After the Fire (3 page)

‘You don’t need to worry about originally.’ She’d glanced back at him, full lips curving into a smile. ‘You only need to worry about now.’

And then she had turned so he could see her full, high breasts and he had forgotten everything except her divine body.

God, she was incredible. And his. His! He barely dared to speak to girls like her, usually. For various reasons, it wasn’t a good idea. But there she was, offering herself to him, not once but often.

As if she actually liked him – and liked the way he worshipped her. How could he do anything else? She was his goddess.

He’d have to remember to say that to her, he thought.
My goddess
. She would like that.

His body was humming with excitement. Anticipation. He paced up and down, unable to stand still. She was all he thought about, all the time – her taste, her smell, the places he was allowed to touch her and the way her body felt when he did.

The smile on his face faded as the old, familiar, unwanted thought came into his head, effective as a cold shower. No one could know. No one could ever know. It would be a disaster.

It would be the end of everything.

A soft tap at the door brought him back to the present. He felt exquisitely aware of his body as he hurried to unlock the door – of his muscles moving, the clothes touching his skin, his heart thudding. He felt powerful. He felt younger than he had for years. He felt like a man.

His last thought, as he reached out to open the door, was that she was right. There was no point in thinking about the past, or the future. There was only now.

At twenty-one minutes past five on a cold Thursday evening, a small fire started in Murchison House. No one noticed, at first. The fire consumed everything it could reach, and as it spread it became stronger, hotter. It borrowed all of the oxygen it could find and paid it back in poisonous, choking black smoke. The smoke travelled faster than the flames, sliding through cracks and crevices, spreading to fill every space it found. And the heat of the fire travelled too, building in intensity until everything it touched burst into flames, and soon the small fire wasn’t small any more and the smoke was streaming out of windows, under doors, filling the stairwells and flats, until it had taken control of Murchison House.

Carl Bellew didn’t hear anything or smell anything or see anything suspicious. He was asleep in his chair. His mother, Nina, was in her bedroom down the hall from the living room, and she didn’t notice anything either. It was seven-year-old Becky who heard the sound of something falling – a muffled sound. A mysterious sound. Becky was sitting in an armchair, her feet hanging down over the side, watching television. The unexpected noise got her attention. She swung her legs down to the floor and stood up, walking past her brother and her sleeping father. She didn’t say anything to either of them about the sound she had heard. She didn’t say where she was going, or why. The kitchen door was closed and she thought nothing of it. The door to the bedroom she shared with her brother was closed and that wasn’t unusual either. But when she touched it, the door was warm. Warm as blood. Becky reached her hand out to the door handle, which was metal. It was hot enough to sear her palm and she cried out in pain. The scream was loud enough to disturb her father.

‘What’s going on?’ he called. He was still half-asleep and grouchy as a hibernating bear. It wasn’t a good idea to wake him up at the best of times.

‘I’m all right,’ Becky shouted back, pulling her sleeve down over her hand to protect it. She put her covered hand on the door handle and turned it, then pushed the door open.

And the fire came to meet her.

Debbie Bellew was crossing the car park, carrying a plastic shopping bag, when she heard a shout. Shouts were normal on the Maudling Estate but it was always wise to check it was nothing to do with you. Debbie glanced behind her and saw a man shading his eyes, pointing up at the tower block opposite him. Murchison House. Debbie turned to see what he was looking at. It took her a second to make sense of the fact that the top of the tower had changed shape, widened, swelled. Against the darkening sky, black smoke made parts of the building disappear. It was flowing out of windows on the west side of the tower, and with every second that passed the smoke seemed to move faster, finding new places to escape.

The handles of the plastic bag slipped through her fingers and fell on the tarmac. By the time the sponge cake slid onto the ground, Debbie was already gone, sprinting towards the base of Murchison House, knowing that she was too late. Nothing on earth could have stopped her.

Melissa Pell heard a smoke alarm going off – not in her flat, somewhere else – and one part of her brain considered it, then dismissed it. It was teatime. People were cooking. People burned food. She’d done it herself, many a time.

