The Last Thing to Burn: Gripping and unforgettable, one of the most highly anticipated releases of 2021

by Will Dean

  ‘How are our parents?’ she asks. ‘Are they well?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I say. ‘Kim-Ly, I’ve been here for years. Right here. Over there.’

  She shakes her head.

  ‘I got the letters.’

  She looks up with some absurd and desperate hope in her eyes. ‘You did!’

  ‘From Manchester, from the nail bar.’

  She nods. ‘I thought they were the bad days. But then he brought me out here. This place. Him and his pills.’

  ‘Horse pills?’ I say.

  She frowns.

  ‘Big pills, too big to swallow?’

  She points to the three and a half tablets on the Formica fold-down table between the single beds.

  ‘I need two a day now,’ she says. ‘He’ll bring me two if I’m good. He doesn’t forget. I sleep a lot these days, fourteen hours a day or more.’ She looks at me. ‘I’m dying from the tablets, I expect. My insides don’t work well any more, Thanh.’

  I squint my eyes shut and shake my head. Then I open my eyes and look at her chained ankle and I say, ‘We’ll get you to a hospital.’

  ‘I spent the first few months screaming like this.’ She cups her hands around her mouth. ‘At them, at the cars and vans and lorries on the road. I could see them but they couldn’t see me or hear me. Too far away. I lost my voice from all the screaming. And he lost his temper. I’d only get things – toothpaste, a blanket, a bar of soap – if I stayed quiet. But I can live without those things, I’ve lived without them for years.’ She points to the dusty horse tablets. ‘But those I cannot live without. Not any more. They control me more than he does.’

  I think back to the sound of pigs screaming. The desperate hungry screeching noises carried on the damp sea air. That was Kim-Ly? Did I hear my own sister on those nights?

  I look out of the window at Cynth working, bashing the chain over and over again.

  ‘Were there ever pigs here?’ I ask.

  Kim-Ly shivers and her face contorts.

  ‘Never?’ I say.

  ‘Yes,’ she says. ‘There were lots of pigs.’

  Thank God. It was the pigs screaming. It was just the pigs.

  ‘He sold them?’

  She looks at me and screws up her face into a tight knot. She shakes her head.

  ‘He had a wife, you see.’

  ‘Jane?’ I say.

  ‘Jane,’ she says.

  ‘What’s that got to do with the pigs?’

  ‘Jane died, Thanh.’

  ‘I know.’

  Kim-Ly shakes her head. ‘She died. I have no idea how. Maybe he killed her, maybe she killed herself, I don’t know anything.’

  I nod, rocking Huong in the crook of my arm.

  ‘One night, soon after I arrived, one night when I was screaming at the cars in the distance, he told me he left her with them.’

  My mouth falls open.

  ‘You mean?’ I say.

  She nods.

  ‘But the next day he told me he was only joking. To scare me,’ she says. ‘Thanh, I don’t know what the real truth is. He might have left her to the pigs.’

  I feel faint. I take a deep breath to steady myself. I must not pass out now, not now.

  ‘Over the years,’ says Kim-Ly, shaking her head, tears in her eyes. ‘There was no other food. He told me it was a daft lie. Just a joke. He told me the pigs ate scraps, that’s all.’

  I pass my hand out to her and she takes it and she’s shaking.

  ‘I refused to eat the meat he gave me.’ She swallows and nods towards the kitchen at the far end of the caravan, at the electric oven and hob. ‘In case it was true. But I got so hungry, Thanh. I would have died. I was too weak, my hair was falling out. I told myself, with the first animal, it had just lived on vegetable scraps. That’s all. Nothing else.’

  ‘It’s true,’ I say. ‘That is true, Kim-Ly.’

  ‘But I’ll never know for sure.’

  I bite my lip and look down at my child.

  ‘I know for sure,’ I say, lying, doing something for my sister, offering her some peace, something solid to anchor to. ‘He told me what happened to Jane, his first wife. The pigs here just ate scraps. Nothing else.’

  She closes her eyes with relief and squeezes my hand.

  ‘There’s nothing that’ll work,’ says Cynth, panting, interrupting this horror, her filthy head peering through the fibreglass caravan door. ‘Can I talk to you?’

