In the early hours of a December morning, Jade Horton was woken from a deep sleep by the sounds of screaming.
It was her seven-year-old daughter Sienna from her bedroom across the hall.
Half asleep and assuming Sienna was having a nightmare, Jade dragged herself out of bed and opened her bedroom door to a sight that made her snap awake instantly. Through a wall of thick, black smoke, she could make out flames coming from the floor below.
‘I couldn’t believe my eyes,’ says Jade, now 39. ‘My three-year-old son Isaac’s bedroom was on the floor below. I started screaming, calling out for them both. The smoke filled my room within seconds, making me choke.
‘It was only a few feet to Sienna’s room, but I was completely overpowered by heat and smoke. It was so hot, I felt as though my skin was melting. I dropped to my hands and knees and tried to crawl, but I couldn’t see where I was going.’
In abject panic, Jade ran back to her bedroom window at the top of the three-storey home to shout for help. Her neighbours were already in the back garden on the phone to the fire brigade. She managed to find her phone to call her partner Andy, who had left for work as a floor fitter.
‘I was completely panic-stricken. At the open window, I could take in air, but when I turned back to get to the children, I was overcome by smoke and could feel myself struggling to stay conscious.
‘I never made it back to the bedroom door. My body physically couldn’t move any further. My legs were bare and they were so hot it felt as though they were on fire.’
Half asleep and assuming her daughter Sienna was having a nightmare, Jade Horton dragged herself out of bed and opened her bedroom door to a sight that made her snap awake instantly
Although Jade escaped with multiple injuries after neighbours encouraged her to jump from her window, both Sienna and Isaac (pictured) died at the scene
Although firefighters arrived within minutes, the blaze was already so advanced that they were instructed not to enter the building because it was too dangerous. Andy, who had rushed back from work, and two neighbours did make it into the house, but were beaten back by the flames before they could get to Jade and the children.
‘I heard their voices on the stairs, and then I realised I couldn’t hear Sienna any more,’ says Jade, pausing, her eyes filling with tears. ‘So I thought she had been rescued…’
Tragically, although Jade escaped with multiple injuries after neighbours encouraged her to jump from her window, both Sienna and Isaac died at the scene.
‘I remember the plastic starting to melt as I climbed up on to the windowsill,’ says Jade. ‘In my delirium, I thought the children must have been rescued from the front of the house. If I’d known they were still inside, I would have died with them.
‘The next thing I remember is the hard impact and a crunch, which I now know was my bones breaking.’
After she landed, Jade shouted for her children, ‘but no one would look at me’. ‘Eventually, I screamed at Andy, “Where are they?” He managed to say: “They’re gone.”
‘I remember hearing this guttural, animal-like scream that must have come from me – but it was like I wasn’t in my own body.’
Jade was taken to hospital, where it was discovered she had shattered both heel bones, ankles, her pelvis, her sternum, right wrist, three fingers and all ten toes. She had also broken her spine in four places and her right hip socket. Medics thought it was unlikely she would survive.
She pulled through multiple surgeries but was told she would be left permanently paralysed.
It’s hard to imagine a story more deserving of sympathy. Yet, as the house fire made national news, Jade found herself the victim of vicious online trolling. Not only was she accused of saving herself and leaving her children to perish, she was even likened to a murderer.
‘Everyone told me not to read anything about the fire online,’ says Jade. ‘But I had no idea why the fire had started so I couldn’t help but pore over every news article and on social media for any clues.
‘Every article had dozens of comments underneath it. I was horrified to find that all these complete strangers were saying I had left my children to die.
Jade found herself the victim of vicious online trolling. Some compared Jade to Mick Philpott, who in 2013 was found guilty of killing his six children by arson
‘I thought I couldn’t be in any more pain, but that hurt the most.’
Some trolls even compared Jade to Mick Philpott, who in 2013 was found guilty of killing his six children by arson.
‘As someone who worked as a prison officer who actually guarded Philpott, these comments made me physically shake,’ she says. ‘I loved my children and would have given my life to save them. How could people think I was a monster like that?’
But far from dismissing these hideous jibes, Jade, deep in mourning, was tortured by the thought that she might have been to blame.
‘Losing your children is any parent’s worst nightmare, but the guilt over not being able to save them was already eating me up. The trolls touched a hideously raw nerve – I started to think maybe they were right, maybe it was my fault and I should have been able to save them.’
Every time the fire was in the news, the same accusations would appear.
It was only following the inquest, when Jade was officially and publicly told there was absolutely nothing more she could have done to save her children, that she ‘started to believe it myself again’.
Nearly five years have passed since Jade’s life fell to pieces that December in 2020. Only now does she feel able to speak about what happened to her that dreadful night. As someone who had always longed to have children, she felt ‘as though I couldn’t go on without them’.
‘When I gave birth to Sienna in 2013, I was completely overwhelmed and utterly in love with her,’ she smiles. ‘I’d spend hours just staring at her. When Isaac arrived four years later, I felt like I’d won the lottery.’
Although Jade split from her children’s father, Sienna and Issac enjoyed a wonderful childhood.
‘Everyone told me what lovely children they were,’ Jade says.
‘I know everyone thinks their own children are wonderful, but they were just so special, so full of happiness and love.’
When Jade met her new partner, Andy, they rented a townhouse in St Neots, Cambridgeshire, while they looked for their own home to buy.
Sienna’s room was on the second floor, across the hall from Jade and Andy, with Isaac in a room on the first floor so he could be on the same level as Andy’s teenage son, who stayed part of the week and was at his mum’s on the night of the fire.
