by Simon Lelic
Either way, after five o’clock the rest of the building will be empty, and it strikes Susanna that Adam must have known this as well. I’ve done my research, she can almost hear him gloat.
“Are you heading off now? To the pub, I mean.”
“Well, we were going to,” Ruth replies, before adding quietly, “But we’ll wait if you want. I’ve got some invoices I need to go through and I’m sure Alina’s got something she can be getting on with, so if you’d rather we stick around it’s really no—”
“Don’t be silly.” Please don’t go. “You go ahead. I’m feeling a bit under the weather anyway, so a night off the booze will do me good.”
“You’re not going to meet us down there later?”
“I . . . Probably not. Not this time. But next week, I promise.”
Please don’t go! There is an instant when Susanna almost screams it because she knows that this is her final chance; that once the others leave she will be well and truly on her own. She could attempt to communicate her panic with a look, one she would be able to keep hidden from Adam’s view, and Ruth, she is certain, would understand. Once again, though, it comes down to what would happen next. Adam has shown he is capable of violence, that he is barely holding himself back. At least if Ruth and Alina leave they will be safe. Once Susanna is able to discover what has happened to Emily, she will be free to take whatever risk she feels necessary. If she took a chance while the others were still in harm’s way, and somehow one of them got hurt, Susanna knows that there is no way she would be able to live with herself. And not just in figurative terms.
“Well, if you’re sure,” Ruth says. “Are you sure, Susanna?”
Susanna, this time, doesn’t hesitate. “Perfectly,” she says. “You two go and enjoy yourselves. It’s been a long week.”
Ruth rolls her eyes and gives a snort of agreement.
“I’ll see you Monday,” Susanna says. And with a smile and a little wave, she shuts the door. Her forehead comes to rest on the painted wood and she listens to her friend heading back along the landing—until from outside, from behind her, there is silence.
8.
A building burns. It starts with a single flame, like a burst of red in a scan of an otherwise healthy body, before steadily the cancer metastasizes and the deadly glow begins to spread. On the first floor, through the floorboards, there are candle trails of smoke. The wisps billow into plumes, and soon the smoke is being chased upward by the whip of the crackling flames. The desks burn, the books, the schoolwork fixed so lovingly to the walls. The fire crawls upward from story to story, until it eats into the timbers of the roof. In a matter of minutes the blaze is more deafening than the fire alarm, more insistent than the approaching sirens. The walls char and blacken, the windows bubble and burst. Even the air warps in the impossible heat. It is unreal, horrific, glorious: a shimmering pyre that leaps toward the stars. It is an appalling image, unspeakable . . . and one that Susanna cannot help but savor.
“Whose idea was it, do you think?”
Susanna is back in her chair. The rug beneath her feet is wrinkled, and all it would take to nudge it straight is a simple movement of her foot. She keeps both soles flat on the floor.
Adam has recovered himself. He hasn’t said as much but Susanna suspects he has been placated by having witnessed her lie. He seems to regard Susanna doing so as justification somehow for what he’s doing. Proof, almost. Vindication.
He is pacing beside the fireplace, tapping the knife against his jeans as he talks. Susanna frowns in response to his question.
“Their plan,” Adam clarifies. “The fire. Whose idea was it?”
“Scott’s. Obviously.”
“Do you believe that?”
“What do you mean?”
“Just what I said.”
“He admitted it. He never even tried to deny it. He said it was a joke of course, that he never meant for it to happen, but he never disputed that the idea was his.”
“Yes but knowing what you know. Do you still believe that?”
“I don’t understand what you mean.”
“You don’t think it could have been Jake’s idea?”
“Jake’s? No. I mean . . . no.”
Adam purses his lips, bobs his head. “No,” he says. “Me neither.” He seems reassured in some way, which puzzles Susanna all the more.
“What difference does it make?” she asks. “Given what happened. Why does it even matter whose idea it was?”
Adam stops moving and looks at her. For a moment he seems to be genuinely considering the answer. In the end, however, he shrugs. “None, I guess,” he says. “Not to you.” And with that he resumes pacing.
Susanna is getting tired just watching him. As the minutes have passed—the hours, almost: according to the clock it is coming up for two—Susanna has felt the energy drain out of her. It’s not that she doesn’t have the will to fight. It’s more frustration that she doesn’t know how. She’s a hamster spinning on a wheel, a mouse running mindlessly through a maze. She knows she should be looking for a way out but, the longer the pursuit goes on, the harder she’s finding it to believe that she hasn’t already been cornered.
“That’s another thing they couldn’t talk about much,” Adam is saying. “The newspapers, I mean. That’s why I asked.”
Susanna can’t help but scoff.
Adam stops pacing and turns toward her. “What?”
“Nothing.”
“No, really. Tell me.”
Susanna scowls up at him. “The newspapers. That’s where you did the ‘research’ you’re so proud of? In the newspapers.”
Adam is genuinely intrigued. “Sure. Some of it. Why? Is that so awful?”
