Before the Fire (3 page)

‘You’re a fucking knobhead,’ Stick laughed. He touched his fist against Mac’s and followed him inside. ‘Hi, Mrs McKinley.’ He nodded to Mac’s ma, who
sat on the sofa, a cup of tea in one hand, her phone in the other.

‘Kieran. Looking smart. How are you? All packed?’

‘Yup.’

‘Your man here’s got some dressing-up plans for you both tonight.’

Stick narrowed his eyes at Mac.

‘Yeah, yeah, I know. But you’re going to love it, seriously,’ Mac said.

Mrs McKinley tipped back her head and laughed. She had nice teeth. Stick thought about telling her so, but didn’t.

‘I’ve been teaching Ma Bubble Breaker,’ Mac said.

She held up her phone. ‘I’m better at that than the helicopter one.’

‘Got to keep her occupied while we’re living it up in Spain,’ Mac said.

Maybe Mrs McKinley could be mates with his mum. Stick tried to picture them sitting together on the black sofa, his mum’s feet on the hot-pink rug, drinking a cup of tea, a fag in one
hand.

‘You all right, man?’ Mac asked, beckoning Stick towards the kitchen.

Stick shrugged, took the half-bottle of vodka out of his back pocket and waggled it at Mac.

‘Don’t mind if I do.’ Mac cracked the top and took a long swig. Stick did the same and felt the sting down his throat and across his chest. Mac’s kitchen was about as big
as the one at Stick’s, except Mac’s had a hatch in the wall so you could look through into the living room where Mrs McKinley was still frowning at her phone.

‘You packed then?’ Stick asked.

‘Ma did it.’

Stick raised his eyebrows, and Mac snorted. ‘You never think more than five minutes ahead, Iain,’ he said, mimicking his ma; then, in his own voice, ‘There’s like
first-aid kits and I don’t even know what in there.’ He took another drink, placed both coconuts on the draining board and took a knife out of the drawer. ‘Do you know birds
sunbathe topless in Spain?’ He gave an exaggerated sigh. ‘It’s, like, compulsory.’

Stick reached around Mac and took one of the coconuts, threw it up and caught it, rough and dry against his palm. ‘Your ma’s all right then,’ he said. ‘About you
going?’

Mac started moving his knife across the remaining coconut. ‘Yours kicking off?’

‘She’s back doing that thing with the plugs.’

Mac pulled a face. ‘She’ll be all right,’ he said. ‘Seriously, she’ll be fine. You worry too much, man.’

Stick looked through the hatch at Mac’s ma. The sun was directly on her, lighting up the edges of her hair – the same pale blonde as Mac’s. He took a swig of vodka. ‘And
my dad’s on my case, like it’s any of his fucking business what I do with my life. “You’ve got to have a plan, Kieran. You’re nearly eighteen, you need to think about
the future.” Mac, you can’t cut it like that.’

‘Well, how the fuck else do they get them in half? Come on, I need a drum roll.’

Stick tapped his fingers on the top of the fridge.

‘Ladies and gentlemen.’ Mac raised his voice. ‘You are about to witness something never seen before.’ He took the second coconut from Stick and laid it next to the first
on the draining board, then lifted the knife in both hands, the handle level with his eyes. ‘I will create not one but two sets of beautiful squeezable titties from these ugly, brown, hairy
fruit.’

‘Nut.’

‘What?’

‘It’s a nut, and I’m not wearing them if that’s your big plan.’

Mac screwed up his forehead until his pale eyebrows almost met and brought the knife down hard. A coconut ricocheted away and the blade clashed against the draining board.

‘Fucking hell.’ He held out the knife towards Stick. ‘Shitty tools.’

Stick laughed. ‘You going to pull Lainey then?’

Mac grinned. ‘If she’s lucky.’

‘If you’re lucky.’

‘I’m a catch, man.’ Mac retrieved the coconut and went back to his sawing, his whole body wobbling with the effort of it.

‘You’re a chubber,’ Stick said.

Mac grabbed his stomach with both hands. ‘The ladies love it! Plus I am going to look hot once I’ve sorted these fuckers out.’

Stick drank vodka and listened to the
scratch scratch scratch
of the blade.

‘He’s all right, your dad,’ Mac said. ‘Least he tries.’

Stick put the bottle down and started opening and closing the cupboard doors. ‘You need something heavy,’ he said, pulling out a bowl that looked like it was made from stone, or
concrete. Weighed a ton. ‘You need to whack it with something heavy.’

Mac stepped out of the way. ‘Don’t wreck anything.’

Stick held the bowl in both hands and brought it down with a thud on one of the coconuts. The whole kitchen shook.

