After the Fire (Maeve Kerrigan)

by Casey, Jane

  Carl looked around, eyeing the room. Pictures on the walls. Curtains at the windows. Games consoles stacked up by the wide-screen television. ‘We don’t need any money.’

  ‘Stupid.’ She leaned over and jabbed her finger into the soft flesh that padded the back of his neck and bulked out the top of his shoulders. ‘Stupid and lazy. When are you going to call round to number thirty-four?’

  ‘I will, I said.’

  ‘That was two days ago. They’ll be wondering if you’re ever going to come. Didn’t realise you were so well off you could walk away from a couple of hundred quid, Carl. If you don’t go, I will.’

  ‘You?’ He laughed halfway through lifting a can of Coke to his mouth. ‘Yeah, all right. You can go.’

  ‘I’m telling you—’

  ‘And I heard.’

  Nina turned, giving up on him for the time being, and screeched, ‘Debbie?’

  ‘What is it?’ Debbie Bellew leaned into the living room, her face shiny with sweat from the heat of the kitchen, where she had been ironing in clouds of steam. ‘Everything all right?’

  ‘Only that I’m dying for a cup of tea, not that anyone cares.’

  ‘Sorry, Mum.’ Debbie called her mother-in-law ‘Mum’ because she had no choice. Nina insisted. Nina Bellew couldn’t have been less like Debbie’s round, comfortable mother, who’d died twenty years earlier. Debbie missed her every day. She sometimes wondered if she would have married Carl, had her mother still been alive. She had been lonely, and scared, and young when Carl started to court her. He had seemed like the answer to her prayers.

  Carl had been a mistake.

  ‘Have we got any cakes?’ Nina demanded.

  ‘Cakes?’

  ‘A sponge. Better for me teeth. I can’t be doing with crisps or whatever it is they’re eating.’ She peered down at the children, who were having a low-level fight. It wasn’t vicious or loud enough for anyone to feel they had to intervene, yet. ‘You won’t want your dinners,’ Nina said loudly.

  Nathan rolled over. ‘What’s for tea?’

  ‘Fish and chips,’ Debbie replied.

  ‘From the chippy?’

  ‘No, I’m making them.’

  ‘Yuck.’

  Nina kicked him, not gently. ‘Enough of that. You’re lucky to have anything to eat. When I was a girl we got one meal a day. By the evening your stomach’d be wondering if your throat had been cut.’ She laughed, though no one else did. ‘Sponge cake, Debbie. Got any?’

  ‘No, sorry.’ She felt in the pocket of her jeans for some coins. ‘Nathan, you wouldn’t run down to the shop—’

  ‘Nooooo.’ Nathan flopped face down on the floor, burying his head in his arms. ‘I’m not going.’

  Becky turned and grinned at her mother, waiting for her brother to get in trouble. She was too young to go and she knew it.

  Debbie couldn’t face a fight. Not again. ‘I’ll go myself. I won’t be long. I’ll make you your tea when I get back, Mum. Unless—’

  Carl hunched up one shoulder in a silent message that was at least as effective as his son’s howling. No chance.

  ‘I won’t be long,’ Debbie said again.

  ‘It might take you a while,’ Carl said. ‘Lift’s broken again.’

  ‘Again? But they only fixed it last week.’ It had been broken for so long, she’d thought she’d got used to the stairs. Strange how you resented it, though, when it was broken again. It was the disappointment, that was all. The hope and then the disappointment. Debbie had had just about enough of disappointment.

  She hurried to the door and lifted her anorak off the hook, wondering if she needed to get anything else. It was no joke, going up and down all those stairs. On the other hand, it gave her time she wouldn’t otherwise have. No one would expect her back for ages.

  Debbie left the flat with an unusual feeling of freedom. On her own, for once. No one talking to her. No one asking her to do anything or get anything. No one interrupting her. She took her time about heading for the stairs. What was wrong with taking a few minutes for herself? Time to think.

  Except that her thoughts weren’t all that comforting, when they came. And even though she knew she had time, she couldn’t enjoy it. She was going to have to run down and back up again to make up for the three or four minutes she’d stolen for herself.

