Another Place

by Matthew Crow

  In that moment Dan was frightened, and it felt nourishing to see. For the first time ever he seemed to recognise that he was alone.

  ‘Bitch,’ he yelled, turning quickly and running from the room.

  I made my way as close to the door as I could, savouring the cool air of the corridor, and smiled as I heard him trying the locked fire escape.

  He yelled and screamed, kicking his frustration as he flew down flights of stairs only to be met by the loud, authoritative knocking of a truncheon on the corrugated metal of the main entrance.

  He slipped down towards the cellar staircase, while I defied every instinct in my body and made my way back into the burning room. I picked up wood, bottles – anything with heft from the floor – and began throwing them through the glass of the rear windows, trying everything I could to alert whoever was outside to the back of the building.

  Before long the heat and the smoke grew too much. The room, however sparse, was hazy and obscured. I counted to eight on my fingers and made my way back towards the door from memory, never lifting my feet from the ground lest I tripped, before I arrived in the corridor and collapsed on the floor.

  I gifted myself a moment to breathe before jumping back to my feet. The pounding of the front door grew louder and I could hear that the metal was beginning to give way to whatever force was being used on the other side.

  I jumped down to the mezzanine level and retrieved the second key from my pocket just as the front door gave way and a stream of footsteps cascaded into the main hall of the Mariners. The chain scratched my hand and drew blood as I unravelled it but eventually I made it out onto the escape staircase and down to terra firma.

  Blue lights cast shadows from the back of the building where the sound of Dan being held to the ground by officers played out like sweet music.

  I removed my bobble, and drew my hair across the front of my face as I slid beneath the iron fence surrounding the building. Then I was out in the yard of the ice-cream shop next door. This was our meeting place. But Ross was not there.

  I whispered his name almost inaudibly, and then again, more frantically this time, as the sound of sirens grew closer.

  The old wooden door of the outhouse opened and Ross looked up at me from where he sat on the floor, tears rolling down his face.

  ‘We’re safe,’ I said, sitting down next to him and closing the door behind me.

  ‘What happened?’ he whispered. ‘Are you OK?’

  ‘He’s gone,’ I said, holding on to him in the dark. ‘It’s over.’

  22

  Another Place

  Once it was all over, and the dust had settled on our little town, Paula and a team of her closest friends and enemies from the community centre organised a memorial service for Sarah. One of the pictures Jacob left for me had been used on the remembrance flyers handed out throughout town.

  Between the pier and the lighthouse it seemed as though the entire town had turned out. Even those who would normally venture no further than the pub made an effort to pay their respects. Mobility scooters chugged unsteadily across the sand until their wheels were stuck in the soft ground and spun helplessly, while children ran to the shore, kicking and splashing, celebrating the last moments of light as yet another summer drew to a close. Even people who got two buses to school turned up. Some were in uniform. Most in their Sunday best – they stood patiently in line with their parents, while volunteers handed paper lanterns with marker pens and candles from the trestle tables which had been erected on the dunes above.

  It is strange to see your entire world congregate. The only other time I’d seen so many people in one place was on New Year’s Eve, the millennium year, when we’d followed the bangs and the lights as a rogue firework took out a chip shop and a neighbouring kebab shop in thick, oily flames which gave everything the faint odour of scorched fat long into February.

  I had worn a dress for the occasion and felt unusually good about myself as I made my way down with Dad and Paula to write messages on our lanterns before we released them into the evening with the others. My confidence was not unfounded, either, as Donna made a lewd gesture from across the beach where she stood with her mum and Adam – who, since catching Dan Vesper, was in training for his role as real life policeman.

  What they found in Dan’s jacket and car alone would have been enough to have him jailed for so long nobody would ever remember what he had done or who he had been. But the bundles of money and drugs that the firemen had discovered after extinguishing the top floor of the Mariners really stuck the boot in it. Dan would be conducting his business from a cage for as long as anybody could comprehend. The thought of him trapped and unable to get out made me happier than any person’s captivity should have.

