‘Stop fussing,’ she said. ‘Tea?’
We accepted, and Phil went and lifted the kettle.
‘Let me, Dad,’ she said. ‘You sit down.’
The house was quiet, the patio doors open and the sun streaming in.
‘Is Ollie asleep?’ I’d hoped to have another cuddle, to soothe myself with the simple innocence of holding a newborn. She told us he’d just gone down.
‘What did the police say?’ I asked her.
‘They wanted to know everything about Naomi and Alex. When they arrived, when they left, what they said, what they did. Who they spoke to. They want to talk to Jonty, too. I’m to give a statement. I might be called as a witness.’
Oh no!
‘Why was she going so fast?’ I said suddenly.
One moment’s thoughtlessness and the railings plastered with toys.
‘Because she was drunk.’
‘She wasn’t!’
Suzanne glared at me.
‘We’ve spoken to Alex. She was the designated driver. She had some champagne, yes, but she was fine by the time they left.’
‘She wasn’t,’ Suzanne said, shaking her head. ‘She might have promised to drive, but that didn’t stop her drinking. She’s a selfish idiot.’
‘Suzanne!’
‘It’s true, Mum. The only person she cares about is herself.’
‘No,’ I protested. I turned to Phil, seeking his support.
‘What about the fire?’ Suzanne pressed on. ‘What about the time the police brought her home. And what happened to Georgia?’
THE FIRE. I thought of it in capitals still: a headline moment in our lives. ‘Suzanne, that was seven, eight years ago.’
‘She hasn’t changed.’
‘She has. She was impulsive then, she didn’t always think.’
‘Exactly,’ Suzanne said.
‘She needs us more than ever. We have to support her, we nearly lost . . .’ I was going to cry.
‘Mum.’ Suzanne came and sat beside me, her hand on my shoulder. ‘Of course we have to help her, I know that. We all love her, but that’s not the same as condoning what she’s done.’
‘I’m not condoning it! I can’t believe she did what you are accusing her of.’ I put my head in my hands. Fought back the tears. ‘Accidents happen . . .’ I tried to speak, but Suzanne talked over me.
‘Yes, but if she was drink-driving, that changes everything. It wasn’t
just
an accident.’
‘But we’ve only your word for that, and Alex says differently. And I believe him.’
In the strained silence that followed, I looked outside to the garden, where the bamboo and the grasses were still and the only movements were the insects busy flying hither and thither and seeds drifting through the air. And tried to still my thoughts.
THE FIRE, just like this was THE ACCIDENT.
We had left strict instructions before going away that the girls were not to have a party. Later Naomi claimed it wasn’t a party, just a few friends who’d come round.
They had reached an age, at eighteen and sixteen, when they didn’t want to holiday with us and so we hadn’t been away for over a year. I was exhausted by all the work involved in moving my mother into a nursing home and sorting her house out, and Phil had talked me into a week staying in a cottage in the west of Ireland. I’d have loved some sunshine but we didn’t dare venture any further afield in case Mum took a turn for the worse. She had had a small stroke a couple of months earlier and there was a chance she’d have another.
There was a music festival on in a town near to where we were staying, and Phil was looking forward to that and to some nights jamming in the local pub. We were taking cheap flights to Cork, and if he’d brought his guitar he’d have had to pay through the nose, so he made do with his harmonica instead.
Suzanne was in charge and we knew she would take the responsibility seriously. But she was going away herself on the Friday night; she had an interview for a university course at Bournemouth that afternoon and was staying over in a B&B near the station. When we realized this, I panicked and talked to Phil about changing our dates. But Naomi came up with a solution: she would stay at Georgia’s that night. Perfect.
Except she was lying to us. Maybe not from the outset, but somewhere along the line the plan shifted to Georgia and a dozen other friends coming to our house. Unsupervised.
There wasn’t a good signal for mobile phones in the area we were visiting, but we were able to ring home each evening from the landline at the pub. The cottage was tiny and cosy; we used peat on the open fire and banged our heads on the sloping ceiling above the stairs each time we went down without thinking about it. Saturday we walked along the rocky shoreline, spotting seals off the rocks and trying to identify birds, breathing in the ripe smell of the great hanks of seaweed that clotted the sands. We had lunch at a little café in the bay and bought an outrageously expensive bottle of wine to share with our evening meal of freshly caught mackerel.