  Debbie started towards the stairwell, hurrying past a man who was walking up, his head bent, a cap pulled down low over his eyebrows. She didn’t really notice him. Afterwards, she couldn’t remember if he’d been carrying anything. She couldn’t remember much at all.

  In the flat opposite the lift, Melissa Pell listened. Her wooden spoon circled in the pan of baked beans, slowly, as she strained to hear over the hiss of the gas flame. The television was on in the living room, but it wasn’t loud. She liked to be able to hear Thomas playing. She liked to be able to hear any other noises too. Anything unexpected. Anything unusual.

  The trouble was that Murchison House was full of unexpected and unusual noises. Screaming and shouting in the middle of the night. Footsteps in the corridor, slow or fast. Doors slamming without warning. The hum and whine of the lift lumbering up and down, the judder as it stopped opposite her door. She was on edge all the time.

  ‘Mummy!’

  Melissa started, flicking some lurid orange sauce on the cooker. She went to get a cloth. ‘You gave me a fright, poppet.’

  ‘Sorry, Mummy.’ He sounded it, too.

  It was all wrong, Melissa thought, that a three-year-old should know to be really sorry for scaring his mother. She made an extra effort to sound cheerful as she rubbed at the ceramic hob. ‘That’s all right. I just wasn’t expecting you to burst in here.’

  ‘I didn’t mean to burf.’ The consonants always foxed him when they came together. It was babyish and she hated correcting him. She wanted to keep him, her sweet-smelling delicate boy, just as he was, for ever.

  ‘Burst,’ she said clearly.

  ‘Burft.’

  That was as close as he was going to get, Melissa knew. She grinned at him and went to rinse out the cloth. The water rattled into the sink. She could hear his voice, but not what he was saying to her.

  ‘Hold on a second.’

  ‘Is it ready, Mummy?’

  She turned just in time to see him grabbing the handle of the saucepan to tilt it towards him. The sauce was heaving with bubbles, hot as lava. She had no breath to scream at him, no time to inhale. She lunged across the small kitchen and grabbed the handle of the saucepan, pushing it onto one of the rings at the back, out of Thomas’s reach, where it should have been all along.

  It was as if her husband was in the room, leaning close to her, shouting in her ear. What the hell do you think you’re playing at? Careless, that’s what you are. And a bad mother. Selfish, too. Do you really think this is the best place for the boy? Even if you can’t stand me, don’t you want what’s best for him? Can’t you even cook his dinner without putting him in danger?

  She was never going to get away from him. Even if she was hundreds of miles away from him, he was still there, in her head. She was never going to be free.

  Thomas was looking wounded. ‘You snatched it.’

  ‘I had to, pet. It’s hot.’

  ‘You’re not supposed to snatch things.’

  ‘You could have been scalded.’ Melissa felt like screaming at her small son, but she worked very hard not to take the rage and the stress and the fear out on him. She took a deep breath, willing her hands to stop trembling. ‘It’s dangerous to be in the kitchen when I’m cooking.’

  ‘Sorry.’ He said it very softly, his face flushed with the effort of not crying. He was a good child, a quiet and obedient child, and he wasn’t used to getting in trouble.

  ‘Come on,’ Melissa said, putting the cloth down and holding out her hands. ‘Come and have a cuddle.’

  ‘On the sofa?’ Thomas suggested, clambering into her arms.

  ‘For a little while.’ She held him tight as she
walked through to the living room, his soft cheek against hers, his arms and legs wrapped tight around her as if he was a baby monkey.

  Dinner could wait.

  In the flat next door, just under Drina’s bedroom, a man stood by the window. He was looking out, passing the time until she came. He wouldn’t see her crossing the car park – the flat faced the wrong way. He could imagine it so easily though: her lean, tall figure, narrow-hipped and long-limbed. That elegant neck – her easy way of carrying herself. Dignity in every move she made.

  The man winced. He’d asked her once what tribe she belonged to, a conversational misstep that had almost cost him everything.