“Not awful. Idiotic.” The word is in her mouth before she can suppress it. It tastes good, though. Bracingly bitter.
Adam just laughs. “You see? That’s what I’m talking about. I’d have thought you would have approved. They were on Jake’s side, after all. Eventually.”
Susanna laughs right back at him. “The papers weren’t on anybody’s side. They never are.”
“Well, not yours, I suppose,” Adam concedes with a smirk. “They really didn’t like you much, did they? How did that make you feel, I wonder?”
“I don’t care what they said about me. I don’t care what the newspapers said full stop. Neither should anyone. Neither should you.” Something strikes her, distracting her for a moment from her anger. “But then, you don’t actually believe what they said either. Do you? It doesn’t make sense that you do.”
Because Adam was right. The newspapers eventually took Jake’s side. From everything Adam’s said so far, however, it’s obvious he’s as certain that Jake was guilty as Susanna is. And, more than that, he admires him for it, believes he should have been exalted rather than suffer the end he did. Isn’t that what Susanna has decided, the reason she’s identified for Adam being here?
Except, if that’s the case, why does he also seem so determined to punish Susanna for what Jake did? Do you deny you’re responsible? That’s what he asked her, a question that was as much an accusation.
“I used the newspaper stories as a framework, that’s all. Just, you know. To establish the facts.”
Susanna barks out another laugh. “Facts! Ha. That’s a good one.”
“Tell me, then,” Adam responds. “Because I don’t know everything, you’re right. That’s part of the reason I’m here.”
He tilts his head, as though seeing Susanna for the first time.
“You know,” he says, “I actually have to admit you look way better than I thought you would. I figured you’d look older, obviously. But the longer hair, that color on you. It’s a bit darker than I would have chosen—I prefer your more natural blond—but it suits you. It does.”
Susanna doesn’t like the way Adam is looking at her. S
he pulls her cardigan tighter across her bust. “Tell you what?”
“Huh?”
“You said, ‘Tell me.’ Tell you what?”
Adam grins. He knows she’s riled and he doesn’t resist the temptation to gloat. He would sit and mock her all day, Susanna reckons, if time—in his words—weren’t so pressing.
“The plan,” Adam says, returning to business. “Tell me what you know about the plan.”
* * *
• • •
It sounds so official. But there was no plan, not at first. Scott, Pete, Charlie, even Jake—they all admitted it. They were just messing about, they said. Like, if you were going to kill someone, how would you do it? If you were going to break into some rich twat’s home, what would be the first thing you stole? A game essentially. One, it turned out, they played all the time. It was a bit of fun, was the phrase Charlie used in his statement. Just, you know. A laugh.
Jake by now was well and truly one of the gang. And the stuff they talked about, the things they got up to, right down to these hypothetical “games” they played . . . It excited Jake. In Susanna’s mind, ridiculous as she knows it would seem to anyone else, she compares it with the first time she remembers opening a book. Not the actual first time but the first time she realized that these words on the page, these lines and lines of what had once seemed impenetrable text, were gateways to whole entire worlds, all of them waiting to be explored. For Jake she imagines it felt similar. His own world thus far had been painted in foggy grays and cloying whites. Scott, Pete and Charlie showed him how full of color life could be. Dashing colors, daring ones. They could smoke cigarettes, weed, if they wanted to, pore over all the filth and violent movies they could get their hands on, do whatever they could get away with, basically. They weren’t kids anymore. “Right, Jake? You’re fifteen for fuck’s sake, and you’ve never even seen a girl’s snatch.”
That’s how it worked, from what Susanna gathered. The four of them, they egged one another on. At first Jake was more of a spectator, soaking everything up: a newfound audience to which Scott and the others could demonstrate their daring. So, Charlie would brag about something he’d done at school, for example, some prank he’d pulled on one of the supply teachers, and then Scott would try to go one better. “Yeah, well, that’s nothing. You should have heard what I said to the headmaster when he had a go at me for the state of my uniform. Told him it was a political statement, sir. That I didn’t want to get mistaken for a member of Hitler’s Youth, sir. Reckon I’ll get detention for a week, minimum.”
And so on and so on, each of them trying to outdo the rest, until Jake joined in the fun too. It emerged later that he’d bullied some of the younger kids, smoked marijuana, tried ecstasy, even stolen from several shops on the local high street. Other things as well that Susanna would never have believed he was capable of. He knew right from wrong. He knew it. But knowing what he was doing was wrong was part of the thrill. More important, and the way it looked to Jake, the worse you got up to, the better the others liked you. The more they approved.
Plus, doing what was right had never made him happy. That was what Susanna learned, when it was too late for her to try to help Jake work out the reason why not. Doing wrong may not have made him feel happy exactly either but it made him feel something. It filled the hole he carried inside of him, made him forget his frustrations and growing anger at the world.
