Jack doubled over with coughing. He groped for the handle to the door of the living room and pulled it shut to stop the advance. If the fire got in there, nothing would save the house.
He scurried up the stairs on all fours, to stay low, coughing all the way.
‘Merry!’ he croaked at the top. ‘The house is on fire!’
Her room was already blurred with smoke. She was there, almost buried in her paper bedding.
He shook her roughly, terrified that he was too late, that she wouldn’t wake up.
‘What’s wrong?’ she said crossly.
‘The house is on fire!’
Jack pulled her out of her nest, then dragged her by her wrist into the bathroom and slammed the door behind them.
‘It smells,’ she yawned, and then coughed.
‘That’s the smoke,’ said Jack, grabbing a towel and running water over it in the basin. Then he threw open the window and lifted Merry on to the sill.
‘You go out the window and slide off the kitchen roof into the garden and then stay far away from the house. Do you understand?’
‘Why can’t I just stay in here?’ said Merry. ‘If the fire’s out there?’
‘Because the fire will come and get you.’
‘Fire can’t move!’ she said, looking sceptical.
‘Yes, it can,’ he said. ‘Faster than you can run.’
Merry’s eyes grew wide with fear. ‘But what about Donald?’
‘He’ll be fine.’
She started to cry. ‘But he can’t run fast and the fire will come and get him!’
Jack hesitated. Then he shouted, ‘Shit!’ and took a deep breath and went back out on to the landing.
The smoke up here was thicker now. He took two paces and fell over something, which turned out to be Donald, making a slow run for it.
Merry’s face lit up as Jack pressed the hard dome of pet into her chest. Then he stood on the edge of the bath, picked her up under her arms and lowered her and Donald from the window to the gently sloping lean-to roof.
‘Sit down,’ he said. ‘Be careful.’
Merry turned and looked up at him, one hand on the sill, the other around Donald. ‘Where are you going?’ she said.
‘To get Joy.’
‘But the fire!’
‘Just go!’ he said. ‘And don’t come back!’
He slammed the window so she couldn’t get back in, then hesitated for a brief moment, taking stock, making choices.
The bag of money was stashed on top of the wardrobe in his bedroom. Was there time to get it and throw it out of the window after Merry?
No.
Shit.
Jack covered his head with the dripping towel and ran downstairs.
The flames had made an arch around the front door but were taking their time spreading up the hallway. However, the smoke billowed eagerly behind him as he entered the front room – crowding in, creeping along the paper passages and sliding over the canyon walls like a thick grey search party. Jack slammed the door closed on it but enough had come in with him to make him cough, and he could see more sneaking under the door and between the hinges.
‘Joy!’ he shouted at the wall, but he choked so badly on the word that she may not have heard him.
He hoped that was why she wasn’t answering.
Jack shoved at the wall of newspapers. They didn’t budge. Not even an inch.
‘Joy!’
He dropped to his hands and knees.
As he started through the tunnel, he realized just how tight it was. He had to lie flat on his stomach and pull himself along with his elbows like a soldier under wire, although the sides of the tunnel were so close that even that much movement was difficult. The papers pressed his shoulders, his hips and his head at all times. He had thought the tunnel would be flimsy and easily collapsed, but now that he was inside it, it felt absolutely solid. The front of the living room was only a few feet away through the wall, and yet he felt that at any moment he might get stuck and be unable to move forwards or backwards. That he would suffocate here, and then burn, and firemen would have to pull his charred body out by the ankles.
He hoped to God that Merry was safe at the bottom of the garden.
The wet towel helped with his breathing but not with his vision. He wiped his eyes but they only welled with tears again as smoke and evil ash filled the air.
‘Joy!’ he tried again.
Nothing. He kept going.
It can’t have taken more than twenty seconds to get through the paper wall, but it seemed to last a lifetime.
Finally his shoulders were free and he dragged his legs after him and stood up. He lifted the towel to peer around him. The streetlight shone through the window that Joy had stolen from the rest of the house, illuminating her half of the room.
