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This story is the first in a new series from the Manchester Evening News focusing on interviews with remarkable people who have survived extreme trauma.

It was the early hours of an October morning. The sun wasn’t up yet, the street was quiet, and Emma Martin was fast asleep in bed.

Then came the sound of the letterbox snapping shut, waking her. “It was five in the morning, pitch black,” Emma recalls now, over a year later. “I thought, who’s delivering letters at this time?”

She got up to investigate, quickly reaching her landing, when she heard the letterbox snap shut again. The next moment, she heard a crackling noise.

“I knew straight away it was a fire,” she said. “I got to the top of the stairs and the flames were already halfway up the front door.” Her estranged hu

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