by Luan Goldie
‘No, I didn’t mean that. Stop.’ He took her arm, but she pulled away, then ducked to collect her other bag of stuff.
‘I can’t believe my dad was right about you.’
And that was it, she moved off to Portishead the very next day.
That’s where she should still be.
‘My girl, my girl,’ Jay shouts. ‘My little girl.’ His voice breaks and his words are no longer audible as he paces about the hallway.
Malachi rises to his feet. ‘She came back?’ he asks.
The man turns to face Malachi and suddenly lunges, slamming him against a vending machine, the contents rattling inside.
‘Hey, hey, hey.’ One of the officers rushes over. ‘Lads, take it easy.’
At full height Malachi has a few inches on Pamela’s dad, as he does with most people, but finds the closeness intimidating.
‘You. You. You!’ he screams, his white knuckles bunching handfuls of Malachi’s shirt.
‘Someone stop them,’ a voice from the crowd shouts. ‘We’re all fired up here but this won’t help.’
‘It’s because of you,’ he says. ‘I was protecting her from you. She needed me to protect her.’ His eyes drop down and his body crumples as he falls into Malachi’s chest and sobs. ‘She’s gone. She’s gone.’
Pamela’s not even meant to be here. Malachi saw her leave, her bags by her feet as she waited for the bus. Right now she’s surely feeling the sun burn her pale nose, or having an awkward lunch with her mum and stepdad, or riding the bus to Bristol to see a friend whose shoulder she would cry on about her broken heart. Pamela’s not here. She left.
Malachi’s shirt becomes wet with her dad’s tears. ‘I didn’t want you to have her. I wanted her to be safe.’
Why is he saying this? Pamela is running along the seafront right now, in her new pink and lilac trainers, her ponytail swinging, her thoughts only on how much she’s missed the freedom of running. Malachi needs to believe this image so badly, but her dad’s face, the way his body appears broken and shattered, says something else.
‘My girl,’ he says again.
‘Come, let’s step outside for a bit.’ The officer, his tone now gentle, lays a hand on the man’s curled shoulder. He walks him outside, his sobs still audible until the doors slide shut.
She was home. She was in the flat. Alone. He could have got her. Saved her.
Malachi screams, slamming against the vending machine repeatedly till the palms of his hands sting with heat.
‘Stop,’ someone shouts. ‘Malachi, no, stop.’
Blurry faces surround him; a woman pulls her elderly mother closer to her side; a tattooed man puffs his chest up, as if ready to get involved; then a familiar face pushes through the wall of disapproval and fear.
‘Malachi, please stop,’ Mary says.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Chapter Twenty-Three ,Mary
She’s never heard Malachi scream this way, but as soon as she hears it she knows it’s him. Quickly, Mary elbows her way through to get close and when she sees his face the twitch in her elbow returns. Something is very wrong.
‘Eh? Look at me.’ She puts her hand on his cheek and turns him to face her. But his body slowly falls to the floor, hands around his shaved head. She drops with him, distracted by the unwanted presence of the crowd, bystanders to his torment. ‘Go away,’ she calls. ‘Go.’
Malachi looks up. ‘Mary?’
‘Yes, yes. I am here.’ She strokes his face. She feels so many things right now: confusion, relief, but also anxiety. Even as a child Malachi rarely cried. When he was first born Mary didn’t even know there was a baby in the flat. So to see him weep in front of so many breaks her heart.
‘It’s Pamela,’ he says. ‘She was home.’
Mary shushes him, tries to calm him. ‘No, Malachi. She left, remember? You said her dad took her back to her town.’
‘No, she came back. I don’t know when. I don’t know. But she was home, he told me. Why did no one help her? Maybe they couldn’t get to her. I couldn’t get up the stairs either, I tried, but it was just flames and bricks and rubble and people.’
It’s difficult to see Malachi without his composure. There’s a ragged edge to his breathing and she fears he will have an asthma attack, the kind he used to have as a child, when his mum would panic and call Mary into the flat.
