KRYSTAL Evans remembers looking down with adoration at Katie, the newborn little sister whose name she had been allowed to choose.
“I love you and I’ll always look out for you,” whispered Krystal in her ear.
Krystal was eight years old and had longed for a sibling. She loved Katie ardently and helped her mother raise the little girl.
Krystal would glow inwardly every time strangers told her what a great big sister she was after she had chased two-year-old Katie in the supermarket, forcing the toddler back into her clothes after she’d stripped naked.
The pair would spend hours in the woods near their home in rural Washington state in the USA playing Katie’s favourite game of pretending to be cats.
“Katie was an adorable kid with perfectly round glasses and a very pronounced lisp – she pronounced my name “Kwithtal,’” recalls Krystal.
But Krystal was more a mum to Katie than a big sister.
“Our single mother, Tracy, was mentally ill as well as loud, embarrassing, unpredictable and an emotional grenade, ready to go off,” explains Krystal.
But what Krystal could never have imagined was just how unpredictable her mother could be.
When she awoke to a room filled with smoke as fire engulfed her home, the most shocking sight was of her mum fleeing leaving Krystal and her sister in the burning building.
“In the middle of the night I woke up to the sound of blood-curdling screams, a roaring, deafening crackle and unimaginable heat,” she recalls.
“Our mobile home was on fire. I saw a flash of white as an adult figure ran from the bedroom.”
While Krystal was able to escape, her sister Katie was killed in the fire after her mum made no attempt to rescue her.
It was at that moment that Krystal decided she was ‘done’ with her mother.
Krystal says that their childhood had always been rocky with her mum’s dating life proving disruptive.
When Krystal was 11, Tracy married a 91-year-old man for financial security, a marriage that lasted eight weeks.
“We moved all over the western US whenever my mum embarked on – or left – doomed relationships or ran out of money,” explains Krystal.
“I looked after Katie, making her meals, getting her to the school bus and teaching her to play video games.”
Krystal claims that one of Tracy’s strange habits was befriending younger women who were down on their luck, inviting them to move in, then kicking them out when she caught them drinking or doing drugs.
When Krystal was 14 in 2000, their latest stray houseguest was Tiffany and her 18-month-old daughter, Willow.
One Saturday night at their mobile home, it was full of adults who’d decided to head out to a karaoke bar, leaving Krystal to babysit Willow and Katie.
At the last minute, Tracy decided she wasn’t up to going out and she watched a movie with the youngsters instead.
Krystal and Katie snuggled together under a blanket in their PJs before heading to bed – Katie was in one bedroom with Willow, Krystal bunking in their mum’s bed to leave her bedroom free for the other adults.
It was then that tragedy struck and Krystal awoke to her home burning down.
As the flames poured in from the hallway and covered the ceiling, Krystal couldn’t breathe.
The fabric on her pyjamas sizzled.
She instinctively dropped to the floor and crawled to a desk. With the doorway blocked knew that her only chance of survival lay in smashing the bedroom window and flinging herself out.
Krystal grabbed a burning-hot printer to break the inner pane, then used a desk drawer to finish the job.
“I hurled myself through the shards of glass six feet to the ground, the flames licking at my back,” she recalls.
I saw my mother writhing in the road and was consumed with rage: How could she let this happen? Why didn’t she keep Katie safe?
Krystal Evans
“I landed hard and remember the smell of my own burning flesh and hair. I ran to the front yard and spotted my mother lying in the street, burned and covered in blood, screaming and sobbing.”
Krystal spotted Tiffany’s baby, Willow, wandering around the lawn in her onesie, wailing.
She looked back at their house, parts of which were cracking and collapsing. Flames were exploding from windows and leaping 15 feet into the air. It was a giant burning pyre.
All her life, Krystal had feared that Katie would die – now, with overwhelming dread, she realised that her worst fears had come true. Katie was still in the house. Katie was dead.
“My mother had left me in bed to run to the girls’ room, grabbed Willow and left Katie behind,” explains Krystal.