We were relaxed and windswept and glowing with contentment by the time we went out to the pub. It was a five-minute walk from the cottage, no street lights and the stars glittering cold and fierce in the dark blue sky. The air smelling of brine and burning peat.
We could hear the musicians tuning up in the main room as we arrived. We tucked ourselves into the phone booth by the door and closed its wooden folding door. Suzanne answered the phone and began to cry. I went cold all over. ‘What is it? What’s the matter?’ Images of my mum dead, or a burglary at the house. ‘Suzanne?’
‘Oh Mum,’ she cried, ‘the house, there’s been a fire.’
Oh God.
‘Are you all right? And Naomi?’
‘Fine.’
What on earth had happened? An electrical fault? We’d never bothered rewiring, we just loaded the sockets with extension cables and adaptors so we could plug everything in. Was it that? Or had one of the girls accidentally set a tea towel alight or let a pan boil dry? ‘Is anyone hurt?’
‘Georgia’s in hospital.’
‘In hospital?’ I said. Phil was pressing his ear to the other side of the receiver so he could hear too. ‘From the fire? But they were at Georgia’s.’
‘No, they were here. I got back this afternoon. It’s such a mess.’
‘How is Georgia? Was she burnt?’
‘No. She’s okay, I think, but Naomi won’t tell me any details.’
‘Put her on.’
‘She’s not here, she’s at the hospital.’
‘Where was the fire?’
‘The lounge mainly, and your bedroom. The fire brigade came.’
My stomach turned over. ‘Look, we’ll be home by lunchtime.’ We had an early-morning flight back the next day. ‘Are you okay staying there? Do you want to go to one of your friends?’
‘I’ll stay. Mr Harrison got the windows boarded up.’ I felt sick; that image brought it home. The fact that it had been savage enough to damage the windows. And that our neighbour was involved in helping secure the place.
We talked a bit more, trying to calm Suzanne down rather than finding out any more information. Mr Harrison had told her not to clean up until we’d taken photographs for the insurance claim. An eminently sensible suggestion, but I knew how impotent she’d feel. I did try again to persuade her to sleep elsewhere, or at least get someone round. ‘Naomi will be back,’ she said.
‘Tell her to stay there,’ I said. ‘She’s got some explaining to do.’ Even if the fire was an electrical fault, she should not have been there.
‘I’ll kill her,’ I said to Phil, as we sat with our pints of Guinness going over what we’d just heard. ‘And Georgia, I can’t work out if she’s been hurt in the fire or what. It’s more likely to be smoke inhalation, isn’t it?’
‘We could ring Georgia’s parents,’ said Phil.
‘Except I don’t have their number.’
All the benefits of the holiday were wiped out in one fell swoop. The warm glow replaced by cold tension.
I’ve managed the aftermath of house fires a number of times at work. Dealing with shocked and displaced families, or even worse, the bereaved. Firemen with tears in their eyes carrying small corpses. One time it was deliberate. Arson. Three generations killed while they slept. The grandfather coming back from his night shift to Armageddon. Me there getting him a place to sleep, clean clothes and toiletries, money for food and a visit from the doctor. Sitting with him while the police spoke to him. His daughter’s ex-boyfriend was convicted of the offence. She had ended the relationship and begun seeing another man. Seven people died that night, four of them children.
Naomi wasn’t there when the taxi dropped us back from the airport. I was glad, actually. I might have lost it, in the first full shock of seeing the damage; said things that couldn’t be undone.
It was bad enough from the outside: the ugly boards over the big lounge windows, and our bedroom above. Black smears on the walls, the front garden full of shards of glass.
Oh God! Our house. I’d been pregnant when we moved in. I’d loved the flat above the shop, with its bohemian flavour, but wasn’t sure about having a baby there. We’d no central heating, washing machine or even a shower, just a stained old bathtub. There was nowhere outside to put a pram or sit out.
We scoured estate agents’ windows and local newspaper pages to get an idea of prices. The biggest problem was the deposit. If we bought somewhere at the cheapest end of the market, with my salary and Phil’s average income, we could just about afford the monthly payments. But we had no savings.
In the event, Phil’s dad offered to help as soon as he heard we were considering buying.
