Nightingale Point

by Luan Goldie

  ‘Can you hear me?’ But she can’t even hear herself. The phone falls to the ground.

  How can she escape this? Which way can she run? A flash of brightness catches her attention as one of the sand-coloured curtains catches light, flames quickly sucking up the fabric and curling into itself before melting away into nothing. She pulls the throw from the sofa and scuttles through to the kitchen, where she whacks the taps on and pushes the blanket under the water. She doubles over the sink, hacking, attempting to clear her mouth of the blood and grit.

  What were the points from the fire safety video? You wet a towel? You put it over your face? Around your head? You keep the towel dry and use it to stop smoke coming under the doors?

  She can’t remember, and now her breath feels thick and scratchy as she runs through her darkened home to the bathroom. The light blinks as she sits on the toilet seat. Under the smoke she can still smell the grey emulsion and gloss from the skirting boards. One of Dad’s attempts to smarten up the flat. The water from the damp blanket dribbles down her face, mixing with the blood from her nose and mouth. Has she come in here to wait to be saved? Or to die?

  She takes a deep breath, the fullest she can manage, and feels the paint fumes, smoke and vapours of something else chemical fill her body and graze her lungs, like freezing fog on a February morning. That cold hour each day she was allowed to run the field, back when she was free.

  She struggles for another breath and pulls the wet material from her face to gulp at the air, but finds none. Her head rolls back. There’s a bare light bulb, hazy within the smoke, like the moon on a cloudy night. She’s running again now, outside in the air, in the space and sparseness of the field in front of the flats. It’s cold and crisp, like that first day she spoke to Malachi. The first time he ever put his hands on her. The start of it all when things could have gone so right. The iciness tears at her chest, uncomfortable yet freeing. Where is he now? Tristan said he was out somewhere. Where? For how long? He’s always at home. Or maybe he’s in the library, squinting into a book. Yes, that’s where he is. He’s safe.

  She squeezes her eyes shut, feeling Malachi kiss her goodbye outside his flat. The last time they were okay and happy, the last time they were together. That kiss was the last one and they didn’t even know it then.

  She had kept her head down as she leapt up the stairs two at a time, back to her flat on the eleventh floor. It was impossible to stop smiling, thinking of all the things she had done with Malachi that afternoon. But as she reached the flat her heart sank to see the gate lying open, unlocked. Dad was home early.

  Inside, the lights were on and the cream saucer was piled with fresh ash. He stood in the doorway and it was clear from his expression there was no point going through the charade of hanging the wet swimming costume up above the bath.

  ‘I’ve been trying to work out who you’ve been spending all this time with,’ he said. ‘For a while I thought that paedophile coach was back on the scene.’

  ‘Dad, please—’

  He held up a hand. ‘Don’t bother. Who is it?’ He looked helpless, not angry as she expected him to be. ‘Tell me, Pam, ’cause I need to know. Who’s been with you? If someone’s been taking advantage …’

  Her skin crawled at the suggestion that she was some child being exploited.

  ‘Who is it?’ he demanded. ‘Is it that black guy from downstairs?’

  She dug her nails into her palms and hoped her face wouldn’t betray her.

  ‘Even after I smacked him one.’

  ‘Tristan? No.’ She almost laughed with relief. ‘Of course not.’

  ‘So who is it?’ he shouted.

  ‘He’s a nice guy.’ It came out so weakly, her voice tiny and scared. ‘He’s smart, he’s kind and he’s good. He’s at university and—’

  ‘University? How old is he?’

  Was it too late to lie? Would it even help matters?

  ‘Tell me how old he is.’

  ‘He’s twenty-one.’

  ‘No, Pam. Not again.’ He grabbed his head. ‘Why? It’s like they see you coming.’ His face clouded. ‘It’s over. From now on you go to school. You come home from school. No running. No swimming. Just focus on your GCSEs.’

  ‘Dad, please listen to me—’

  ‘No!’ he shouted.

