by Kate Helm
In the days after the fire, the pavement here was carpeted by flowers. The same had happened at my house. I never went home, but I saw it on the news: the pile of rotting, pastel petals. My social worker brought me a selection of the cards left there. I only recognised two or three as coming from people who’d known us and I despised the strangers who’d appropriated my grief.
But now I’m the same as them.
I want to turn back, my cheeks red with shame, but something about the house catches my eye. Number 9 has been rebuilt, the concrete frontage whitewashed and dazzling, even with no sun. It almost hurts my eyes. But that’s not what’s strange. It’s the windows: every one has newspapers taped to the inside of the panes.
Why? To stop people seeing in? Jim doesn’t live here anymore. He said on the court steps after the trial that he could never go back, and tomorrow I’ve arranged to meet him at his new house.
I feel it again: the sense I’m being watched. I close my eyes, afraid suddenly that I will see young Charlie outside the house where he nearly died.
Except, I can hear footsteps and it makes me realise something for the first time: Charlie never makes a sound.
‘Been a while since we’ve had a rubbernecker.’
I spin around. A ruddy-skinned woman in her fifties is watching me from behind the fence of the last house.
‘Sorry, I—’
I shrug. There’s not much I can say. What else would a stranger be doing here but coming to gawp?
I look towards the woman’s neat house, the half-decent car in the drive.
‘Is it empty now? Jim’s house?’
‘Last lot of tenants wrecked the place. Mr Fielding had to do it up again but no one else has rented it yet. Not like they’re queuing round the block to live where some poor girl and her unborn kid died, is it?’
‘Did you know them?’
‘You a reporter?’
I shake my head.
‘Didn’t know Tessa except to wave at. She wasn’t here long. Only after she and Mr Fielding wed and of course, that were only months before the fire.’
I look back at the blanked-out windowpanes. Was this a happy home?
‘And did Jim live here before, with his first wife?’
The woman nods. ‘Yeah. Sharon. She wasn’t from Ashdean, originally. Trouble with a capital T.’
It seems a cruel judgement on a woman whose life became so unbearable she jumped off a bridge.
‘In what way?’
‘Oh, not for me to say. But she wasn’t much of a wife. No one could have blamed Mr Fielding for looking elsewhere. Not that he had to look far.’
Is she insinuating that Jim had been having an affair?
‘Good mum, though, give her her due,’ the woman says, interpreting my silence as disapproval.
‘You knew Daniel?’
She nods. ‘He wasn’t a bad lad, bit of a mummy’s boy if anything. Her doing herself in hit him hard. His big sister, that’s Amy, she was always the smarter of the two.’
I look up at the house again.
‘You wouldn’t have known anything had happened there.’
She shrugs. ‘For a long while, even after it had been all re-plastered, painted, the lot, you could still smell the fire. Like a ruddy great barbecue.’
I shudder. ‘And Jim? You knew him well?’
She narrows her eyes. ‘Everybody in Ashdean knows Mr Fielding. I wasn’t surprised when he did what he did that night.’
‘Rescuing the children?’
‘Loved those kids like they were his own.’
She gives me a sideways look.
‘Did you know Charlie and Jodie too?’
She nods. ‘By sight, yeah. They were always out in the garden, with their parents. Well, Emma and Sharon were chalk and cheese, but Mr Fielding was mates with the kids’ dad, Robert, until he did a runner.’
‘Did they work together?’
‘No, it was when they were teenagers. Young Jimmy was a right tearaway. Spent a year inside for what he got up to.’
I didn’t know that.
‘What was that?’
‘Joyriding, from what I recall.’ The woman’s blushing now. ‘Our very own Jimmy Dean.’
‘He sounds like a charmer.’
‘I’ve always liked bad boys.’ She smiles. ‘At school, he was in the year below me and you know how it goes, usually girls only look at the older lads. But when Mr Fielding came back from his year in the nick, he was taller, stronger. Tough, you know? We all fancied him.’ She blushes again. ‘You sure you’re not a journalist? You’re good at getting stuff out of me.’