  ‘I was born in London, sweetheart.’ Her voice had been heavy with disapproval, a rough edge to it to remind him she’d grown up on the estate, not in Kensington, privileged like him. She’d fought her way out of the sheets and sat on the edge of the bed, running her hands down her arms over and over again. The movement reminded him of an irritated cat grooming itself.

  ‘I just mean originally.’ He’d traced his fingers down the length of her spine, his skin pale against her shining darkness. She was all lines and exciting leanness, not frail and sagging like Cressida.

  ‘You don’t need to worry about originally.’ She’d glanced back at him, full lips curving into a smile. ‘You only need to worry about now.’

  And then she had turned so he could see her full, high breasts and he had forgotten everything except her divine body.

  God, she was incredible. And his. His! He barely dared to speak to girls like her, usually. For various reasons, it wasn’t a good idea. But there she was, offering herself to him, not once but often.

  As if she actually liked him – and liked the way he worshipped her. How could he do anything else? She was his goddess.

  He’d have to remember to say that to her, he thought. My goddess. She would like that.

  His body was humming with excitement. Anticipation. He paced up and down, unable to stand still. She was all he thought about, all the time – her taste, her smell, the places he was allowed to touch her and the way her body felt when he did.

  The smile on his face faded as the old, familiar, unwanted thought came into his head, effective as a cold shower. No one could know. No one could ever know. It would be a disaster.

  It would be the end of everything.

  A soft tap at the door brought him back to the present. He felt exquisitely aware of his body as he hurried to unlock the door – of his muscles moving, the clothes touching his skin, his heart thudding. He felt powerful. He felt younger than he had for years. He felt like a man.

  His last thought, as he reached out to open the door, was that she was right. There was no point in thinking about the past, or the future. There was only now.

  II

  At twenty-one minutes past five on a cold Thursday evening, a small fire started in Murchison House. No one noticed, at first. The fire consumed everything it could reach, and as it spread it became stronger, hotter. It borrowed all of the oxygen it could find and paid it back in poisonous, choking black smoke. The smoke travelled faster than the flames, sliding through cracks and crevices, spreading to fill every space it found. And the heat of the fire travelled too, building in intensity until everything it touched burst into flames, and soon the small fire wasn’t small any more and the smoke was streaming out of windows, under doors, filling the stairwells and flats, until it had taken control of Murchison House.

  Carl Bellew didn’t hear anything or smell anything or see anything suspicious. He was asleep in his chair. His mother, Nina, was in her bedroom down the hall from the living room, and she didn’t notice anything either. It was seven-year-old Becky who heard the sound of something falling – a muffled sound. A mysterious sound. Becky was sitting in an armchair, her feet hanging down over the side, watching television. The unexpected noise got her attention. She swung her legs down to the floor and stood up, walking past her brother and her sleeping father. She didn’t say anything to either of them about the sound she had heard. She didn’t say where she was going, or why. The kitchen door was closed and she thought nothing of it. The door to the bedroom she shared with her brother was closed and that wasn’t unusual either. But when she touched it, the door was warm. Warm as blood. Becky reached her hand out to the door handle, which was metal. It was hot enough to sear her palm and she cried out in pain. The scream was loud enough to disturb her father.

  ‘What’s going on?’ he called. He was still half-asleep and grouchy as a hibernating bear. It wasn’t a good idea to wake him up at the best of times.

  ‘I’m all right,’ Becky shouted back, pulling her sleeve down over her hand to protect it. She put her covered hand on the door handle and turned it, then pushed the door open.

  And the fire came to meet her.

  Debbie Bellew was crossing the car park, carrying a plastic shopping bag, when she heard a shout. Shouts were normal on the Maudling Estate but it was always wise to check it was nothing to do with you. Debbie glanced behind her and saw a man shading his eyes, pointing up at the tower block opposite him. Murchison House. Debbie turned to see what he was looking at. It took her a second to make sense of the fact that the top of the tower had changed shape, widened, swelled. Against the darkening sky, black smoke made parts of the building disappear. It was flowing out of windows on the west side of the tower, and with every second that passed the smoke seemed to move faster, finding new places to escape.

