The face leaves the window. It’s coming for the door.
If I had the courage to look at that door, there would be a sign on it written in crazy, sparkling writing. It would say ‘Welcome Home’.
If I had the courage to look, maybe I’d have the courage to shout to the girl. Tell her to run. Run as fast as she can.
But I don’t have the courage. I don’t look again. If I looked, I would go mad.
If the burning thing opened the door, and came out, and opened its arms wide in welcome, I would go mad. If it enclosed the girl in a warm embrace, in a burning embrace, I would go mad as the girl’s yellow dress caught alight and joined the fire.
But none of that matters. Everything is fine. I don’t need to look, because the stranger is in control, looking out through my dead eye, seeing the world as though through a grimy window. Everything is going to be fine, because above all else, the stranger is a coward.
I turn my head away and walk on, steady. Clump and slide. I don’t see. There’s no struggle with it, inside me. The stranger has no conscience.
He’s dead, and the dead don’t care. They don’t love.
‘No, Honey,’ I say in my easy voice. ‘She’ll be fine. It’s a good neighbourhood. Come on. We’ll miss my sunset.’
I expect to hear a scream. If I do I’ll try to run. Out to the main road, where things are fine and there are no burning men behind dark windows.
There is no scream.
There’s just the sea, and the fading yellow of my sunset, and a black spot where my memory of the twenty minute walk should be.
I remember a lost girl, but right then I don’t care. My headache, suddenly come, just as easily washes away in the sea of yellow above the water.
People don’t burn. Girls don’t go missing on quiet estates. They just die, withering in a hospital bed.
‘Let’s go home,’ I say. Just for something to say.
It’s not until I hear my voice that I’m sure it’s me.
*
34.
Helen doesn’t notice what’s going on. I’ve got the stranger to thank. He’s looked after me all these years. He’ll get me through.
Did I ever think to banish him?
No. No I did not.
I convince myself I didn’t see anything. My mind’s playing tricks on me, that’s all.
That’s true, I guess, but not in the way I think. That’s the way of the best lies.
After sunset we stroll back, the other way. The long way. The orange glow of the street lights is welcome. They throw back the shadows.
I hold Helen’s hand. The stranger is fading. I’m in control now, and I feel guilty but above all scared. So scared.
The fear only comes now that he fades.
We spend the evening in bed. I tell Helen I’m tired, want an early night.
I hold her so tight, though, that neither of us can sleep.
In the morning, we’re both tired. Helen wakes up happy just the same, because when we did sleep we did so in each other’s arms.
We eat a big breakfast, head out of town to the supermarket for the weekly shop.
We park in the crip spot. Pay out a pound for a trolley.
Helen wanders ahead, already thinking about two-for-ones, milk, butter, bacon, chops, broccoli, sweet potato…
I’m behind. A poster on the glass to the side of the entrance catches my eye.
In the space of a second pain erupts in my chest. Suddenly it’s like I was just in hospital.
The words on the poster are swimming, but the picture is fine.
It’s the girl from last night.
I rub my chest. I have to. It burns in there. People look at me like they think I’m about to keel over.
‘Helen,’ I call.
She’s back at my side in an instant, all worry, pale, looking me over.
‘Sam, I’m calling an ambulance.’
‘No. Just let me sit here.’
There’s a bench, dedicated in memory of Albert Lyndon. I can read that just fine. We go to it. Sit down. The poster with the girl’s face is right there, but I’m not sure anyone else sees it.
‘Just do the shopping. I’m just peaky from last night.’
‘Sam, you look pale. Don’t lie to me.’
But I do. Again.
‘I’m fine, Helen. Fine. Just let me rest. I’m not dying. I’m tired.’
‘Sam…’
‘Go on,’ I say, give her a gentle nudge.
She sighs. But she gives in. It’s easy enough to lie to her now. I don’t need the stranger to do it for me. I’ve had enough practice.
I wait for her to go. She keeps looking back so I wave like I haven’t got a care. ‘Go on,’ I mouth at her, nodding in the direction of away. Anywhere but here, honey, I think and then wait some more until she gets down the next aisle where she can’t see me.
I push myself up, leaning heavily on my stick as I walk to the glass. To the poster.
The girl’s face is there. She looks younger than the girl we saw, but it’s definitely her. She’s wearing a red jumper. You can see the neck in the picture, but it’s a head shot, so that’s all.
She’s pretty. She doesn’t have the worried look she had when we saw her, talking on the phone.
The words finally swim into focus. Sarah Mills.
That’s such a relief.
I expected it to say Samantha O’Donnell.
I read more.
Last seen wearing a yellow summer dress. It seems important. I don’t know why, but it’s a detail, and it sticks.
I don’t know why I do the thing I do next, either.
I close my left eye. A kind of blink. I think I mean to close both, but the right eyelid isn’t working.
The stranger’s there. He wants to look.
The poster is faded. It’s cracked and bleached by the sun. It’s hard to read, but the stranger can see better with my right eye than I can.
He’s 20/20.
Somewhere inside I’m still there, looking out, but not for long. It’s too much. My legs buckle.
It’s the date she went missing that gets me.
Is it to the day? The day my little girl died?