She wasn’t there. There was a narrow bed made of neat stacks of papers. It had Joy’s duvet on it. Bambi and Thumper. He hadn’t seen it for years but recognized it immediately. Beside the bed was the crib that had been bought for their new baby sister, although all it held now was Joy’s old doll, Martha.
Smoke rolled lazily over the paper wall like storm clouds, and Jack doubled over with coughing.
‘Joy!’ he yelled – angry now, and suddenly scared too.
He couldn’t go back through the tunnel. He’d have to go out through the window. Then round the back to get the hose. He’d have to run to the end of the row of houses to get over the back garden wall from the riverbank. Vital minutes lost. But it was the only thing to do now.
The window was locked.
Desperately he jerked the handle.
Still locked. Where was the key! Was there a key? Blinded by acrid smoke, he felt along the windowsill. Nothing but papers that fell to the floor.
Stupid with panic, he bent to pick them up. He coughed and dragged in smoke and coughed again. He sank to his knees, and then to his hands and knees, and then realized that he wasn’t picking up the papers any more, but suffocating – right here under the window where he’d crouched with Joy and Merry on the day they’d first met Louis Bridge.
Now that he knew he was dying, Jack decided to get up.
In his mind that’s what he was doing, but in reality he sank even lower, on to his elbows and knees, then slumped sideways against the wall, feeling nothing on the outside of his body, but inside there was a huge dull pain deep in the middle of his chest, where his lungs were no longer breathing air, but smoke and ash and carpet chemicals …
How stupid, he thought as he slid gently down the wall on to his nose, his lips, his cheek, his ear … How stupid to leave me in charge.
COLD, HARD WATER hit Jack in the face, making him splutter and roll over and cough and cough and cough.
‘I told you he wasn’t dead,’ said Merry.
The spray blasted ice into his ear and ran in waterfalls down his neck and back and chest, soaking him, choking him.
He covered his head with his arms and shouted, ‘Turn it off! Turn it off!’
‘Turn it off!’ squeaked Merry, and it finally stopped soaking him, although he could still hear it falling nearby.
Jack gasped for air and wiped his eyes. Joy stood in the middle of her paper room, lit by the streetlight, with the garden hose in her hand – the silvery water blossoming into the air and down again like a liquid umbrella that rained around her. Her face was white, her lips blue, and she wore the same pink nightdress Jack had seen her in last, but so dirty now that it was grey, and so wet that water ran off it and on to her bare feet in sheets.
Her pale eyes bored into his face – they were the only part of her that looked alive.
Jack shivered in the freezing water that pooled under him and croaked up at Merry, ‘I told you to stay out of the house.’
‘Joy and me put out the fire with the hose,’ Merry shrugged. ‘And I cut my foot.’
She lifted it to show him. The gash under the ball of her foot was still bleeding. He sat up, slow and dripping. ‘How did y
ou do that?’
‘There was glass in the hall.’ Merry held up a chunk of glass, but it was not glass from the porthole – this was thick and dark brown. The bottom of a bottle. Most of the label had been burned off, but Jack could still read the ness of Guinness.
Even before he put it to his nose, he could smell the petrol.
Adam While.
The coincidence was too great. Jack had thought he’d outrun him. He’d thought he’d won. But at some point While must have stopped trying to catch, and started to hide and to follow.
Followed him all the way home. Tried to kill him. Could have killed them all.
Jack felt a sudden uneasy concern for Catherine While. Did she know what her husband had done? What he was capable of doing?
‘I hate you,’ said Joy.
‘I hate you too,’ said Jack wearily. He leaned forward in the sodden mush and got awkwardly to his knees.
‘Shit,’ he said. ‘What a bloody m—’
Joy hit him. Not with a hand, or an arm, but with her whole body, bowling him over, scratching, biting, pulling his hair, and all with the hose in one hand, still spraying. It was like being hit by a wave and tumbled over rocks: so wet, so cold, so disorientating that he thought he might drown right here in the front room.
