Before the Fire

by Sarah Butler

  J stopped in front of him. ‘Hi.’

  He couldn’t tell if she was still pissed off with him. ‘Oh, hi.’ He tried to sound cool, like he hadn’t really been expecting her to come.

  ‘Blackpool,’ she said. ‘Good choice.’

  Stick held back a smile. ‘I’ve got cash,’ he said. ‘Saved it up for the trip, but—’

  She nodded. ‘Rock, candyfloss, doughnuts, rides.’ And then she patted at her rucksack. ‘I brought you a birthday present too. But—’ She held up one hand. ‘Not until we’re there.’

  On the train, they sat opposite each other at a table sticky with someone else’s spilt drink, J going backwards because she said she liked it – seeing where she’d already been, not knowing what was coming up. They chugged through the city. Oxford Road. Deansgate. Castlefield. Past the Beetham Tower and the courts, then east towards Salford – stretches of scrubby grass, bigger roads, the three tower blocks on Rochdale Road.

  ‘You got my—’ Stick blurted at last.

  J nodded.

  ‘You should get a phone.’

  She raised her eyebrows.

  ‘I felt like someone out of a play or something,’ Stick said and she smiled then, her face softening. ‘I am sorry,’ he barged on. ‘I didn’t—’

  J shook her head. ‘Doesn’t matter,’ she said. ‘Means we’re square, anyway.’

  Stick took the chocolate mouse out of his pocket. It looked small and cheap. ‘I got you a mouse,’ he said and put it on the table in front of her.

  J glanced up at him. ‘Thanks.’ She pulled off the wrapper and nibbled the mouse’s nose.

  Stick sat and watched her eat it, bite by tiny bite, the landscape changing from streets and warehouses to fields, with hedges and sheep. He felt a lightness, like when you get the swing up high enough to leave your stomach behind for a second. J finished the mouse, licked her fingers one by one and then stood to push the window open. The train sucked in the air and threw it across their faces and they sat listening to the racket of the wheels against the tracks.

  ‘To the sea,’ J said, pulling Stick through the bright train station hall out onto the street.

  She wore denim shorts with frayed bits of thread hanging down her legs. A black vest top, loose enough to keep showing her bra. Stick walked behind her, noticing how the skin met in dark creases at the backs of her knees, listening to the seagulls screeching overhead.

  Eighteen. He was eighteen. He straightened his shoulders and put a slight side-to-side in his step, his shoulders shifting left right, left right.

  ‘You’re a man now,’ his mum had said that morning, pushing a bacon sandwich towards him. She’d sounded like she was trying hard not to let on that she was sad.

  He followed J, past a huge pub with photos of the inside on the outside. Past an electrics shop, its window crammed with toasters and kettles and lightbulbs and TVs showing men with T-shirts wrapped round their heads, guns to their shoulders, running along a dusty road. Past banks, charity shops, a nightclub shut up for the daytime. Posters for body piercing and karaoke and cabaret shows, half of them ripped so you had to piece together leftover bits of words to work out what they were about. Past hoardings with pictures of people in posh flats – a man in a kitchen holding a plate of pasta; two kids sitting on a white rug. Past more charity shops and more banks, Blackpool Tower stretching up on their left. And then there, at the end of the street, was the sea.

  Stick stopped and stared. A thin stretch of beach – grey pebbles and a glimpse of yellow sand, and then nothing but water, the waves curling into long white lines, sending up flecks of spray.

  ‘Smell it,’ J said, drawing in a breath through her nostrils.

  ‘Smells of chips.’

  ‘No, under that.’

  Stick tried to smell it. Maybe there was something – salty, a bit grubby, like wet socks.

  They went all the way to the beach and J plonked herself down on the pebbles, her bag between her knees. She pulled out a silver Thermos flask and held it towards Stick. ‘You like getting high?’ She grinned.

  ‘On tea?’ Stick said, sitting next to her as she poured brown liquid into the flask’s lid and handed it to him.

  ‘Mushrooms,’ she said. ‘My own recipe. Happy birthday.’

  Stick sniffed at the liquid. It looked like tea but smelt like sweaty feet. ‘I don’t drink tea.’