Of course it is.
*
35.
I’m out cold on the floor. When I come around, a small group of people crowd me. A couple of shop assistants, a family with a kid. The kid’s got a line of snot working its way toward his mouth.
It takes this old guy to pick me up. Everyone else is just milling or deciding they shouldn’t move me. The old guy’s the only one with any sense. He gets his hands under my armpits. I hear his back crack. It makes me try harder. I take my weight on my good leg. One of the women who works there picks up my stick and gives it to me.
‘Thanks,’ I say. ‘Sorry.’
I don’t know what I’m apologising for. Maybe for embarrassing these people. ‘Half price on Teachers has that effect on me, too,’ says the old guy.
‘What?’ I say. ‘Oh,’ I say, seeing what he’s pointing at. It’s not like an exclamation though. It’s just air coming out. Where the poster of the missing girl was is just a poster with the latest deal.
I root around in my head for something banal to say. It’s what you do when you’ve fainted dead away in public.
‘I wouldn’t mind,’ I say, forcing a smile, ‘But I’m teetotal.’
‘Maybe you ought to start,’ he says. ‘OK?’
‘Yeah. I’m OK.’
The crowd is going about its business. ‘Thanks for the hand up.’
‘Take it easy,’ he says, and nods.
He’s got grey, loose skin. I try to figure out his age. If he’s old enough to have been around when people said things like 'take it easy'.
Helen comes along the back of the supermarket in the space behind the tills. The trolley is full of food and stuff I wouldn’t ever buy but women do, like polish, and conditioner.
She does this little wave. I wave back.
I
t’s time I told her what’s going on...I know I won’t, though.
I opened a door. The stranger came in and closed it behind him.
I won’t tell her, because she’d take my tennis ball away, and now, more than ever, I need it.
I walk away from the poster advertising cheap Scotch. I don’t want to see it anymore, but more than that, I don’t want anyone who saw me on the floor to blow my cover.
‘Hi,’ I say. ‘All done?’
I’m standing. I can’t look that bad. She just smiles. Doesn’t ask me what happened. No concern, save the usual.
‘Feeling better?’
I’m safe.
‘Much better. Let’s go.’
‘You wouldn’t believe how people act at the till. I swear the old lady in front of me had been on a desert island for a thousand years, the way she was nattering on.’
‘People take things slower up here.’
‘You think the checkout girl would’ve moved her on.’
‘That’s not like you. She’s probably not spoken to anyone for days.’
She huffs.
‘I was just worried about you. It makes me impatient. You’re right, though. She’s probably just lonely.’
I put my good arm around her.
‘That’ll be us one day,’ I tell her. ‘A hundred coupons and a story for each day of the week. That’ll be our day out. Going to the shops, talking the ear off the youngsters.’
I prattle on for a while. I’m not sure it’s me. Helen likes it, so I don’t fight it. I talk all the way to the car park, all the way home, all the way through unpacking.
She’s glowing. I don’t usually talk so much.
But it’s like I’m watching me, while I’m talking, taking notes. Cold.
All the time I’m thinking. What I’m thinking about doesn’t have anything to do with Helen. It’s about Helen. But she’s got no say in it. I’m thinking how I’m going to get her out of the house for a couple of hours.
I’ve got a phone call to make. I don’t want her in. I could take the phone in the bedroom, tell her it’s private, but a secret only lasts as long as no one knows you’ve got one.
It’s for the right reasons. That’s what I tell myself. There’s a missing girl. I’ve seen her. I should be on the phone right now. The police. Tell Helen everything.
But I know before I call. I feel it. It makes sense. It makes sense to the guy that bullshits police with a ton of coke in his pockets and up his nose after being caught thirty miles an hour over the speed limit.
Blood shot eyes and a dying wife.
I’m an arsehole. I know that better than Helen.
But it’s not going to happen. I’m sly, but Helen’s not letting go.
That’s OK. There’s tomorrow.
We make love. I watch. I fall asleep.
I wake up at 3.45 AM.
The red numbers. The dots between the hour and the minutes flash. I watch them ‘til the sweat on my thighs dries. I’m not going back to sleep.
I know that, because the adrenaline was still pumping. I’m not shaking, even though I remember the dream with the girl in the yellow dress. The girl without a face who once had spray of freckles across her nose and twinkling blue eyes just like her father’s.
I push myself out of bed quiet as I can.
Helen sleeps on. She doesn’t even stir.
I go downstairs. The wind’s up. When the wind gusts, I take a step. It takes longer this way, but no one’s silent. The trick is to make your noise under the ones that are already there.
The stranger’s in. I push him down. I close my dead eye. He’s raging, because he’s blind.
I ignore him as I sit and look out the window.
Looking for a cat.
The cat doesn’t come. The sun comes, instead. First, yellow. Then the light. Then the blue. My very own sunrise.
It’s the first time I’ve seen it. I didn’t even need my dead eye.
There’s something there, in the dead parts of me. But I know it’s not all of me.
Maybe I can’t talk to Helen, but I’m going to need to talk to someone.
I know I’m not crazy. It’s not even a thought. Maybe once. Not now. I’m sure. Something is fucking with me. I’m afraid. Terrified. But I’m not crazy.