  The handles of the plastic bag slipped through her fingers and fell on the tarmac. By the time the sponge cake slid onto the ground, Debbie was already gone, sprinting towards the base of Murchison House, knowing that she was too late. Nothing on earth could have stopped her.

  Melissa Pell heard a smoke alarm going off – not in her flat, somewhere else – and one part of her brain considered it, then dismissed it. It was teatime. People were cooking. People burned food. She’d done it herself, many a time.

  She sniffed. She could smell something in the air, something acrid. Smoke. Actual smoke. That was dinner in the bin, she thought. No salvaging it.

  ‘Shit!’ She jumped up off the sofa, tipping her son off her lap onto the floor.

  ‘Mummy,’ Thomas protested as she rushed to the kitchen. She could see it in her mind’s eye: the gas flame flickering, the cloth she’d tossed to one side carelessly. Charring and then burning, the flames rising higher and higher.

  But the kitchen was fine. The gas was off. The cloth was nowhere near the cooker. Everything was just the same as normal. Melissa stood for a second, letting her heart rate drop. Everything was all right. There was no reason to panic. Panic was a habit. She needed to let it go. She needed to allow herself to believe that she and Thomas were safe at last.

  Melissa turned to go back to her son. She’d moved two steps towards him when her smoke alarm began to chirp.

  Mary Hearn put the radio on, for company, and dozed through the afternoon play. She wasn’t quite asleep but she wasn’t awake either. The words got jumbled up and the plot didn’t seem to make any sense. Maybe that was her own fault, though, she thought. Maybe she was missing the point. She didn’t usually nap so late in the day but she was tired, and she let herself drift, thinking about George.

  Drina saw the smoke first. She stood up and pressed her face against the cold glass of the window, peering down. It was belching out of the building on the floor below. The wind caught it and blew it across Drina’s view, blotting out London below her. The window frame rattled and she caught the smell of the smoke. It was in the room with her. She stumbled away from the glass and ran to the door, shouting in English and in her own language as she hurried into the dingy living room. The other two girls came out of their room. One was sleepy and yawning, the other hobbling on her heels with cotton wool wedged between her toes. Her toenails were dark red, like drops of blood. She was dark-skinned, African, very young.

  ‘What is it? What’s wrong?’

  ‘There’s a fire
. We have to get out.’ Drina ran to the living room window, seeing only darkness where there should have been miles of orange streetlights. ‘Are you listening, you bastards? You have to let us out. Unlock the door.’

  ‘They won’t come,’ the African girl said.

  ‘They have to.’ Drina ran to hammer on the door. ‘Otherwise we’ll be rescued. If they want to keep us, they have to keep us alive.’

  She choked a little on the last word. Smoke was catching the back of her throat. Behind her, the other girl started to cough, muttering something in Russian as she clamped a hand over her mouth and nose. Drina spoke some Russian – she’d learned it in Israel, the first place she’d stopped on her journey from her home. She knew enough to be able to translate it for herself.

  Dear God, we are going to die.

  Carl Bellew gathered up his daughter and his phone, then yelled to his mother to collect every bit of jewellery he owned: watches, rings, heavy necklaces and bracelets. Debbie’s jewellery was worthless but his was real gold, real diamonds. Nathan was snivelling with fear and shock and Carl shoved him towards the door.

  ‘Get a move on.’

  ‘Put that over your mouth and nose.’ Nina handed him a t-shirt soaked in water. ‘Stay low down when we go outside the door.’

  Carl looked down at her, worried. ‘Ready, Mum?’

  ‘Ready.’ She hefted her handbag on her arm, looking small and spindly but somehow unbreakable. ‘We’ll go straight down the stairs. Easy peasy.’

  ‘So we need to go down the stairs very quickly but not running, darling, do you understand?’ Melissa picked up the bag she kept by the door, not allowing herself to stop and check that it still contained the money, the passports, the credit cards, the birth certificates, addresses and phone numbers. She’d put them all in there. She’d checked a hundred times.

  She had been ready to run. But not from a fire.

  Thomas’s face was pink, his bottom lip turned down. He held on to Captain Bunbun. ‘I’m scared.’