No Smoke Without Fire

by Claire S. Lewis

  Tom’s having fun. He doesn’t need his mum when Celeste is here.

  ‘Up, up, up,’ he shouts. He giggles and yelps at the thrill of going higher and higher ‘up to the sky’ as Celeste pushes him, again and again, harder and harder, swinging him up to the height of the branches until Toms yells at the top of his voice, ‘I’m flying.’

  And Celeste fears that the rope will break.

  *

  The weeks after the fire are like a black hole – as dark and charred and desolate and devastated as the black hole that the flames left in Ben’s barn. Celeste cannot sleep or eat or speak. She can barely think – she’s falling deeper and deeper into the black hole and she never wants to climb out. She wants to die.

  Celeste tries to kill herself. But she can’t do it. She takes sleeping pills, but at the last minute some instinct for self-preservation makes her go to the bathroom and put two fingers down her throat. She cuts herself, but never too deep. She walks out of the house in the middle of the night through the woods and over the fields and down to the river. She stands looking down into the water while a cloud shadows the moon and the cold and the damp seeps into her soul. But a rustle and a crack in the branches behind her back, fills her with fear and sets her running home.

  She can’t kill herself. So, she settles for second best. She hates herself.

  Her mother makes things even worse – of course, she’s in pieces – and she blames Celeste.

  ‘If Celeste hadn’t taken Tom to the party… If she hadn’t lock…’ (she can’t even bring herself to say it out loud) ‘… he would still be alive.’

  Celeste has lost count of the number of times she’s heard her mother say those words. It’s a self-evident truth – a facile statement – yet no less poisonous.

  Celeste hates her mother too.

  As for her father, well, Celeste can’t even bring herself to look at him. If he hadn’t abandoned them when she was only thirteen and Tom was only seven, then none of this would have happened. She can’t even put a name to the way she feels about him.

  But the person she hates and despises the most is herself. She can blame her father for abandoning his children with an alcoholic and opioid-addicted mother; she can blame her mother’s sleazy boyfriend for distracting his girlfriend from her maternal responsibilities; she can blame her selfish, egotistical mother for years of neglect (and for making her babysit on a Saturday night); she can blame Ben for forcing her to go to the party and for plying her with drink (and God knows what else), and for doing what he did to her in the boathouse…

  But at the end of the day and through the sheet-twisting terrors of every sleepless night she tortures herself with the thought she was the one who locked Tom inside Ben’s bedroom. For that Celeste has only herself to blame. And for that, there is no forgiveness.

  Each time her eyes close, her mind conjures images of her hand turning a key.

  Every night, without a rope, she hangs herself.

  PRESENT

  39

  I had no idea You were such a good actress, Celeste.

  I know You are lying to Meghan about the photographs because I watched You planting those photographs at the grave.

  This makes me wonder what else You are lying about and more importantly, why?

  I get that uneasy yet peculiarly arousing feeling that You are framing me as your fall guy. You are becoming the mistress of deception.

  Well, Celeste, I stand ready. If I can’t be your lover, I will be your accomplice.

  *

  Things had been stressful in Seventh Heaven all week. Meghan was reacting badly to the business with the Madison bride. She was tetchy and short-tempered with Celeste. Almost a week had passed since the scheduled date of Mia’s wedding and so far, there had been no word as to why the wedding had not gone ahead and no instruction as to what should be done with the flowers.

  The cold room was beginning to reek with the pungent, sickly-sweet stink of decomposing vegetation as the blooms began to rot. Meghan was getting more and more vocal in her complaints. Celeste could barely bring herself to step inside the room. Smells were so evocative, and this smell reminded her of the flowers on her little brother’s grave. She was transported to the evening of Tom’s burial when she had gone back to the churchyard alone as the sun was setting. There had been no headstone as yet but the mound of earth covering Tom’s fresh grave had been heaped with floral tributes. Every inch of soil was covered with blooms. It had been a mild evening and the smell of flowers in the evening air was intoxicating and overpowering.