  We made our way towards the front. Paula held tight on to my arm as her ankle went loose in a soft patch of sand.

  ‘That’s the last thing I need tonight, to be airlifted out of here and have to call the whole thing off.’ She laughed as she gripped my arm tighter. Her duties were done but she still insisted on wearing a hi-vis jacket over the black dress she had picked for the occasion, lest anybody mistake her for a simple reveller and totally overlook her authority and input into the whole affair.

  I’d caught her crying in her bedroom that morning, when I’d been running around the house looking for a hairbrush.

  ‘What’s the problem?’ I asked, my dress only half zipped up at the back and already making me itchy and irritable.

  Paula dabbed her eyes as she sat on the bed and looked up at me.

  ‘You look nice,’ she said, as another tear rolled down her face.

  ‘You don’t. What’s wrong? Has one of the volunteers pulled out or something?’ I said, sitting down and turning my back to her, holding my hair back from my neck as she politely zipped my dress up without making the grievous error of huffing and puffing at the tenacity of the zip, as Dad often would.

  I turned to face her once I was sucked into my garment and she shook her head.

  ‘No – no. All systems very much go!’ she said, punching the air in mock enthusiasm. ‘It’s just… it’s been a funny old summer.’

  ‘You’re telling me.’

  ‘And that poor girl,’ she said, wiping another tear. ‘I just keep thinking about her out there alone, and it’s…’

  ‘It’s OK.’ I gave her hand a brief squeeze. ‘It’s over now. Wherever she is it can’t be any worse than when she was alive. Sarah died,’ I said, removing my hand. ‘It was wrong and it was awful. But you have no idea how many people get to live because of that. Just think how many bad things have stopped because of her.’

  ‘Oh I know,’ Paula said, rallying and sniffing any emotion from her face. ‘I just. It’s just a tragedy isn’t it?’ I nodded. ‘So expected and so shocking all at once. I just want to take that little girl in my arms, to keep her safe. I know I’m nobody’s mother, but still…’ she said before beginning to tear up again.

  I sighed and rolled my head back as though it had been freshly severed.

  ‘Ugh!’ I grumbled. ‘Fuck that!’

  Paula was shocked. ‘I beg your pardon?’ she said, the angriest I’ve ever seen her.

  ‘I said, fuck that. You know you’re my mother. You’re the only one I’ve ever had and you’re the only one I’ll ever get. You’re my mum, so wear that mantle with pride.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said mistily, clutching her fist to her chest.

  ‘I’d never ride you this hard if you were just some random woman my dad was seeing. I’m an arsehole and you have to take it. That’s what being a mother is all about. It’s your divine right and as much as it kills me to say it you excel in your given role.’

  ‘Oh, Claudette,’ she said, wiping a happier tear from her eye this time. ‘That’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me!’

  She brought me into a tight hug and made it clear through brute force that it was an embrace that would only end once she was good and ready, and that this would be some t
ime in the distant, distant future.

  I wrote a secret message on my lantern and popped the tea light into the holder, prepared for flight.

  ‘Mine’s a message to you, my girl,’ Dad said, as he readied his vessel and tucked the marker pen into his pocket.

  ‘Well don’t tell me what it is or it won’t come true,’ I said.

  ‘That’s birthday wishes, not lanterns,’ Paula said.

  ‘I think it’s a transferrable rule,’ I said, as Dad smiled.

  ‘Whatever happens I’ll make it come true,’ he said, hugging me. Across the beach, removed from the crowd but close enough to participate, I saw Ross standing alone. He noticed me and winked. I smiled back and gestured for him to join us but with his eyes he politely refused. I shrugged and smiled and carried on watching the water as the sun began to melt into the ocean.

  Even I was surprised, after the fire, when there were no knocks on our door. No policeman asking questions I couldn’t answer, or hurling accusations that I could not deny. I suppose they got what they wanted. They’d finally snared Dan – after years of him evading them, sacrificing his underlings as he scaled the top of the murky empire he watched over.