  ‘It’s not tea.’

  ‘It smells bad.’

  ‘So hold your nose.’

  Stick looked out towards the sea and thought about his mum, sat across from him at the breakfast table, biting her fingernails. He lifted the cup to his lips and drank it in one bitter gulp, screwed up his eyes and stuck out his tongue.

  J laughed, took the cup back and poured herself some. ‘Here’s to the sea,’ she said, drank it in one and wiped her lips with the back of her hand. ‘Let’s get doughnuts before we start feeling it.’

  ‘How long does it take?’

  J shrugged. ‘Twenty minutes? Come on.’

  Stick bought them doughnuts from a kiosk, and they went down the pier to eat them. J perched on the back of a long metal bench, her feet on the mouldy-looking wooden seat. She didn’t look safe and Stick wanted, for a moment, to take her arm and hold her steady.

  She ate her doughnut the same way she ate the chocolate mouse. Stick sat next to her and swallowed his in two mouthfuls. Now he could smell it – the salty, dark-green edge of the sea.

  ‘Every time we came to Blackpool I’d buy loads of rock and take it home in a big plastic bag and then eat it in like two days. Except I’d always keep one bit. One for each birthday. I’ve still got them,’ J said. A seagull landed on the ground by their feet and eyed them. She aimed a kick at it but it didn’t even flinch. ‘They’re all faded and sticky. Can’t throw them away though.’ J chucked the end of her doughnut to the seagull, who snatched it up like she might change her mind and take it back. ‘I’m like my dad,’ she said. ‘Except not as bad.’

  ‘He saves sweets?’

  ‘He saves everything. He doesn’t just save everything, he spends his life buying shit we don’t need. Seriously, our house is so full of crap you can’t move. Mum says it’s because he grew up with nothing, but I reckon he’s just mental.’

  Stick looked out across the water to another pier, with a Ferris wheel and funfair rides perched at the sea end.

  ‘My nan’s boyfriend’s a spiritualist,’ he said.

  ‘What’s that then?’

  ‘He’s got mates who talk to dead people. Do you reckon that’s for real?’ He kept his eyes fixed on the horizon.

  ‘I think it’s bollocks,’ J said. ‘Dead people are dead, aren’t they? I mean – I don’t mean to be nasty about it, but—’

  ‘No, you’re right.’ Stick picked bits of paint off the bench and flicked them onto the pier. ‘It’s bollocks.’

  He stared up at the sky. Pale blue. Almost not blue at all. Layers of clouds at the horizon, one wedged up against the other. He had a sudden, wild urge to tip himself backwards off the edge of the railings. It was a long way down. He’d break his neck. Have to be dragged out. He wondered if J would jump in after him.

  ‘How’s being eighteen?’ J asked.

  Stick took the last doughnut from the bag, bit it in half and handed the other piece to her. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Same as being seventeen. Except you gave me that dodgy tea.’

  ‘You feeling it yet?’

  Stick closed his eyes and listened to the sea bashing at the edges of the pier below. ‘Nope.’

  ‘Let’s go back.’ She pointed towards the beach. ‘There’s too many people here. It’s better to be away from people. First time.’

  It started with a pressure at the centre of his forehead, like someone was pushing their fingertip against his skin. Just that for a while. Then a bubbling sense of anticipation.

  ‘You need to stay calm when it comes,’ J said. ‘Think good things. Don’t think about your mate, seriously.’
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  They were sat, side by side, where the pebbles stopped and the sand started. The air had a cool edge and J had taken a loose khaki-green jacket from her bag and hung it around her shoulders.

  Stick blinked. Blinked again. There was a layer of green, blue and red blobs over the sea, over the sand, over his hands when he held them in front of his eyes. He could see, but everything looked like it was on a screen and there was something wrong with the signal. When he closed his eyes the colours were still there. When he opened his eyes they were still there, but squarer.

  ‘I can—’ His mouth was dry. He moved his tongue around it to try and make it feel right.

  J started laughing.

  ‘It’s red and green and blue,’ Stick said.