  Celeste remembered falling to the ground and lying there sobbing into the grass and crushing the petals into her hands in desperation. It was the first time she had been able to cry since the night of the fire.

  Finally, on the Thursday lunchtime, Meghan lost patience.

  ‘This lot has got to go,’ she announced. ‘I want my cold room back. We’re going to have to bite the bullet and throw them away. Can you bag up all the flowers and take them out to the bins?’ Celeste understood that Meghan couldn’t help feeling there was something vaguely shameful and disturbing about getting rid of the flowers, without having heard a word from Mia. ‘Do you think we should notify the police?’ she wondered out loud to Celeste for about the hundredth time as she handed her a roll of large black bin liners. For all the reasons spoken and unspoken (bad publicity, tax avoidance, not wanting to be caught up in a domestic scandal or the personal affairs of clients), Meghan was averse to the idea of calling in the police but there was a sense of unfinished business that held her back from disposing of the flowers entirely.

  In the end, Celeste came up with a solution. There was a skip just outside the entrance to the backyard that was being used for the debris from some building work that Meghan was getting done in the flat above the shop to update the kitchen and the bathroom.

  ‘Look there are too many flower arrangements to fit in the bins anyway. Keep the bags. I’ll just carry out them out to the skip. It’s going to be there for a few weeks. That way, (if you insist on being melodramatic about this), we won’t be accused of “destroying the evidence” or anything like that, if the police come calling!’ She put on a mock dramatic voice to show Meghan that she was being ironic. ‘And also, if Mia turns up this afternoon asking for her flowers, we’ve still got them. She can help herself.’ There was no doubt that she was being disingenuous now.

  The next day was Friday so Celeste went into college for her regular digital design and marketing course. When Meghan unlocked the premises at just after six o’clock in the morning, she found an envelope lying on the doormat. It was a plain white A3 envelope with just one word written on it. ‘Celeste.’

  Meghan was burning with curiosity but resisted the urge to rip it open. She tried texting Celeste to let her know a missive had arrived for her, but the message wouldn’t go through. Then she remembered that it was college policy to require students to switch off their phones during classes.

  ‘I’ll just have to wait until she gets here this afternoon,’ Meghan muttered to herself crossly.

  The minute Celeste stepped through the door that afternoon, Meghan handed her the envelope.

  ‘This arrived for you overnight. It was posted through the door before I got here this morning – hand delivered – there’s no stamp,’ said Meghan.

  Celeste turned the envelope over in her hand uncertainly.

  ‘Well come on then, open it!’ urged Meghan. ‘It must be from Mia.’

  ‘Let me get through the door, at least,’ said Celeste.

  She hung up her jacket and put her handbag on the shelf in the office. Meghan followed her in and stood by her side expectantly. Celeste unsealed the envelope and pulled the letter partly out so that only the opening few lines were visible.

  ‘It’s not from Mia,’ she said. Meghan was hovering in anticipation of some revelation.

  Hello,

  I’m in London for the next few days. Just got your deets from Jessi who also tells
me you are now an award-winning florist. Many congratulations! Joe, Ed, and I and no doubt others are going to Surrey Grammar School old boys’ drinks at the RAC Epsom early evening on 27th May. Why not come too? Deets on their website. It would be good to catch up… it’s been almost seven years!

  Celeste couldn’t help smiling at the word ‘deets’. Still the same old ‘try-hard’ Harry! Even before she glanced at the signature, she could guess who it was from.

  At that moment the bell above the door rang as a client entered the shop.

  ‘I’ll get it,’ she said hastily, keen to get away from Meghan’s questioning eyes. She stuffed the note into the front pocket of her Seventh Heaven apron and went through to the shop to serve.

  ‘How can I help you?’ she said, with a bright smile.

  *

  When she got back to the flat that evening Celeste tapped on Jessi’s door.

  ‘You didn’t tell me Harry was in London,’ she said. Jessi looked sheepish. ‘Yes, I didn’t want to upset you, stir things up, you know…’

  Celeste shrugged. ‘I’ve got to move on from that,’ she said. ‘Put the ghosts to rest.’ There was a steely edge to her voice and a new intensity in her eyes. She walked into Jessi’s room and sat on her bed.

