Before the Fire (19 page)

His dad coughed and Stick looked up.

‘We’re all waiting,’ his dad said.

That snap again, like a ligament breaking. ‘You fucking apologise,’ Stick said.

‘I beg your pardon?’ His dad took his arm away from Stick’s mum’s shoulder.

‘I said, why don’t you fucking apologise?’ Stick kept his voice and his stare as steady as he could and felt a prickle of satisfaction when he saw the realisation on his
dad’s face.

‘I haven’t done anything wrong,’ he said, quietly.

‘Right.’ Stick nodded. ‘You hear that, Mum? No harm done. He just forgot to come home one day. Could have happened to anyone.’

Stick’s nan and Alan started gathering up plates and foil containers; they both slunk out towards the kitchen.

‘Kieran, this is not the time,’ his dad started.

‘No, it never is, is it?’

Another bang, as loud as the first. Stick stared at his mum and the two limp bits of coloured rubber behind her.

‘I will not have this. You.’ She pointed to Stick. ‘Upstairs.’

Stick shook his head. ‘So you’re on his side now?’

‘There are no sides,’ his dad said.

‘Upstairs.’ Stick’s mum pointed at the door.

‘I’m eighteen!’

‘Well, you’re not acting that way.’

Stick’s head throbbed like it could burst as easily as the balloons. He needed Mac to sit him on the sofa, put a can of beer in his hand and turn the TV on. He needed Mac to punch him in
the arm and tell him to get the fuck over himself.

‘I’m out of here,’ he said, lifting the car keys from his pocket. ‘I’m going.’

‘Look, we’re all tired and emotional, we just need to sit down like grown-ups and talk about this,’ his dad said. His cheeks were bright red and he was patting Stick’s
mum’s arm like she was a cat.

Stick shook his head, a laugh snaking up from his stomach to his mouth. ‘You can’t stop me.’ He pushed past his dad into the hallway, his mum following close behind.

‘You’re high!’ she said. ‘You are not driving.’

‘I said, you can’t stop me.’

‘I can call the police.’ She picked up her phone from the hallway table.

‘Everyone just needs to calm down.’ Stick’s dad held up both arms, like a drowning man.

‘Bet you wish you were back with your other family, don’t you?’ Stick said.

‘Kieran, you’re acting like a child. Your mum’s right, you need to go upstairs, sleep off whatever you’ve been taking and then perhaps you’ll see fit to apologise
to everyone in the morning.’

Stick opened the front door. He looked back at his parents, his mum standing close to his dad, his hand back around her shoulder, Stick’s nan and Alan hovering behind them. They
didn’t need him and he definitely didn’t need them. He half ran down the steps onto the street.

As he approached the shit Ford Fiesta, Alan appeared behind him and snatched the car keys.

Stick held out his hand. ‘Give them back.’

Alan shook his head. ‘Tomorrow,’ he said, then walked to his own car and opened the back door. ‘Hop in.’

‘Fuck off.’

‘Come on.’ Alan sounded like he was on some shit chat show. ‘You’ve been taking what, mushrooms? LSD? We don’t need any accidents. You can stay at ours, sleep it
off. Tomorrow’s a new day.’

Stick felt suddenly exhausted. ‘Fine.’ He got in and slammed the door.

Stick’s nan got in too, fussed with her seat belt before twisting around and looking at Stick. He stared at J’s writing on his hand, and she turned back without saying anything. They
drove to Beswick in silence, Stick gazing out of the window, narrowing his eyes until the street lights and the car lights blurred.

It was a stand-off. His mum calling and Stick not answering. His dad calling and Stick not answering. Neither of them calling. His mum calling again. And his nan in the middle,
saying no, I won’t get involved, you can stay for a week, OK two, but then you’ve got to sort this out yourselves. Alan saying it was like harbouring a fugitive and trying to get Stick
to come to his Monday art class – it’s fabulous, he said, we’re just free, we paint what we like. He came home the first week with an ugly painting of Manchester, the buildings
grey and black, their edges at weird angles; the second week with what he called a still life – a pile of fruit on a bumpy tablecloth.

The first two times he called J, no one answered. The third time, a man with a faint African accent picked up the phone.

‘Is J there?’ Stick stumbled over his words.

‘Who?’

‘J?’

‘You have the wrong house.’ He put the phone down before Stick could say anything more.

He waited five minutes and then called again. This time J picked up.

‘Stick? Sorry.’ She was speaking in little more than a whisper.

‘Is J not your name then?’