  J nodded and carried on laughing. ‘Look.’ She pointed. ‘Like someone’s drawn the waves on, with crayon.’

  Stick looked. All he could see were the coloured squares and the waves moving in, out, in.

  ‘Like a kid’s drawn them,’ J said.

  Stick looked at her. ‘Your hair.’ He reached out to touch it. Felt like silk. Felt like Babs’s fur. ‘It’s so pink,’ he said. Like paint fresh out of the tin. He could look at her hair forever.

  J sat and let him touch her hair and after a while – he had no idea how long – she lay down on the sand, and he lay down next to her. He could hear the sea, the edges of the waves bubbling over the sand, towards them, away from them, towards them, away.

  J pointed at the sky.

  It was the bluest blue he’d ever seen. He kept looking, at the blue, blue sky and the thin white clouds. After a while, the whole thing started to breathe. Stick stared. The sky breathed. In, out, in, out, moving like someone’s chest when they’re sleeping, the clouds moving too, slipping up and down, up and down. Stick breathed with it. When he stretched his arms to each side, like wings, his fingers brushed J’s jacket – soft as candyfloss. It felt as though if he pressed, his hand would go all the way into it.

  ‘We could go to Spain,’ Stick said.

  ‘Eat paella,’ J said. Her voice seemed to come from directly above him. The sound of it tasted like gingerbread.

  ‘Get a flat.’

  ‘Learn to dive.’ She flung her hand upwards and grains of sand flew out, drawing thin yellow lines through the air. ‘I’ve always wanted to go diving.’ Her voice sounded like it was in a tunnel now, echoing off the edges.

  The squares were still there, but they’d faded, or he’d got used to them. It just looked like someone had put a fishing net in front of his face. He had a sudden, clear memory of climbing into Sophie’s cot, the two of them jumping up and down against the wooden bars and squealing, his mum laughing. He could feel it – the soft, squeaky plastic mat, the hard wooden bars. He could smell the soapy-sweet baby wipes and Sophie’s skin, sleepy and hot.

  The sadness was like a weight dropped into water. He felt it ripple out towards his head, his stomach, his fingertips.

  J leaned over him. ‘You all right?’ Her eyes were so dark he almost couldn’t look at them.

  Stick reached up and touched her skin, then snatched his hand away and looked at it. He showed it to J and she laughed and then he laughed too, but it didn’t stop the sadness rippling out again, his limbs heavy as water.

  ‘What are you going to do?’ he said. His lips felt thick, the words smudged between them, like someone had punched him in the mouth.

  J lay down and stretched her arms up over her head. ‘Watch the sky,’ she said.

  Stick closed his eyes. He could see red pulses of light on the backs of his eyelids. ‘No, like afterwards,’ he said. ‘Later.’

  ‘Astronaut,’ J said. ‘Ballet dancer. Racing driver. Nuclear physicist.’

  Stick stared at the sky, and realised after a while that its breathing was in time with his own heartbeat. Dum-dum, dum-dum, dum-dum.

  When it had worn off, they wandered around the town, eating sticks of pink-and-yellow rock and drinking cans of warm lager. J took him to Coral Island: dark, low-ceilinged, rammed with slot machines. It was too bright, too noisy, too crowded. Sweat and skin, tattoos and toenails. The sound of falling coins. Kids with plastic guns and stuffed toys, pretend cars rocking in front of TV screens, a woman in a wheelchair feeding two-pences into the coin waterfall. Stick couldn’t stand it. He dragged J back to the beach, but that was packed too – kids screeching, the sea dotted with the bobbing heads of swimmers. He could feel his face starting to burn and something like panic simmering in his chest.

  ‘So, Chinese tonight,’ J said. ‘Cashew chicken, chilli beef, prawn crackers, sweet-and-sour pork.’

  Stick picked up a stone and threw it, picked up another and threw that. ‘Isn’t there any more tea?’

  J took the flask out of her bag and shook it. ‘You want to go home tripping?’ she said.

  It was three o’clock. They had to be back by seven – should be leaving already. Stick thought about his mum setting the dinner table. Blowing up balloons like he was still five years old. He thought about the sky turned bright blue and J’s eyes like jewels. ‘It’ll be fine.’ He reached out his hand and J shrugged, poured another cup, which Stick drank, lukewarm and sour.