‘Yaaa!’ she screamed. ‘YAAAA!’
Jack fell on to his back and tried to push her off him, but she straddled his chest with sharp knees, punching his head with the sprayer so that every blow was both hot and cold. Jack covered his face and tried to turn away from the blows while Joy continued to spit at him.
‘You shouldn’t be in charge! You said we’d find her and we didn’t! And you promised everything would be OK and it’s not, and I hate you! I hate you! I HATE YOU!’
‘Stop!’ shouted Merry from a long way away. ‘Joy! Stop!’
And finally Joy did stop.
Jack spluttered as she hung over him – the water dripping off her face on to his protective hands.
‘I don’t want to be in charge,’ he said. ‘But somebody had to be.’
‘Daddy was in charge.’
‘But he was shit at it. He was just a cry-baby.’
‘Because he was sad!’ Joy shouted.
‘I was sad too!’ Jack shouted back. ‘But I didn’t get pissed every night! I didn’t lose my job! I didn’t fuck off to get milk and never come back! I stayed here and I did my best.’
‘But …’ Joy started, and then her mouth struggled to keep a shape. She was going to cry; Jack remembered when she used to do that all the time and get her own way. None of them cried now. It never got them anywhere.
She sat up on his stomach. She wiped her wet face with her wet arm, and looked around the paper room slowly melting into itself as the hose ran and ran and ran.
‘But,’ she said again, ‘I don’t like your best.’
‘I don’t like it too,’ sniffed Merry. ‘And neither does Donald.’
Jack didn’t know what to say. He didn’t know what to do. He only knew that he’d failed, and it felt like shit.
Joy climbed off him slowly. Then she crawled away through the tunnel with the hose.
‘Will we have to move now?’ said Merry, looking around miserably. ‘Because I only just mowed the lawn.’
‘No,’ he said. ‘Everything will be OK.’ The words sounded hollow to Jack’s ears – a promise he’d already failed to keep.
He sighed and sat up in a squelchy puddle of dirty water. The smoke was clearing and by the streetlight he now saw that the walls of Joy’s little room were festooned with hundreds of newspaper cuttings. Maybe thousands – hanging from the stacks like fish scales.
This must be where all those holes had ended up. Jack imagined Joy bent over the papers by night, muttering and cuttering like Rumpelstiltskin …
Crazy.
But as he stared at them, he realized the cuttings weren’t about crazy things.
They were all about their mother.
Headlines and articles and tiny little snippets.
Mum-to-be, Mum-to-be, Mum-to-be …
And photos. The one of their father crying. Abandoned Joy. The small and blurry photo of his mother, repeated around the walls.
There were other pictures he’d never seen. Images that sparked memories in him that he’d have sworn were lost for ever. Photos of Call-Me-Ralph and his big moustache. Of Merry in the crook of their father’s arm in front of their blue and peeling front door. Of his mother’s coffin, covered in daisies. Jack remembered how they had picked the daisies from the verge near the roundabout. He hadn’t wanted to. Hadn’t wanted to pretend the world was anything but vicious and ugly.
His eyes roamed the walls, eagerly seeking the photo of them all together, with their hair in their eyes, but it wasn’t there.
So this was how Joy spent her life – remembering the last days of the life she’d had before …
For the first time, Jack felt sorry for her.
For the first time, he realized that she was not crazy – only heartbroken.
And for the first time, he wondered if they were the same thing …
Somebody knocked at the door.
Jack and Merry looked at each other, wide-eyed. He moved towards the tunnel, but before he could start through it, they heard Joy open the door.
‘Shit,’ he hissed. He and Merry sat cross-legged, facing each other. Listening.
‘Hello, dear. Is everything all right?’
‘Mrs Reynolds!’ said Merry in a stage whisper.
‘Sssh!’ said Jack with a finger at her lips. She batted him away and said loudly, ‘I’m whispering!’
‘Yes,’ said Joy. ‘Everything’s all right.’