‘As usual, I tucked Isaac into bed and sang him his favourite nursery rhymes as he drifted off,’ Jade smiles at her final memories.
It was only following an inquest, when Jade was officially told there was nothing more she could have done to save her children, that she ‘started to believe it herself again’
‘I went up to kiss Sienna goodnight, and she asked me to read her a story. She picked her favourite, about a flying unicorn. I read it to her and kissed her goodnight.
‘I’m glad I cuddled them and kissed them before watching them both fall asleep happy that night.’
Ever since she lost them, she has felt their presence around her, even right after the moment she jumped in delirium into the back garden.
‘For a moment, all I could see was this blinding white light,’ she recalls.
‘It was so strange, the only way I can describe it was as though my soul was being lifted out of my body, it was euphoric and beautiful. I have never felt so safe. Suddenly, I felt the pressure shoot back into my bones, and I could see things around me – glass and blood everywhere.’
It was this feeling of euphoria that she would return to.
‘As the days went by in hospital, I kept thinking back to the weird comforting feeling I’d had when I jumped, and I felt as though I could hear the children, urging me to keep going.’
So, too, when it came to attempting to walk – a feat doctors said she would never achieve.
‘Even though I’d been told I wouldn’t walk again, I was determined to try. About 12 weeks after the fire, a physio asked me if I wanted to try taking a step. Every part of my body was in agony, but I could hear Sienna and Isaac shouting, “You can do it Mummy!” and I managed to walk the length of a corridor. The doctors called me a miracle.’
Jade was moved into temporary accommodation when she left hospital, to allow her to have access to help in a ground-floor apartment.
But despite making incredible progress with her physical recovery, she struggled to cope mentally.
‘It was an awful time,’ she says. ‘They tested the fire alarm every week, which would give me flashbacks. I’d see smoke in the corridors when there wasn’t any, and even opening doors when I didn’t know what was behind them would take me right back to the fire.
‘I eventually moved into a bungalow, but a year on, my suicidal thoughts were getting worse. I just wanted to be with the children. I’d spend the days writing my funeral plan and looking for ways to kill myself. I remember one day sitting in the garden, looking at the gazebo wondering whether I would be able to hang myself from it.
‘Andy was struggling, too – he’d see the flames when he closed his eyes at night, and think he was back trying to get to the children. We eventually split, we both needed support but we weren’t strong enough to give it to each other at that moment.’
On the waiting list for psychiatric help, Jade continued to feel her children’s presence. ‘Sometimes I was convinced I actually saw them at the end of the bed.
Jade says she felt tortured by the thought that she might have been to blame
‘I started to notice a lot of little coincidences when I felt them near me. I’d suddenly feel their presence while walking along the street and then see a coin lying on the ground – it would always be one minted in either of their years of birth.
‘I’d see two little robins, their favourite birds, flying around the garden whenever I thought of them. I’ve always been quite a spiritual person, and open to the idea of holistic healing.
‘I researched alternative therapies, including Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing Therapy (EMDR), as well as types of Reiki, and went for private sessions. Immediately, I started to feel as though I was making progress.’
She also went to see a psychic. ‘I was concerned that she might know who I was and scam me, so I booked the appointment under a friend’s name, covered my hair and my walking aid on my leg, so she wouldn’t know anything about my background.
‘As soon as I walked through the door, she said to me: “Do you know you have a little girl and boy walking around after you?”
‘I sobbed – but they were tears of comfort, and a sense of peace. She told me that the children were always there with me.
‘Some might be sceptical, but I felt she was just confirming what I already knew. She told me stories about the children’s favourite things that nobody but I could have known. From that moment, I felt as though I could start to rebuild my life with them by my side. Obviously, I still have bad days and would give anything to hold them in my arms again, but I honestly believe they are still with me.’
Jade retrained as a spiritual healer and found by helping others, she felt more at peace.
‘It would have been very easy for me to have leaned into the bitterness and anger that I felt at the world, and let it consume me for ever. But I realised that being angry and resentful was a waste of my energy.
‘I came to realise that I couldn’t control what had happened, and that the people who had written awful things about me weren’t a reflection of me.
‘Their comments were a reflection of them, and I could choose who I wanted to be.’
In March 2022, an inquest into the children’s deaths heard the fire likely reached temperatures of 1,000C, and the family’s smoke alarms did not sound due to a ‘perfect storm’ of conditions in the house that created a chimney effect, drawing smoke and flames upwards.
‘For a long time, I had been tortured by the thought that my children had been consumed by flames, it was unbearable,’ says Jade. ‘But at the inquest, they said it was likely they both fell unconscious, overcome with smoke. That brought me a small amount of comfort. I hope Isaac didn’t even wake up.’
The inquest ruled electrics in a TV in Isaac’s room probably caused the blaze and, in 2024, the manufacturer paid Jade a six-figure settlement.
‘People hear that there was a large settlement and think I must be living the high life,’ she says. ‘In reality, I need that money to survive – the therapies I am still undergoing all the time for my injuries are not cheap.’
She adds: ‘I’ve finally been able to move house, although it is difficult to find joy in a new home knowing I’ll be there without my children.
‘I had their ashes put into two teddy bears, so I can take them with me wherever I go.’
Jade has recently won a Woman of Courage award.
‘It was for building my successful holistic business despite adversity,’ she explains.
‘When I got up on stage, I could hear Sienna and Isaac cheering for me louder than anyone else.’