  They walked, side by side but not touching, far up the beach, trying to get away from the families and the kids and the ice-cream trolleys. They could do this forever, Stick thought. Just walk and walk.

  ‘Where would we end up?’ he said. ‘If we just carried on.’

  J shaded her eyes with one hand. ‘We’d get back here, wouldn’t we? If you kept on walking and went the whole of the way around, you’d get back to here.’

  He wanted, suddenly, to do that with her. ‘It’d take fucking ages,’ he said.

  ‘And you’d end up back where you started.’

  ‘Just older.’

  J laughed.

  ‘You’re pretty when you laugh,’ Stick said and then blushed.

  J stopped and looked at him. He kept walking and after a minute he felt her hand on his sleeve. When he turned, she was standing close. Too close.

  ‘What?’ he said, stepping back. She stepped forwards. He could see the pores in her skin, a tiny dark mole on her right cheek, the line of her lips, the silver stud. ‘I’m not going to kiss you,’ he said.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘You punched me in the face last time.’

  She smiled without opening her mouth. ‘Yeah, sorry.’

  ‘You always punch people who try to kiss you?’

  She looked him in the eyes. ‘Recently, yes.’ She dropped his gaze and pushed her foot into the sand. ‘There was this other guy, and—’ She shrugged. ‘He was a cock.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘But you’re not a cock,’ she said.

  Before Stick could think it through and decide not to, he put one hand on her cheek and kissed her. She tasted of lager and mushroom tea and doughnuts. Her lips and the tip of her nose were cold against his face. He pulled back, but not far, and looked her in the eyes. Her eyelashes were short and black, her eyebrows plucked thin. She held his gaze but he couldn’t tell what she was thinking.

  Stick dropped his palm from J’s cheek and reached for her hand.

  ‘Your hands are cold,’ he said.

  ‘Always are.’ She closed her fingers through his. ‘Shall we walk a bit more?’

  Stick nodded and they started walking, matching their steps to each other, her hand warming against his, waiting for the mushrooms to kick in again.

  18

  They were late. Really late. The train coming into Piccadilly station gone nine o’clock. Both of them groggy and silent.

  ‘You’d better not come,’ Stick said. ‘She’s going to kill me.’

  ‘You don’t want back-up?’ J asked, pulling her rucksack onto her shoulders.

  Stick shook his head. He’d missed so many calls by the time he’d thought to look at his phone, he’d just turned it off.

  ‘How do I find you though?’ he said, following her along the platfo
rm under the high curved roof. ‘I can’t spend my life leaving you love letters.’

  He saw her smile before she caught it and felt himself blush. ‘I mean—’

  ‘I’ll give you the house number,’ she said, and reached into her bag for a pen. She wrote it in neat black numbers on the back of his hand, and then her address below.

  ‘Don’t wash it off.’ She stood on tiptoes and kissed him, her tongue darting into his mouth and then retreating. He reached his hand around her back and she let him draw her towards him. For a moment. Then she pulled away and said, ‘Go on,’ and pushed him gently out of the station door and into the cool city air.

  It was almost ten by the time he got to the estate – the street lights on, the sky dimming towards black.

  He didn’t take the cut-through down Paget Street; didn’t even turn his head to look at it; didn’t let himself think about Mac the whole way home.

  He slowed down as he got to his road. His chest felt packed full – as though a wrong move would make everything spill out. He never looked at his house. Never thought twice about it really. But now, in this half-light, it felt unfamiliar. The bricks looked too neat, too flat, like a machine had built it, not a person. The paint on the window frames was peeling, dark bits of wood showing under the black. The curtains were open, the front room alight, and he could just see the top of someone’s head.

  Stick stood on the doorstep and waited a moment before he put his key in the lock. He imagined the sea creeping up to the front door, coming through the gaps and into the hallway, turning the carpet dark, peeling the wallpaper away from the walls, making the lights fizz, and then rising slowly, slowly up the stairs. He imagined letting himself go into it, how his body would lift with the water.