  I hand my child to my sister and move to Cynth, outside the caravan, the thick unbroken chain still in her blackened hands.

  ‘We can’t break this, not even close,’ Cynth says between breaths. ‘Jane, we have to run for it. Your sister can’t come with us right now, she can’t leave this spot, but we can. We have to. Let’s run to the road, this barn in between us and the cottage, and we’ll get help. The police. Or a farmer. We’ll come back here and help her straight away, I promise.’

  I look out at the road.

  ‘I can’t leave my sister.’

  ‘We’ll come back for her later today.’

  ‘You don’t understand, Cynth. She’s been here alone for years. Alone. My own baby sister.’ Tears threaten behind my eyes. ‘I will never leave her again. Never. We have to stay together.’

  Cynth throws her hands in the air.

  ‘We will die,’ she says, her chin trembling.

  ‘Bolt cutters,’ I whisper.

  ‘What?’

  I look at her and smile and then that smile morphs into a grimace as I feel every inch of the journey in my ankle, in my knees, in my hips, in my back.

  ‘Bolt cutters, in the shed by the cottage. We go back, bring them back here, free Kim-Ly. We leave this place together. All of us.’

  Cynth shakes her head.

  ‘You’ll never make it all the way back there,’ she says. ‘Neither will I. And he’ll be on his way back from town by now; he’ll be getting hungry for his dinner by now, Jane. You know it yourself.’

  ‘We have to try.’

  ‘I’ll go get help,’ she says. ‘It’s a better plan. I’ll run to the road by myself and call for help and then I’ll come straight back.’

  I stare towards the road and there are no cars on it. No lorries, no motorbikes, no tractors, no buses, no nothing.

  I shake my head.

  ‘I can’t go back into that cellar,’ she says, raw panic in her eyes, her shoulders seeming to fall away from her. ‘Not down there again. Not that place.’

  ‘I’ll leave Huong with my sister,’ I say, nodding to myself, and then I hear my own words and I am astonished and also not surprised at all. I have never been more than twenty feet from Huong. And yet the thought of leaving her in the care of Kim-Ly fills me with hope, not terror. I’ll leave the bottle. I’ll show her how Huong likes to be rocked, what noises to make.

  ‘We have to get the bolt cutters, Cynth. We have to leave right now.’

  I dash into the caravan. Huong and my sister are staring at each other. There is murmuring and I cannot tell who it is coming from. They seem calm.

  ‘There are tools back at the cottage, bolt cutters,’ I tell her. ‘Cynth and I will fetch them and come straight back. I need to leave Huong with you. It’ll be faster just the two of us.’

  She nods and grips my daughter in her arms.

  ‘Thank you,’ she says.

  I turn, and Cynth has already fled.

  No.

  ‘Cynth!’ I shout. ‘Please, Cynthia. Come back!’

  I hobble out to the pig enclosures and she is nowhere.

  ‘I need your help!’

  The wind whistles. It tastes of salt.

  ‘I can’t make it on my own,’ I say, my voice failing me, the noise catching in my throat. ‘I need your help.’

  She appears from behind the wall. ‘I know,’ she says. ‘I know you do. The coast is clear,’ she says. ‘We go together. Let’s be quick.’

  I dash back to the caravan and take Huong from Kim-Ly and kiss her and breath
e in her smell. ‘This woman is your other mother,’ I whisper in her tiny perfect ear. ‘I told you that I was your aunt and your family and your friends. I was wrong. This is your family.’ I rub my nose against her plump cheek. ‘My love.’

  And then I hand her back to my sister and dare not look at her a last time because then I will surely fail.

  I kiss Kim-Ly on her forehead and she says, ‘Go.’

  Chapter 30

  I’m being pulled back.

  I’m being dragged west towards that miserable cottage for the bolt cutters but also east back to my lost sister and my child. And towards the road. Torn in every direction. It’s getting dark now, the sun low on the ground, and I can see headlights flash on and off on that faraway road.

