by Unknown
‘He’s getting pretty good!’
‘Sure,’ Tess says. ‘He’s got a skill, definitely. Like with the juggling. And he’ll try anything – he just doesn’t seem to get scared at all.’
‘Maybe,’ says Finn, joining us. ‘Or maybe he’s just scared of different things.’
‘Maybe. Better go get that cake organized, anyhow,’ Tess says.
A minute later she’s in the cottage doorway, shouting for Niall. ‘Quick! Niall! That wretched goat’s got loose again, it’s in the kitchen! Give us a hand!’
Niall runs off towards the house.
‘Wonder if she was in time to save the cake?’ Finn muses. ‘Last time Cedric got in the house, he ate a bowl of ice cream, my Year Eight physics textbook and Gran’s cardigan. Scary.’
Finn’s gran is sitting on a log at the other side of the bonfire. She looks tired, dreamy. She doesn’t notice when Finn edges closer to me, when his hand slides over mine. ‘Today was brilliant,’ he whispers into my hair.
I let my hair fall forwards to hide my flaming cheeks. I can’t think of anything to say. Suddenly, typically, the CD player stops and Niall isn’t there to keep it fed with discs, to plug the long, heavy silence.
‘Hey!’
We both jump.
‘Watch me!’
Mouse is behind us on the grass, waving, grinning, a tiny, skinny figure astride Finn’s BMX. Something looks odd about it. Then I realize – there are sparklers stuck all round the wheel rims of the bike, jutting their fuzzy, crackling fire into the clear night air.
‘Looks cool, Mouse,’ Finn starts to say, but the words die on his lips as Mouse pedals forwards, hammering down the slope and across the grass. The sparklers leave a trail of silver as the wheels spin.
He’s heading straight for the ramp, the bonfire. He’s been practising all day, hasn’t he? Before the bonfire was lit, obviously. Only there’s no obviously with Mouse. There never has been.
That was nothing. You’ll see.
I’m starting to see, Mouse. I am.
I open my mouth to scream, but it feels like it’s full of sand. No sound comes. Finn’s gran is on her feet on the other side of the bonfire, her face white. Leggit starts to whine.
Mouse flies straight at the ramp, up and into the bonfire. The bike hovers, high above the flames, and Mouse tries for a bar spin. He’s going to make it. He spins the handlebars, and the wheel turns quickly. And then it stops, and the bike is dropping, down into the fire.
‘There’s a branch in the wheel!’ Finn gasps.
Mouse is pushing himself away from the bike, leaping away from the flames. He can still make it. Then the bike is gone, and Mouse falls after it, down into the bonfire.
And into the silence of the stopped CD player comes his scream, loud and thin and ugly.
It goes on and on and on.
Everything happens slowly, then everything happens fast.
Finn pulls up the hood of his jacket, drags the sleeves down over his hands and runs into the bonfire. He claws at the burning branches, hauls the bike to one side. And then he’s falling backwards on to the grass, with Mouse in his arms.
Tiny flames curl all along Mouse’s jeans, his sweatshirt, but Finn rolls him over and over, holding him close. He smothers the flames with his own body, and then he lets go, rolls away.
Mouse is still, silent.
Finn’s gran is there suddenly, dragging the hosepipe. She pours water over Mouse’s blackened clothing, dousing him, soaking him. His little body jerks and shudders.
‘Don’t!’ I yell at her. ‘It’s hurting him! Are you meant to do that?’
‘Get Tess,’ she says to me. ‘Tell her to call an ambulance.’
I hesitate. There’s a stink of burning rubber from the bike, and the smell of burned fabric, and something worse. It could be hair, or skin.
‘Quickly!’ screams Finn’s gran, and because I’ve never heard her raise her voice before, I push back my terror and run up to the house.
Tess appears in the doorway with a huge sponge cake studded with lit candles. Behind her, in the hall, Niall is scuffling with Cedric.
‘Isn’t it great?’ Tess beams. ‘D’you think he’ll like it? Dizzy? What’s the matter, Dizz?’
‘The bonfire – Mouse fell – Finn – we need an ambulance…’
Then the stench from the bonfire fills my nostrils again, and I turn away into the bushes and retch.
Tess runs down to the bonfire, dropping the cake on to the path. Niall rings for the ambulance, then puts an arm round my shoulders and leads me back down to the others.