She sniffed. She could smell something in the air, something acrid. Smoke. Actual smoke. That was dinner in the bin, she thought. No salvaging it.

‘Shit!’ She jumped up off the sofa, tipping her son off her lap onto the floor.

‘Mummy,’ Thomas protested as she rushed to the kitchen. She could see it in her mind’s eye: the gas flame flickering, the cloth she’d tossed to one side carelessly. Charring and then burning, the flames rising higher and higher.

But the kitchen was fine. The gas was off. The cloth was nowhere near the cooker. Everything was just the same as normal. Melissa stood for a second, letting her heart rate drop. Everything was all right. There was no reason to panic. Panic was a habit. She needed to let it go. She needed to allow herself to believe that she and Thomas were safe at last.

Melissa turned to go back to her son. She’d moved two steps towards him when her smoke alarm began to chirp.

Mary Hearn put the radio on, for company, and dozed through the afternoon play. She wasn’t quite asleep but she wasn’t awake either. The words got jumbled up and the plot didn’t seem to make any sense. Maybe that was her own fault, though, she thought. Maybe she was missing the point. She didn’t usually nap so late in the day but she was tired, and she let herself drift, thinking about George.

Drina saw the smoke first. She stood up and pressed her face against the cold glass of the window, peering down. It was belching out of the building on the floor below. The wind caught it and blew it across Drina’s view, blotting out London below her. The window frame rattled and she caught the smell of the smoke. It was in the room with her. She stumbled away from the glass and ran to the door, shouting in English and in her own language as she hurried into the dingy living room. The other two girls came out of their room. One was sleepy and yawning, the other hobbling on her heels with cotton wool wedged between her toes. Her toenails were dark red, like drops of blood. She was dark-skinned, African, very young.

‘What is it? What’s wrong?’

‘There’s a fire. We have to get out.’ Drina ran to the living room window, seeing only darkness where there should have been miles of orange streetlights. ‘Are you listening, you bastards? You have to let us out. Unlock the door.’

‘They won’t come,’ the African girl said.

‘They have to.’ Drina ran to hammer on the door. ‘Otherwise we’ll be rescued. If they want to keep us, they have to keep us alive.’

She choked a little on the last word. Smoke was catching the back of her throat. Behind her, the other girl started to cough, muttering something in Russian as she clamped a hand over her mouth and nose. Drina spoke some Russian – she’d learned it in Israel, the first place she’d stopped on her journey from her home. She knew enough to be able to translate it for herself.

Dear God, we are going to die
.

Carl Bellew gathered up his daughter and his phone, then yelled to his mother to collect every bit of jewellery he owned: watches, rings, heavy necklaces and bracelets. Debbie’s jewellery was worthless but his was real gold, real diamonds. Nathan was snivelling with fear and shock and Carl shoved him towards the door.

‘Get a move on.’

‘Put that over your mouth and nose.’ Nina handed him a t-shirt soaked in water. ‘Stay low down when we go outside the door.’

Carl looked down at her, worried. ‘Ready, Mum?’

‘Ready.’ She hefted her handbag on her arm, looking small and spindly but somehow unbreakable. ‘We’ll go straight down the stairs. Easy peasy.’

‘So we need to go down the stairs very quickly but not running, darling, do you understand?’ Melissa picked up the bag she kept by the door, not allowing herself to stop and check that it still contained the money, the passports, the credit cards, the birth certificates, addresses and phone numbers. She’d put them all in there. She’d checked a hundred times.

She had been ready to run. But not from a fire.

Thomas’s face was pink, his bottom lip turned down. He held on to Captain Bunbun. ‘I’m scared.’

‘I know, I do, but you can’t be scared now. We have to go. We’re going to crawl until we get to the stairs and then we’re going to hold on to the handrail and walk down, but not stopping for anything, and if we see a fireman like Fireman Sam we’ll ask him to help us.’

‘Fireman Sam?’ He looked around, his eyes vacant, tuning her out. It was what he did when he was scared or uncertain, and it worried the hell out of her.