  ‘If you’d meet him, if you’d give Malachi a chance, you would—’

  ‘He’s Irish?’

  ‘No, he’s black.’ She wanted to take it back straight away. The way her dad’s face fell at her words. She knew in that moment that Malachi had been right. ‘You’re not even going to give him a chance, are you?’

  ‘I don’t need to.’ His reply was calm, but Pamela felt herself stepping away, backing into her room in case he lashed out. ‘Just ’cause this one’s at university doesn’t make him any better than the rest. You want to end up like all these other dumb white girls left with black babies? Is that what you want for yourself?’

  ‘You’re wrong. And I won’t stop seeing him. I love him.’

  ‘You’re just a girl.’ His voice softened. ‘You really think he loves you? That he’s taking you, a schoolgirl, seriously? He’s using you.’

  ‘I know he’s not. He’s not like that.’

  ‘Pam, if you keep seeing him, if you break my trust, then that’s it, I’ll send you back to stay with your mum.’

  ‘No. You won’t.’ She knew then the right thing to say, the thing that made perfect sense. ‘Because I’m moving in with Malachi.’

  Dad’s face reddened as the anger returned, his shoulders shifting back.

  ‘Well, then maybe you should go now.’

  The light flickers in the bathroom. On. Off. On. Then goes out completely. Only a strip of light from under the door illuminates the grey as it creeps in. Something hot and wet falls on her face and she drops into a tight space on the warm, grimy lino floor.

  Dad? In her mind she calls him.

  ‘Dad? Dad?’ She screams for him to come and save her.

  But nothing.

  ‘Dad? I’m sorry. I’m sorry, you were right.’

  The smell becomes pungent, different from the bin fires she became used to the first winter she lived on the estate. It’s a smell like no other. A wet blob of something heavy and searing falls on her shoulder and she flinches away from it. She blocks out the smell and taste of the smoke, looking up to see if the moon is still there. Instead, there is only the ceiling, an orange glow around its edges, like a frame around something beautiful. The frame gets larger and larger, and she knows it is the last thing she will ever see.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Chapter Twenty ,Elvis

  He pulls himself to standing and staggers over to the cubbyhole, but there is no one to help. Outside there is noise and people, and Elvis runs towards it, grateful that finally someone can take over and sort out this very bad mess that he hopes was not his fault.

  A group of firefighters come close; they look scary in their masks and are rushing.

  ‘Please can you help—’ But they do not stop to hear what he has to say.

  More firefighters come and one of them pushes Elvis out of the way and shouts something at him. There is so much noise and still a strange buzzing in his ears so he does not hear the exact words.

  Outside someone grabs Elvis and tries to sit him down to help him, but he is not the one who needs help. He tries to explain this to the person but they are not paying attention. No one is. Who is going to help the boy? He is hurt, hurt very badly. His eye is smashed like an old plum and a bone is sticking out of his foot. Maybe he is dead now. Dead like the frog Elvis found in the park once, blackened and hard.

  There are police on the field, Elvis can see their blue flashing lights and wants to find them. He runs through the car park, trying not to look at the smashed cars and broken glass and injured people all around. It is too horrible. He runs across the road and onto the field where there are people, so many of them, hundreds and thousands and millions. But
none look like they know what to do.

  ‘Can someone help? Someone is hurt on the ground floor,’ he calls into the crowd.

  Some of the people look hurt too, but not as badly as the boy, who cannot even walk because his foot is so broken.

  ‘Who can help?’ he asks again.

  They are staring at him, and he does not like to be stared at, especially not now because he is crying and dirty and smelly. There is blood on his clothes, vomit all over his shorts.

  A police officer walks past and Elvis stops him.

  ‘Someone is stuck in there,’ he shouts at the officer.

  ‘Yes, we are working to get everyone out.’

  ‘He’s hurt.’

  The officer pushes Elvis away a little and shouts to another, ‘Can someone assist this man?’