‘I have one of those faces, people say.’
‘Lose someone, did you?’
I turn back to face her.
‘What?’
‘Three kinds of people who come to places like this. First the reporters. Then the rubberneckers, desperate to have a piece of the action. But I’ve changed my mind, I don’t think you’re one of them. Apart from anything, you didn’t bring a bunch of bloody carnations.’
‘Who are the third kind of people?’
‘The sad ones. You can see by the way they hold themselves, they’re embarrassed. They didn’t want to be a part of this, but it’s like they couldn’t help themselves. What happened here – not just the fire, but what Mr Fielding done, how he saved those kiddies – made them come.’
‘People would tell you that?’
She nods. ‘Used to make them tea. No charge, mind. It’d all spill out. Dead wives, kids, parents.’
‘Do you think visiting helped them? The people who came.’
She shrugs. ‘A brew makes most things a bit better. Want one?’
I’m tempted to go with her, to ask her more about Jim, and Daniel too. But she’s clearly the local gossip and I don’t want anyone to know about the commission until it’s definite.
‘Thanks for the offer, but I’ve had a long drive. You could point me in the direction of the Forester’s Rest?’
‘Just head back out and right onto the main road, until you’re nearly out of town. If you get to the bloody great white house on the right, looks like a nuclear bunker, you’ve gone too far. Mind you. Maybe you’d like to take a look at that too.’
‘Why?’
‘It’s where Jim Fielding lives now. Behind a very high wall. You can be sure he won’t be inviting you in for a cuppa.’
15
A mile down the road, the last pebble-dashed houses peter out, and the Forester’s Rest appears on the left.
But I see it too late, and have to drive on, looking for a turning place. Before I do, there’s a long, high, plastered wall, painted in a textured white finish that looks too sticky to climb.
Jim Fielding’s house.
I drive slowly, still trying to spot somewhere to turn. As the road climbs out of the dip, the landscape opens up again: rich green meadows and sandstone farm buildings. Sheep dot the landscape. After the unrelenting silence of Ashdean, it’s a shock to hear the sweet-sour melodies of a blackbird.
Finally, I do a U-turn, and on the way back, I pass the walled house again, right-angled corners sharp as daggers. A reinforced metal gate, the width of a truck, is topped with razor wire. Twin CCTV cameras turn in opposite directions, even though the road here is deserted.
The security measures seem extreme, but Jim lost two wives and a child. I imagine he wants to keep those who are left as safe as he can.
The car jolts over something, and when I look back in my mirror, I half expect to see a vision of Charlie. But instead, I realise it’s a dead animal – a large bird. I think there are hawks in the forest, and other birds of prey. I hope I wasn’t the one who killed it.
I turn into the pub car park, where modern extensions dwarf the original Victorian footprint: there’s a skittle alley, and a peach-curtained function room.
As I step into the pub, a large, brown dog with a broad, pink muzzle bounds towards me, growling and wagging his tail simultaneously.
/> ‘Rambo, easy.’ The landlord appears from the same direction as the dog. ‘Nothing to worry about, love, unless you’re a burglar. But you don’t look like a burglar.’
‘I’m staying tonight.’
‘Oh yes. I had you down. Single room, is it? I’ve given you a double. Singles are all above the bar, which would have been noisy as we’ve got a do in tonight.’
He gestures down the corridor – I can see the dark-varnished woodwork of a long bar, and beyond that, oak tables and chairs, all empty.
‘A do? I’ve been driving through the town and it’s deserted.’
‘Getting dolled up. Ashdean lives for its Friday nights.’
He takes my overnight bag from me and puffs up the stairs with it.
‘Rambo, no!’ he says, sending the dog back down.
The animal lies on a tread, its long body spilling over the edge.
My room is huge: there’s a king-sized bed with a fern-patterned duvet cover, textured walls painted apple green, and an old map of the forest.
‘This is cosy,’ I say.
‘We redid the rooms. Hoping to get the ramblers in. Hasn’t worked. This bit of the forest isn’t chocolate box enough. You a walker yourself?’
