Before the Fire

by Sarah Butler

On the screen Stick could see a van on fire. Bright flames and pumping black smoke. It was like the van was a ghost. You could see the shape of it in amongst the flames, but it was as though it wasn’t really there at all, just the memory of it, and all that really existed was the fire, roaring. The camera shifted to a crowd of men with their hoods pulled up, throwing bricks and bottles at armed police. Then another group rocking a police van until it overbalanced and fell. Then a grey-haired white guy with frown lines across his forehead, talking. Then the cameras went back to the burning van. A man Stick’s age, maybe younger, ran in front of the fire and was silhouetted, black against yellow, just for a moment. It looked like a film. It looked beautiful. Must be Greece again, Stick thought. Not Libya or Egypt – it didn’t look hot enough. The man in the bed kept tutting and shaking his head.

  He thought about J lying on the beach in Blackpool, the sand swirled into yellow patterns around her. He thought about Owen Lee walking out of prison, his eyes up to the sky, his mouth twisted into a smile. He thought about his car, wrapped around a lamp post he didn’t even know where, and wondered if anyone had set that alight. He imagined a lad reaching through the smashed windscreen, or punching out the passenger window before holding a lighter to the crappy grey seats. The slow burn before it took hold and speeded up faster than you could imagine. He wished he was sat in the middle of it, the flames coming up around him like knives over his skin, and then everything – him, the car, the lamp post – swallowed up in a yellow-orange roar.

  23

  They must have stopped waking him up every hour at some point because Stick woke from a deep sleep to see Jen stood by his bed, Rosie hanging onto her hand.

  ‘I’ve spoken to the doctor and you are good to go,’ Jen said, smiling.

  Stick grunted and turned over.

  ‘Which is great,’ Jen went on. ‘Because it’s Bea’s swimming gala and we’ve just enough time to get there.’

  Stick stared at the grey armchair next to his bed and remembered the burning van on the TV the night before.

  ‘I’ve packed your things.’ Jen held up a canvas bag with the recycling symbol printed on the front. ‘There was a gift.’ She dipped in her hand and pulled out something small, wrapped in red paper. ‘And a note.’

  Stick looked up.

  ‘Maybe you can open it in the car?’ Jen said, dropping it back into the bag. She looked down at Stick. ‘You’ll want to get dressed.’

  Stick buried his head in the pillow. He did not want to get dressed. He did not want to go anywhere.

  ‘Kieran?’

  ‘Leave me alone.’

  Jen put her hand on his shoulder and gave him a little shove.

  ‘That hurts.’

  ‘There’s no cure for feeling rubbish like getting up and getting on,’ Jen said.

  Stick closed his eyes. His head still throbbed.

  ‘Bea’s so excited you’re coming,’ Jen said. ‘She made you a get-well card but I said she could give it to you herself, after swimming.’

  Stick screwed his eyes tighter shut. ‘That’s blackmail,’ he muttered.

  ‘Maybe it is, but she’ll be looking up to the audience and seeing no one at this rate. Your dad had to go into work.’

  Stick felt something drop onto the bed over his legs. He opened an eye and saw a red T-shirt and trackie bottoms neatly folded. His nan must have been in while he was asleep.

  Rosie walked towards the head of the bed. She was unsteady on her feet, like she’d been on the beers.

  ‘Hi, Rosie,’ Stick said.

  She reached up and poked him hard on the cheek with her finger. ‘Bea-Bea dof-fin,’ she said.

  ‘Oh for fuck’s sake.’ Stick swung himself round to standing, his feet cold on the hospital floor, his legs sticking out under the gown – pasty-white knobbly-kneed shite that he was.

  ‘Fuck’s sake,’ Rosie echoed.

  Jen glared at him.

  ‘Can a man get some privacy round here?’ Stick said, picking up the red T-shirt.

  Jen backed off and pulled the blue curtains round the bed. Stick could hear Rosie saying ‘fuck’s sake’ and Jen telling her to hush and it cheered him up enough to get himself dressed.

  Stick sat in the passenger seat of Jen’s little Nissan and lifted the present out of the canvas bag. It was small, heavy, solid. He ripped off the paper to find a stone, green with specks of red, polished so hard it shone. Stick held it in between two fingers.

  ‘What’s that then?’ Jen asked, glancing across at him.