  Ross and I spent over an hour in the coal shed, feeling the flames above us quench and cool as the fire brigade blasted jets to the rafters. For a long time we hardly said a word. Rather, I hacked and coughed until my lungs felt clean, and Ross dampened his sleeve with drops of leftover cider, carefully wiping streaks of black from my cheeks. Both of us were exhausted from the night before, and from the weeks and months and years before that. Damaged by a life that hadn’t always been kind, but safe in the knowledge that somehow, with little more than a box of matches and a stupid plan, something had changed.

  Once the coast was clear enough, we made our way out from the yard. I dipped my head and stared at the ground as we passed by the policemen who were taking notes and trying to decipher the static instructions of walkie-talkies. I knew my face was sooty and my edges singed. They would have clocked me in a heartbeat. Ross was not quite so demure.

  ‘What’s going on there then?’ he asked a policeman, slipping his hand around my waist as he lead me through the scant crowd.

  ‘Never you mind. You’ll find out soon enough,’ said an unimpressed policeman who was making notes on the bonnet of his car. ‘Why?’ he asked, standing up, suddenly interested. ‘You haven’t noticed anything suspicious?’

  ‘There’s smoke coming out of that roof,’ Ross said, pointing to the top of the building as we walked on. ‘Pretty sure that’s not always been there.’

  The policemen mumbled something patronising to Ross as we made our way across the promenade. Donna had texted with instructions that she was home alone and a warning that if I did not turn up within an hour she would call my dad, the police, the school – just about anybody that could listen.

  I turned back briefly towards the Mariners, my hair caught on my face, and saw Adam giving a statement beside a second police car. I hadn’t noticed him before but he had clearly spotted me, as his eyes met mine with a look of relief and concern. I nodded once and hoped he’d interpret the look as intended – my apology and my thanks. Mostly I hoped he’d see in it that I was fine. I was alive and that I was well. I’d say it all, in words, one day, no doubt. But for the time being it had to suffice.

  We showered and changed at Donna’s house as she spat and snarled at our own stupidity. We threw out our clothes down the rubbish chute, rich with smoke, and Donna gifted me a pair of jeans and a jumper and Ross one of Adam’s old tracksuits as she snuck brandy from her mum’s bottle into the mugs of tea she’d hurriedly poured.

  Her fury faded eventually into relief, before she herself dimmed to sleep. After that Ross and I were alone, and we talked quietly to the sound of Donna’s rich doze, until the sun bleached the night.

  We talked about when we were children. We talked about school and friends and how we came to be here, now, at this point in our lives. Mostly we talked about Sarah. We shared parts of her that neither one of us had known when she was alive and, like eyes adjusting to a strange room in the dark, she suddenly became whole again, and alive again. A rounded story, a beginning and a middle and an ending.

  ‘What are you going to do now?’ he asked as the sun began to rise.

  ‘I’m going to do what I always do,’ I said. ‘Put one foot in front of the other and see where it gets me. What about you?’ I asked.

  ‘Dunno,’ he said sleepily. ‘Maybe I’ll just follow you for a bit.’

  ‘I can’t guarantee I’m on the best path,’ I said.

  ‘We can keep each other right I reckon.’

  The investigation of the children’s home made the news, but not in the way Sarah’s disappearance had. I was at Mr Fitzpatrick’s house, drinking tea and regaling him with anecdotes about my life whether he wanted to hear them or not. He turned on the news in time for the local headlines as he did every night. I was mid-sentence. It was only a brief mention, cast in the shadow of a larger investigation, but all the words we wanted to hear were there. There were inquiries, there were arrests – the children were rehomed indefinitely.

  Mr Fitzpatrick shed a tear as the camera cut back to the studio, and then segued into a feature on recycling bin wars.

  ‘You did it,’ he said, quietly, tapping my shoulder heartily as I sat at his feet, bent-legged and staring at the TV.