‘On my way up to see family.’
The excuse I’d made up feels phoney now. I’ve seen how Ashdean isn’t really on the way to or from anywhere.
But the landlord is already on to the next thing.
‘Oh, if you’re planning to eat, you might want to do that now. You won’t want to be fighting off drunks while you’re trying to eat your ploughman’s.’
‘What’s the celebration?’
‘An engagement do. There will be drinking, that’s for certain. But it’s always good-natured. Like one big family, Ashdean. We live too cheek by jowl for it to be any other way.’
*
I take a shower, then go down stairs. The bar is tidy, with local ales and a basic menu of pies and pub grub. The landlord sets my table in the corner and I trip, not noticing the low step up to it. But at least, as it’s slightly raised, I’ll be out of the way.
Almost on the dot of seven, Ashdean arrives ready to party. The customers are all ages, a little dressed up: the women in tops with glitter panels or cut-out backs, the men in pressed shirts with short sleeves revealing tattoos and muscled arms. But it’s a lot less outrageous than Brighton.
I look at a group of younger lads, in case one of them is Charlie. But I probably wouldn’t recognise him even if he was there.
A few customers give me curious glances as they order their drinks, but soon it’s so busy that no one looks my way at all. A DJ has set up in the other corner, where a few tables have been pushed out of the way to create a small dance floor.
I finish my dinner and am just about to buy another drink to take up to my room, when the main bar door opens and the atmosphere changes so instantly it’s as if someone has flicked a switch.
Two women come in first: a skinny blonde, younger than me, with a fake tan so deep it’s as though she’s been dipped in linseed oil. The other woman is my age, and very heavily pregnant, with lank, sandy hair.
The pub holds its breath as a man hesitates on the threshold, his back to us as he tosses away a cigarette. Even before he turns, I know who he is. He enters like the lead singer on a comeback tour, grinning as he takes the hand of the pregnant woman, and circles his arm around the skinny hips of the other girl.
Jim Fielding.
Weather-beaten but ageless, eyes bright, smile broad. He must be in his early fifties, but he’s not gone to seed. His clothes emphasise the flatness of his belly and the strength in his legs.
I wait for the furore of his arrival to die down, but it doesn’t. The blonde girl must be twenty – no, even thirty years – his junior, but she gazes up at him as though he is Romeo to her Juliet. He sweeps a strand of golden hair away from her temple, then looks up at the waiting customers.
‘Friends. Family members. Enemies.’ He waits for the laugh, which comes as a wall of sound. ‘Kidding! Thanks for coming here tonight to be with me, and my new fiancée, Leah.’
Fiancée? I hadn’t expected that. After what happened to the first two Mrs Fieldings, it would take a brave woman to marry Jim.
‘Despite all that’s happened to our family, I feel like a bloody lucky man. Because this woman has agreed to become my third wife. Not hanging around to give her time to change her mind, either. So get August the twelfth in your diaries. I don’t know what I did to deserve meeting this special person, but it must have been something good.’
He turns back to her. I’ve never looked at another person with such transparent desire. My discomfort at the age gap fades a little.
When he kisses her, I sense the women sighing. And when they break apart, the pub erupts in applause.
Only the pregnant girl doesn’t join in. Her hands rest on the top of her protruding belly, and she tilts her head in my direction. I catch my breath. It’s like seeing Daniel: the same high cheekbones, the same watchful eyes. This must be his older sister Amy, all grown up.
I wonder if she’s still in touch with Daniel in prison, if she has told him he’s going to be an uncle. If she misses her brother, as I miss mine.
‘Not a bad lad,’ the neighbour had said.
Was he a good brother? Despite everything he did?
‘Thirsty work, getting engaged,’ Jim says, and walks up to the bar. ‘First round’s on me!’
I plan to slip away when no one is looking. But as I cross the bar, I can see the other people at the table with Amy. A pretty, middle-aged woman with a salt-and-pepper bob holds the hand of a teenaged girl whose soft features make me look again. She has Down syndrome. And now I realise who she is, too: Jodie O’Neill, the tiny bridesmaid at Jim’s last wedding, the child in bunny ears he rescued from the fire. The woman with the bob must be her mother, Emma.