‘Iain?’ Mrs McKinley shouted through.

Mac pulled a face. ‘It’s under control,’ he shouted back.

Stick slammed the bowl down again. Everything in the cupboards rattled. The coconut rocked, but stayed whole.

‘Do you remember he bought you that stuffed rabbit and we torched it?’ Mac said, and chuckled.

Stick bashed the coconut again and this time he felt it give a little. ‘I was twelve. Who buys a twelve-year-old a stuffed rabbit?’ The two of them standing by the canal,
Stick’s breath high and fast. The smell of burning plastic. The eyes refused to melt, so Mac found a stone and smashed them into tiny orange and black pieces. They’d thrown what was
left into the water, watched it float for a second, and then sink, until all they could see was a dark shape like a shadow, down in the green-grey water. Later, when Stick was in bed, he’d
remembered the plastic fur singeing and melting, and had to curl himself into a tight ball to stop himself feeling sick.

‘It stank,’ Stick said.

‘Yeah, and you started guilt-tripping halfway through and tried to put it out.’

‘Did not.’

‘Did too.’

‘Yeah, well, he’s a dick anyway.’ Stick brought the bowl down again and this time the coconut cracked properly. When he held it up, a thin line of water dribbled down his
arm.

‘Fucker’s bleeding,’ Mac said and laughed.

Stick bashed at it again, until it split – the curved insides wet and white and perfect.

‘Do you reckon the doctor could do something?’ Stick said.

Mac took the coconut halves and held them against his chest. ‘An enlargement?’ he asked, laughing.

‘About my mum and the plugs. Do you think it’s like a medical thing?’

Mac lowered his hands and shrugged. ‘Maybe.’ They were silent for a moment and then Mac said, ‘Don’t think about it, man. Not tonight. Come on, I’ve got shirts,
flip-flops, sunglasses. I’ve got a fucking blow-up parrot.’

He danced out of the kitchen and Stick followed him, down the dark, narrow corridor to his bedroom, with its long window looking out over the estate towards the jagged buildings of the city
centre.

Stick took a turquoise shirt patterned with huge yellow-petalled, red-tongued flowers from the crowded bed. ‘Where did you get all this shit?’

‘Man’s got contacts.’ Mac tapped the side of his nose.

Stick picked up a string of blue plastic flowers. ‘Is anyone else even dressing up?’

‘Course.’

Stick walked to the window, still holding the flowers. Everything looked smaller from up here: the scrappy bit of grass at the back of the block; the flag hanging off the side of the
Queen’s; the moss-stained roofs of all the houses that looked the same as Stick’s – the McCauleys’, the Sweeneys’, the Stevens’s. But the sky looked bigger,
bright blue and dotted with white clouds. Sophie used to spend ages staring at clouds then prod him in the arm and shout – an elephant, look, an elephant! Or a cat, or a mouse, or a tiger.
They were always animals. He could never see them when she pointed – there, that’s the trunk, the tail, its ears, oh, but it’s gone. Stick rested his forehead against Mac’s
window and examined one cloud after another, but they just looked like blobs.

‘You want green or red?’ Mac was holding up a pair of shorts in each hand.

‘I don’t wear shorts.’

‘We’re going to Spain. It’ll be boiling.’

Stick glared at him until Mac rolled his eyes and threw Stick a skirt made out of strips of creased beige plastic. ‘Put that on over your jeans then.’

Stick threw it back. ‘You’re gay, you know that.’

‘And you’re a dickhead. Come on, girls love this stuff. They’ll all be in bikinis. We’ll drink shots. You might even get laid.’ He looked at Stick and then his
shoulders dropped. ‘Come on?’

Stick looped the blue plastic flowers over his head and Mac grinned.

‘That’s better. Your mum’ll be fine, mate, I promise. And tonight’ll be a blast, and then tomorrow –’ he held up his arm in a Superman pose – ‘we
head for the sea.’

‘I ironed this fucking shirt,’ Stick said, but he unbuttoned it all the same and put the turquoise one on instead. What did it matter? Tomorrow they were out of there.

The shirt would have fitted Mac but it hung loose on him. Stick chose a pair of glasses with blue plastic rims and smeary lenses. The flowers scratched at the back of his neck. He looked like a
knob.

Mac wore three strings of flowers, two grass skirts over his shorts, a straw hat tilted to one side and a pair of pink sunglasses. Stick helped him tie the coconuts on with gaffer tape and
string.

‘More is more,’ he said when Stick started laughing. ‘At least I look like I mean it.’