“I saw my mother writhing in the road and was consumed with rage: How could she let this happen? Why didn’t she keep Katie safe?”
As their house burned down it was Krystal who’d had to look after Willow and run to the neighbours’ house and call the emergency services.
It was then that Krystal decided she was finished with her mother.
Krystal spent three weeks in hospital and Tracy was in for three and a half months.
Krystal recalls all the doctors and nurses feeling sorry for the poor burned mother who’d lost her daughter in such tragic circumstances.
When they insisted that Krystal go see her mother in the ICU, she didn’t feel bad for her mum – only anger and resentment.
When Tracy was released from hospital, Krystal had to move back in with her – nobody in Krystal’s wider family to protect her from her mother and Krystal was too emotionally shut down to protest.
At high school she hid the burn scars on her face with makeup and a fringe and the scars on her arm with long sleeved tops even in summer.
“Whenever anyone asked if I had siblings, Katie’s face would pop into my head and it was too painful to talk about her,” says Krystal.
“I didn’t want to make other people feel bad. I’d say: ‘No, I’m an only child.’”
Six months after Katie died, Krystal and her mother went to a ‘burn camp’ for young people who’d suffered burns, Tracy as a camp counsellor.
Where to get support for bereavement
There is lots of help and available if you are experiencing grief after the death of a loved one.
NHS therapy and counselling services – NHS talking therapies services are for people in England aged 18 or over. You can speak to your GP about talking therapies or get in touch with the talking therapies service directly without going to your GP.
At a loss – Find bereavement services and counselling across the UK
Child Bereavement UK – Offers support if you are bereaved after losing a child. Or if you’re a child or young person who is grieving after losing someone.
The Good Grief Trust – a charity run by bereaved people, helping all those experiencing grief in the UK.
Samaritans – if you’re struggling you can call Samaritans any time on 116 123 to talk about anything.
For the first time since her ordeal, Krystal felt that being around other young burns victims – kids like her, some with even worse scars – meant she could relax in their presence.
But after she started a food fight in the canteen, Tracy and Krystal were asked to leave.
When Krystal was 19 she fled to California to attend drama school and then moved to New York, where she met her future husband, Stuart Ralston, a Scottish chef.
The couple moved to Edinburgh and had a baby boy called Sonny, now ten. But motherhood didn’t go smoothly for Krystal at first.
“Looking at this perfect baby brought a new layer of grief to losing Katie and I started having hallucinations and nightmares about us dying in a fire and intrusive thoughts about harming him,” she confesses.
“I had never processed the trauma of losing Katie and the horror of what happened during my childhood.
“I ended up going to trauma therapy, which was hard but the right thing to do.
“I found some kind of peace with what happened and in 2020 we had another boy, Jesse, who’s now five.”
Eventually, Krystal realised that she wanted to tell her story, but chose to do it through comedy.
She started doing stand-up slots that went well, then performed a whole show about her childhood at the Edinburgh Fringe.
I started having hallucinations and nightmares about us dying in a fire and intrusive thoughts about harming my baby
Krystal Evans
“It got so much attention I was overwhelmed – comics I admired told me they loved it and agents and producers gave me their cards,” says Krystal.
“Even Banksy wrote me a note.”
According to Krystal Tracy’s mental health has worsened over the years. Krystal has not been in touch with Tracy for over two years.
She is still processing the grief of losing Katie in such a terrible way.
One therapist suggested she write a letter to Katie, to tell her sister how she felt.
“It was painful, but I did it,” says Krystal.
“I told her how hard it’s been to think about the terrible thing that happened to her.
“I wrote: ‘I know how much you looked up to me and I tried to be the best sister I could for you.
“It’s not fair that your life ended in the way it did. I don’t know how my life would have turned out differently if you’d lived, but I know I would have always been there for you.
“‘I will always remember you. I love you so much. You were the best little sister.’”
The Hottest Girl at Burn Camp by Krystal Evans is out now (Monoray, £20).