‘Slow down, slow down,’ she tells him.
He stops and looks up at the ceiling, pulling his shirt to his face to wipe the tears. He takes a breath and Mary can see he’s trying to compose himself.
A police officer comes over and indicates down to Malachi, but Mary gives a little shake of her head, thinking she is probably best placed to bring him back.
‘She’s dead, Mary.’
Pamela, she was just a girl. She was still at school. She can’t be gone. Mary cries, ‘I’m so sorry. So, so sorry.’
Malachi’s face hardens and he doesn’t look at her.
How could this happen to him? Hasn’t he already been through enough?
A few hours ago she had encouraged Malachi to forget about the girl, to move onto another, and now that will never happen. She strokes the side of his face again. His skin is hot and he shakes like he has flu. She wants to comfort him, to get down into the deep hole of grief with him for the girl, but there is still too much she doesn’t understand about today. She needs to know why Malachi is alone, why Tristan is not hovering close as always.
‘Malachi, please.’ She takes his hand. ‘Where is he?’
Malachi shakes his head.
‘No?’ She mirrors his actions.
‘I can’t find him.’
There are flecks of white dust in his eyelashes and she rests a hand on his shoulder to comfort him, but also to steady herself as she balances on her haunches.
‘He was on the wall with the others, but then I saw them and not him. I looked for him, I looked and looked. All over the field. I went to the hospital, but he’s not there. It’s hell there, Mary, so many people are hurt,’ he looks up at her, ‘dying. No one knew anything. They sent me here.’
The back of his neck is damp with sweat. He smells like Nightingale Point, of smoke and death, but underneath that he smells like Tristan and the overly floral washing powder he uses. She never noticed that the boys smelt the same before, as Malachi, so unlike his tactile brother, rarely let her get close enough.
His weight now bears down on her, it shakes her with each cry. ‘I don’t know where he is.’
Then, despite her dreams and the twitch in her elbow, she says, ‘They will find him.’
The two of them sit within a row of plastic chairs in the hall. Both blank-faced and focused only on the doors. But the flow of people seems to be going out rather than in. Many of those, who have now endured hours in the hall, begin to gather in the centre. They give their names and details to an overweight woman with a clipboard. She had introduced herself to Malachi and Mary earlier as ‘Tina from the council’, in charge of arranging everyone’s emergency accommodation for the night. She smiled at them as if this was what they wanted to hear, that a night on a camp bed in a church hall or some bedbug-infested local hostel was the missing component they needed for a good night’s sleep.
Mary watches as Tina does a headcount. Some of those in the group beam as they realise their hours stuck in the stale hall have finally come to an end. They make their way eagerly to the exit, some stopping to collect their remaining possessions: a pair of sunglasses folded neatly on a chair, two transparent green swim bags, and a few plastic carriers of spoilt groceries, which leave a wet smear on the ground like a footprint.
A baby, naked apart from a nappy, lets out a strained cry from a few seats down. The father attempts to shush it. ‘Sorry,’ he says.
‘It’s okay.’ Mary manages to raise a smile as the thin legs kick in the air.
‘He’s twenty-two weeks. Needs to be fed soon. Can’t find my wife.’ He states each line as if giving directions, his vo
ice rising along with the baby’s wails. ‘We went for a walk to the high street. Needed to buy a fan. It was so hot this morning, wasn’t it? I don’t understand why the plane was flying so low,’ he snaps. The baby’s fussing increases. ‘Shush, shush.’ He stands and sways back and forth till the cries die down to a murmur.
‘I’m sure she’ll be okay,’ Mary says.
Harris walks over and puts a cup of tea in Malachi’s hand. Mary had watched Malachi earlier as he nervously broke three polystyrene cups into tiny pieces while they tried calling around the hospitals again.
‘I can’t take this,’ she stands up, ‘waiting here in this place.’
‘Mary,’ Harris says, ‘this is where he will come.’
‘No. We should be out looking for him.’
Malachi remains silent.
