Before the Fire (5 page)

His dad was talking into the phone. ‘Mandy, he’s here. It’s OK, he’s here.’ He was breathing loudly, like he’d been running. ‘She wants you.’ He
handed the phone over.

‘Mum? I was just out.’

She was sobbing.

‘I’m sorry, OK? I was just out. Mum, where are you?’ Stick waited, then gave the phone back. ‘I can’t hear what she’s saying.’

His dad held it to his ear, still watching Stick. ‘It’s all right, Mandy, come back. Come on back.’

Stick put his foot on the bottom stair. ‘I’m getting a shower.’

‘I think you’d better wait, Kieran. For your mum.’

Stick wanted to tell him to fuck off and stop sticking his nose in, but he felt too sick, too tired. He needed a drink. He needed to lie down. It was like there was a thick blanket between him
and the world.

He was in the kitchen downing a pint of water when his mum barged in, took the glass off him and reached up to hold his face, a hand on each cheek. Stick tried to breathe to one side so she
didn’t catch the stink of him. ‘Kieran. Kieran. Kieran.’ She just kept saying his name, like she’d lost it. Like she’d really actually lost it. ‘Kieran. Kieran.
Kieran.’ And then she dropped her hands to her sides and gave him a frightened look, standing there in her dressing gown with her hair all wild.

Stick took the glass off the side and finished the water, drinking too fast so it spilt down his chin. His mum was staring at him. ‘Tea,’ she said. ‘I’ll make us all a
cup of tea.’

‘I don’t drink tea.’ Stick looked at her. ‘You know I don’t drink tea. What the fuck’s going on?’ Something cut through the fug of his hangover.
‘Nan? Is it Nan?’

‘Your nan’s fine.’

Stick glanced at his dad, his shirt still misbuttoned. ‘You’re back with Dad?’

‘We need to talk to you, love. Why don’t we go and sit down?’ She took a packet of cigarettes out of her dressing-gown pocket, pulled one out, then pushed it back in again.

‘Mac?’ Stick said.

He knew, from the way she bit at her lower lip, the way her eyes slipped away from his face. Felt the weight of it like a sack of bricks pressing on top of him. He saw his mum’s mouth
move, heard her say, ‘He’s dead, love. He died. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.’ But the words stopped somewhere above him, like they were floating on the surface of a dirty
swimming pool and he was deep down below them.

He managed to turn and put his hands either side of the sink before throwing up. Thick beige puke, bitter with booze, specked with chunks of pasta from the night before.

‘There, love. There, there.’ His mum rubbed her hand up and down his back, like he was a kid.

Dead. Mac’s dead. It was like there was someone inside his head, shouting: Dead. Mac’s dead. But the car was outside the house, full of petrol, ready for them to get in and drive
away. His bag was upstairs, packed. Mac’s bag was in his flat, packed. There was a sofa and a bit of floor in a flat in Spain, waiting for them.

He threw up again – thinner and yellower this time – and stood staring at the mess in the metal bowl. He didn’t want to turn around. He wanted to stay there, with the stink of
himself, wearing Mac’s shirt with the ugly yellow flowers and their cherry-red tongues. His mum kept on rubbing along his spine.

‘I’m afraid he was stabbed, Kieran,’ his dad said.

‘We thought you were dead too, love. We thought they just hadn’t found you yet.’ His mum made a noise like someone had let out all the air from inside of her.

Stick laughed. It came out more like a dog’s bark. ‘Bollocks,’ he said. His voice sounded smaller than he’d meant it to. He turned round. They were staring at him like he
had a bomb strapped to his chest. ‘You’re talking shit,’ he said, louder. ‘This is some shit you’ve made up so I can’t go to Spain.’

‘They’ll find him.’ Stick watched his dad’s Adam’s apple jerk up and down as he swallowed, noticed the way the skin wrinkled at the sides of his neck.
‘They’ll find whoever did it.’

‘Shut up.’

His mum opened her mouth to speak.

‘I said, shut up.’ Stick was shouting now. ‘Both of you, shut up.’

His mum fretted at her dressing-gown belt with her fingertips.

‘Look.’ Stick took his phone out of his pocket. ‘I’m calling him. I’m calling him now.’

But Mac didn’t pick up. Stick listened to it ring and then heard the click as it went to Mac’s recorded message: ‘Dude, I’m busy. Sing me a tune. Laters.’ He hung
up.