  We’re walking faster. Kim-Ly gave us each half a horse pill, the rectangular ones, and it’s helping. We know how far it is to get to those bolt cutters and that’s reassuring, and we know how much is at stake here, how many lives, how many lost years, how many possibilities. We’ve done this once and we can do it again. We know that we all have actual futures almost within reach, and that helps as well. It fuels us.

  There is damp in the air. I keep thinking I can hear Huong cry out for me, but it’s the flatland winds being cruel, tricking me. Cynth has her bony arm around my waist. We settle into a rhythm, no talking, just her and me, three good feet between us; two shoes and one sandal.

  ‘Is that him?’ she asks.

  We walk faster, her shoulder bone piercing into my underarm, and there are lights up on the other road, the bigger road, the road I saw seven years ago when I arrived here.

  ‘That’s not him,’ I say.

  The cars are driving, not turning. They’re not indicating or manoeuvring onto his track, Lenn’s track. He’s still at the shop. He’s not back yet.

  ‘Might be that the bridge is up,’ says Cynth. ‘Dear God, I hope it is.’

  I saw the bridge years ago on the local news, me sitting on the floor, his fingers exploring my scalp. Before Huong. Before he burnt my passport and my clothes and the photograph of my extended family. The bridge pivots around to let larger boats travel up the river. The cars have to stop. Maybe he’s waiting for it?

  We cross a stile in seconds and race off towards the dyke.

  ‘Let’s cross it together,’ says Cynth. ‘Like we walk. Together.’

  George and Lennie.

  We plunge straight into the dark metallic waters. Nothing down there: no eels, no rats, no creature ready to take my sandal. It’s muddier than before and even though we cross at a different point this time, I still hope to pick up my size eleven sandal from this stinking black silt.

  As we clamber up from the escarpment, back onto the flatness that is every direction, the water streams off us and we drip and slosh and make our own mud under our feet. I slip again and again and it is Cynth who stops me from falling. She is the size of a baby deer and yet she has the power of a shire horse.

  ‘Keep on going,’ she says. ‘That’s the way.’

  It’s cold, freezing cold, the air cooling more with each minute, the sun sinking into the earth, collapsing into the spires that have never once helped me and the trees that I have never touched.

  He’s not here. He is still out there, at the shop, in his Land Rover. We’ll get the bolt cutters and run back and free Kim-Ly and we’ll make it to that back road.

  I haven’t produced milk for weeks but my breasts hurt like they did before, they yearn for her. I yearn for her. I look back at the barn and I don’t fear for my child, she’s safe with Kim-Ly, but I yearn for her. It’s a kind of hurt the horse pills don’t touch. I’m a hundred, a thousand times further away from my baby than I have ever been. Than I will ever be again.

  We cross into the winter wheat field and Cynth is slowing. I try to keep up the momentum but I’m half carrying her now, half taking her weight.

  ‘Almost there,’ I say. ‘You’ll be back in your own house soon, Cynth. Triangular windows. You can put your feet up soon. Come on.’

  She tries but there’s not enough life left in her.

  She’s loose at the knees, stumbling.

  She says nothing.

  ‘I can’t make it on my own,’ I say. ‘We are relying on each other now, Cynth. One last push. Come on.’

  ‘I will not make it back,’ she says.

  ‘You will. We’ll get the cutters and you will make it back, we’ll make it back together.’

  ‘I’ll get you as far as the cottage, Jane.’

  The sad, defeated words float and linger in the damp fenland air. They wait there for the winds to come and blow them out to sea. I’ll get you as far as the cottage.

  There is no woodsmoke. No light. I look back over my shoulder and the barn is dark now in the distance. It is small. They’re both in there, in that caravan, his mother’s and his, they’re together inside, no food for her, no formula. I’ll collect some in the cottage, it’ll only take a minute, thirty seconds.

  One last field.

  Fertile black soil reclaimed long ago from the seas.

  Earth ploughed into ridges. They’re twice as tall and twice as easy to stumble over as on the way out. No frost yet but it’s on its way. Sinking down from the grey skies like a cold sheet of silk.

  ‘He’s not coming,’ says Cynth. ‘You will get your cutters.’

  I say nothing. You will not We will. It’s still we will. It still is.

