He did not consider himself a criminal, not by a long shot.
“We’ve discovered a gap in the market,” he would say. “People need buildings set on fire, so they can claim insurance and the like. And they want it done safely. Who could be better at that, than me, an ex-fireman?”
You would think he was running a charity, the way he talked.
“I still say you should spend more time watching the buildings beforehand,” Richard said. “How else are you going to be sure there’s no one inside? Better still, scope it out a week before, to get an idea of whether anyone is likely to be there. If it’s an office building, for instance, you want to know if anyone works late. You can go up to the front door and ring the bell to see if anyone answers. It just takes a couple of minutes, and it will ensure that the property is empty.”
Dad shook his head. “I get what you’re saying. But if I hang around too long, someone might remember me. I don’t want no one pointing the finger.”
“You’ve got to think of public safety.” Richard argued. “Surely that’s the priority?”
The discussion between them went on long into the night and ended in raucous singing that kept us all awake.
When I finally got to sleep, my dreams took me back to that terrible night with Mum dying in the bathtub. But this time the flames were black, and when I lifted up Alicia, she was as lifeless as a doll. I sat up straight in bed. My pillow was soaked through and there were bite marks in it. I had bitten all the way through to the stuffing. Immediately, I jumped out of bed and checked on Alicia. She was fast asleep, shivering violently, having thrown her blankets on the floor. I covered her up again, but my gentle touch roused her and she opened one eye crossly. I made her some milk and tried to rock her back to sleep, but that was it for the night. In the end, I plonked her in her buggy and walked her up and down Cold Bath Lane until morning.
The following week, Dad made me to go out on another job with him. We didn’t even set a fire that time. We sat outside a building all night, watching to see if anyone went in or out. I don’t know why he even brought me along. I suppose he wanted the company.
In the morning, I was so knackered that Sam offered to watch Alicia for a bit, so I could sleep.
“What about school?” I asked.
“What about it?”
All this time, I had been envious of him, for being able to carry on a normal existence, but now I saw that he envied me for not having to. Being a stay-at-home parent was hard work, but so was going to school. At least I didn’t have to deal with bullies in the playground, and I was spared the humiliation of vindictive teachers like Mr Blackthorn.
I climbed into bed, fully intending to be up in an hour or so, but I was so zonked that it was gone noon by the time I came to. The house was silent. I couldn’t hear the TV or anything. I wondered if Sam had taken Alicia out for a walk. He could have taken her down to the swings, or round to Asda in her buggy.
I got up and went downstairs. I found Alicia sitting on the living room floor, blood smeared all over her face, down her neck and ingrained into her finger nails. She was laughing in delight.
“Sam! Sam!”
“In the bog,” he yelled back.
“How long have you been in there?”
I spotted a large pair of scissors on the rug and grabbed them before Alicia could get hold of them again. There were clumps of hair on the carpet.
“Oh my god! What have you done?”
On closer examination, I found that she had snipped her ear. That was where all the blood had come from. I took a bottle of vodka from the cabinet and bathed the wound, as Mum had done so many times for me. Alicia shrieked as I applied the cotton wool. This, apparently, hurt, even if the cut hadn’t. I put the scissors up on the mantelpiece, where she couldn’t reach them.
21
The world works a lot more smoothly if everyone owes you a favour, that’s what Dad used to say. We were walking past a bus stop when an old man looked at us and winked.
“Who’s that?” I asked.
“Oh, he works for me,” Dad said.
“In what way?”
“He just does,” said Dad, striding past. I don’t think he even acknowledged the old man, so I wasn’t sure if he was pulling my leg.
Another time, I was waiting for Dad and Sam in the barbers. They were getting matching crew cuts, which I thought looked terrible, but Dad insisted that this was the best way to ward off the lice.
“Hey Jody, you and Alicia should get your barnets done too,” he said, fixing his eye on me. “Nice and short, like.”
“No,” I said vehemently.
I wasn’t a vain child, but my curly black hair was my one beauty.
“Do it,” Dad ordered. “Sit in the chair.”
“I’m sorry, we don’t do girls’ hair in here,” the barber told him.
“Oh, go on. No one will know.”
He shook his head. “If I do one, I’ll have to do them all. You can have your haircuts on the house though.”
I could have kissed him for saving my hair. I wasn’t sure why he was being so generous, but I didn’t worry about it. I pulled Alicia swiftly up the road, rushing past the hairdressers on the other side of the street. I went so fast, her little legs nearly lifted off the ground. Once we got home, I fetched Dad a beer and he was soon lost in a fog. The idea was forgotten, for the time being.
When I was about twelve, I bumped into my old mate, Dawn, at the local park. I barely recognised her, in her denim skirt and pink crochet jumper. She looked so mature and glamourous, and yet I was the one who had really grown up.
“I’ve got a boyfriend,” she told me, as we sat side by side on the swings. “His name is Craig. I’m meeting him later.” She looked me up and down. “Have you got a boyfriend?”
“No.”
And I didn’t want one either. In fact, the thought of it made me feel ill.
