No Smoke Without Fire

by Claire S. Lewis

  Walking on, Celeste’s eyes fell on the towering stone airman statue positioned in front of the memorial. The airman statue was standing tall, eyes directly ahead, next to a machine gun on its right and holding an unopened parachute in its left. The statue was sporting a fleece-lined helmet, fleece-lined bomber jacket and fleece-lined boots. Celeste stopped abruptly as if she herself had been turned to stone, struck by the resemblance in the stance and attire of the statue to the apparition that had confronted her from a distance in the woods.

  It was time to go…

  *

  When Celeste drove into Cambridge, her spirits rose. After the austere formality of the cemetery, where the flowers and lawns were tamed and controlled with military rigour, it was a relief to park her car and stroll up a tree-lined path to the riverbank, where the natural world was bursting into life untamed on this beautiful spring day. The daffodils and crocuses were now in full bloom, colouring the meadows with splashes of yellow and blue. The cherry blossoms were at their best, kissing the branches in delicate shades of white and the palest of pinks. The scene was like an impressionist painting. The contrast with the American cemetery couldn’t have been greater.

  It struck her that death was stark and hard-lined and geometric whereas life was filled with colours and curves and blurred edges and softness and light. Everywhere she looked was buzzing with insects and birds and students walking arm-in-arm, and young families with children and babies in pushchairs and tourists clicking cameras. They were all out and about bathed in the soothing midday sun.

  She was overwhelmed by the loveliness of this stretch of the River Cam, known affectionately as ‘The Backs’ because of the university colleges whose green lawns and flower-filled courts backed onto it. To stave off her hunger she stopped to eat an ice cream bought from a mobile tricycle stall, then wandered along the riverbank, snapping photographs of the college buildings and gardens and bridges, and smiling at the antics of the undergraduates and tourists crashing their punts on the water.

  Though she didn’t know much about history or design, she was awestruck by the soaring architecture of the Kings College Chapel and all the visually stunning and imposing colleges she passed on her walk. Their names sounded as romantic and poetic as the shipping forecast when she recited them to herself – Clare, Kings, Magdalen, Trinity and St John’s.

  Although she hadn’t planned this as a tourist outing, eventually she gave in to the advances of a pushy tour guide and jumped into one of the ten-seater wooden boats being punted up and down the river by students dressed in straw boaters and cream flannels. It was relaxing to sit back and listen to the young man reciting from his memorised script the potted history of Cambridge and its colleges. She used the boat trip as an opportunity to get some ‘Instagrammable’ photographs for the CelestialHeadstones.com account and to find the perfect ‘thank-you-for-your-business’ message image to send to Barbara in New Mexico to accompany the photographs she had taken of the Cambridge American Cemetery and Eugene’s grave.

  They punted down as far as the Bridge of Sighs, aptly named after the Bridge of Sighs in Venice. It was here that she captured the perfect archetypal image of Cambridge on her camera as she photographed the smaller punts passing beneath the bridge. The dappled reflection of the ornate stone arch with its crenellated-covered passageway shimmered in the dark ripples. The vivid green of the oak tree on the riverbank beyond the bridge was visible through its latticed arch-shaped window openings. The bridge was framed by the walls of the courts of St John’s College on either side of the River Cam. Patches of sunlight and shade highlighted the architectural lines and features of the ancient buildings.

  After the punting tour Celeste wandered through the ancient courts of Clare College and along a winding cobbled alleyway into the centre of town. The tour guide had mentioned ‘Fitzbillies’ cake shop and café on Trumpington Street, a popular spot with students and tourists alike, which had been around for over 150 years. Apparently, it served an excellent brunch as well as being famous for its traditional Chelsea buns.

  Celeste was charmed by the place. It was so Cambridge! The name ‘Fitzbillies’ was emblazoned in large gold lettering on the timber frontage. There were bicycles propped up against the glass window displays of tiered wedding cakes and iced buns and jars of traditional marmalades and preserves. She took her place at a corner table across the room from two undergraduates just a few years younger than her who were wearing black scholars’ gowns over their T-shirts and jeans. She felt as if she had strayed on to the set of a Harry Potter movie. They were chatting and laughing about nothing in particular and the boy kept leaning across the table to touch the girl’s hand. He’d placed a book on the table next to him, and she glanced over to check the title:

  Marcel Proust, À La Recherche du Temps Perdu.

  Her first thought was how pretentious! But then she thought she should cut him some slack. He was probably a modern languages undergraduate so it was perhaps natural that he would read Proust in the original and bring him to brunch.

  In Search of Lost Time…

  She had read the novel herself in translation and now the book lying there seemed imbued with significance. Watching the young couple sitting there flirting and lost in each other’s company made her sad and nostalgic for things that could have been. She was lost… just lost… and alone. She pushed away her plate, nauseated by the smell of the full English breakfast. Her stomach was in knots. She had been a star pupil in her senior school, having gained straight A’s in her GCSEs aged sixteen and then having been predicted the highest grades for her final end-of-school exams. Once upon a time, this happy gilded life or something similar at another university had been within her grasp, not an impossible dream. But it had all been wrenched away from her so very brutally, that fateful night in February, seven years ago.