‘Course it is. How did it go, the birthday dinner thing?’

Stick was in his nan’s spare room. Everything was cream-coloured – the thick puffy duvet, the bedside table, the lamp and its tassled shade, the wallpaper with its pattern of huge
pale ferns. ‘Not brilliant,’ he said. ‘I’m at my nan’s.’

‘As in living at your nan’s?’

‘Yeah,’ Stick said. He hated talking on the phone. As soon as you stopped speaking the silence started, and he never quite knew how to get out of it. ‘It’s Mac’s
birthday,’ he said. ‘We were going to hire mopeds.’

Another silence. And then J said, ‘Do you want to come round?’

‘Your dad—?’

‘He’s going out. Come in an hour.’

Stick caught himself smiling.

J lived in a little bungalow in Cheetham Hill with plaster gnomes and dogs arranged in rows on the front lawn. Inside, it was like an antique shop, stuffed full of crystal
rabbits and painted cherubs and plates with pictures of animals, and glass bottles with tiny glass stoppers. It made him nervous he’d make too big a move, too wide a gesture, and send the
whole thing tumbling, but she laughed and said not to worry – none of it meant anything, none of it was important.

Her room looked like it wasn’t part of the same house. Each wall was painted a different colour: black, purple, green, orange; the ceiling bright blue and dotted with glowin-the-dark
stars. A single bed with plain white sheets. A desk with books and papers stacked neatly around an old-looking laptop. A white wardrobe. A white chest of drawers with a rainbow of nail varnish
across its top. Black carpet, black curtains. The walls empty except for an unframed mirror above the chest of drawers and a photo of a blonde woman Blu-Tacked up next to the bed.

J stood by the wardrobe. He wanted to kiss her, but when he stepped forwards she held her hand up and said, ‘He was more than just a dickhead.’

‘What?’

She hitched her shoulders towards her ears. ‘My ex. He was—’ She scratched at the top of her arm. ‘He was – I don’t know, a bully?’ She glanced at Stick
and then looked back at the floor. ‘He put a thing on my phone so he always knew where I was.’

Stick backed away and sat on the bed. ‘What thing?’

She shrugged. ‘Like a tracker. He could see where I was on a map on his phone.’

‘But why would—’

‘I had to text him where I was, who I was with, what I was doing.’

He wanted to put his hand on hers so she’d stop scratching, but he stayed where he was.

‘He’d flip out if I talked to other blokes.’ She shrugged. ‘It was shit.’

Stick didn’t know what to say.

‘So that’s why,’ she said after an age. ‘Why I punched you that first time. Why I don’t have a phone.’ She moved one hand in his direction and then went back
to scratching at her arm. ‘I mean, I’m all right, but—’

Stick nodded. ‘Sounds like a cock, like you said.’

She let out a laugh.

‘I wouldn’t do that, you know.’ Now he sounded like a cock, but she smiled and nodded and said:

‘I know.’

‘You dumped him?’ Stick asked. ‘Didn’t he freak?’

She flicked her tongue against the silver stud in her lip. ‘My dad got involved,’ she said at last. ‘It was complicated.’

He stood up, walked across the room and kissed her.

She kissed him back, then pulled away and looked at him. ‘I’m sorry about Mac,’ she said, and then she slipped her arms up and around Stick’s neck. He drew her close. She
felt like a bird – her body warm and fragile against his.

Two weeks after his birthday his mum called, and this time his nan came to the door of the spare room, her face grave, and said, ‘You’d better talk to
her.’

Stick was in bed. He shoved the duvet down towards his stomach and took the phone.

‘It’s Trish McKinley,’ his mum said.

For a minute, he thought Mac’s ma had killed herself. He could imagine it – an empty bottle of pills by her bed; or her leaning back from the balcony until she lost her balance and
fell.

‘Is this a trick?’ he said.

‘A trick?’

‘You just want me on the phone?’

‘It’s the case, Kieran.’

He felt his stomach dip-dive.

‘Hang on.’ He could hear someone talking to his mum and the rustle of her hand held over the receiver. ‘Something about DNA,’ she said, eventually. ‘Will you
come?’

Stick said he would and then hung up and sat staring at the curtains, the shape of the dream catcher just visible behind them – a circle made out of wood, with red thread like a
spider’s web, scratty feathers and beads hanging off the bottom. Sophie would have loved that, he thought, the idea that you could filter out the bad dreams and they’d just disappear
when the sun rose.

