Summary

Jan Carson’s short story “The World Ending in Fire” starts with the narrator talking about Mrs Agnew, her friend Lyndsey’s mother. In the last three years of her life, Mrs Agnew lived in a paddling pool in the living room and never got out, not even to sleep or go to the toilet, which the narrator considered lazy and did not understand. The narrator was careful with Lyndsay, though, and did not express her disgust for Mrs Agnew, since she knew her friend was in a fragile mental state. 

The narrator explains that Mrs Agnew’s behavior changed suddenly right after Mr Agnew was killed in service, by a bomb under his car. She starts living in the paddling pool and the narrator never saw her out of the water after that. The pool was in the middle of the living room and could be ...