"Dan, Mum’s house is burning down. We’re going to see how bad it is."
"Whatever," he mumbles.
Cheers, babe, I think.
I pull a coat and a pair of trainers on and grab a coat for Mum too, as she’s only wearing a nightdress.
"Here," I say, handing it to her when I get back downstairs. "It’s cold tonight."
"Thanks," she says. She seems a little shaken up.
"Are you sure you’re okay? I mean, should you get checked out at the hospital or anything? You know, for smoke inhalation or shock or something?"
"No, I’m fine," she says. "I was just worried about getting the animals out in time."
"Well, they look fine to me," I say. Pussy is in a carrier, but Baby is loose and sniffing his way around my living room, probably looking for any other plants he might be able to kill.
We head out the door and walk down to end of the road where Mum’s house and the firemen are.
"Hi," Mum says to one of them. "This is my daughter, Mackenzie."
I nod politely at the fire fighter.
"So, what happened?" I ask him. "How bad is the damage?"
"We’re lucky that we caught it early so it didn’t have much of a chance to spread. The fire started in the kitchen—there’s a faulty fridge freezer in there and I’d bet you any money that it was sending sparks flying all over the place."
"Is the fire out now?"
"Yes, we’re just pulling out."
"How bad is it?"
"The kitchen is pretty messy. You’ll have to get that fixed up on insurance, but like I said, we saved it spreading too much. You’re lucky you woke up when you did," he says to Mum.
"My Baby barked," she says. "My Baby saved my life."
The fire guy is giving her a funny look.
"She means her dog," I clarify, and suddenly I feel a lump in my throat. Thank god that Baby barked when he did, otherwise who knows what could have happened… Oh my god, it doesn’t bear thinking about.
"I’d avoid staying there tonight if you possibly can," the fireman says.
"That’s fine," I interject. "She can stay with me."
"Are you sure?" Mum asks. "What about Dan?"
"Dan can like it or lump it," I say, suddenly feeling quite angry at him. Okay, so I know it isn’t his fault, but he was over here tonight working on that damn fridge, and he should have noticed if it wasn’t safe. And why am I the one who has to climb out of bed and go to confront someone at the door who may or may not have been a dangerous burglar?
"Can we go inside?" I ask.
"Not tonight," the fireman says. "Come back in the morning and have a look then. You should be thankful that’s it only the kitchen that sustained damage."
I nod.
"Okay," I say to Mum. "Is there anything you’ve forgotten that you desperately need tonight? Because I’ll go in and get it while the firefighters are still here."
"No," she says. "I have my Baby and my Pussy, so I’m fine."
"She means her cat," I clarify.
The fireman nods knowingly.
We make our way back up the road just as the first fire engine pulls away.
"Are you sure you’re okay?" I ask.
"I’m fine," she says. "Just worried about how much mess there will be."
"Well, don’t worry," I tell her. "Tomorrow is Saturday, so I’m off work. We’ll go and have a look in the morning and get the insurance stuff sorted out. And the fireman did say it was only the kitchen, so it’ll be as good as new in no time. Just think, you can even get that new kitchen carpet you’ve been thinking about."
"I know," she says. "But it was horrible to see all those flames eating up my house."
"I’m sure." I wrap an arm around her shoulder and squeeze gently.
"You should sleep in our bed tonight," I say, wanting nothing more than to stomp upstairs and drag Dan out of bed by his feet and make him sleep on the sofa, just as punishment for being so oblivious.
"No, no. I’m sure your boyfriend is fast asleep. I’ll be fine on the couch."
"It pulls out," I say. "So you can have Baby sleep with you. And Pussy too, if you want."
"Thanks, Mac," she says. "That would be great."
"I’ll just fetch a spare duvet and pillow."
CHAPTER 41
"What happened last night?" Dan asks again.
"I told you, her kitchen caught fire thanks to the fridge which you couldn’t fix."
"Hey, I'm not a repair man. I told you that."
"Yeah, and I told you, if you had had the common decency to get up last night when my mother was having a total crisis then maybe it wouldn’t have been such a shock to find her in the living room this morning."
"It was three in the morning."
"Yeah, and my mum’s house was on fire. Fire, Dan. It’s not a joke. If Baby hadn’t have barked when he did then who knows what could have happened. And you couldn’t even be bothered to open your eyes."
"It was three a.m.," he mutters. "And your mother has at least one crisis a week."
"So what? You think fire only comes during daylight? You think it knows when you’ve clocked off for the night and can’t be bothered with the possibility of people dying?"
"Oh, she didn’t die, Mac. I don’t know what your problem is."
"My problem is that my mother could have died last night and you couldn’t even get your lazy ass out of bed to see if she was okay. If we were okay."
I am barely keeping a lid on my anger this morning. Dan has only just woken up and stumbled downstairs in his bathrobe to find Mum asleep on the couch and to have a spoilt Yorkshire terrier launch itself at his dressing gown cord. I’m trying not to yell and throw things at him because my mum is asleep in the living room and I don’t want to wake her up after the trauma of last night. And it's a good thing too, or Dan might find a few plates being aimed at his head.
"So how long is she going to be here?"