‘And look where? We have been told a hundred times: everyone needs to come through here at some point. He will have to. He has nowhere else to go. Sit down, please.’
She drops back into the seat, folds and unfolds the leaflet the Salvation Army volunteer gave her: Call if you need us. She will never call. She watches as the caretaker from Nightingale Point, still bumbling in his incapability, taps an old lady on her hunched shoulder.
‘Camp beds at St Marks,’ he says loudly. ‘You’ll love it. It’ll be like the war.’
The old lady gives him a vague nod, before she takes the arm of a volunteer and follows the crowd out of the Arches Leisure Centre.
‘Good they found somewhere,’ the caretaker announces to no one in particular. He sighs deeply, then surveys those left in the hall, like some captain of a sinking ship he has refused to leave until everyone else has gone. There are now no more than twenty people left, drawn, drained, disturbed.
Mary still can’t believe that Tristan has been reduced to a few scribbled notes on a Missing Persons list. No body, no belongings, no home. Tristan Roberts is now just a name, age and description. She closes her eyes and pictures him walking into the hall, cocksure and full of bravado about how he escaped unscathed, how he spent his time saving others from the burning building while she and Malachi sat idly drinking tea.
Malachi still has the cup in his hands, untouched and going cold. Does he feel Tristan is gone? Surely he would know. He would feel it.
Harris, who has kept up dialogue with the woman in the trouser suit organizing the relief effort, walks over to the desk for Nightingale Point where she sits slumped, blazer discarded. He hands her a cup of tea.
‘He’s from your hospital?’ Malachi nods towards Harris.
Mary is relieved to hear to his voice again. ‘Yes,’ she answers quickly. ‘He’s my friend.’ But of course he’s not. Malachi will see through this lie straight away. Stupid old woman.
‘These lights are giving me a headache.’ He rubs at his eyes. ‘How long have we been here?’
Mary takes the watch from her pocket. ‘Long. You are getting tired. You need to rest.’
‘I’m fine.’
‘You are not fine. You need the hospital.’
‘I’m fine.’
‘What help are you offering sitting here? Go.’
‘Where to, Mary? There is nowhere to go,’ he says, raising his voice at her. ‘Sorry.’
She wants to hold him again, to rub his back, but he seems so closed off.
They turn away from each other and watch as Harris makes a slow return across the hall.
‘Right, this is it. They’re going to close this centre down for the night.’ He puts out a hand for Mary to grab, to help her rise from her seat. ‘Malachi, no one else from the estate is being sent here. Come to mine, it’s close by, and in the morning I will drive you around the hospitals. By then things will be clearer.’
Malachi looks up at Harris and nods.
As they walk out of the hall Mary notices a stereo pushed up against a wall. The disc blinks on pause and she wonders what was taking place in the room before all this tragedy entered it.
The woman in the suit is being held by one of the last remaining volunteers. The others help to clear the desks of paper and put everything into cardboard boxes, while some stand with their handbags over arms, desperate to escape.
The caretaker pats Mary on the shoulder as she walks by. ‘You’re all right, love, you’re all right.’ There are liver spots on his hand, a tremble in his wrist. Mary never noticed him get old. But, of course, he has been on the Morpeth Estate since the first day she arrived. She had collected her keys from his cubbyhole on the ground floor. It was him that talked her through how to use the bin chute and central heating. She wonders if she will ever see him again.
‘Mind how you go,’ he calls after her.
After
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Chapter Twenty-Four ,Elvis
Elvis has never been in his care worker George’s house before. He has been in his car, which he really enjoys because it smells like Aztec, George’s Labrador dog, but he has never ever been in the house where George actually lives. He is excited about this and also very glad to be out of the Queen Elizabeth Hospital as he does not like it there, not one little bit. It was busy and noisy. But it was where the kind people from Jade Garden took him after he fell over and fell asleep on the street.
He follows George into a big hallway. On the wall is a huge framed map of the world and a wooden clock from the olden times, which does not have English numbers on it only Roman numbers. Elvis thinks this could be confusing if you are learning to tell the time.