Mouse lies curled on the grass, his face white, his eyelids flickering. Finn’s gran kneels beside him, offering sips of water. Leggit skulks nearby, cringing and whining. She pushes Mouse with her long wolf’s muzzle, her big pink tongue, and his hand uncurls to touch her.
He doesn’t look too bad. Until he turns his head, and I see what the fire has really done. I turn away, sickened.
Finn lies a few feet away, hunched over, Tess bathing his feet and legs with a rag soaked in water. Then I realize that the rag is a piece of her skirt, torn roughly from the rest.
‘Oh, Finn, Finn,’ she whispers. ‘Your poor feet.’
I can’t look at Finn’s feet, his beautiful, bare feet that ran through white-hot embers and leaping flames to rescue Mouse. Instead I look at his face, scrunched up in pain, wet with tears.
There’s a small, dark shape on the grass at the bonfire’s edge. An old toy mouse, slightly blackened now. I pick it up, my fingers shaking.
The ambulance takes Mouse and Finn and Tess, and Finn’s gran takes the car with Niall and me. We drive through the night and end up in the Specialist Burns Unit of a big hospital, miles away. We sit in a corridor that reeks of bleach and fear, waiting for news. Tess is hollow-eyed, grey with pain.
‘It’s my fault,’ she whispers. ‘I should have known. All day he was practising with that BMX, flying up the ramp, leaping the bonfire. I should have known. I should have guessed.’
‘How could you?’ Niall soothes. ‘It was a crazy thing to do.’
‘His face,’ Tess breathes. ‘His little face, all down one side. And Finn’s feet. Oh, God, how many times have I told him to wear shoes?’
‘Mum, don’t,’ Niall says. ‘It’s nobody’s fault.’
But it is, of course.
OK, Mouse was crazy to try the jump. It was a risk, but it nearly came off. If he hadn’t tried the bar spin, if the front wheel hadn’t tangled with that branch…
If I hadn’t kicked the ramp back.
All day he practised, getting everything perfect. And I moved the ramp.
It was my fault. I choke back another wave of nausea and let the tears fall. My eyes sting, like they’re full of grit.
After what feels like a hundred years or so, an Asian doctor and a little blonde nurse come out to talk to Tess.
‘Will they be OK?’ she asks, hanging on to the doctor’s arm. ‘How does it look? Will they…?’
‘They’re comfortable,’ the doctor says. ‘The little boy has some partial and some full-thickness burns to the head, shoulder and hands, and less severe damage to the chest and back. He will recover, but there’ll be scarring. Perhaps, later, we can do some cosmetic work, help to lessen the impact.’
‘And Finn?’
‘Some damage to the hands and wrists, but nothing serious. It’s his feet we’re concerned about. It’s too soon to say how well things will heal, but again, there will certainly be scarring.’
‘But they’ll be OK?’ Tess asks again. ‘Won’t they?’
The nurse smiles sadly. ‘Yes, Mrs Campbell, they’ll be OK. Now… is there anyone I can call for you? How about the boys’ father?’
‘Oh, no, we’re not together any more,’ Tess murmurs. ‘And Mouse’s dad’s in India. Although I suppose perhaps his mum should know…’
The doctor frowns. ‘The littlest boy… he’s not yours?’ he asks slowly.
‘No,
no, he was just staying… for a while…’
‘And his dad is abroad? Where is his mum?’
‘She’s ill,’ Finn’s gran says. ‘She’s in London, somewhere, in a clinic. My daughter’s been helping out.’
‘I see. And what relation, exactly, are you both to the little boy?’
‘Well,’ flounders Tess. ‘No relation, exactly.’
‘I see.’
‘Somebody had to look after them,’ Finn’s gran says anxiously.
‘Them?’ says the nurse.
‘Well, you know, Mouse and Dizzy.’
The doctor looks at Tess, then me. ‘Dizzy,’ he says. ‘The sister of the little boy who fell in the fire?’
‘Yes,’ I say.
‘No,’ Tess corrects. ‘Not exactly. She’s just staying with us. Her mum is in India, her dad’s in Birmingham.’
‘I see.’
They turn away.
‘Social services,’ the nurse whispers, when she thinks we’re out of earshot.