"I don’t fucking know, Dan. We weren’t even allowed back inside the house last night to see the damage so I don’t know how bad it is. I’m going to take her inside this morning to find her insurance papers and everything."
"Well, it’s a good thing I’m going to work then, isn’t it?"
"Yes it damn well is, because I want to kill you this morning. I’ve never known anyone who could be so fucking insensitive. Her house nearly burns to the ground and all you can say is ‘how long is she going to be here?’"
"She’s in the way. And that blasted cat has pissed somewhere, I can smell it."
"The poor cat was probably terrified last night, Dan. It’s not Pussy’s fault. You don’t have to be so cruel about it."
"I seem to remember that it was only last week you were screeching about how Baby should never be allowed inside our house again because he killed your plant."
"Yeah, and some things are more important than plants or cat pee."
"Whatever."
"And I don’t screech."
"See you later," Dan huffs. "I’ll get dressed in the car."
"You do that," I call after him.
Twat.
"Are you all right?" I ask Mum over breakfast. I’ve cooked a couple of pieces of toast each and had to do extra bits for the cat and dog seeing as their own food is still at home. Or—seeing as it was kept in the kitchen—probably charcoal by now.
"I’m fine," she says. "I just keep thinking about how lucky I was last night."
"Me too," I admit.
"And how lucky I am to have you living only a few doors down. Where would I have gone last night if you weren’t here?"
"The firemen would probably have taken you to a hotel. They wouldn’t have just left you stranded."
"I didn’t see Dan this morning," she says, casually.
"Oh, he had to work early," I lie. "Covering the morning shift for someone or other, I don’t really know."
"Oh, right. Good, because I was thinking about something."
"Oh yeah?"
; "I think Dan tried to kill me."
I choke on the tea I am drinking.
"You think Dan tried to kill you?"
"I had him over to fix the fridge last night and he couldn’t do it—"
"That’s because he’s not a fridge repair man. He had a look and couldn’t see what was wrong with it. He told you to call a professional."
"Well, I was going to but it was nine o’clock on a Friday night, I was going to do it this morning. I didn’t know it would explode before I had the chance."
"I don’t think it exploded," I say gently. "It sparked. And you shouldn’t hang tea towels near it anyway."
"So it’s my fault?"
"No, I didn’t say that. I’m just saying that I don’t think Dan tried to kill you."
"Maybe he did. Maybe he planted a bomb."
"He didn’t plant a bomb, Mum. The firemen would have found it."
"Not if it was one of those smart bombs."
"Dan isn’t a smart bomb kinda guy," I say.
"But he is a bomb kind of guy?"
"No," I say. "He’s not an anything illegal kind of guy."
"Well, maybe there was no bomb then, but he knew it would catch fire and he didn’t tell me. Maybe he was trying to kill Baby. I know how much he hates Baby."
"It’s nothing like that," I say. "I think the smoke has gone to your brain. What happened last night was just an accident. Just one of those things that nobody can predict. Luckily nobody was hurt and that’s all that matters."
"But they could have been, and then your boyfriend would have been happy."
"Mum, can we drop this subject, please? Dan would not have been happy at that."
"I still think he tried to kill me," she mutters under her breath.
I decide to let that one slide. I’ve had enough arguments for one morning.
The house is pretty much in the shape the fireman said it would be. The kitchen is a write-off, but aside from a few smoke blackened things in the living room, the rest of the house is virtually untouched.
Mum goes to walk though the kitchen doorway but I stop her. "I don’t think we should go in there, it doesn’t look very safe. Let’s just go upstairs and find your insurance policy and get someone in to clean it up."
Thanks to Mum’s filing system, she knows exactly where the documents she needs are, and I sit on the stairs waiting as Mum phones them from the upstairs landline.
Eventually she thanks them and hangs up.
"They’re sending a surveyor round on Tuesday to assess the cost of the damage, and then they’ll send their own building contractors in to do the job."
"That’s good," I say. "At least you won’t have to do any of the getting quotes business and phoning around different places and crap like that."
"Mac, I have something to ask you."
"Go ahead," I say, fully expecting what it is.
"Can I stay with you for a couple more nights? At least until Tuesday when the surveyor has been and I know something is being done about the kitchen."
Yep, that’s what I expected. "Of course you can," I tell her.
"And Baby and Pussy too?"
"Of course."
"Ahh, thank you so much." She comes over and hugs me. "It just doesn’t feel right to be here, not with the kitchen all burnt out like that. It feels so empty. Almost haunted… I don’t know. I just don’t want to be here."
"I get that," I say, not really wanting to be here either.
She sighs.
"You should get some clothes together so we won’t need to come back again until Tuesday. I’ll take you shopping later to get some food in and find something for the cat and dog to eat."
"Thanks, Mac," she says. "What about Dan? Won’t he mind?"
"He’ll be fine," I lie.
Dan is going to kill me.
CHAPTER 42
"You did what?" Dan practically screeches at me.
"I told her she could stay until Tuesday when the insurance guy comes to assess the damage."
"Why the fuck would you do that?"
"Because she didn’t want to be alone in her house."