  Stick shrugged. He curled his fingers into a fist around the stone and imagined throwing it at the windscreen, the glass shooting out cracks from where it hit.

  ‘You saw the note?’ Jen said.

  A white envelope with a plain white postcard inside. This is a bloodstone, it read. For courage, strength and wisdom. It gives courage to overcome obstacles and wisdom to decide how to do so. Be strong, Kieran, and wise. Alan.

  The leisure centre was crowded with kids, shouts and screams and splashes echoing off the tiles. Stick felt the energy seeping out of him.

  ‘I should be in bed,’ he said to Jen. ‘I should be resting.’

  ‘Nonsense.’ Jen led him through double doors into a chlorine-stinking corridor, dragging Rosie along with her. They walked up a set of concrete stairs to a balcony that ran the length of the building. There were five lines of hard red plastic seats, bolted to the floor, each row higher than the one before. It was maybe half full – clusters of families with drinks cans and packets of crisps, looking down at the blue rectangle of water.

  Jen ushered Stick into a seat on the back row and sat Rosie in between them. ‘She’ll be so chuffed you’re here,’ she whispered.

  Stick fingered the stone in his pocket and scanned the water below for Bea. He couldn’t see her amongst the crowd of kids running about in swimming costumes, jumping into the water like nothing bad could happen. Rosie was gazing up at him with big blue eyes, chattering nonsense. She had a bubble of green snot in one nostril that bulged as she breathed.

  ‘Bea,’ she said, turning to look down at the exact moment her sister walked towards the pool in the middle of a straggly line of kids. Bea wore a red swimming costume, her stomach puffed out in front of her.

  ‘Dof-fin.’ Rosie pointed down at the children who now stood solemnly at the edge of the water.

  ‘That’s right! Dolphin!’ Jen cooed.

  Stick couldn’t really work out what was going on. It wasn’t, it seemed, a race – more a disorganised show of sorts. The kids jumped one by one into the shallow end, doggy-paddled for a bit and then clung to the edge, their faces raised. Adults in red uniforms stood on each side of the pool ready to fish out anyone about to drown. And then at some point people started clapping, so Stick clapped too. They all got out of the pool, wet and shivering, and a man in a dark suit went along the line and hung a medal on a blue-and-white ribbon around each kid’s neck. Stick saw Bea scanning the seats, looking for them – left, right, left. He waved, but she didn’t see him.

  They waited for Bea, standing in the foyer by a noticeboard pinned with adverts for yoga and sports massage and toddler groups.

  ‘Will you come for lunch?’ Jen asked, and before he could answer she said, ‘She would love it, Kieran, if you came. She really would.’

  And then Bea was there, her hair all wet and messed up, wrapping her arms around his legs. And so he went, holding Bea’s hand as they walked to the cafe. Wooden tables, fairy lights, pointless home-made craft stuff for sale in the corner. Crap music on the radio. Weird things on the menu: goat’s cheese and tofu and couscous. He ordered a burger and a Coke, which arrived just as the radio went to its news bulletin. The woman behind the bar turned it up and the other people in the cafe stopped talking, tilted their heads to one side to listen, the way Shelia had when she was pretending to channel Sophie’s spirit, or whatever it was she was supposed to do.

  There was rioting in London. All night people had been running into
shops and taking what they wanted. It was chaos, a woman kept saying, sounding panicked and excited at the same time.

  ‘London?’ Stick looked at Jen. Her cheeks were pink, like someone had drawn circles of paint onto them.

  Mac had hated London, even though he’d never been. Full of bankers and wankers, he said. Gets all the money and all the attention, and they still ponce about whinging.

  ‘I just feel sorry for that man’s family,’ Jen said.

  ‘The black guy?’

  Jen narrowed her eyes and nodded. ‘Your son gets shot by the police, you’re going to want some answers,’ she said. ‘But it’s out of hand now, by the sounds of it.’

  Stick tugged a bit of lettuce out of his burger and dropped it on the plate. He wanted some answers too. Maybe he should start a riot in Manchester – throw shit at the police, set fire to something, keep on doing it until someone fucking explained.

  The radio had gone back to playing music – a guy crooning about a girl who loved someone else.

  ‘I used to live in London,’ Jen said. ‘Not where all that’s happening. I was in Clapham.’

