by Jay Stringer
Move.
In a fire you get only seconds. Maybe a couple of minutes, if you’re very lucky. After that, the place is a death trap and you’re not getting out. I put my arm round Rosie’s waist and propelled her through the door into the hallway. Thick black smoke was already coming out of the living room doorway, and with nowhere to go, it was building up in the hall ahead of us. I bent down low, and Rosie followed suit as we inched through the smoke, looking for the door. I heard the whooshing sound of a fire at full burn in the living room. It’s a sound you can’t mistake for anything else. Hear it once and it’s with you for good in your dreams.
The flat was going up fast.
Whoever had made the Molotov cocktails knew what they were doing.
The heat was getting to be too much, rolling out of the living room like a wave. I found the handle, but the cheap metal was hot. The plastic doorframe was starting to warp, so I put my weight into it. I didn’t budge. I pulled my sleeve down over my hand and turned the handle and swung the door inward. The smoke now had somewhere to go, and our vision cleared slightly. I pushed Rosie through, into the fresh air, and then I stepped out after her onto the balcony at the top of the stairs. She was leaning over the edge, coughing from somewhere deep inside herself.
I heard Mum call both our names, and I saw she was standing outside one of the ground-floor flats, shepherding people away from the smoke. The people leaving the building didn’t have far to go, as the crowd across the road had grown and were advancing, shouting racist chants and telling the people who lived in the flats to go back where they came from.
The immigrants were trapped between the burning flats and the crowd. There was a gap between the two groups, and so far nobody had crossed the line, but it was only a matter of time. I pushed Rosie toward the stairs, where Mum was now waiting for her. I looked across the heads and faces in the crowd, but I couldn’t see Sally or Bejna. I’d known I wouldn’t, unless they’d gone out a back window, because they hadn’t come out with us through the front door. I turned to look back at the open door and the smoke that billowed out, blocking the doorway and bounding out toward me before rising to the sky. It looked like every nightmare I’d ever had, as if the smoke was about to take me.
I could see in through the broken window, but all I could see were the flames. There was the sound of plaster and paper falling from the walls. The top half of the room was lost to a roiling black cloud. I ran the odds in my head, but all I could think of were reasons not to go in.
As I stood there I saw some of the immigrants break away from the crowd and run toward the edge of the car park nearest to me, at the back of the houses. I looked in the direction they were running and saw the people who had thrown the Molotov cocktails. Two of them were big; I was reminded of the hooded thugs who had attacked me. The third was smaller, and he was still holding a cocktail, about ready to throw it. He saw me as I saw him, and even through the balaclava covering his features I knew who he was.
He dropped the bottle at his feet and turned away, running into the darkness at the back of the houses. I thought about giving chase, but then I heard a very human sound from inside the flat. I stepped back to the doorway and dived through the smoke.
What the fuck am I doing?
I ducked low. The smoke roiled above me, and the wallpaper dropped down around me in flaming sheets. I called out Sally’s name, followed by Bejna’s, but there was no response. I took another breath but then coughed out something black. I decided not to do that again.
I crawled into the living room, ignoring the heat that threatened to suffocate me. The carpet was hot to the touch and curling up as its glue no longer held it to the floor. I didn’t fancy being on it when the flames decided to see what it tasted like.
I crawled forward until I found what had once been the sofa. It was now a molten liquid mass, giving off fumes and making my eyes sting. I reached the chair, which was made of different material and burning away like a bonfire. I couldn’t get past it, but beyond I could see what had once been a shelving unit, now broken and toppled to the floor. It was smoking but hadn’t caught fire.
I turned round, screwed my eyes shut against the smoke, and started back toward the door. Someone grabbed hold of my leg. I couldn’t make out who it was in the darkness, but I felt the hand tighten its grip. I reached back and held it, and tugged in the direction I was moving, hoping they would get the message. I crawled on with my weight on one arm, guiding my follower with my other hand.
I tried for the doorway but was forced back by the heat. I opened my eyes long enough to see that the flames had formed a wall and were spreading toward us.
What the fuck am I doing?
The only other option was the window, which I guessed was somewhere to my left. That would mean standing up. It would mean having only seconds to follow through before the heat and the smoke took me down. I turned back and crawled close to the person clutching my leg. It was Sally, and she had an unconscious Bejna hooked beneath her other arm. I didn’t know where she was getting the strength.
I barked out the word window and hoped she could hear me or lip-read. I pulled up a section of carpet and rose to my feet. I stepped forward until my arms hit the jagged glass around the frame, and I punched away at it from behind the carpet.
I felt my hands tear as the glass tore through the carpet. Then I felt enough glass clear away that I could put weight on the frame.
I climbed over the edge and breathed in fresh air—massive gulps of it that burned my lungs. Then I turned back to see Sally standing in the window, her face obscured by the smoke. I pulled Bejna away from her, taking her full weight slowly, and started down the steps.
I took a couple steps, but then my bad knee buckled, and I toppled forward, leaning into the railing to try and steady myself. Two men ran up the steps and met me, lifting Bejna from me and then guiding me down the steps before they ran back up past me, toward the flat.