  ‘He’s asked me to meet him,’ she said.

  ‘That’s so exciting. You should go,’ said Jessi. ‘I heard he always had a bit of thing about you when we were at school… if Ben hadn’t muscled in…’

  ‘Let’s look him up then.’ Jessi’s phone was on the bed. ‘I’ve deleted my Facebook – you do it,’ said Celeste throwing the phone across to Jessi.

  Celeste looked over Jess’s shoulder as she scrolled back through Harry’s Facebook feed. As Celeste was vaguely aware, Harry had been seconded to New York a couple of years previously to work for the US office of one of the UK investment banks. Being a fellow ‘Englishman in New York’ it seemed from his Facebook posts as if Harry and Ben hung out quite a bit together in the bars and the clubs around Tribeca and trendy eateries in Chelsea Market, Greenwich Village and SoHo.

  ‘I thought they’d had a big falling out after…’ Celeste couldn’t bring herself to finish the sentence. ‘After he was expelled, he told me he never wanted anything more to do with…’ She couldn’t bring herself to mention Ben’s name either.

  It felt like a betrayal to Celeste, seeing all those pictures on Harry’s Facebook feed of the pair of them downing beers and propping up the bars of fashionable establishments in every corner of NYC. Harry was the one boy in Ben’s macho gang who had broken ranks and been a good friend to Celeste when she had begun to re-emerge from the wreckage of her life wrought by the fire.

  ‘Well, they’re big buddies now,’ said Jessi. ‘I guess all the expats hang together. It’s good to see a familiar face when you’re far from home.’ Jessi continued flicking through the feed at great pace until suddenly her finger stopped dead on one of the posts.

  ‘Oh my God!’ she squealed. ‘Look at this.’ Jessi tapped the screen.

  The picture was of a group of guys, all looking the worse for wear, sitting round a table in a sleazy pole-dancing venue (judging by the glittery poles and podiums in the background). Harry and Ben were in the front of the shot – arms around each other’s shoulders, flanked by a ‘hostess’ on each side, a big leery grin on Ben’s face and a slightly pained look on Harry’s.

  Celeste read out the comments to the post Jessi was pointing at.

  ‘#bestman’ ‘#bridegroomBen’ ‘#legend’ ‘@polecatslondon’

  ‘So, Ben’s getting married,’ said Celeste slowly. ‘This must be his stag night and Harry must be his best man.’ She said the words out loud, mechanically and without betraying her emotions. But a different tag word for her old friend Harry seared inside her head, as if written with a red-hot poker:

  ‘#traitor’

  When Celeste stood up to leave Jessi’s room, she was struck with a thought that drained the blood from her head, leaving her dizzy and faint.

  ‘Oh my God! I’ve been such an idiot,’ she said. ‘I can’t believe I didn’t put two and two together. But now it all makes perfect horrible sense… What’s the date on that post?’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ said Jessi while Celeste dropped back down onto the bed. ‘Now you’re not making any sense.’

  ‘My American bride, Mia Madison – that poor girl, she got herself in such a state about the wedding flowers. Her fiancé seemed to exert so much emotional control over her. I think she was terrified of doing anything wrong. Now I feel almost certain that Ben Johnson is the man she was supposed to marry last week – at the Chelsea Register office. No one turned up to collect her flowers. I think maybe she finally worked up the courage to run away from him.’

  ‘My God,’ said Jessi. ‘That’s such a bizarre coincidence. How come you didn’t make the connection before?’

  ‘Mia never told me his name,’ said Celeste, ‘It didn’t even cross my mind it could be him. Meghan was taking Mia’s money “off balance sheet” so we didn’t write anything up in the company books – that’s partly why she got me to deal with it all so informally, writing up all the details in my notebooks instead of, as usual, in the Seventh Heaven Wedding Bookings Ledger.’

  ‘When did you find out her fiancé was treating her badly?’ said Jessi, eager to find out every detail.