  If only I hadn’t let him order me around… If only I hadn’t gone with him… If only I hadn’t let him ply me with drink… If only I hadn’t smoked that cigarette… If only I hadn’t locked the door… If only I had said No! No! No!

  There were too many If onlys to torment herself with.

  She stood up to leave, despising herself. She was not worthy of self-pity or compassion.

  My loss is nothing compared to…

  This moment of self-indulgence in Fitzbillies, in search of lost time for things that might have been, tortured her with guilt, making her feel all the more wretched and broken and irredeemable…

  And for that, she hated him all the more.

  PAST

  15

  When she stops shaking, she stoops down to pick up her laptop and check that it’s still working. It fell to the floor in all the commotion. She powers it up. It works thank goodness – she would be distraught to lose all her A-level notes. She puts in her headphones then opens the document she was working on when her dad barged in, and tries to concentrate on her homework – an essay question from a Philosophy A-level past paper: ‘How might a utilitarian attempt to justify preventative imprisonment (imprisoning someone to prevent them from committing a crime, rather than because they have already committed a crime)?’

  Her head was buzzing with ideas when she first started making notes on this topic, but now she can’t do it. Utilitarian arguments about calculating the good of the many versus the good of the few get tangled up in her head with ideas about absolute ethical values and natural justice. All she can think about is the punishment that her father has unjustifiably subjected her to. At this very moment she would like to kill him. Should she be imprisoned? Would that be justified to prevent her carrying out the crime?

  What an absurd essay title! she thinks. How can you be sure who will commit a crime and when? Every one of us is capable of committing a crime if we are pushed too far. Instead of feeling cowed and chastened by her father she is bursting with defiance. Right now, the devil is in her. She sees red. She would like to burn the house down and everyone in it. We are all fallen angels, she reflects. Given su
fficient provocation, the most peace-loving of individuals may unleash his or her anger and turn to violence… And she types that, as the first line of her essay.

  Her cheekbone throbs and her fingers stumble over the keys. Message bubbles pop up in the notifications corner of her screen. She saves her document and closes it. Her homework will have to wait until tomorrow. She can’t concentrate anyway. She clicks on the texts.

  The messages are from Lucie and Harry – they’re in a new thing together. Lucie’s message says:

  ‘Get your ass over here – we’re pre-ing at Ben’s.’

  Lucie is Celeste’s new best friend. Celeste’s always been on the fringes of the ‘popular group’ – her parents’ divorce and her mother’s alcoholism (these kids are narrow-minded snobs underneath it all), and her reputation for being something of a swot, keep her out of the inner circle. But in the past few months, her NHS braces have come off, and she’s become a fitness fanatic, and started wearing black eyeliner to school, and she’s highlighted her hair and lifted her hemline and suddenly the boys have agreed ‘she has good tits and a great pair of legs’, and Ben has let it be known that in his estimation she’s gone up from a ‘seven out of ten’ to a ‘nine out of ten’ and the girls have started to respect her and decided it’s better to have her as a friend than a rival.

  Harry is Ben’s ‘wingman’ – not as tall or as good-looking or as strong, but the girls like him because he’s funny and doesn’t take himself too seriously. She reads Harry’s message:

  ‘Ben says bring the vodka.’

  That’s as close to a ‘come-on’ as she’s had from Ben.

  She scrabbles around in the bottom of her suitcase and pulls out a bottle of vodka. This is the other asset that’s raised her net worth in the popularity stakes recently – she can always be relied upon to bring the booze. Her mother has so many bottles of spirits stashed away in hiding places around the house that she doesn’t notice when one of them goes missing. And even if she did notice, she would be too embarrassed about her own secret drinking habits to challenge her teenage daughter. Celeste finds a shot glass (stolen from the local pub) in amongst her underwear and pours herself a measure. If the pre-lash is already happening at Ben’s house, she’s gonna have to ‘pre’ the ‘pre’!

  Having knocked back the vodka and pulled on her bodycon, she immediately feels more confident and up for the party. She grabs her make-up bag and heads for the bathroom. And that’s when her anger explodes… Her bedroom door is locked. She yanks at the handle and hammers frantically on the door with her hairbrush. Unlike the flimsy doors at her new place, it’s made of solid wood – though she’s mad with rage, there’s no chance of breaking it down.

  She gets no response from downstairs. Through the oak she can hear the TV turned to full volume as usual. She rattles the handle again. Her father seems to be going deaf. The lovebirds must be watching a movie so there’s no knowing when they’ll come up. Ironically, she’s the one who insisted on having a lock fitted to her door. It’s still her bedroom. She’s got to have one place of refuge in the old family home. And now that Natasha is squatting here, there’s absolutely no way she’s going to give her the opportunity of nosing through her stuff when she’s away.

  She opens her bedroom window. In this high-ceilinged house, it’s a long drop to the gravel driveway below. She’s not that crazy. Thank God, she has her phone. She calls her father’s number. It goes to voicemail. Of course, he’s switched it to silent. He’s probably otherwise engaged, slavering over Natasha.

