Before the Fire (9 page)

‘Fellow travellers.’ Alan appeared at the door to the kitchen. He was older than Stick’s nan, a small man with a tanned, wrinkled face. A long white top reached over his beer
belly and he had strings of beads and strips of leather around his neck and wrists. He held a glass bowl – the one Stick’s nan used for whisking eggs – filled with water, a
yoghurt pot floating on the surface. As he approached, he dunked the pot so it filled with water and before Stick could dodge, he had reached up and tipped it over Stick’s head.

Stick reared back, hand to his scalp. The water splashed down onto his nose, into the crease behind his left ear, over the front of his T-shirt.

‘Sun water.’ Alan smiled. ‘Opens the crown chakra. Clears the aura. Amanda?’ He turned to Stick’s mum.

‘It’s Mandy,’ she said. ‘And you’re all right.’

‘We were up at sunrise to make it,’ Alan said. ‘Feels good, doesn’t it, Kieran?’

‘Alan, I’m not—’ Stick’s mum protested, but Alan had already filled the yoghurt pot and now half threw it towards her. Water splashed against her face and she
spluttered and swore, wiping her hands across her eyes.

‘Now,’ Stick’s nan announced, as though everything was going to plan. ‘Come through.’ She led the way into the sitting room. ‘Sit, sit.’

Alan sat in the armchair by the electric fire, put his hands on his knees and leaned forwards. ‘Now, let me tell you about today. Today is about looking ahead, into tomorrow and everything
that will come. Kieran, we wanted you here because of Iain, because of what’s happened.’

Mac was dead and no one had a fucking clue who’d done it. Ricky said he’d been asking around but no one knew a thing.

‘This is a powerful time of the year. Things seem insurmountable. The world feels broken and terrifying and wrong. But we are powerful. We reach inside of ourselves and we find we are
powerful.’

Stick thought about J sitting up in the empty window frame, pointing at the rotting handbags –
they look like dead animals
– and him bollocking on about driving to Spain. He
couldn’t even hold it together to get past Birmingham.

‘Do you really believe this shit?’ he said, looking at his nan. Her cheeks flushed red and he felt immediately bad, but he couldn’t seem to stop himself. ‘Sun water and
shakers and bits of rock?’

‘Chakras,’ said Alan. He shook his head at Stick’s nan. ‘He’s angry, of course he’s angry,’ he said and then turned to Stick. ‘Of course
you’re angry, son.’

‘I’m not your son.’

‘Look, I’m not sure this is really a very good idea. Kieran’s still in shock. I shouldn’t have—’ Stick’s mum sat forwards on the sofa, but Alan held up
his hand and carried on.

‘Your friend Iain has simply passed over. He’s still close, just on the other side.’

Stick imagined Mac floating around on the other side of the window, farting and pulling faces and moving his mouth like he was trying to say something but knew Stick couldn’t hear through
the glass.

‘I know you think you’re helping, Alan—’ Stick’s mum tried again.

‘It’s a continuum, that’s what most people don’t realise.’ Alan pushed his palms against each other. ‘He’s been lifted from his body, but his
spirit—’ He moved his hands up and apart, fingers spread. ‘His spirit is free. That is a wonderful thing – to be released from time, from anxiety.’

‘Wonderful,’ Stick said, his voice quiet, his eyes fixed on Alan’s.

He could sense his mum watching him. ‘Maybe we should go. Love, do you want to go?’

‘It is really, actually, fucking wonderful that my best mate got stabbed and bled to death on his own in the dark, five minutes from his flat. And now he’s in a morgue and I’m
stuck in Manchester. That is pretty much the most wonderful thing I have ever heard.’

Alan just shook his head. ‘No, a tragedy. A terrible, terrible tragedy. But I want you to know that he’s here.’

Stick stood up. He could feel himself shaking. ‘He’s not fucking here. If he was here then I wouldn’t be here.’ He waved his arm to take in the room. ‘I’d be
in Spain, sat in a bar drinking beer, not here listening to your shit.’

‘Kieran, come on. We’ll go.’

Stick shook off his mum’s hand. ‘No,’ he said. ‘If Alan knows so much about everything, maybe he can tell me who killed Mac.’

‘Kieran, come on. We’ll get pizza. Watch a film, take your mind off it.’

Stick stared at Alan. ‘If Mac’s still here then he can say who killed him, right? So who did it?’

‘I’m afraid that kind of work’s a touch beyond my capabilities, young man,’ Alan said, like Stick had been joking. ‘I’ve a friend though,
who—’

‘Enough.’ Stick’s nan stood up, hands on her hips. ‘Enough.’ She pointed at the ugly brass clock sat on top of the electric fire. ‘It’s time,’ she
said. ‘And I for one have every intention of doing this. Kieran, I would very much like you to stay.’