  ‘He’s on the ground floor. He’s lying there.’

  ‘Yes. Okay. Okay. Someone help this man?’ he shouts again before running off.

  But no one comes. No one is listening. Not even the police, who are usually so kind to Elvis. This is all taking too long. Time is running out and time is important when there is an emergency, just like Michael Buerk says on 999 Lifesavers.

  Elvis cannot stop coughing and feels very sick. Maybe he does need help. Maybe he is hurt. He stumbles over to a bench, but there are too many people there so he sits next to it on the ground. His home is gone, his perfect home, destroyed in the fire. He hopes it was not his fault. He does not think so as he was not cooking rice or watching football when the fire began. He was not even in his flat. He was in the stairwell watching a plane; it was quite exciting. Planes are fun to watch but this plane got too close and went too fast and then boom.

  His ears buzz, bzzzzz. His eyes sting too, like they do in cooking class at the Waterside Centre, where they teach you how to chop onions very carefully rather than very quickly like the chefs on television.

  Someone passes him a bottle of water, then a lady with nice curly hair and a necklace with a blue eye on it says, ‘I’m Ann-Marie. I’m going to stay with you till the ambulance comes, all right?’

  But Elvis does not need an ambulance.

  ‘What’s your name, sweetheart? Do you live in the block?’

  Elvis likes meeting new people, but not now, not today. Also, Ann-Marie is asking too many questions and he’s finding it very hard to get the answers out as quickly as she wants them.

  ‘The boy,’ he manages between coughs. ‘Has someone helped him?’

  ‘They are trying to get everyone out. They are really trying.’

  ‘But he is hurt. Very badly. And there is a fire inside.’

  Ann-Marie shakes her head and says, ‘Wait here, I’ll be back.’

  A man with too many tattoos and no top on falls on the ground next to Elvis. He pours a bottle of water over his face and laughs. ‘I got out.’ His face is covered with black smudges and black snot runs from his nose. He sniffs and laughs again. ‘I got out of there. I can’t believe it. I can’t believe I was fast enough. Everyone from the eighth floor up is dead. Look at it, they’ve got to be.’

  But Elvis does not want to look at Nightingale Point. He has just come from there and it was horrible.

  There is a tattoo of a mermaid on the man’s arm, which goes upside down as he wipes the blood from his head.

  ‘They got us this time, didn’t they? IRA. We didn’t stand a chance. Even if they called, sent a warning. No chance. Not a chance. They got us.’

  Elvis is scared of the IRA. Whenever he sees them on the television it is because they have done something bad, like kill some horses or hidden a bomb in a shopping centre.

  Elvis does not like the noise on the field, or the way people are running about, or the upside-down mermaid on the man’s arm. He wants to get away. He has to get away. He stands and runs. Runs and runs as fast as he can, like Linford Christie, but even faster. He keeps going right till he gets to the high street with the takeaways and betting shops. There he stops to catch his breath because he is feeling sick now, so sick.

  A group of people dressed as basketball players stand outside a closed post office. Their shorts are so long they look like trousers. They are smoking funny-smelling cigarettes and talking very loudly. So loudly that Elvis, even with his slightly broken ears, can hear them.

  ‘I knew it was gonna happen,’ one of them shouts. ‘I watched it go like this and I knew it was gonna be some Die Hard-style terrorism. Woo,’ he shouts, then claps his hands together.

  Elvis does not hear the clapping noise but sees the boy bring his hands together with such a force it makes Elvis jump. One of the basketball players looks across the street at Elvis and then they all point and stare.

  Elvis cries. He’s scared but too tired to run anymore. He leans his head against the big window of a takeaway called Jade Garden. The TV is on inside, showing his perfect home burning. A golden gloved cat waves at him. Usually this would make him laugh, but he does not want to laugh today because he is sad and lost and dirty and scared. His ears hurt, his chest hurts, his feet are wet and hurt too from all the running, and he wants to go home.