Again, Susanna only found out afterward that this was the way Jake was feeling. Part of the reason she didn’t spot the change in him was that he didn’t outwardly appear any different. He wore the same clothes, followed the same routines. At least as far as Susanna knew because she was working as head of HR for an accountancy firm at this stage—a job she’d initially taken on part-time but one that had steadily demanded more and more of her week, until she found herself staying late most days—and would only usually get home in time for dinner. He was moodier, she supposes, ruder, but he was also awash with hormones, so even that she put down as something to be expected. He was a teenage boy, for heaven’s sake. And Jake’s teachers didn’t notice any change in him either. He was smarter than the others, was the thing. He kept his transgressions covert, below the radar, so only Scott, Pete and Charlie would see. Smarter? Or more cowardly? Given what it all eventually led to, you could just as easily make a case for both.
* * *
• • •
The fire.
The plan.
They were playing that same old game. What if, just imagine, wouldn’t it be cool. Except this time their flight of fancy morphed into something real.
They’d been building a bonfire, their accounts later revealed, scavenging anything that would burn from the local dumping ground and transporting it to the barren patch at the eastern end of the nearby common that tended to default as their base. It was just Charlie, Pete and Jake at first. Scott hadn’t shown up when he was supposed to, so sod him, they’d said, he knows where we’ll be, and they’d gone ahead and started the fire without him.
Again, Charlie claimed later they were just having a laugh, mucking about, but Susanna quickly became convinced that fire, for each of them, had some deeper attraction. Heavens, she’s known grown men who’ve turned positively primeval at the mere suggestion of setting something alight, so yes, perhaps partly it was simply that: a caveman-like obsession that was all the less inhibited because of their age. But she also remembers how Jake described the fire he saw Scott and the others set in the litter bin that day at school, the adjectives he used to describe the flames. And Pete. Fire definitely held some unhealthy fascination for Pete. He was the quietest of the bunch, the least prone to bragging, and at first, after the whole story had come out, he’d been the one who’d frightened Susanna the most—at least before that mantle passed to Scott, and after Scott, to her very own son.
So, playing with fire: it was more than a game to them. And on this occasion it lent their version of let’s pretend a distinct and exhilarating edge.
“What would you burn? Free choice. It could be a building, an object, a person. Anything.”
Charlie later admitted he raised the subject, and he confessed to using pretty much those exact words.
“Why, what would you?” Jake was still at the solicitous stage at this point, worried about saying the wrong thing. And he could tell Charlie wanted to be asked. That was why he’d voiced the question.
“My neighbor’s house. With everyone in it. No question. Fucking pikeys. My dad’s been round there like a million times telling them to shut the fuck up, said next time he’d go back there with a cricket bat. Figure I could save him the trouble.”
Susanna imagines Charlie throwing something on the fire then, the splash of sparks mirrored in his soot-black eyes.
“If you burned down your neighbor’s house, wouldn’t your own house burn down too?” Jake had been thinking the same thing but it was Pete who pointed out the obvious.
“So what? It’s a shithole anyway. We could build a new one with the insurance. Put in a pool.”
A cackle of laughter then, mimicking the flames.
“Your turn, Jakey-boy. What would you burn?”
“My dad’s computer.”
Pete and Charlie laughed.
“His computer?”
Jake admitted later he thought he’d said the wrong thing. That his suggestion, compared to Charlie’s, was pretty lame. But he stuck to his guns.
“Yeah. And I’d make him watch too. He’s on that thing all the sodding time, like from the minute he gets home from work. Actually, he probably wouldn’t even notice if it was on fire. He’d still be trying to play his stupid games.”
“What kind of games?”
“I dunno. Like Tomb Raider, sometimes. Poker and stuff after me and Mum have gone to bed, even though he denies it to Mum.”
“Your old man plays Tomb Raider?” Charlie asked. “Sweet!
”
“It’s not sweet. It’s pathetic.”
“Yeah, well,” Charlie said. “A computer probably wouldn’t even burn, not unless you doused it in petrol.”
“Yeah it would.” This from Pete, who’d been following the exchange mutely. “Everything burns if the fire’s hot enough.”
“Ha! Says the fucking pyro over there. What would you burn, Petey? No, wait, let me guess . . .”
Everything, Jake had expected him to say. Anything. Because even among his friends, Pete’s fascination with fire was considered abnormal. Not bad necessarily, just peculiarly intense. Before Charlie had a chance to finish his sentence, however, Scott appeared from the line of trees that served as a fence around their private patch of common.
“What are you three homos gassing about?”
He looked angry, the others said later. His cheeks were all fiery and his heavy eyebrows were set in a frown. He was carrying a bag, like a holdall, and he tossed it down as he drew near. The odd thing was that the bag, when it landed, seemed to squirm.
“Where have you been?” Charlie said.
“Where do you think? Fucking detention, that’s where. The first of five she’s got me in this week.”
“Who?”
“That slag. The new one, with the tits. She’s had it in for me since she spotted us trying to melt that bin.”
“Ms. Birch?” Jake said.
“Miss Bitch more like,” said Charlie, who always knew how to draw Scott from one of his funks.
“Ha, yeah, Miss Bitch. Her.”