Stick’s mum had started ushering him towards the door, but Stick looked at his nan, all dressed up and hopeful-looking, and imagined Mac stood by the electric fire shaking his head,
saying,
Stick, dude! Chill out, man
. His anger leached away as quickly as it had arrived and he sat down heavily on the sofa.

‘Will you stay?’ his nan asked.

Stick shrugged.

She smiled. ‘We’ll do it in the kitchen,’ she said. ‘I thought that would be best.’

It was, Alan explained, a compromise: a metal bowl of water with red and yellow food colouring dropped into it. ‘To represent the fire,’ he said. ‘Usually,
there’d be a fire. But we thought—’ He glanced at Stick’s mum and then smoothed his hair against his neck and stared at the water. ‘Fire symbolises the sun. We jump
over the fire and strengthen the power of the sun.’

Stick’s mum put her arm around his shoulders and squeezed. He didn’t step away. The food colouring did look a bit like swirls of smoke in the water, turning orange where one crossed
the other. The bowl was balanced on a wooden chopping board in the middle of the floor.

‘We jump,’ he said. ‘And then we write what we need – our wishes – and we burn them in the flames. You first, Kieran.’ Alan waved Stick towards the bowl.
‘Feet up. Knees up. Feel the power of the sun.’

Mac would be pissing himself at this: red-cheeked, his stomach wobbling under his T-shirt, a hand slapping at his side. Mac would jump; he wouldn’t think twice about it. And so Stick
jumped. Feet up. Knees up.

Alan clapped his hands together. ‘Great stuff. Mandy?’ Alan beckoned but she shook her head. Stick’s nan stepped forwards and jumped.

It was Alan who knocked it over. His heel catching the edge, coloured water spreading across the pale floor.

‘Fucking hell,’ he snapped. Stick and his mum backed towards the cupboards.

‘Not the end of the world, nothing a mop won’t fix. Go on, do your wishes.’ Stick’s nan hustled them into the dining room.

Four pieces of paper – pale pink, with faint flowers printed across them – had been laid out like place mats on the glass table, four sharpened pencils next to them.

‘Sit, sit.’ Alan looked pissed off. ‘You’re to write something you want to invite into your life.’ He pointed to the pieces of paper.

Stick’s mum wrote something on hers and folded it in half before Stick could read it.

Stick stared at his paper for a long time, listening to his nan in the kitchen – the slop and slap of the mop and her humming under her breath.

‘Ready?’ Alan said.

Stick folded his piece of paper in half and then half again.

‘I suppose we’ll just have to put them in the water.’ Alan didn’t sound convinced.

Stick’s nan reappeared in the doorway. ‘All good as new,’ she said.

‘We’ll go first.’ Alan beckoned to Stick and he followed him into the kitchen. Alan closed the door behind them. The bowl had been refilled with non-dyed water. Stick could see
a faint orange stain on the floor.

‘Let’s use the cooker,’ Alan whispered.

Stick wondered what he’d been like as a teenager. A bit of a geek. A bit of a goth. Bullied, probably.

Alan lit the smallest gas ring and held out his hand for Stick’s paper. ‘I won’t read it,’ he said, and so Stick passed it to him, watched him hold it against the burner
until it caught, the flame creeping upwards. He waited until it was close enough to scorch his fingers and then dropped it onto the cooker top, where it burnt itself up into nothing but soft grey
ash.

‘Now don’t tell me what you wrote,’ Alan said. ‘You mustn’t tell your wish to anyone.’

Stick looked at what was left of the paper. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, isn’t that what they said at funerals?

‘Now mine.’ Alan repeated the process with his own folded paper. ‘And then I’ll get rid of this.’ He took up a cloth, scooped up the ash and the burnt scraps in a
soggy grey clump and rinsed it out in the sink. ‘And we’re done.’ He looked at Stick and smiled, and Stick didn’t tell him that his piece of paper had been blank, because
even though he’d tried to work out how to put it, which words to use, he hadn’t been able to.

People had started leaving things on the fence outside Mac’s block almost as soon as it had happened – didn’t take news long to travel round there. Nearly a
week on and it was packed, top to bottom, left to right: a riot of colour – flowers and teddy bears, photos and cards.