  ‘We did it,’ I said, looking up at him.

  ‘To Sarah,’ he said, reaching down and clinking his teacup against mine. ‘For making the world a better place for all those after her.’

  ‘To Sarah,’ I whispered, clinking the edge of the china gently to his. ‘And all those after her.’

  He had moaned like hell when I’d told him about Paula’s coffee and conversations mornings every Wednesday at the Community Centre.

  ‘The only reason I’m going is to shut you up,’ he told me the day I came to chaperone him to the first meeting. ‘And you must stay with me. I don’t like spending too much time around old people. They make me feel claustrophobic.’

  I’d practically had to carry him there and then spent the entire duration feeling pissed when he ditched me for a pair of merry widows who volunteered at the library two days a week and were thrilled when he was able to elaborate upon the books of Vatican art they evidently got their kicks from.

  ‘How was it?’ I asked as we walked home eating a bag of chips that lunchtime.

  ‘Pfff,’ he said, picking a piece of batter from the side of the paper cone. ‘It was what it was I suppose.’

  ‘So you’ll be going back?’

  ‘Only to keep up the numbers,’ he said, picking up his pace.

  More often than not he was the first one there each Wednesday, tapping his watch and huffing and puffing if Paula was a minute late opening the centre. He’d usually be there until everybody else had left, too, helping us to clear up the tables.

  ‘They do make such a mess, the oldies,’ he’d say, scraping icing and cake crumbs into black paper bags.

  ‘Well anything to keep them off the streets,’ Paula would say, week on week. He would laugh, week on week, like he hadn’t heard the joke before, and return the gesture with the same old joke of his own.

  ‘Cake wasn’t up to much this week, Paula. You’ve a heavy hand.’

  ‘Oh really,’ she’d say.

  ‘Icing was a bit dry.’

  ‘Like your attitude. Now hurry up with those bloody forks. They’ve ju-jitsu in five minutes and if there’s one class you don’t want to mess with…’ she’d say, raising her eyebrows as he elaborately picked up his pace.

  ‘They say it’s meant to be the quietest time of your life, old age,’ he’d mock-moan. ‘Not for me. Not a moment’s peace and quiet.’

  ‘You love it, old boy,’ she’d say, giving his arm a reassuring squeeze as she made her way around the hall, collecting stray napkins and wiping spilled drops of coffee.

  On the beach everyone lit
their tea lights one by one. The crowd expanded as we stepped back to allow room for the heat to enlarge the paper lanterns that pulled lightly towards the sky like winged creatures; only really alive when in flight.

  There was a countdown before we released them and slowly a warm glowing wave rose and swelled, blooming above us before dispersing into hundreds and hundreds of low stars, all scribbled with messages of love and remembrance and hope.

  The silence on the beach was unusual but felt right in that moment, in its own peaceful way. It was as if for the first time that summer we were all free, and at peace. I leant back into Dad and felt a rush of happiness that I hadn’t experienced in a long time. It was happiness that they were there. Happiness that we were in that place, at that time. Happiness, more than anything, that I was there with them, too.

  That was what depression was to me; constantly wanting to be somewhere else. An insatiable urge for another place. Some people make a joke of it. You tell them that’s how it feels and they laugh and roll their eyes. They want to be in Barbados, they say. Or they want to be anywhere else but the factory line or the checkout counter or the office desk between nine and five every weekday. They usually mean well but if they really understood then they wouldn’t be so flippant. If they knew that what you meant was a place outside of yourself, a place that never did and never would exist – a place you’d rip your skin on jagged shards of glass to reach. If only you could step out of yourself, and only for a moment, just to breathe the same clear air that most people took for granted day in, day out.

  In that moment on the beach, with Dad behind me and Paula by my side, and Donna and Ross and all the people gathered there, all of that desperation had evaporated. Not for ever, I knew that, but as the tide peeled slowly back and the lanterns filled the sky I felt a rush of calm at the thought that I had come home.