“Did you know your sister just pushed that boy into the sand?” Dawn said, watching the playground.
“Did she?”
I was aware that Alicia did not play nicely, but I didn’t see the point in correcting her. I could tell her off till I was blue in the face, but it never changed anything. I wasn’t her mum and she knew it.
“Do you think your dad killed your mum?” Dawn asked, completely out of the blue. She eyed me keenly, expecting a confession.
“My mum died in childbirth.”
“Are you sure? I heard…”
“I don’t care what you heard, I was there, so get out of my face, alright?”
I swung my legs high into the air, wishing I had never bumped into her.
“Well, I’m always here for you if you need me. I still live in the same street. We ain’t moved or nothing.”
I thanked her by cutting her out of my life again. I ignored her whenever I passed her in the street and if she tried to start a conversation, I kept to short, clipped answers. The hurt on her face was clearly visible, but it was nothing compared to the hurt she had caused me. She should never have said that about my dad.
Alicia was four when Dad made her climb into her first empty house. I felt sick as I watched him hoist her up. I remembered vividly the first time he had made me do it. But, unlike me, Alicia showed no fear. In fact, she seemed to relish it. It made me wonder if there was more of Dad in her than I liked to admit.
“Why don’t the cozzers come after us?” I asked, after a particularly busy winter, when we’d started ten different fires.
“A lot of the time, they don’t know that if it’s arson. We don’t even know most of the clients. There is nothing to tie us to all these people, and all these buildings. We can do what we like.”
Unbelievably, I think Sam was jealous, as Alicia and I took over more of the work. After a while, Dad didn’t even come in with us. He told us where to light the fire and we got on with it. I still didn’t like it, but if we didn’t break into those buildings, we would have to face Dad’s anger, and no one wanted that.
>
We watched the news every night to see if there was any mention of our nocturnal activities. I felt strangely excited if one of our fires made it into the news. All my life, I’d been a nobody. I’d never won an award or done anything to make people notice me, but now my fires were on TV, and it made me feel like I was famous. I was still cautious as I entered each empty building, but I wasn’t as yellow as I had been in the early days. It was just work to me now, the thing I did to pay the bills.
As the business expanded, we travelled further afield. Dad would drive us up to Coventry or Birmingham and even as far afield as Cardiff. We burned down a big factory in Shropshire once, and an office block in Bristol. I learnt how to start an electrical fire, by overheating the socket, or using an electric heater. One time I even used fairy lights, starting a fire that ripped through a huge Christmas tree, burning the presents beneath.
Alicia and I would practice on abandoned cars and buildings, experimenting with different methods. I preferred the slow-burning fires, the ones you could set up and leave, before the fire really got going. But Alicia liked to stay and watch the flames. Sometimes she would leap and dance over them.
“Careful, you’ll burn yourself,” I would warn her.
“No, I won’t.”
She was always so sure of herself, even when she was tiny. I wished she would burn herself, just a little. Maybe then she wouldn’t be so cocky.
While we were busy working on the business, our house in Cold Bath Lane was falling into disrepair. Dad never fixed anything, or worse still, he started to fix things, took them apart, then gave up on them until the new house started to resemble the old one. Already, we had a dodgy floorboard in the hallway, and the living room curtains hung from a broken rail.
Dad refused to take his boots off when he came into the house, and he left his dirty clothes wherever they fell. There was never enough time to do everything: the cooking, the cleaning, and taking care of Alicia. I didn’t have time to worry about him and his drunken madness.
I took to making him a strong cup of coffee to sober him up after his tea, but it didn’t always work. So I asked Sam to get hold of some sleeping pills. He had mates who would get them as a favour as they rummaged through the shelves of the chemists. I crumbled them into his beer each night, and that put him right out, before he could cause any bother.
Alicia did everything she could to remind me I wasn’t her real mother. She threw terrible temper tantrums and banged her head against the wall until she bled. Her rebelliousness seemed very personal to me. I knew I made mistakes, like running the bath too hot, and letting her have too many biscuits. I gave in to her far too easily, but I was so tired, and the more she grew, the less sure I became that I could take care of her. A darkness lurked inside her and it made me wonder if she remembered the traumatic nature of her birth, and the way Dad tried to make Mum get rid of her.
I wanted so much for Alicia to have a normal upbringing, but she fought me at every turn. There was a sweet little girl called Tabitha, who lived down the lane. For her birthday, she was given a beautiful doll’s pram. Alicia watched Tabitha closely when she pushed the pram up and down. Tabitha caught her looking and asked her if she wanted to play, but Alicia always said ‘no’.
Then one day, Tabitha left her pram outside the corner shop when she went inside. That was the last time she saw it. I saw her walking up the lane, crying her eyes out, and I asked Alicia if she knew where the pram was.
“How should I know?” Alicia said, poking a stick in the dirt.
I gave her a long stare.
“You had better not be telling porkies.”
It was only later that evening that I found out the truth. Sam had a bonfire going to burn some garden waste. Once the fire went out, I poked around in the rubble and found the metal frame of Tabitha’s beloved pram.