It had taken Stick this long to decide what to put up himself, and now he stood breathing in the thick, sweet smell of the flowers, looking for a space. He should have brought Sellotape, he
thought, moving a bunch of yellow roses from Tesco’s – the price tag only half ripped off. He tried to wedge the road map of Europe in between two fence struts. It stayed there for a
moment and then slipped through, falling onto the grass on the other side so he had to trek all the way around to get it back. He wanted to unfold the map, spread it out on the ground and wait for
it to rain so the paper would soften and fall apart. Instead, he balanced it on top of a framed photo of Mac wearing a Santa hat, and tugged a blue teddy bear down a little to fix it in
position.

He stepped back to see what it looked like and wondered if the ugly fence outside his mum’s house would be covered with this much stuff if it had been him, not Mac. It would be harder to
attach things to, definitely, but that wouldn’t be the reason. Everyone knew Mac. Everyone loved him.

He’d never worked out why Mac had picked him out as a friend. Because that’s what it felt like. They were both ten. Sophie had been dead two months and Stick’s house felt like
the funeral home he’d gone to with his mum – quiet and awkward and not quite real. Stick had started going up to the railway after school, sitting by the tracks and waiting for the
trains to come past and blast him. His mum didn’t seem to notice he was coming in late, that he pushed his dinner round his plate instead of eating it. His teachers kept asking if he was OK,
if he needed some time out. The other kids either ignored him, looked at him weirdly, or asked him questions he couldn’t answer. What happened? Did you start it? Did you see her? Was she,
like, burnt up?

And then Mac had arrived, all noise and confidence. He was fat. That should have been enough to make him a laughing stock. But he was bolshie and brash and funny and quick to make friends. And
for some reason he wanted to be friends with Stick – who was still Kieran at that point. One lunchtime, Stick was slouched by the window of Year Five’s classroom scratching his
fingernail into the mortar between the bricks. Mac came over and stood watching him. ‘What are you doing?’

Stick dropped his hand to his side. ‘Nothing.’

‘I’m Mac. Well, Iain, but Mac to my mates.’ He held his hand out, like he was a grown man. It was a trick, surely. He’d be into karate or something, take Stick’s
hand and flip him over onto the concrete. ‘Shake,’ he insisted, and what could Stick do but reach out his own hand?

Mac shook. ‘Want to see something?’

Stick nodded.

Mac opened his other hand to reveal ten silver ball bearings. ‘Bullets,’ he said. ‘They’re bullets for small people.’

‘They’re those things for cakes.’

‘Uh-uh.’ Mac put one between his teeth and bit it, spat it out again. ‘That’s metal, that is.’

Stick looked at the tiny silver spheres, and then up at Mac. ‘My sister died,’ he said.

Mac’s face turned serious, his pale eyebrows coming together into a frown. He didn’t say anything for a long time, and then he opened his arms and put them around Stick, who had to
bite his tongue really hard to stop himself from crying into Mac’s shoulder. He made himself pull away, even though he didn’t want to.

‘Are you a gay?’ he asked.

Mac laughed. ‘I’ve touched a girl’s boobs.’ And then he took one of the tiny silver bullets between his fingers and threw it at the classroom window. It made a noise
bigger than itself; a crack like a gunshot. Mac offered one to Stick and he did the same. A teacher appeared on the other side of the glass and started shouting.

Mac held his hand to his ear. ‘I can’t hear you,’ he said, loud and slow, exaggerating each word. ‘Sorry, I can’t hear you.’ And then they turned and ran,
laughing, across the field towards the tall metal fence that separated it from the road.

And that was it, they were friends. Stick had never asked Mac why he’d picked him, and now it was too late. Mac was dead and there was a fence covered in flowers and teddy bears to prove
it. Stick stared at a bunch of white lilies just opening to show their violent pink insides. It didn’t even matter, except that he couldn’t ask him, and so he wanted to know.

‘Kieran!’ It was Mac’s ma, walking down the street towards him. She looked like she hadn’t washed her hair for days. Stick fought the urge to run away.

‘Mrs McKinley,’ he said and tried to smile.

‘Isn’t this—’ She waved towards the fence. ‘I’ve read all of them. All the cards.’

Stick reached out to touch the edges of the map. ‘I’m sorry about the other day,’ he muttered.

‘They’ve arrested him,’ Mrs McKinley said.

Stick stared at her.

‘A man called Owen Lee. He killed my boy.’ She said it like she was a kid in bottom set trying to read. ‘Rob says they’ll charge him.’ She looked at Stick and
nodded. ‘Rob says they’ll be charging him tomorrow. They’ll go for murder.’ She laughed and then pressed her hand over her mouth. ‘That’s what he said.
They’ll go for murder. That’s instead of manslaughter. And the papers. It’ll be in the papers tomorrow. He said I shouldn’t buy one. I shouldn’t look.
But—’