  Stick looked up in surprise and she laughed. ‘I didn’t come into existence when I married your dad, you know.’

  Stick thought about the photo of Jen and his dad on the mantelpiece in their living room – his dad in a suit, Jen in a white dress with her head tipped back, laughing, confetti blurring around them. It sat in a crowd of other photos, of Bea and Rosie and one of him too, his hair longer than it was now, scowling at the camera. Stick had refused to go to the wedding. His mum had half-heartedly tried to make him, and then shrugged and took him to the Trafford Centre, bought him new trainers and a new tracksuit, let him order whatever he wanted in McDonald’s.

  ‘Why did you marry him anyway?’ Stick said.

  She laughed. She looked pretty when she laughed. ‘He’s kind,’ she said. ‘He’s funny. He cares.’ She brushed a bit of hair away from her eyes. ‘We’re all right, Kieran. Your dad and me, you don’t need to worry about that.’

  He wasn’t worried about that. He was worried that Owen Lee was walking the streets of Manchester, laughing about getting away with it. He was worried about his mum. He was worried he’d forget what Mac looked like, what Mac’s voice sounded like. He was worried he couldn’t think of one single job he wanted to do and he’d never have any money or anywhere to live and J would realise he was a loser and leave him before they’d even had sex.

  ‘What is it that you want, Kieran?’ Jen said.

  The tears surprised him. He didn’t let them out, but he felt them pushing up towards his eyes and had to blink them away. She saw; he could tell by the way she looked at him. He was about to get up and walk out, but she put her hand on his forearm.

  ‘It’s a difficult question,’ she said.

  Stick took another mouthful of his burger. It seemed to get bigger the more he chewed. He breathed in through his nose – tried again. Chew, swallow, chew, swallow.

  ‘What do you want for you?’ Jen said. ‘For your life.’

  She’d ordered scrambled eggs and smoked salmon. It looked disgusting. Stick watched her cut a neat triangle of pink fish and place it on top of a square of toast and egg, then stab her fork through the whole thing.

  He swallowed again, his mouth empty at last. ‘Is that what all this is for?’ he asked. ‘You bring me here, buy me lunch and then start on about that double-glazing job? Is Dad about to turn up with a contract?’

  Jen smiled and shook her head. ‘I know you don’t want the job.’

  ‘So what are you on about?’

  ‘I know what you don’t want,’ she said. ‘I just wanted to know what you do want. I’m interested.’

  ‘I don’t want anything.’

  ‘I don’t believe that for a second.’ She fussed about, arranging egg and salmon on another tiny square of toast. ‘What do you like?’ she asked.

  Stick shrugged.

  Jen put her knife and fork down. ‘OK. What makes you excited?’

  J. The way she looked at him when she took her bra off. He couldn’t say that to Jen.

  They were back talking about the riots on the radio. That was exciting. London was two hours on the train away from Manchester. Fires. People throwing bricks through windows and no one stopping them.

  ‘I get it, Kieran, I do.’

  ‘No offence, Jen, but you have no fucking idea.’

  She glanced towards Rosie and Bea, who sat with colouring books, the pages a mess of felt-tip scribbles.

  ‘No fucking idea,’ Stick said, louder this time.

  ‘OK, fine. Look. Close your eyes.’

  Stick folded his arms over his chest.

  She sighed. ‘Ten years’ time,’ she said. ‘You’re twenty-eight. It’s Monday morning. Your alarm goes.’

  ‘Bippity beep. Bippity beep.’ Stick met her gaze but she didn’t flinch.

  ‘Where are you?’ she said.

  ‘In bed.’

  ‘Close your eyes. Where’s the bed?’

  ‘Is this hypnosis or something?’

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘Because I’ve got enough of that with crazy Alan.’

  ‘Close your eyes. Tell me where you are.’

  Stick looked at the row of houses opposite the cafe. Net curtains in folds across a window. Ivy creeping up towards a roof. Where was he? A double bed. J next to him, her hair blue or pink or black or orange, spread out over the pillow. Downstairs, a little kitchen diner, a living room with big leather sofas. A dog – maybe a pug – curled up in a basket by the back door.

  ‘Are you getting up to go to work?’ Jen asked.

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t fucking know.’ He could feel the tears again. ‘Can you leave it?’ he snapped.