There was a long pause and Jack could only imagine the woman looking Joy up and down, wondering if this was really what ‘all right’ looked like.
‘Has there been a fire?’
‘Yes,’ said Joy. ‘But Daddy put it out, thank you.’
Merry giggled and, instead of being cross with her, Jack giggled too.
‘Oh good,’ said Mrs Reynolds doubtfully. ‘As long as everything’s all right …’
‘Yes,’ said Joy. ‘But thanks for coming.’
They heard Mrs Reynolds pass the window, then heard her door open and close behind her.
‘You said you’d fix her mower,’ Merry reminded him.
‘You said I’d fix her mower!’ he said, wringing water out of the bottom of his T-shirt.
‘That’s Mummy,’ said Merry, touching one of the small and blurry pictures beside his head. ‘I remember her.’ Then, before Jack could contradict her, she glared at him and insisted, ‘I do.’
But he only nodded. He was in no mood to argue with Merry. Let her imagine that she remembered their mother. Where was the harm in it, he thought. Let her imagine whatever she needed to.
‘She waved goodbye and I didn’t want her to go,’ said Merry.
‘When?’ said Jack.
‘That day when we were walking and it was so hot, and you carried me, remember?’
Jack nodded vaguely. Merry was only recounting what she’d overheard, what she’d read, what she’d imagined down the years. He wondered suddenly if that’s how everybody constructed their own past – with the experiences of others, and photos and headlines and snatches of reality, all mashed together into memories they claimed as their own. For the first time, he thought that the photo of them all, happy and with the wind in their hair, might never have existed either. Maybe it was all in his head and he’d only imagined it on the fridge, and the little frame he’d stolen from HomeFayre would be empty for ever …
He shivered. He should get up and put on some dry clothes.
But Merry was rambling on, her finger on the little picture: ‘… and the fox with its guts hanging out and Joy chased the birds and Mummy was in that car—’
‘What car?’
‘You remember,’ Merry encouraged him. ‘The car that slowed down. Going the other way.’
It
was like a slap in the face.
He had forgotten the slowing car. He’d forgotten it. Had never talked of it! Had never even thought of it, from that moment to this, but instantly he was back there – on the hard shoulder, where he’d been a thousand times before, and could feel once more the heat through his shoes, and the sun on his face, and the leaden weight of his sister on his shoulder, grizzling and wriggling …
‘What was she doing?’ he whispered.
‘Waving goodbye,’ said Merry, and raised her own little fingers in sad memory. ‘And I said, “Mama! Mama!”’
Jack’s heart beat so hard that it hurt.
He remembered it now. He remembered it all. The car slowing down … The driver had looked at him and he’d looked away. Shaking with fear.
But Merry hadn’t looked away. Hanging over his shoulder, looking back down the road, watching the car speed up again, Merry had cried and reached out for something.
Or someone …
Mama! Mama!
Someone small and blurry …
Jack felt dizzy. He rocked forward on to his knees, fighting for air. Then he put his forehead on the soggy paper floor, as if praying.
‘What’s wrong?’ said Merry.
‘I feel sick,’ he choked. ‘I feel sick.’
Merry patted his back gently. ‘There, there,’ she said, just like his mother used to do to him.
To them.
Merry was only two when she’d gone.
But she did remember.
They all did.
BAZ WAS ON a rusty little tricycle, riding slow circles around a precarious pile of timber. He saw Jack before Louis did, and waved.
‘Ja’!’ he said. ‘Ja’!’
Jack had never been to Bridge Fencing. Louis didn’t like the boys there, mixing straight with crooked. He was in the middle of the yard, talking to a tall fat man and a short thin one, when Jack skidded to a halt beside them.
‘I know who killed my mother.’
Silence fell like lead.
Then, ‘You go on,’ said the tall fat man. ‘We’re not in a hurry.’
‘Cheers, mate,’ said Louis, and took Jack’s elbow and half led, half marched him to the wooden shed that he used as an office.
Snap_‘The best crime novel I’ve read in a very long time’ Val McDermid Page 15