His parents stood in the doorway looking at him, and it was like Sophie was in the room with them, everyone squashed so close together Stick couldn’t breathe. He remembered the night after
the fire, the house stinking of smoke and the three of them sitting in the living room with nothing to say. Neither his mum nor his dad could stop touching him, like they had to keep checking he
was there. Eventually he’d slipped upstairs, past Sophie’s door to his room, emptied his Lego onto the bed and then couldn’t decide what to build. They wish it was me, he’d
told himself over and over; they wish it was me, not Sophie.

‘Sweetheart, they will find who did it,’ his mum said.

‘No one’s done anything.’ He’d kill Mac himself when he turned up. Stick pictured it: Mac covered in tomato ketchup, laughing hard enough to choke – I got you, I
fucking got all of you.

‘Maybe a cup of tea,’ his mum said. ‘Sweet tea? You’re in shock.’

Stick turned back towards the sink where his puke still lay, wet and lumpy and stinking. His head was roaring, like when you open the car window on the motorway and can’t hear yourself
think.

His dad coughed. ‘The police will want to speak with you, Kieran.’

His mum coughed too. ‘They’ll want to know where you were,’ she said.

Stick stared out of the window at the shed door, its hinges brown with rust. He thought of the girl in the blue sequinned top, her lips around his cock, and slammed his fist hard against the
draining board. His mum snatched in a breath, but neither of them said anything. Eventually Stick turned around. ‘He’ll be at Lainey’s,’ he said. ‘Or asleep in a
bin.’ He tried to laugh but it came out sounding more like a sob.

‘Why don’t you come and sit down and I’ll get you a drink. A Coke?’ His mum’s voice was low and wheedling, like she was frightened of him.

‘I’m going over. I’m going to Mac’s.’ Stick pushed past them into the hallway.

‘Not now, love.’ His mum put her hand on his arm but he shrugged her off. ‘I don’t think now’s a good time. I mean, whoever did it’s still— And his poor
mother.’ She started to cry. Stick’s dad put his arm around her shoulder and pulled her towards him. Stick half ran out of the house, his legs flushed with adrenaline and his heart
thumping somewhere up near his throat. He and Mac were driving to Spain. They were leaving today.

He got himself to Mac’s block, through the double doors to the stairwell and then up to the fifth floor, where he ended up holding onto the rail and dry-retching until
his eyes watered. Mac’s flat was at the far end of the corridor but even from the stairs Stick could see the door was open, could hear people talking in low voices and a woman crying –
a thin, constant wail.

He stared at the dark scuffs on the corridor walls, the painted-over graffiti and the noticeboard with nothing on it. He told himself to keep walking, to go to the flat and get someone to
explain. But it was as though his skin had been replaced with ice – the thin kind that covered puddles over but cracked as soon as you touched it. He would break if he took another step.

It wasn’t until a policewoman came out of Mac’s flat and glanced towards Stick that he turned and walked back down the stairs and out into the too-bright day. Nothing looked right.
The grass was wrong. The fence around Mac’s block was wrong. The new apple trees with their curled green leaves were wrong.

He retraced his route but stopped at the red Ford Fiesta. Mac had bought it off eBay, like a chump. But it went OK. There was rust on the doors and they’d had to hoover out the inside;
their mess was fine – someone else’s wasn’t. They’d driven it to Mac’s aunt’s in Sheffield the weekend before – through the Peaks, over the Pennines, along
narrow twisting roads, Mac pretending he was a rally driver, and the hills stretching out on both sides, green and empty.

Inside, the car smelt like wet dog. Or maybe it was him. His phone kept bleeping. Lainey, Ricky, Shooter:
wtf? Have u heard?
He threw it into the footwell of the passenger seat and then
punched the steering wheel. In the end it turned out that punching the window was better; it hurt his knuckles and made more of a sound. Except the glass wouldn’t break, however hard he went
at it.

He was sitting with his head against the backrest and his eyes closed when he heard the passenger door open and someone get in. It was his dad, not Mac. He could tell from the way he was
breathing, but he kept his eyes shut all the same and imagined his friend sat next to him, his bag on his lap, his eyes bright, saying, ‘Come on, let’s go!’

Stick’s dad cleared his throat. ‘How are you doing?’ he said.

Stick stayed still.

‘Your mum’s worried about you.’ He paused. ‘I’m worried about you.’

Manchester — Birmingham — Dover — Calais — Tours — Bordeaux — Bilbao — Madrid — Malaga
. Stick listed the names in his head.