Bejna was laid out on the concrete, still unconscious. Two women fussed over her, taking turns to breathe air into her while Rosie stood over them with her mobile phone, holding a hurried conversation with someone on the other end and then relaying instructions to the women. I tried to offer my help, but I broke out into a fit of coughing and felt my knee go again. My stomach heaved as I hit the floor, and I threw up something black and sticky onto the concrete, planting my hands down either side of it to steady myself as the world spun.
I heard a cough, coming like the rattle of an empty can of spray paint, and then a louder one, full throated, and looked up to see Bejna turning onto her side and throwing up black tar of her own.
The men who had steadied me came back down the stairs, walking on either side of Sally, holding her upright. She had a huge gash across her forehead. The blood was congealed along her hairline, and her sleeve was smeared crimson where she must have kept wiping her eyes clear. Her right arm hung limp at her side. She staggered and then dropped to her knees beside her daughter.
As Bejna looked up at her with a weak smile, Sally relaxed, and then she screamed, clutching at her right arm. She’d been carrying Bejna with a dislocated shoulder.
More locals were gathering round us now, but this wasn’t a hate mob. People from the nearby houses were bringing blankets and water. Three people near me were talking to emergency services on their mobile phones. Beyond them the Community mob had been pushed back across the road by a row of burly men, with Bull shouting at them to fuck off or step up. Gaines’s cavalry had arrived, and they had ridden in on white transit vans to move the families.
Rosie was kneeling on the ground, still holding an urgent phone conversation in between drinking water and coughing. She kept using initials and acronyms, so I figured she was talking to one of her nonprofit people. Sounds were coming to me in bits and pieces as the world around me seemed to speed up and slow down. I heard snatches of shouting and chatter, Bull’s voice booming loud. I heard Rosie coughing and, somewhere, sirens. Some sleepy part of my b
rain was talking to me about shock. I could have stayed in that moment, with no noise, no pain, and no smoke, but I noticed my mum was missing.
“Where the hell is she?” is what I meant to say, though I’m not sure what came out.
Rosie looked up, noticing Mum’s absence now too. She looked to me and then back at the flats. Then one of the locals said, “Crazy woman, she heard someone scream and ran into that one,” pointing to an open doorway with black smoke pouring out.
I recognized it as the first flat Salma had taken me to, the one with the children’s party. Something tugged at me from my memory, but I couldn’t pull it loose. I ran over to the doorway and peered inside.
I called out Mum’s name, but got no answer.
The sirens were close now. Bull was going to have to move fast to get people away in time. I turned back to the smoke and called for my mum a second time. This time I caught sight of movement. I bent low and peered through the smoke. At the far end of the hallway I could see her, inching toward me beneath the smoke, with a young child held beneath her.
I stepped into the smoke and started crawling toward her.
Then I remembered what was eating away at my memory.
There was a portable gas heater inside the bedroom.
That was when something inside the flat exploded.
THIRTY‐EIGHT
It wasn’t a huge explosion—the gas canister wasn’t big enough for that—but the doorframe shook, and somewhere inside the building I heard a sickening thud as something was forced into a wall. A new onslaught of black smoke filled the hallway, enveloping us. I doubled over in a coughing fit, gasping for air but finding only fiery hot smoke to inhale.
I heard a warping sound and realized too late that it was the ceiling above us caving in. The plaster rained down, followed by wooden beams, concrete, and everything else that had been on the floor above.
My vision was starting to dance at the edges, and again I coughed up something black. As the smoke shifted, I saw my mum again. She was curled into a ball, sheltering the child. I crawled over to them. Mum had taken the brunt of the ceiling, and there was blood on the back of her head.
Her face was pale and drawn, and her eyelids were fluttering; a wheezing sound came from her mouth. She’d been in the smoke for too long. I turned back to look for the way out, but the visibility was zero. The floor beneath us feet sagged, and my brain worked just fast enough to remind me that we were on the upper floor of a poorly constructed building.
It was my fault. I knew the rules.
Get out.
Don’t go back in.
Then the smoke parted and men dressed like aliens stepped into the hallway. They wore helmets that made them look like Darth Vader. They were shouting words I couldn’t understand. I resisted as they tried to lift Mum away from me. My chest was getting tight, and the world was getting faint. We moved back along the hallway, which was now clear. My feet weren’t touching the floor, but my arms were being held up.
Am I flying?
We flew out of the flat and down the stairs. The cold air hit me and almost kick-started my brain. I could feel everything speeding up around me and starting to make sense again. At the foot of the stairs I sank to my knees and realized that some of the aliens in gas masks were holding onto me and shouting. I tried to make sense of what I could see. People in uniform. A white van with flashing lights on top. It seemed impossible to understand.
Wait.
Wait.
Then, all at once, the world I understood snapped back into focus. I saw the cops rounding up people. Only a couple of Bull’s transit vans were left, and I guessed they’d gotten most of the people away. Then I saw Bull being bundled into the back of a police car.