Mac’s ma howled with laughter too when they walked into the living room, Mac strutting about saying, ‘
Hola, senorita bella, veinte cervezas por favor
.’

‘Can you tell him?’ Stick said. ‘We can’t go out like this.’

‘You look cracking,’ she said. ‘Both of you.’

She made them pasta with a thick creamy sauce and strips of salty bacon. ‘Line your stomachs,’ she said. ‘I saw you with that vodka.’ She winked at Stick and he held his
hand to his face to hide the colour in his cheeks. He was just like his dad, always reddening up. It did his head in.

They crossed Queen’s Road and cut through the back streets to Rochdale Road, finishing off the vodka at the bus stop. Everyone kept staring at them but Mac didn’t
seem to give a shit. When a white-van driver blasted his horn, his two mates leaning out of the window, laughing, Mac just fondled his coconuts and shouted ‘Want a lick?’ Stick
wondered, sometimes, how one person could be so different from another.

The vodka helped though, the way it always did, making him softer and easier than he actually was. On the bus, he sat next to Mac and managed to half smile at the people who grinned and made
comments. He lowered the sunglasses over his eyes so everything darkened, and looked out of the window: a patch of tall grasses and yellow flowers where there used to be a shop or maybe a house;
Cash for Scrap signs in front of a low-slung brick building; a nothingy sort of a park with a path cut through the middle of it and daisies dotting the grass. And then ahead, down the hill –
Manchester.

Some idiot had spread sand over the floor of the bar. It might have looked good before anyone arrived, but now it was gathered in thin, dirtied lines and Stick could feel it
scratch against the bottoms of his trainers. Mac walked in and roared with laughter. ‘Fucking genius. Love it!’ he said. Plastic starfish wedged between the bottles of spirits; beach
balls set loose amongst the crowd; the bar staff in bikini tops mixing blue cocktails; Ibiza anthems. Pretty much everyone had dressed up. Lainey in a red bikini top and black hot pants, Aaron and
Malika with matching pink flower garlands down to their knees. Shooter dressed as a pirate for some reason – eyepatch, black hat, wide-sleeved white shirt. Even Ricky had a cocktail umbrella
shoved through his top buttonhole.

Stick headed for the bar. Double shot for the price of a single. He got a quadruple, with Coke, and a thin yellow straw that reminded him of being a kid.

‘Gets you drunk faster.’

Stick turned. It was a girl he didn’t know in a blue sequinned top, her face already blurred with drink.

‘Through a straw,’ she said, lurching towards him a little and then steadying herself against the bar. ‘It gets it in your bloodstream quicker.’ She frowned.
‘Something like that. I’m Stacey.’ Her hand was on his forearm, Nan tattooed on the bit of skin between her thumb and forefinger.

‘Stick.’

‘Stick?’ She scrunched up her nose.

‘Kieran. Whatever.’ He’d almost finished his drink, the straw making sucking noises in between the ice cubes.

‘Is that cos you’re skinny?’

Stick shrugged.

‘I’ve always wanted a nickname. Stace, that’s like the best there is for me. You can’t just come up with it yourself though, can you? Someone’s got to give it to
you, or it doesn’t stick. Stick.’ She grinned at her own joke. ‘You getting another one of them?’ She pointed at his glass.

Stick shrugged. She tipped her head to one side and batted her eyes at him, fake eyelashes like curling spiders’ legs.

‘I’ve got a trip to save for,’ he said, but ordered two doubles with Coke and ice all the same.

‘Where you going?’ She leaned on the bar, both elbows in front of her so her tits squeezed together.

‘Malaga.’ Stick looked at her cleavage, the soft flesh either side, and felt his cock twitch.

She nodded. ‘It’s all right there.’

‘Yeah?’ He handed her one of the drinks.

She put the straw between her lips and sucked. ‘Went last year. With my parents.’ She rolled her eyes. ‘Which was, like, annoying. But I got a tan. Met a couple of nice
guys.’ She smiled.

‘We’re driving. Me and –’ Stick looked over to where Mac and Lainey were dancing hip to hip – ‘him.’

She frowned. ‘Why? It’s like two hours on a plane.’

Because that wasn’t the point. Because the journey was the point. Because he’d never left Manchester, he’d never been anywhere, he’d never even been to the fucking
seaside. And if they drove, then he’d have been to all those places, not just Manchester and Malaga, he’d have been everywhere in between.

‘It was a bet kind of thing,’ he said. ‘We were pissed.’ Which was also true, him and Mac shit-faced, Mac punching the air and saying, ‘Let’s go, let’s
get out of here.’

‘We’re going for ages,’ he said. ‘Months. It’s like a trip, not a holiday.’