Alan drove him to his mum’s house. It’s no bother, no trouble, I’m happy to, he said, and Stick said thanks, got in the car and tried not to think the whole
way there.

Stick’s mum didn’t try to hug him, just ushered them through to where Mrs McKinley sat at the table with a cup of tea and a plate of chocolate biscuits, both untouched. Stick and
Alan sat down opposite her. She looked at them and ground her lips together like she was trying not to cry. Every time she started to speak the words came out in a tangle of sobs, so Stick’s
mum had to explain.

‘Inconclusive,’ she said. ‘The DNA tests came back inconclusive.’

Like two ribbons twisted together, that was all Stick could remember about DNA. He watched one tear and then another run down Mac’s ma’s cheeks.

‘They’ll still serve the evidence,’ Stick’s mum said. ‘Isn’t that right, Trish?’

Mrs McKinley looked up and smiled weakly.

Stick’s mum caught his eye. ‘On Friday,’ she said. ‘But it doesn’t look good. Not any more.’

Stick tried to make his brain work. ‘The threads,’ he said. ‘There were threads.’

Mrs McKinley sniffed and wiped her hand across her face.

‘Marks and Spencer’s,’ Stick’s mum said. ‘It’s too common to prove guilt. Half the men in Manchester are wearing that jumper, it turns out.’

Stick hugged his arms across his chest to stop himself from shaking. ‘And the blood?’ he said. ‘There was blood on his shoes.’

‘Contaminated.’ Mrs McKinley’s voice sounded like a bell, like the ones they ring in churches, echoing around the walls. ‘He’d bleached them before they picked him
up.’ She looked at Stick with bloodshot eyes.

‘So, what? What now? He just walks?’

Stick’s mum took a sharp breath. ‘They’re still serving the evidence,’ she said. ‘Then the judge decides.’

‘And there are other tests,’ Mrs McKinley said. ‘Complicated ones. They take months, but—’

‘What does the judge decide?’ Stick asked.

His mum wouldn’t look at him. ‘Whether to carry on with the case,’ she said.

‘And if he says no?’ Stick swallowed hard. This couldn’t be happening.

‘Then they do the other tests and hope to recharge him,’ his mum said.

Stick pictured a heavy metal prison door pulled open and that man, Owen Lee, walking out of it, lifting his gaze up to the sky and smiling, like you would at a private joke. He shook his head.
‘They can’t,’ he said. ‘They can’t let him out.’

‘It’s not happened yet, love,’ his mum said. ‘It’s not happened yet.’

When Mrs McKinley got up to go, Alan stood too. ‘I’ll see you out, Trish,’ he said, putting his hand under her elbow. ‘Give you two a minute.’ He
nodded at Stick.

Stick’s mum sat down opposite him and reached her hand to cover his. She’d been biting her nails, the skin around them red and sore.

‘It’ll work out,’ she said. ‘It will.’

Stick stared at the table, the pale, slightly shiny wood, marked with the occasional scratch. The underside must still be covered in felt-tip scrawls from when he and Sophie used to drape a
duvet cover over it to make walls around them, sit there together and make shit up.

‘You don’t know that,’ he said.

She patted at his hand.

‘They don’t care,’ Stick said.

‘Who don’t?’

Stick flicked his hand towards the back door. ‘Anyone. Police, lawyers, all those cunts in suits.’

‘You care. We care.’

‘Fat lot of use that is.’ Stick heard the cat flap slap open-closed. When Babs came into the room he put out his hand and blew her kisses; she just looked at him and stalked off
towards the kitchen.

‘How’s your nan?’ his mum asked after a long pause.

Stick traced his finger in circles on the tabletop. ‘Fine.’

Alan and Mrs McKinley were still in the hallway, talking.

‘She looking after you?’

Stick nodded.

‘Bacon rolls in bed, right?’ His mum gave a forced smile, and when Stick didn’t respond she said, ‘Are you coming home?’

‘Want to rent out my room?’ He said it before he could stop himself and his mum jerked back as though he’d slapped her. He drew another circle on the tabletop and imagined
sitting on a coach, window seat, headphones on, rain on the glass, the movement rocking him so he was almost but not quite asleep.

‘Your dad said the job offer’s still there,’ she said.

‘I told you, I don’t want it. I told him.’

‘You’re going to have to start thinking about the future, love.’

He had been. He’d been lying on his nan’s sofa trying to think what the fuck he was going to do with his life but had got all of nowhere. Stick swallowed. ‘They can’t
throw the case out, Mum. How can they do that?’