  She sat back, looking a bit deflated. ‘I’m just trying to help.’

  He’d thought his dad had put her up to it, but suddenly he wasn’t sure. Maybe she was just being nice.

  Jen placed her knife and fork together across her empty plate. ‘Perhaps you could try making a list,’ she said.

  He would go back to his nan’s, get in bed, go to sleep. He could imagine it, the duvet warm and soft against his chin. The water ticking in the pipes. The noise of traffic seeping in through the window.

  ‘A list of things you like. Things you’re good at,’ Jen continued. ‘It might give you some ideas.’

  ‘I’m not good at anything.’

  ‘That is not true.’ She said it so forcefully he almost laughed. ‘It isn’t,’ she said. ‘Look at you and Bea.’

  Bea glanced up. ‘I’m a dolphin,’ she said, and held out the medal that still hung around her neck.

  Jen stroked Bea’s hair. ‘Some people haven’t got the first idea how to talk to kids.’ She paused. ‘And your mum.’

  ‘What about her?’

  ‘I coloured in the princess.’ Bea held her colouring book out towards Stick. The picture was of a thin-waisted girl with big hair and a long dress, a poodle sitting in her lap. Bea had scribbled over the whole thing in blue.

  ‘Pin-cess,’ Rosie said. Jen leaned over with a tissue and wiped Rosie’s snotty nose.

  ‘What do you mean, and my mum?’ Stick said.

  ‘I just meant, the OCD and—’

  ‘How do you even know that?’

  ‘And you deal with that great. You might do – I don’t know – nursery work? Care work?’

  Stick picked up the salt and poured a pile of it onto his plate. He glanced at Jen. She had blonde eyelashes, the same as Mac’s used to be. He tried out the words in his head before he let them out. ‘She said she’d go to the doctor’s but I know she hasn’t.’

  There was a long pause. Jen was looking at him, but he wouldn’t catch her eye. Rosie scribbled over a picture of a donkey, the pen scratching at the paper, round and round and round.

  ‘It’s something she’s got to sort out herself,’ Jen said. ‘You can’t do it for her, however much you want to.’


  Stick pushed the salt into a line, then a square, then a line again. ‘Do you think I’ll end up like that?’ he said.

  Jen frowned.

  ‘Checking plugs and locking doors and whatever?’

  She was looking at him like he wasn’t making any sense. ‘It’s not hereditary,’ she said.

  He meant would he end up like his mum because of Mac, because he couldn’t get over him dying. Would he get stuck? He wanted to ask her how you got over someone dying without them just disappearing into nothing, like you’d never cared about them in the first place. Instead, he said, ‘I like building.’

  ‘Building?’

  ‘Construction.’

  Jen nodded, her lips pulling down a bit at the edges, and Stick felt himself flush red.

  ‘What, it’s too rough? It’s for stupid people? You don’t want your precious girls with a fucking bricklayer for a half-brother.’ It was easier, being angry. ‘That’s what you think, isn’t it?’ he said.

  Jen shook her head, but Stick kept talking; he couldn’t stop himself. ‘You and your snobby house and your snobby pizzas and Sunday lunches and holidays in fucking France, the lot of you looking down at me.’

  Rosie started crying, her voice rising into a high-pitched wail. Jen reached over and patted her arm. ‘It’s OK, sweetheart, it’s OK. What a beautiful donkey, Rosie. Aren’t you a clever girl?’

  Stick looked around the cafe. Everything was too close together: too many things on the tables – stacked glasses and water jugs and brown paper menus propped between the ketchup and the salt; too many things on the walls – wooden boxes filled with wooden letters, pictures made out of fragile-looking bits of paper; too many people.

  ‘Actually, my brother’s in construction,’ Jen said, once Rosie had settled. ‘I could talk to him.’

  Stick drew a circle in the pile of salt.

  ‘He has a few boys working for him. One of them just did a course, I think. On a day release thing. In Salford, or somewhere.’

  Stick stared at his plate and shrugged.

  Jen sucked her tongue against her teeth. ‘It’s up to you, Kieran. The offer’s there. I can call him, put you in touch.’ She paused, and then said in a gentler voice, ‘You’re a great lad, Kieran. You can do whatever you want to do, but the world isn’t going to come towards you if you don’t go towards the world.’