I’m going to need to talk to someone.
But first, I’ve got a phone call to make.
*
36.
I’m part of the CCTV generation. I’m not paranoid enough to think my every move is being watched, but I’m smart enough to realise they might be watching, and the possibility is enough.
Helen calls it the Panopticon. She reads this guy called John Twelve Hawks. I tried to read it. It frightened me worse than zombies or werewolves ever could.
So I don’t want to phone from home. I don’t know if the police have call back, but it makes sense that they would.
There aren’t that many public phone boxes anymore. Probably justified now the world is mobile, but it worries me, while I’m on that track.
I’m not doing anything wrong, other than lying to my wife, but I can see how people get sucked into interviews, being a suspect…getting involved. I can’t afford to get involved. Not with the police. A knock on the door, and I’m busted.
Helen loses the half a husband she’s still got. I lose Helen.
If I lose Helen…
So why don’t I just tell her? Why don’t I tell her, if I’m really not crazy? Come clean, before it’s too late?
I go round and round. The short answer is, I don’t know.
All I know for sure is I’m not going to tell her.
This is mine. I see them. Helen saw the girl, though. Does that mean she’s real?
Helen gets up at ten. I’ve got crumpets ready to go, coffee on.
‘Wow,’ she says, ‘This is service.’
I smile. ‘It gets better.’
‘Mmm…already?’
I laugh. I don’t have to force it.
‘No. Not that. I’m not eighteen anymore.’
I pour. Then I go to my wallet. Pull out a hundred in twenties.
She raises her eyebrows.
‘I booked you at Amy’s. That’s the place, right?’
‘Yes,’ she says. She’s unsure, but she likes it.
‘Indian head massage, pedicure, manicure. 11 O’clock.’
‘Sam!’
I take her hug. It’s a nice thing to do. There’s some guilt behind it. But if I’m going behind her back, I’d rather do it nicely.
That’s the way the stranger thinks. Sometimes he thinks like me.
‘I just wanted to treat you.’
‘You done good.’
I beam, rub my knuckles on my t-shirt. Blow. Theatrical.
I join her in crumpets, watch her eat. I want a coffee. I have tea. I’m far enough up without a heavy hit of caffeine. I’d be shaking and Helen would never leave.
I see her out at ten to eleven. I figure that gives me two hours.
I’ve been going over it in my head the whole time.
The house phone is out.
I’m not a criminal, so I wouldn’t even know where to begin buying a ‘clean’ mobile, or stealing one.
The least suspicious way possible. That’s the trick. That’s always the trick.
If the poster had still been there, it would have been easier. If I had the internet, maybe. Maybe I could find something in back issues of the local paper, from the library. But the library presents the same problem as the internet. There’s no way I could read the print for long enough.
I’m better reading, now, but not good enough. I couldn’t do it for hours.
Besides, I don’t have hours.
The wind that had sounded so threatening last night has gone. The day is warm and still, but I put my jacket on anyway, for the pockets.
I put my mobile in my pocket.
I head out. Take the long way to the old Fakenham road.
It’s a long shot. No. It’s
not. It’s way, way, beyond a long shot.
I realise, back somewhere forgotten, in the part of my mind that’s still functioning rationally, that this is really paranoid. It’s not just paranoid. It’s crazy.
But I don’t listen to that part of myself. I haven’t listened to that part of myself for a long time, now.
Normal people don’t do this.
I don’t care.
I make it to the road. It’s not the busiest road. Just busy enough for there to be chances. I figure I’m a good bet. I’m middle aged. I’ve got a jacket on, so I look trustworthy. I’ve got a cane, so I’m not a threat.
I’m limping along the side of the road. I don’t pick, I just wave down cars as they pass.
The first ten minutes pass and not one car stops.
I wonder what happened to the milk of human kindness. I’m practically a cripple, for crying out loud.
I watch another car scream past, and only hear the crunch of tyres behind me when the noise dies down.
It’s a young guy. He gets out, which is nice. He doesn’t make me walk to him.
‘You OK?’ he asks.
‘Oh, thank you,’ I say. I’m not old enough, or a woman, to put on breathless. It wouldn’t wash. But the cane is working for me.
‘I broke down a mile or so away, but I forgot my mobile. You wouldn’t have one, would you?’
He doesn’t even look unsure.
‘Sure,’ he says, leans in the car, comes out with his mobile.
‘Thank you so much,’ I say.
‘You OK with it?’ he says.
He’s not patronising, though. To him, I’m an old guy. Old guys can’t work phones.
‘Fine,’ I say, because that’s irrelevant. The phone is relevant, and only the phone.
The phone isn’t even close.
‘I’ll just wait here,’ he says.
‘Thank you,’ I say again. I really mean it. He’s a nice guy. ‘I really appreciate it.’
‘No problem.’
I make out I’m calling the breakdown company. I brought the cover note. It’s got my policy number on it. I’m still a named driver on Helen’s car. I can’t drive, but it’s cheaper to leave me as a named driver. Go figure.
I tell no one on the phone where I am – a street I know off the main road.
Cold Fire Page 13