“Why?” I asked Alicia, when I confronted her. “What did she ever do to you?”
Alicia just carried on picking the paint off the wall. I was losing control of her, and I didn’t have a clue what to do.
Tabitha sat outside on her doorstep, crying her little heart out and I watched as Alicia went out and put her arm around her, as if it had had nothing to do with her. My stomach twisted as Tabitha laid her head on Alicia’s shoulder, and Alicia comforted her. There was a big smile on her face, and I could see Alicia thought she had won.
As I stood at the window, watching, Dad came over to me.
“You want a beer?” he said, always his answer to any problem.
“No, thanks.”
“Maybe you’d prefer cider?”
He pulled a colourful bottle out of a paper bag.
“What’s it like?”
“It’s just pop with a kick.”
“OK.”
I took a swig straight from the bottle, like Dad did. It wasn’t bad.
22
It was a wet September morning, when Alicia started at the local primary school, splashing her best shoes in the puddles. I propped Dad up as we walked from the car, towards the school gates. His breath was as noxious as the fumes the factories pumped out, a moronic smile plastered across his face.
I felt a pang, watching Alicia skip into the classroom with the others. Her teacher was a smiley young woman called Miss Honey, who wore her hair in pigtails, like she wasn’t ready to let go of her own childhood. I felt like I had accomplished something that morning, seeing Alicia start school. I promised myself that this would be the beginning of a new chapter in my own life.
I started off with the best intentions. I went round the local shops asking if they had any part-time jobs, but everywhere I went I was met with rudeness. The woman in the card shop looked down her nose at me, as if I smelled bad. Perhaps she smelt the cider I’d drunk for Dutch courage.
“I’m sorry, we’re not hiring at present.”
“Why have you got a ‘help wanted’ sign in the window, then?”
She couldn’t answer me that.
It was the same at the butchers.
“No, we’ve already got a Saturday Girl,” the man said, refusing to look me in the eye.
“Why don’t you take my details anyway, in case something comes up?”
“No, you’re all right, love. Would you mind budging over so I can serve this customer?”
They wouldn’t even give me a chance. I slammed the door as hard as I could behind me, disappointed when the glass failed to smash.
“You’re Tony McBride’s girl, aren’t you?” the woman at the next shop said. “Haven’t you had a baby?”
I snarled at her, unable to force my mouth into a smile.
“No, she’s my sister.”
“I used to see you pushing her up and down the street. Are you sure she’s not yours?”
“No, she bloody well ain’t. Now have you got a job for me or not?”
“Well, that’s a fine way to ask!”
I didn’t like the way she looked at me, all snotty and judgmental. I felt the blood pulsing through my veins. Why did everyone think they were better than me?
I ran my hand along the shelf, where all the food was stacked. Tins of peas and beans rained down. A couple of them burst open and spilled their guts as they hit the floor. I looked down at the mess I’d made, the piles of dented tins, swimming in green and orange goo. I felt bad, but I couldn’t take it back. “They were probably past their sell-by dates anyway.”
“You get out of here, before I call the coppers.”
“If you were going to call them, you already would have.”
I kicked the newspaper stand for good measure.
But none of it made me feel any better. I bought more cider on the way home and pissed away the afternoon, until it was time to fetch Alicia.
It became a pattern after that. Every morning I packed Alicia off to school, and then I bought a litre of cider on the way back. I had to remember to collect her again at three, but besides that, the time passed in a haze.
When she wasn’t at school,
Alicia spent a lot of time playing with dolls. Usually, I left her to it, but once, I sat back and watched.
Alicia was sitting cross-legged on the floor with four Barbie dolls positioned in a circle.
“Tea?”
She poured water from a jug into each of their cups.
“Tea,” she squealed again, as she lifted a cup to each of the doll’s mouths.
“I need the loo,” she said, and picked one of the dolls up and put it in the doorway.
While the doll was out of the room, Alicia had the other dolls lean in close and whispered something. She giggled to herself as she took something from her pocket and dropped it into the absent doll’s tea.
“What’s that?” I asked, curiously.
Alicia giggled. “We put poison berries in her tea. Sh, don’t tell her, she’s coming back.”
She went and got the fourth doll and brought it back to the circle, and continued to pretend that the dolls were having a tea party. For a moment, I thought she’d forgotten about the poison berry idea, but all of a sudden, the fourth doll got up from her seat and started to stagger about.
“Ow, ow my tummy!” Alicia moaned in glee, pretending to be the doll.
The poor doll grabbed one of the others and begged for help, before collapsing on the floor in the middle.
“She’s dead now,” Alicia pronounced.
The other dolls made a big show of crying and hugging one another, as if they hadn’t known anything about the poison. While they did so, Alicia dropped the poison berry into another one of the cups, and the game continued.
“Kids are weird,” Sam commented, as Alicia ripped the arms and legs off the afflicted doll.
“I don’t remember playing like that.”
“You didn’t play with dolls,” he pointed out. “You were too much of a tomboy.”
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