Rosie shouted something from somewhere far off. Paramedics had Mum in the back of an ambulance. One of them was bent over her, pumping his hands down on her chest, shouting something at her. Someone else in the ambulance shouted, “Clear!”
And then the world went away again as I blacked out.
THIRTY‐NINE
I woke up in the hospital with a scary plastic mask strapped over my face. It seemed to be forcing oxygen into me whether I liked it or not. Baby steps, I thought, baby steps. I opened my eyes for a few seconds, looked around, and then closed them again. After a rest, I tried again.
I was in a private room.
I’d spent enough time lying on my back in hospital beds. The last time I’d been here, the fuckers had stolen a piece of my intestines. I wasn’t going to trust them a second time. I ripped off the mask and climbed up off the bed. Then I passed out again.
The second time I woke up was a minute or so later. A doctor was watching me with an amused expression. He asked me if I wanted to stand up again, and I told him that lying down felt pretty good. He looked old and experienced. The sort of doctor you could trust, the sort who looked like a history teacher.
He told me I was okay. “Smoke inhalation, but could be worse. That’ll sort itself out in a few days. I’ve checked your chart, and you have quite a—eh—history. But nothing that’ll cause any problems.”
“The passing out?”
“Heat and exhaustion will do that to you. From what I’ve been told, you ran into two burning buildings.”
“Actually, I think I ran into the same building twice.”
“Okay. What I reckon, and this isn’t an exact medical opinion, is your body wants you to stop doing that.”
“Yeah, it felt like I was having a heart attack back there. I thought I was going to die.”
He listed the symptoms of a heart attack, and I was forced to concede that, no, what had happened to me sounded like none of those things. He said I should stay and get some rest, but that I’d be free to go home as soon as the police gave the okay.
Police?
I decided to ignore his first bit of advice and go for the second. I lifted my clothes out of the cupboard beside the bed and dressed very slowly. My clothes had been washed, or they would have smelled of smoke. I wondered if they did that for all patients or if it was another perk of being sorta married to a top-brass copper.
My belongings were stored in a small plastic bag. My keys, my wallet, my phone. There was what was left of my notebook, and I opened it. At the back was a pouch where I kept an emergency supply of pills. They were still there, amazingly. Soon the pain went away.
I found Rosie in the next room over. She had been given the same speeches as me, but she seemed happy with the former option and was staying put to “get some rest.” Truth was, she was flirting like mad with the nurses and was already the hero of the department. She’d gotten a few minor burns but nothing that couldn’t be treated with ointment and dressings; she was milking it. I told her about my chest pains.
“I think I had a panic attack.”
“You’re saying you’re a wuss, huh?” If she was taking the piss like that, she definitely was feeling pretty much fine. “Shame.” She smiled.
“No, I mean it. I think I had a panic attack. I’ve read about them.”
“Where did you read it, a women’s magazine?”
“You’re a big help, you know that?”
“Anytime. I tell you what, if it happens again, call me. I’ll talk you through it. I’ll sing you nursery rhymes and offer to braid your hair.”
A nurse came by with a uniformed police officer and offered to take us to Mum. She hadn’t regained consciousness, though the paramedics at the scene had resuscitated her. She had a broken shoulder and a fractured skull, and the doctor mumbled something about repeated concussions. We stood and watched her as she drew in shallow breaths with the aid of a mask. Her hand was clutching a stuffed animal, a gift from the child she’d saved.
I knew what I was meant to be feeling, but I couldn’t seem to draw on those emotions.
What I was feeling instead:
Anger.
Shame.
Isolation.
Would I have shielded the child like that? That takes so
mething I’ve always known I don’t have. It takes something I’ve always been jealous of. Going back in for Sally and Bejna hadn’t been any act of heroism. It was guilt. The fire was my fault, just as sure as if I’d thrown the Molotov cocktails myself.
As I stood and watched my mother fight her way back from her injuries, I felt less like her than I ever had before. I’d inherited none of her compassion—or maybe just enough to be dangerously inconsistent. Whatever it was that had urged me not to kill Mike was what had unleashed this whole bloody mess.
I snapped out of it and realized Rosie wasn’t standing beside me. I went out into the hallway, looking for her, and spotted her talking to two women in business suits; their faces looked stern.
It didn’t take long to figure out that they were lawyers. Rosie was talking to them about how to handle the situation, which people in the press to talk to, and how to build this into a campaign. I caught words like media, spin, and messages.
I left them to it.
I struck off on my own with the thought of heading to the canteen. Every step I took was shadowed by a uniformed police officer who wouldn’t engage in conversation. As I headed toward the bank of elevators, he coughed discreetly and suggested I return to my room.
“Am I under arrest?”
“Do you have to argue with everyone that you meet?”
I turned at the sound of Laura’s voice. She was walking toward us along the corridor, in the direction we had just come. She took my hand and then pulled me into a tight embrace and whispered something in my ear about how glad she was that I was okay. She nodded at the uniform, and he took the hint and went to look for someone else to annoy. Laura looked tired, and I wondered how much overtime I’d caused for the police force.