'Who started the Stoke Newington pub fire that killed my cousins?'

Vicky Knight was only eight years old when she was rescued from a fire that tore through her grandad's pub on 27 July 2003, killing her two young cousins and the man who tried to save them.

Vicky, now an actress, had been enjoying a sleepover in the living room above the Prince of Wales pub in Stoke Newington, north London, when she was woken by her older cousin Denise, who told her there was a fire.

Vicky says she went towards the landing, but Denise stopped her, explaining that the flames were behind the door and that they wouldn't make it out that way. Instead, the pair desperately tried to break the windows.

It was an experience the 28-year-old says she remembers "as if it were yesterday".

"I remember the floor being so hot, and I remember hearing the sounds of the wood cracking. I remember just standing on tiptoe and I couldn't close my mouth because it was just burning," she says.

The girls were rescued by Ronnie Springer, a pub regular, who managed to get through the windows. "He just smiled at me, he got hold of me, and I looked at him, and he said to me: 'I'm going to get you out, it'll be OK, I'll get you out.'"

Ronnie tried to rescue the other three children as well, but fell from the window. He died in hospital six weeks later.

The 45-year-old was given a posthumous award for his bravery.

While Vicky's life was saved, she had suffered severe burns. She remembers a firefighter at the scene trying to comfort her as he poured water over her, telling the young girl: "'We'll count to three and we'll scream together'. And I screamed. And he screamed with me."

She spent he next few weeks in an induced coma and when she woke up, she remembers her room being "filled with hundreds of teddies, cards all over the walls, balloons tied to my bed".

"I remember saying to my mum, 'I want to go and see Charlie and Chris', and my mum telling me, 'they're asleep, they've gone to sleep'.

"Obviously at the time, I was only eight and I didn't understand," she says.

Christopher, aged 10, and four-year-old Charlie had not survived.

Investigators suspected the fire had been started deliberately, at the foot of the stairs. They believed a paper towel and a cloth had been doused with white spirit and lighter fuel and set alight.

In 2005, Vicky's aunt, Kate Knight, the mother of Charlie and Christopher, was cleared at the Old Bailey of three counts of manslaughter and arson.

Vicky, who suffered burns to a third of her body, was in hospital for months and 20 years on she is still receiving treatment for her injuries.

She still remembers catching sight of herself, as a young girl, in a hospital mirror, her head shaved, her arms bandaged and thinking it wasn't her in the reflection. "I didn't know who it was, I didn't recognise myself," she says.

At school, Vicky was bullied over how she looked. In 2019, despite no previous acting experience, she was cast as the lead in the film Dirty God, playing the part of an acid attack survivor.

Her performance was praised by critics, and her latest film, Silver Haze, due out next year, is based on her experience of surviving the blaze.

She is hoping the film might prompt someone to come forward with new information so she can discover who was responsible for the deaths of her cousins and her rescuer.

Two years ago a person did approach her with new details, Vicky says, but they have not given a statement to police.

"I want to scream to the world," she adds.

"Someone knows something, and the only thing I can say is if you do know something, I'm begging you - please come forward with that information and please give my family some justice and some peace, so those boys can rest, and so I can get on with my life."

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