  The claustrophobia of being trapped in her room begins to creep up on her. It’s too melodramatic and mortifying to let anyone on her social media chats know that her father locked her in. Instead, she messages the chats to say she can’t make it, and she pours herself another vodka, and another, and another to keep the panic in check and spends the evening on her phone, stalking her friends on Facebook, torturing herself by poring over their inane, drunken posts from the party, gutted with that perverse feeling of anxiety, frustration, misery and self-pity, that in this infancy of social media already has its own acronym – FOMO – fear of missing out. And this FOMO – or, could it more accurately be described as COMO? – certainty of missing out – fires her anger against her father until she really and truly believes that she could kill him.

  PRESENT

  16

  It’s been a good day.

  I get back to my accommodation late in the evening, pleased to find that my Amazon package is waiting for me in the hallway. I get out my penknife and cut strips through the cardboard. With a guilty frisson, I lift my purchase carefully out of the box and break away the polystyrene with a pleasing crunch and snap.

  I may be old-fashioned to seek out print, but this will give me hours of fun.

  Ten laminated photographs later, I dine on toast and marmalade washed down with Horlicks. I stick the photographs to the wall next to my bed and turn out the light.

  No more bare walls. You are my poster girl. Exhausted but content, I sleep like a baby for the first time in weeks.

  *

  Celeste cycled into work bright and early on Monday morning and had a spring in her step when she walked through the door of Seventh Heaven.

  ‘How did it go?’ called Meghan from the back of the shop.

  ‘It was brilliant,’ said Celeste. ‘Thank you so much for lending me the van. I’ll show you the pictures later.’

  The morning was taken up with dealing with deliveries of new stock and fulfilling the orders for regular trade customers such as local restaurants and businesses who bought flowers from Seventh Heaven on a weekly basis to add a touch of colour and poetry to their prosaic premises. Although she was rushed off her feet, Celeste was in a good mood. Meghan had let her plug in her music to the speaker, and she sang along to her favourite tunes while she worked on the flowers. Finally, at three o’clock in the afternoon, all the regular jobs were done, and she was able to sit down in front of the computer with a cup of coffee to go through the photographs that she had downloaded from her camera the night before.

  The pictures of Eugene’s grave had come out perfectly and she was spoilt for choice in deciding which to send to Barbara. She also had some nice shots of the surroundings in the American cemetery, which she was planning to send over as she knew that it would be more moving and meaningful for Barbara to see pictures of the setting taken on the anniversary date that Celeste had placed the flowers on her father’s grave, rather than simply looking up images that she could find online.

  It was when she got to the photographs of the Bridge of Sighs in Cambridge that Celeste was in for a shock. She had shot a sequence from different viewpoints as her punt approached the bridge. The stonework on the bridge could be seen in all its intricate detail. But it was something behind the stonework that caught her attention. Through one of the stone openings, the head and torso of a figure could be seen, standing sideways on, partly obscured by the shadows, gazing down at the water below. There was nothing unusual in this. The bridge was a magnet for tourists and was used by them and members of the university alike as a walkway between the courts of St John’s that straddled the River Cam. But what floored her, when she zoomed in and blew up the shot to its maximum size, was the uncanny resemblance between the image in the photograph, (the facial features were masked by shadows but the outlines were the same) and the person or apparition (she no longer knew what to think!) that she had spotted watching her from under the branches of the trees, at the Cambridge American Cemetery.

  At that moment, Meghan strolled over with her sandwich.

  ‘Come on then, are you going to show me?’

  With some instinct to keep her reflections private, Celeste quickly clicked on the cross to close the magnified image of the bridge and scrolled back through the other pictures.

  ‘It’s very beautiful,’ said Meghan. ‘You did a wonderful job. I’m sure she’ll be delighted.’

  *

  When she got back to t
he flat that evening, Celeste opened her laptop and looked again at her photographs of the Bridge of Sighs. She was agitated and on edge and couldn’t decide whether to talk about it with Anya and Jessi who were camped on the sofa scrolling through their social media while pretending to watch the latest popular series on Netflix, some ridiculous teenage coming-of-age story featuring a sequence of unbelievable paranormal events and a two-dimensional cast.

  She glanced over at the TV monitor. Sinister music was playing, signifying the scene was leading up to yet another ‘jump-out-of-your-skin’ cheap thrill.

  ‘Do you believe in ghosts?’ she asked directly. She had to say it twice before the girls looked up from their phones.

  ‘Not sure I believe in ghosts,’ said Anya absently. She was in the middle of putting together an Instagram post and was more concerned with applying the right filter to set off her pose than in engaging in existential questions.

  ‘Why do you ask?’ said Jessi. ‘Is all this business delivering flowers to the dead getting to you? You’ve been hanging round graveyards a bit too much recently!’

  ‘I had a funny turn at the cemetery in Cambridge,’ said Celeste, without rising to it. ‘I thought I saw a man watching me from a copse of trees on the edge of the cemetery. I must have been seeing things, but it seemed so real – and yet so unreal at the same time. It gave me a scare. He looked just like the picture of the World War II pilot whose grave I was putting flowers on, just like the statue of the airman I walked past in the grounds of the American cemetery.’