‘This way,’ George says. He sounds very tired and the skin under his eyes is dark, like a panda, but Elvis does not tell him this because it would sound mean and Elvis is not a mean person. Instead he follows George through to the living room, where there is a familiar voice coming from a television. It is Breakfast with Susan Hill. Elvis loves Susan Hill’s colourful jackets and the way she says: ‘back to the studio’. It is his favourite breakfast time television show. But as soon as they arrive in the living room a woman stands up from a squashy-looking sofa and points the remote control at Susan Hill to switch her off.
‘Elvis, this is my wife, Jenny,’ George says.
George’s wife Jenny is pretty but her eyes are all red and when she sniffs it sounds like she needs to give her nose a good blow. She has soft-looking blonde hair and green eyes, which are sparkly with her tears. This makes Elvis swoon a little as blonde women are his favourite kind of women. He feels his cheeks grow red so he looks away, out of the window to the willow tree in the garden.
‘Morning, Elvis,’ she says.
Elvis keeps his eyes on the tree. He does not want to look at Jenny the crying wife because he might stare and he knows you should not stare at blonde women just because they are your favourites. You should especially not stare at blonde women who are already married.
‘You must both be hungry?’ she asks. ‘George?’
‘No, thanks,’ he says.
But Elvis is actually a little hungry and he also really wants to watch Breakfast with Susan Hill. He especially wants to watch the weather report, because yesterday it was so hot and he got his outfit wrong at first, wearing a big sweatshirt, until Lina told him to go and put a T-shirt on. Also, on the drive over from the hospital, the clouds looked dark. This worries him because he still has on his sandals, which, although stylish, are not appropriate footwear for rainy days.
‘We had a sandwich at the hospital,’ George says. ‘Think it’s best if we both get some sleep. Okay, Elvis?’
Elvis is not okay and he does not understand what George and Jenny the crying wife have decided. He says nothing and watches a blue tit as it lands in the willow tree and begins to sing a song. Elvis knows the names of a lot of different little birds but he will never say blue tit out loud because it makes him laugh and people will think he is a pervert.
‘Is the room made up?’ George asks.
‘Yes.’
Suddenly, Jenny the crying wife puts her arms around Elvis and her head on his shoulder. A
wisp of her blonde hair touches his nose. It smells good and feels lovely, but he knows he must not stroke it. Or can he? He is not sure. He is not used to people he has just met hugging him.
‘Jenny, please,’ George says.
But Jenny the crying wife holds on and it makes Elvis feel nice, nicer than he has felt all morning and all last night and all the day before, which was a horrible and confusing day. Finally, she lets go. Elvis feels like he may fall down again, like he did outside the takeaway.
‘I’m sorry, it’s just so horrific,’ she says. She takes a big sniff and gives her head a little shake, the same way Lina does when Elvis makes a mess in the kitchen or forgets to put on his trousers before he answers the front door.
‘Come on,’ George says. ‘I’ll show you where you can sleep.’
Elvis follows him up the stairs, which has photographs of little children along the wall. Elvis needs to look very closely as he does not have his glasses on as they were lost in the bad explosion yesterday. He has seen these children before, in a photo on George’s desk, where they are all wearing blue blazers, white shirts and smiles that look like the kind of smile you make when you have been asked to smile for too long. But these photos are more fun: they are of Christmas time around a table of delicious-looking food and of summertime on a beach in swimsuits and sunhats. Elvis would like to spend some time looking at the photos properly but George is walking super fast and is already at the top of the stairs.
‘I’ll be down the hall. If you need anything or have any questions knock on my door.’ George points out which door is his to knock on and then takes Elvis into a nice lemon-coloured room. It has a double bed in it, big enough for two people, but Elvis is only one person so decides he will sleep diagonally on it so no space is wasted.
‘Bathroom is through here. Jenny has left some towels, so have a shower and leave your clothes outside the room. We’ll get them washed for you.’ George keeps his fingers held over his mouth. ‘You’ve been very quiet. Is there anything you want to ask me?’