A little while later, they lead us through to see Finn and Mouse. They’re sleeping, sedated, the nurse says. Finn looks OK, but looking at Mouse is like seeing a TV report from a war zone. Cling film stuff swathes one side of his face, hides his hands. I reach into my pocket for the skanky toy mouse, tuck it in under the covers, softly.
It’s just past nine in the morning when we get back to Bramble Cottage. The sun streaks through the apple-tree branches, still strung with jam-jar lanterns, long since dead. The bonfire still smoulders on the grass, a low mound of grey ash and charred logs. The blackened skeleton of the BMX lies half-in, half-out of the embers.
On the path, a broken china plate marks where Tess dropped Finn’s birthday cake. There’s no trace of the sponge, jam, cream or candles.
‘Goat probably had it,’ says Niall. ‘Lucky thing.’
The cottage door stands open, the way we left it. The tabby cat lies stretched out in the hallway, basking in a patch of sun.
‘Bed,’ Tess says wearily. ‘All of us, and in the house, Dizzy, not the tree house. We need some rest if we’re going to see the boys later on.’
‘OK.’
Inside the cottage the phone begins to ring, and Tess wanders off to get it.
‘Pot of chamomile tea?’ Finn’s gran suggests. ‘Settle us down?’
We can hear Tess talking in the other room.
‘You don’t think it could be the hospital?’ I ask.
‘No, no. Stop worrying,’ says Niall.
But when Tess comes into the kitchen, our eyes swivel to her. She tries to fix her face into a happy shape, but it doesn’t quite come off.
‘Dizzy…’ she says slowly. ‘That was your dad.’
The doorbell rings and rings, somewhere far away. It hauls me out of sleep and I sit up, wearily, rubbing my eyes. It rings again.
Sunlight streams in through thin red curtains, and the bedside clock says just before midday. The walls are covered in black-and-white posters of sulky LA punk bands, and a pair of Doc Martens with lime-green stripy laces sit under the desk. Finn’s room.
The doorbell rings again, and I run across the landing, down the stairs. I see dark shadows through the front door’s coloured glass.
I open the door, still rubbing my eyes.
‘Dad!’
I fling myself at him, and he lifts me right up off the ground like he used to when I was little, swinging me round and round. We come back down to earth, hanging on tighter than ever. I bury my face in his neck and there’s a funny, snuffly sound that means he’s either laughing or crying.
I don’t care which. He’s here.
We don’t let go, not for a long time. When we move apart, there’s a wet patch on my hair where it lay against his cheek, and his eyes are damp and blurry, just like mine.
Dad looks different, somehow. His dark hair is grey at the temples, his face kind of grey and sad. There are lines etched across his forehead that never used to be there. It’s like I haven’t seen him for ten years, not ten weeks.
‘You came,’ I say, and my voice comes out all husky and ragged. ‘At last, you came!’
A flash of what looks like pain crosses Dad’s face. ‘Oh, Dizzy,’ he says sadly. ‘Of course I did.’
Behind him, looking neat and pretty and wonderfully familiar in a blue top and embroidered jeans, is Lucy. She looks uncertain, anxious, but her lips twitch into a nervous smile. Over her shoulder I see the blue Mini pulled up on the driveway. Cedric is hovering by the front wheel, sniffing thoughtfully.
‘Lucy,’ I say.
‘Dizz.’
She hugs me, just a quick, light hug. I hug her back. Behind me, Tess is coming down the stairs, a crocheted shawl wrapped round her nightie.
‘Pete,’ she says. ‘Long time no see. Look, come in, both of you. Just let me call the hospital, then we’ll talk. Get to the bottom of this mess.’
I take them through to the kitchen, put the kettle on.
‘How is – Finn, is it? Tess’s son?’ Dad asks. ‘And the other little boy? How did it happen?’
I turn away. ‘It was Finn’s birthday. Mouse was showing off, trying to impress us. He tried a BMX jump right over the bonfire, but one of the wheels got tangled and he fell in. Finn pulled him out.’
‘How awful,’ says Lucy.
Dad nods, a hand over his mouth, forehead creased. He’s thinking that it could have been me.
‘Someone moved the ramp,’ I say into the silence. ‘That’s why he didn’t make it. He had it all worked out, but someone moved the ramp.’
Dad looks at me. ‘No, no, Dizzy,’ he says slowly. ‘It was a dangerous thing to do, that’s all. If it hadn’t been the ramp, it’d have been something else.’