  ‘I’ve known that for weeks, though she refused point blank to reveal his identity. Mia was always trying to make excuses for him,’ said Celeste. ‘She told me he was he was going through a period of stress at work and had problems with “anger management”. She blamed herself for everything. But then the last time I saw her the other night, things had got even worse. It wasn’t just coercive control. He was abusing her physically. I tried to persuade her to go to the police. She let me take pictures of her bruises but then she changed her mind and started back tracking. She said it was ‘rough sex’ that had got a bit rougher than she expected. She was still determined to go ahead with the wedding. I think she didn’t want her family to know that her marriage was broken before it had even begun. They had been so against the relationship in the first place that she didn’t want to prove them right. She still thought she could fix him. She was in love with him. She thought he would change… once the baby arrived… once they were married… He had promised to go to therapy for his anger issues and never to force her into rough sex again. The control that he exerted over her was so absolute that I think she had lost all agency and objectivity. She kept trying to rationalise his behaviour… just couldn’t see that the way he was treating her was an outrage.’

  Jessi was busy scrolling back through Ben’s feed while she listened to Celeste.

  Suddenly she stopped. It was a post, several months back, with a selfie photograph taken in New York from the top of the Empire State Building. The woman standing beside him was pretty and blonde.

  Celeste looked at the screen.

  ‘That’s Mia Madison.’

  Ben hadn’t given her name in the post, only the hashtag:

  #SheSaidYes

  PAST

  40

  Perversely, just when she is most in need of support from her friends, Celeste’s personal tragedy makes her a social pariah. Nobody wants to be tainted by it, nobody wants to be implicated in it, nobody knows what to say. They circle away and close ranks.

  At school Celeste has no one she can turn to for comfort or support. Her so-called ‘friends’ feel awkward in her presence. They are all devastated and shocked into silence about what happened to Tom but on the topic of what happened in the boathouse, they all have something to say. They take sides. Of course, they pick Ben. He’s more powerful than her. They ‘slut-shame’ her for the nudes – even the girls – who should know better. The online ‘chats’ are on fire with comments from both the boys and the girls. Instead of calling out Ben, they call out Celeste for the way she behaved at the party. ‘She was drunk…’ ‘She was stoned…’ ‘She was bounc
ing off the walls…’ ‘She jumped on him…’ ‘She had her tits out all night…’ (Yes, she was wearing a low-cut bodycon, but ‘tits out’? Really?)

  One girl ventures to use the term ‘date rape’ but only to minimise what happened in the woods. All the others close her down anyway. ‘What did she expect when she went down to the boathouse…?’ ‘She took off his shirt…’ ‘She undid his belt…’ ‘She could have said no…’ ‘She was gagging for it…’ (That’s a direct quote from Ben.)

  Everyone seems to have a better recollection of what happened in the boathouse than Celeste herself! They all seem to have forgotten that she is still in on the chats. It’s only weeks later that she scrolls back and reads through the poison and then she deletes herself from them all.

  Ben’s parents put up a huge great solid wall in front of Ben to prevent him from any contact with Celeste. When he’s not at school, he’s grounded at home. They take away his phone and lock up the car keys. Ben’s mum, Miranda, used to act like she was Celeste’s surrogate mum, but Miranda hasn’t offered her a word of condolence or sympathy since the fire. She blames Celeste for burning down her house.

  When the police liaison officer gets involved, Miranda goes on the attack – a ferocious animal guarding her pup. She knows how to shape the narrative, just like Ben. She already found the nudes Celeste sent to Ben a week before the fire. She’s in the habit of checking his phone. She also knows that within thirty minutes of receiving them, he forwarded every image to every member of the rugby team. Of course, Miranda keeps that information to herself. But she decides it’s better to discredit Celeste before Stacey starts making accusations against her adored youngest son. In a pre-emptive strike she discloses the images to the police officer and to the school. Three weeks after the fire, the headmaster calls a meeting. Celeste’s mother is no match for Ben’s mother. A broken heart and alcohol and opioids have addled Stacey’s brain.