"Well, you go and fucking move in with her then."
"There’s no kitchen, Dan."
He snorts.
"And it’s only until Tuesday."
"Mackenzie, there are three fucking suitcases in my hallway. You think she’s staying until Tuesday? She’s moved in until she’s seventy, more like."
"No, she hasn’t. She’ll go home on Tuesday. She said that she’ll be more comfortable there when she knows something is being done about the kitchen."
"She also said I tried to kill her."
"She told you that?"
"She implied it without using the actual word ‘murderer’, yes."
"Shit. I’m sorry, Dan. I told her to leave that one alone."
"What the fuck ever."
He turns around and smacks the wall with the flat of his hand.
"Mac, how do you propose she’s only going to be here until Tuesday? Even when the insurance guy has been, there will still be no kitchen. He’s not going to wave a magic wand and get it all sparkling and new. He’s solely going to give the builders a budget to work with. These claims can take weeks to go through, months even, and you expect her to live there for all that time with no kitchen? And then when the builders do get in eventually, there will be all the mess and dust and what have you. She won’t want to be there then either."
"So, she’ll go back on Tuesday and just pop up to us to cook her meals or whatever. Or get takeaways."
"Oh well, that’s okay then," he says sarcastically. "Mac, have you even looked in our kitchen? My Belisana stuff is all over the unit for the fucking cat to eat at its own free will because she just cleared my cupboard out to put all her shopping in. Did you even see how much she bought? It’s enough food to last two years, and you expect her to go home on Tuesday? Get real."
"I thought she was just stocking up. She doesn’t have a kitchen to put food in, Dan. The least we can do is offer her one of our cupboards."
"Yeah, my cupboard for restaurant stuff."
"Well, I didn’t tell her which cupboard to use. She obviously didn’t know it was yours."
"She knew exactly whose it was. Why do you think she used it?"
"Oh for god’s sake, Dan. Are we really arguing over a cupboard here?"
"No, Mackenzie, we’re arguing over the fact that your fucking mother has moved in to our house for the next twenty years and you didn’t even consult me."
"I don’t know if you remember or not but you’d stormed off to work in a strop…"
"Yeah, because her fucking little dog tried to eat me alive for having the audacity to walk down my own stairs."
"They’re my stairs too, and, you know what, I didn’t think you’d mind her staying a couple of nights given the dire circumstances."
"Oh, for fuck’s sake. She didn’t die, Mackenzie. So her kitchen is a little blackened. So fucking what? I wouldn’t be surprised if she’d started that fire herself, just so she could come between us."
"Don’t be so damn stupid, Dan. That’s as bad as her saying you tried to kill her."
"Oh come on. She hates me and so far nothing she’s done to break us up has worked. She’s probably getting desperate and will try anything to split us up."
"Oh, and what exactly has she done to break us up? Okay, so she’s a little overbearing, but she’s my mother. She’s just looking out for me. Unlike you, who couldn’t even be arsed to get up in the middle of the night to beat a burglar round the head with a baseball bat."
"It wasn’t a burglar."
"That’s not the point. It could have been. How would you have felt if he’d have held me at gunpoint and stolen all our stuff?"
"It wasn’t a burglar."
"But it might have been. You didn’t know that it wasn’t. It could have been a deranged serial killer, and he could have done anything he wanted to me, all because you think sleep is more important.
"
"I think it actually was a deranged serial killer. I mean, your mother isn’t far off, is she?"
"Oh, shut up."
"I can’t believe we’re still talking about this. It was three in the morning, I was knackered, and you’re still on my back about it because you had to answer the door to your own fucking mother."
"I didn’t know it was my mother. It could have been anyone."
"Yeah, and what happened to being an independent woman of the twenty-first century? Since when do you need a man to protect you at all times?"
"It’s got nothing to do with that. I was vulnerable, Dan. It was a situation I needed you to take charge of and you wouldn’t."
"It was answering the door to your fucking mother!"
"I didn’t know it was my fucking mother!" The words explode from my mouth in an angry shout.
"You’ve been dating too many old guys who still live in the nineteen-fifties and think women should be seen and not heard and that you should just be the little homemaker and let the guy do all the hard work."
"Defending from burglars is a guy’s job. At least, it would be nice if I had a guy who would do that for me. At least you know how to swing a baseball bat. I don’t. I was just holding a big stick."
"It wasn’t a fucking burglar."
"That is not the point."
"I want to ask how you can be so goddamn impossible, but I know exactly where you get it from—your bloody mother."
"Can you keep your voice down, please? She’ll be back any minute."
"And, oh dear, she might hear me? Oh dear, she might find out that I don’t fucking want her here? Oh dear, what a shame."
"Oh, shut up, Dan."
"Where’s she gone, anyway?"
"She’s taking the dog for a walk."
"So it doesn’t crap on my carpet, no doubt."
"It’s not just your carpet, you know. This is our house, Dan. I wouldn’t object if your mother’s house nearly burnt to the ground and she had to move in for a couple of days."
"That’s because my mother would have the decency to stay in a hotel and not deposit a menagerie of animals and three large suitcases on our doorstep."
Kismetology Page 20