  A little boy stands on the other side of the glass. He is small, too small to have a job, but he looks up through the window at Elvis, then runs back behind the counter.

  Elvis touches his forehead. It stings and now feels like when you do not finish your bowl of Weetabix quick enough and it goes all mushy with some crusty bits on the top.

  ‘Hey, hey,’ someone shouts. Elvis feels an arm slip around his chest as he starts to fall down.

  There is lots of talking.

  ‘Someone call an ambulance.’

  ‘What happened to you?’

  ‘Jesus, he smells.’

  But Elvis does not want to talk anymore today. He wants to go home. He wants to go home and eat his steak and kidney pie.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Chapter Twenty-One ,Mary

  Mary finds it hard to estimate how many people are in the sports hall of the Arches Leisure Centre. She looks across the wooden sprung floor, busily marked with different coloured lines and shapes, and thinks it could be anything from fifty to hundred. The vastness of the hall seems to swallow everyone up. There are so many faces here, faces that are not Malachi or Tristan. They dribble in and disperse themselves into the rows of plastic chairs at the far edge of the hall. She twists the hem of her dress, picks at a small scab on her finger and tries to bend the metal catch on her fob watch back into place.

  There’s a cry from a group of skinny teenage girls gathered around a stack of brightly coloured soft play equipment. They hold hands and wipe the remains of smudged eye make-up off each other’s faces.

  ‘What is happening?’ she asks Harris. ‘Why are we sitting here?’

  He shrugs and they both turn to where three desks are being lined up at the other side of the hall. Chairs, papers, a computer monitor and modem are brought in by some of the police officers, all led by a sweaty woman in a grey trouser suit and tightly tied white trainers. There’s a roll of Sellotape around her wrist and more of the photocopied sheets that are stuck up around the outside of the building, their large type declaring: CENTRE CLOSED FOR EMERGENCY SERVICES OCCUPATION.

  Mary feels she should have gone to the hospital to help. It will be overwhelmed with patients: burns, shocks, lacerations. She should be doing her duty, but instead she is paralysed with guilt as she sits here like a patient in an overcrowded surgery, waiting, just waiting.

  ‘Mary?’ Harris turns to her. ‘Someone is coming over.’

  The glow from the strip lighting hits the silver badge on the lapel of one of the volunteers as he makes his way towards the rows of chairs.

  ‘Great news,’ he says like a proud host, keen to sell the merits of his party. ‘We’ve got extra phone lines set up now. Follow me.’

  Mary’s son and daughter come to her mind for the first time since she arrived at the centre. She must let them know she is okay. She pictures the twins watching the news,
hearing of this catastrophe and panicking. They were always such anxious children and have both grown to be – for reasons neither Mary nor David have ever been able to credit – apprehensive adults.

  A stream of people follows the Salvation Army volunteer out of the hall and into an office. Who should she call first? Julia or John? John will ask too many questions, then drop everything to come and save her, while Julia will be capable of nothing more than crumbling into tears.

  ‘This way, miss, there’s a free phone here.’ The keen volunteer directs her to a desk, strewn with mugs and coffee-ringed paper. She feels silly as she sits there in her nurse uniform. But everyone at each of the desks looks as out of place as her: one with sunglasses on his head, another with mascara running down her cheeks and a toddler on her lap, who bemusedly grabs at staplers and pens.

  Mary’s little feet kick at the black court shoes left under the desk by whomever ordinarily works there and Mary hopes she will know what to say by the time the phone is picked up.

  ‘Julia?’

  ‘Mum. Thank God. Thank God. I’ve been going crazy worrying about you. Are you okay?’

  ‘I am fine. They have sent us all to this place …’ Mary looks around the office. A busy whiteboard occupies her eyeline: Options for membership up-sales! Peak swim access – £4 a month. 1-1 gym training – £5 per session.

  ‘Where? Are you safe?’