‘He should have checked it,’ says Lucy.
‘He’s only seven.’
‘Ah, Dizz.’
Tess sweeps into the room, trailing the shawl.
‘So?’ Dad asks. ‘How are they? Any news?’
‘Better,’ she admits. ‘They’re resting. We can visit later.’
Tess sits down, heavily. ‘Anyway, Pete, um… Lucy? It’s good to see you. Find us OK?’
Dad just stares. ‘Find you OK?’ he says, shakily. ‘Not really, no. It’s taken ten weeks, hasn’t it? This whole thing has been a nightmare. Not one word until your letter.’
‘I had no idea, Pete,’ Tess says. ‘Believe me, until you rang this morning I really had no idea.’
I put three mugs of herb tea and an apple juice on the tabletop.
‘You knew I was here, though, right?’ I say. ‘Storm said she’d keep you posted.’
Dad closes his eyes, takes a couple of deep breaths.
‘Keep me posted?’ he says at last. ‘That’s a joke, Dizzy. I’ve been looking for you since the day after your birthday, the day you took off. Nine weeks and six days. I can tell you the hours, the minutes, the seconds, too. I thought I’d never see you again.’
‘Sit down, Dizzy,’ Tess says gently.
I sit.
‘It looks like Storm wasn’t totally upfront with you when she said she’d asked your dad about this holiday…’
‘Holiday!’ Dad rasps. ‘Kidnap, I call it! Don’t defend her, Tess. Storm is in big trouble, this time. She’s gone too far. Too far.’
‘But you knew I was coming,’ I argue. ‘Storm said you were fine with it. And I told you myself, that morning, when I was saying goodbye…’
Dad drops his head into his hands. ‘No, Dizz,’ he says sadly. ‘No, you didn’t. I was pretty hung-over, but I know I’d have remembered if you told me you were running away with your mum for the summer. I… I thought you were going to school…’
Lucy reaches a hand out to cover mine. ‘He started to worry when you didn’t come home that afternoon,’ she says. ‘He rang Jade and Sara and Sasha, but of course they hadn’t seen you. Then we went to the police…’
The police? My heart is thumping.
Storm, Storm, what have you done?
T
he story unravels. The police talked to Dad, decided that it was a pretty sure thing I was with my mum. They put me on the Missing Persons list, but they didn’t do much about tracking me down. I was with family, they said. It wasn’t a priority.
Lucy drove Dad to Wales in the blue Mini and they searched every festival, every open-air concert, every scrap of countryside.
‘I wasn’t in Wales,’ I tell them. ‘I was never in Wales. It was Scotland.’
‘Right,’ Dad sighs. ‘Clever girl, Storm. Later on, the police told us that a traveller girl meeting your description had been picked up for shoplifting in Ayr. By the time they realized and went back to look, she – you? – had gone.’
‘It was me,’ I tell him. ‘It was. But I wasn’t shoplifting.’
‘Unreal,’ Tess says. ‘All that fuss about moving on, packing up in the middle of the night. Storm knew.’
Dad shrugs. ‘We drove up to Scotland and searched ourselves, but nobody had heard of you, or Storm. Or if they did, they weren’t saying.’
‘Did you ring, one day?’ Lucy asks suddenly. ‘Then hang up?’
I nod, red-faced. ‘I don’t know why. I was scared. I got confused. I’m sorry.’
Lucy looks at me for a long time. She knows why I hung up. Because I was jealous, hurt, stupid. But if she can read my mind, she must know how sorry I am. Mustn’t she?
‘Doesn’t matter, now,’ she says softly. ‘We’ve found you.’
‘I sent postcards,’ I remember suddenly. ‘Five postcards. Didn’t you get them?’
Dad’s eyes widen. ‘No, not one. Are you sure you sent them?’
I’m silent. I wrote them, and, each time, I handed them to Storm. Let me add my own little message, she used to say. Or, I’ll post it when I’m in town. No trouble.
‘I gave them to Storm.’
Dad drains his coffee mug and puts it down, wearily. ‘So,’ he says. ‘Where is your mother? Where is Storm?’
Tess stands up, wrapping the shawl tightly round herself. ‘When I sent the letter, I kind of assumed you knew,’ she says. ‘And then, when you rang this morning, I realized things were all wrong, but I just didn’t know how to tell you.’