The house had been empty and on the market for over a year. It smelt musty and damp from where the flat roof let in water. The decor was revolting: Anaglypta on the walls, and polystyrene tiles, swirly brown carpets and fussy ceiling lights. I relinquished my dreams of somewhere with a hundred years of history and high ceilings and attic rooms and bay windows. We saw that it had the potential to be a family home, though. And it was the only property we’d seen that was in an area we liked, not too rough and not too stultifyingly suburban. It was years before we could afford to replace the carpets or do more than slap paint on the embossed wallpaper, but we made it our own as best we could.
And here it was, blackened, ruined. Suzanne was in the kitchen and ran to us as we went in. She hugged us both and told us Naomi was at the hospital again but would be back soon. The smell was horrible, burnt plastic or burning hair.
‘The lounge is the worst,’ Suzanne said. She passed Phil a torch. We went up the half-flight of stairs and stepped in. The carpet was spongy underfoot from the water they had sprayed. It was dark with the windows boarded up. The sofa was a charred wreck, the books along the wall blackened. The television had exploded, its screen punched open. Next to it were Phil’s records. Unrecognisable. Irreplaceable. The curtains had melted and fused to the carpet.
I couldn’t speak. Just shook my head and bit my cheek.
Upstairs, our room was mainly smoke-damaged, apart from the smashed window; flames licking up from outside had destroyed that. Everything was covered with an oily black residue and tiny fragments of soot, like black snow.
We drank cups of tea, then Phil began to make a list of what we needed for an insurance claim, though he wanted to talk to Naomi before he rang the company so he’d got the facts straight. He thought they might have to send an assessor out. It could cost us thousands.
Suzanne had a note of the contact details for the fire officer responsible for investigating the fire. He’d be coming back to see us.
Phil goes very quiet when he’s angry. He doesn’t raise his voice or wave his arms about like I do; he doesn’t even swear. He goes quiet and it is scary.
That was what Naomi faced when she came back. She looked awful, hair lank, her clothes rumpled, a crop of spots on her face. Crying as she came in.
I went to hug her, relieved to see her there, aching for her as well as angry. She smelled of smoke and sweat.
‘Oh Mum,’ she sobbed. I got her to sit down. Offered her tea, but she shook her head.
‘How’s Georgia?’
‘Okay.’ She gave a little nod.
Phil said two words: ‘What happened?’
‘People came over and I was in the bathroom. Then there was this massive bang and the smoke alarms went off. Everyone just got out and someone rang the fire brigade. And I had to get Georgia.’
‘Where was Georgia?’ I said.
‘In my room.’
‘Was she hurt?’ I said.
Naomi hesitated, licked her lips.
‘Naomi,’ said Phil. His face was set and his eyes hard.
‘She’s in hospital.’ She swallowed.
I didn’t understand. ‘What’s she in hospital for?’
‘Alcohol poisoning.’
Phil groaned.
‘And she’s okay?’
‘They said she can go home later.’
‘How did it start?’ Phil asked.
‘I don’t know.’
‘You must have some idea,’ he said steadily.
‘We had candles in the lounge. I think maybe that . . .’
I could see it. Them all pissed and rowdy, easy enough to kick over a candle; if it touched the curtains or one of the cushions . . . ‘You shouldn’t even have been here,’ I said, ‘and you know we’ve told you before, no parties.’
‘It wasn’t a party, just . . .’ she protested, then fell silent. Realizing perhaps that splitting hairs would get her nowhere. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, wiping her nose with the back of her hand. ‘I’m really sorry.’
Phil closed his eyes.
‘I’m so cross with you,’ I said, shaking. ‘You’ve ruined—’
‘I’ll help pay.’
‘How exactly? Don’t be stupid. But once we’re allowed to clear up, you can bloody well muck in.’
‘I will,’ she said in a small voice.
‘Someone could have died, Naomi,’ Phil said. ‘
You
could have died.’
It was horrible. The whole situation was horrible. I’d thought the shock of what had happened might make her buck her ideas up, but Naomi’s rebellion had a way to run yet.
‘I suppose it’s the same old story,’ I said to Phil as we drove back from Suzanne’s. ‘Suzanne’s doing everything by the book, being Superwoman, and then Naomi’s in trouble and it’s all eyes on her. Whatever happens, we must make time to see her and Ollie. She seems so lonely sometimes. She hasn’t really got any close friends. Perhaps you could do something with them on Sundays when I’m at work, take them out or something? While Jonty’s away. I think you’re more neutral in her eyes. She’s cross that I won’t just take her word about Naomi drinking.’