Which means that even before he turns, I know who the last person at the table is. The laughter, the clinking of glasses, the electronic sounds from the fruit machine all fade away.
Mid-brown hair, soft and fluffed up. Broad shoulders, carrying a little too much weight. And a flat, shiny patch on his cheek, perhaps all that’s left of that terrifying night fourteen years ago.
Charlie.
Our eyes meet. For a fraction of a second, I half-expect him to recognise me too.
But he blinks, then looks away.
I can’t take my eyes off him. Charlie is a man now. Of course, I knew that in theory but even so . . .
A flash of red in my peripheral vision makes me turn. It takes me a moment to understand what – or rather, who – I am seeing.
It’s the young Charlie – the lost child in a red football shirt. He watches his older self, hands bunched into small fists. His face seems so much clearer than the real man. And the boy is sobbing silently.
I try to look away or blink him gone. Tears run down his ruddy face, and there is nothing I can do.
A burning sensation in my palm makes me look down. The room key in my hand is biting into the flesh where I’m gripping it.
The last time I felt this scared, my bedroom key was in my hand and through the half-open door to the bathroom, I saw the aqua tiles splashed with the deepest crimson.
I blink again. The younger Charlie – my Charlie – has disappeared.
I stumble to my room and fall onto the bed. This cannot go on. When I’m back in Brighton, I’ll do something about the visions – find help, talk to a counsellor or something. Whatever’s the matter with me, it can’t be as terrible as not knowing.
Sleep won’t happen now, but I close my eyes to stop myself seeing a boy who isn’t there. Party music drifts towards me. Jaunty songs from the seventies – for Jim, I suppose – and up-tempo contemporary tracks, for the woman who is going to be the third Mrs Fielding.
16
I must get some sleep in the end, because when I wake, last night’s events seem unreal. I force myself to focus on
today – this commission matters. I dress smartly and skip breakfast, knowing hunger will make me sharper.
Outside, low white cloud hangs over the forest like a blanket, though it’s surprisingly hot as I walk towards Jim Fielding’s house.
Guard dogs begin to bark when I’m still a good three hundred yards from the gate. The sound has none of Rambo’s amiable gruffness. The perimeter wall is freshly painted, the border of green shrubs thorny and forbidding.
A slate sign is mounted on the wall: THE WHITE HOUSE.
I think of Jim’s reception at the pub last night; perhaps he’s being ironic.
I walk up to the gate without hesitating and push the intercom. As I wait for a response, I run through the flattering words I’ve rehearsed. Seeing him last night has made me more nervous. Jim is clearly no pushover.
The intercom rings and rings. I stare at the panel; a glass lens reflects my own image back at me, monochrome and blurred. Someone behind those gates can see me better than I can see myself.
The dogs have stopped barking, which makes me even more sure there’s a person on the other side settling them.
‘Hello.’ I speak into the grille. ‘I’m Georgia Sage. I am here to see Mr Fielding.’
The blast of static is so loud it makes me jump backwards.
‘Didn’t you see the sign? No junk, no sales.’
The voice is a woman’s: young, scratchy. Leah?
‘I’ve actually got an appointment with him. Arranged by Benjamin Rowland, he’s a publisher in London.’
‘Jim’s out.’
‘Could I wait?’
She tuts like a teenager.
‘He never said nothing.’
‘It’s about a painting.’ I wonder if I can flatter her. ‘You might like to be painted yourself?’
Silence. Then a series of clunks as bolts retract into the steel casings. The gate whines as it moves slowly inwards. I’m impatient to see inside.
First, I see spikes: an island of cacti set in a sea of black gravel. Beyond the ‘garden’ sits a single-storey glass building, with bamboo growing up against the windows like prison bars. This is in another league from Cherry Blossom Lane. Jim Fielding’s life has been full of sadness, but it hasn’t done business any harm.