  We hobble on, the crunch of last season’s barley under our feet. My sock, his mother’s sock, is wearing through. I’ll have one bare foot for the journey back.

  ‘You go in and get a tub of formula and a pack of Rich Teas. They’re by the sink. I’ll get the cutters from the shed.’ I’m panting now, my lungs aching in my chest. ‘One minute, then straight back out to them.’

  She says nothing. Her red hair, once so bright and curly, beautiful, is now black in the twilight. Like ribbons of dried blood. She keeps moving though, everything she has is keeping her moving. She’s almost there.

  The edge of the field.

  We cross through the low hawthorn hedge and I touch the wall of the cottage. We separate. She goes inside and I use the wall to help me around to the shed. The house looks dead tonight, no people, no lights, no heat, no fire. No ham or eggs or chips.

  I get to the shed and open the door and reach up for the cutters, my stomach straining as I stretch. I hold them and get a surge of energy from taking these terrible things. They imprisoned me here but now they will free my sister. We’ll call it quits.

  ‘Let’s go,’ says Cynth, standing at the door frame of the shed, her pockets bulging each side of her legs.

  There are lights behind her.

  She twists to look over her shoulder and I see the headlights.

  His headlights.

  ‘No,’ she says. ‘Run.’

  I fall out of the shed, the cutters in my hands, and close the door and we dash around to the edge of the building. But I already know that this will not work. Not him against us. He will find us in minutes and then he will find them. Four lives over one way or another.

  ‘Get inside,’ I say.

  She looks at me like I’m him.

  ‘Inside. Trust me. We can’t go back yet.’

  She shakes her head. Her voice is as small as a child’s. ‘I can’t do it, Jane.’

  ‘It won’t be for long, trust me.’

  She’s looking at me and then at the headlights and then at me again. The lights go off. He’s parked up by the locked halfway gate.

  ‘You know what to do?’ she asks. ‘You’ll come for me?’

  I nod.

  We go inside the house and I want to retch. I’m back here in his cottage. Cold. The camera lights blinking as I walk. I unbolt the door to the half-cellar and Cynth looks at me like she’s given up now, like she has nothing left. She steps through and climbs down and glances back and says nothing.

  I bolt the door.

  Then I strip naked by the locked TV cabi
net, mud splattering the floorboards, and dump my wet clothes under the plastic-wrapped sofa and throw the bolt cutters under there too.

  How can I do this?

  I have to think, I have to make no mistakes, nothing. I have to protect my family, these three. All of them.

  I turn on the bath taps and run back and get a new box of matches from under the sink and light a fire in the Rayburn stove and open the vents so they’re full and blow into the fire box and shiver and fill it with the best willow I can find. I wipe the floor with paper and stuff the brown, muddy paper into the Rayburn and then I clean up some more, mopping up earth and seeds and dyke water, burning the paper, removing the signs.

  I hear the door open as I’m climbing into the ice-cold bathwater.

  His footsteps.

  I shake from the freezing water.

  The rustle of carrier bags in the kitchen.

  ‘Bleedin’ hell, it’s cold in here, ain’t it?’

  I hear him open the fire box of the Rayburn and then close it again.

  Footsteps.

  Lenn at the open bathroom door.

  ‘When’s tea?’

  He’s there and I’m here, back here, door open, trying not to shiver in this chilled water, trying not to let my teeth shake together in my mouth.

  ‘Half an hour,’ I say.

  ‘Make sure it is,’ he says. ‘Better build up that fire. Where’s Janey?’

  ‘Nap,’ I say.

  ‘All right,’ he says. ‘I’ll go up and feed pigs now before tea.’

  Chapter 31

  I sit up in the bath and let the water cascade down me.

  He looks.

  He stands in the door frame and watches me like he’s done every single day for seven years.

  ‘Tea in fifteen minutes?’ I say, my skin covered in bumps. ‘Bath’s run cold, I’m getting out.’

  ‘Fifteen?’

  I nod, standing up to take a thin, moth-eaten towel, his mother’s, and wrapping it around myself. The water is brown but it’s OK. It’s me he’s looking at. Staring. Does he suspect something? His blue-grey eyes are unreadable, always have been. They’re dead in his head.