‘There’s a policeman at the house,’ his dad said.

Stick opened his eyes.

‘Are you ready to talk to him?’

‘I’ve not done anything wrong.’

‘No one’s saying that. They just need to get as much information as they can. Build up a picture of what might have happened.’

Stick in the toilets with a girl. Lainey crying. Mac walking out of the bar – I’m getting the bus, I’m going home. Tequila and Red Bull. Vodka and Coke.

His dad opened the car door. ‘Will you come in? I’ll stay with you.’

Stick stared out of the car windscreen at the plastic tractor still lying on its side in front of next door’s house. Everyone was acting like it had happened, like Mac was actually dead,
but he couldn’t be. Stick wasn’t dead so how could Mac be? The car was still there, the estate was still there, the sun was out. It didn’t make any sense.

‘You’re doing really well, Kieran,’ his dad said. ‘You just need to take it step by step.’

It was the notebook that got him. Not the polished shoes or the uniform or the serious face. It was the notebook – black, hard-backed, the pages crowded with blue biro
– that made him feel like he’d fallen over face first, except the ground wasn’t where he thought it was and he just kept on falling, his stomach pressed up against his ribs. And
then he was shaking, his teeth chattering like he’d been out in the rain and couldn’t get warm. The policeman put the notebook into his jacket pocket, like it was a phone or a packet of
fags, and said they could do it later, down at the station, when he was ready. That tomorrow was fine. That he should try and get some sleep. But Stick said no, he’d do it now. He held his
arms tight across his chest, each hand gripping the opposite elbow as if he was trying to keep himself from falling apart, and he answered the policeman’s questions. Who had been where. Who
had said what. We were pissed, he said. Everyone was pissed. We were celebrating. We were going away – today; we were supposed to be going away today. The policeman wrote it all down in his
notebook. Stick watched the blue words appear on the page and felt they couldn’t have anything to do with what had happened.

Once the policeman had gone, Stick went upstairs and stood under the shower with the water almost too hot to bear, examining the tiny blue dolphins on the bathroom tiles as if
they might tell him something if he looked at them for long enough. He stayed there until the water ran cold and when he finally got out, there was Mac’s shirt lying in a heap on the bathmat.
He had to kick it into the corner of the room and get out of there so he didn’t do something stupid.

He was almost at the front door, dressed in his grey trackies and a black T-shirt, when his mum appeared. She’d got dressed and brushed her hair but her eyes were still wild.

‘Kieran?’ She stood in front of him, her arms crossed.

‘I’m going out.’ He was going to Paget Street. That was the only thing the policeman had been able to tell him: it had happened on Paget Street, a five-minute walk away, on
their route home from the bus stop. He’d have gone the same way if he hadn’t fallen asleep. Stick pictured Mac running across Rochdale Road and taking a left, walking with his hands in
his pockets, whistling to himself – he did that, Mac, like he was an old man.

‘I don’t want you out there.’ She angled her head towards the door. ‘Not while that man’s—’

‘It’s like ten thirty in the morning, Mum.’

‘It’s not safe.’

‘I’m going out.’ He took a step towards her but she stayed where she was. Stick looked past her at the white front door with its four frosted panes of glass and felt a flicker
of panic in his chest. You can’t be dead, he said to himself – to Mac. You can’t have just fucked off. You wouldn’t do that.

‘You can’t stop me.’ His voice sounded crueller than he’d meant it to.

Little circles of red had appeared on her cheeks. ‘Your dad agrees. Gary!’ she shouted into the house.

Stick heard the toilet flush and his dad’s footsteps on the stairs. He saw the two of them exchange a glance.

‘Just until they’ve found whoever did it, son,’ his dad said.

‘So, what? You live here now? You can’t lock me up.’ He should be in the car, Mac mucking about with the radio, a bag of crisps open in his lap and a can of Coke balanced on
the dashboard. They should be laughing about last night: about Lainey; about the girl in the blue sequinned top; about Ricky getting kicked out. They should be driving with all the windows down,
the wind slamming against their arms and faces, heading south.

‘I’m not losing you too.’ His mum pressed her fingers against her mouth. ‘I’m not having it.’ Her eyes were red from crying and she looked small, standing
there in front of him.

He wanted, for a minute, to put his arms around her, but instead he squared his shoulders and lowered his voice and said, ‘Mum, I’m going out. I can look after myself.’