‘Come on, Thomas.’ She snatched up his coat. No time to look for hers. Keys: yes, in case they had to come back, if it was too bad outside. People died in fires because they left their hotel rooms or their flats and couldn’t get back in. Escaping could be more dangerous than staying. But Melissa had learned the hard way about staying where she was. The devil you knew could be worse than any trouble you could find elsewhere.

‘Just keep moving,’ she said to her son. ‘Don’t stop for anything. Don’t wait for me if I get held up. Go down to the bottom of the stairs and go outside and I’ll find you in the car park.’

‘But I want to stay with you, Mummy.’

‘I’ll be right behind you. If you can’t see me, just wait for me outside. I’ll be there.’ She knelt down and hugged him, a quick, hard embrace, pressing his head into her neck. ‘What’s your name?’ she whispered.

The answer came back straight away. ‘Sam.’

‘Sam what?’

‘Sam Hathaway.’

‘Good boy.’ Melissa made herself stand, her knees trembling, and opened the front door a crack. There was no one in the corridor. She ushered Thomas out in front of her, keeping a hand on him, and the two of them ran towards the door that led to the stairs.

She lifted her head off the pillow. ‘Did you hear that?’

‘It’s nothing.’ He didn’t hear anything, didn’t care. ‘You’re so beautiful.’

‘Shut up.’ She put a hand on his chest, pushing him away. ‘I heard something.’

‘It’s nothing. Forget it.’

She wouldn’t. She got up and walked through the bedroom, disappearing into the living room. He followed reluctantly, and found her standing at the front door, listening. ‘There’s something going on out there.’

There were noises from outside, footsteps and swearing and an occasional scream. A party getting started, he thought, or an argument spilling over into the estate’s grim public spaces. ‘Come back to bed.’

‘I’m going to look.’

‘Don’t open the fucking door, you stupid bitch – not with people outside. If I’ve told you once …’ He moved fast to stop her and she turned and hit him on the jaw, a punch that had plenty of power behind it. He reeled back, losing his balance, falling. He clutched his face. ‘Jesus fucking Christ.’

‘I don’t like this. I’m going.’ She stepped over him, picking up her clothes from the floor. She started to wriggle into them at speed, shoving her underwear into her handbag. She left her boots unzipped. They jangled as she strode past him on her way to the door. He was still lying where he’d fallen. She stopped.

‘You all right?’

‘No, I’m not. You hit me.’ He sounded petulant and he knew it. She tossed her head.

‘Well, you rushed me. I’ve warned you about that before.’ A double blink, very fast. ‘Seriously, you need to get dressed and get out of here. There’s something weird going on.’

‘I can’t leave if there are people in the corridor. Especially not with my face like this.’

‘Give me strength,’ she said. Then, more gently, ‘Don’t leave it too long, will you?’

He shook his head.

‘Will I see you soon?’

‘I don’t know.’ He wanted to punish her, to make her feel as bad as he felt. Maybe she didn’t care about him at all. He’d have to get back at her some other way. ‘I’m not giving you anything for today.’

A shrug. ‘Suit yourself. Not as if you got to do anything, is it?’

He didn’t answer her. He watched her open the door and disappear through it. Almost immediately, she poked her head back in.

‘It’s full of smoke out here. I think there’s a fire.’

‘
Shit
. Go on, get out of here.’ He waved her on irritably, getting to his feet as she closed the door. He wasn’t worried about the fire. It was the repercussions that worried him. If there was a fire, that meant one thing: London Fire Brigade responding with all the weight of officialdom, which meant form-filling, which would involve answering awkward questions. He didn’t want to explain why he was on the Maudling Estate in the first place, let alone in that flat.

As for the fire, well, he had to approach it logically. He couldn’t be found in the flat so he had to get out. He had to get out without being seen. He had to avoid, at all costs, a scandal.

He didn’t start to be afraid for his life until it was much too late to save it.

WHEN MY PHONE
rang I knew it was bad news, but there was nothing remarkable about that. If your business is bad news, some part of you is always waiting for the phone to ring.

And for once, it was ringing before I had got as far as going to bed. No dreams to shatter. Small mercies. I checked the time – ten past eleven – before I answered it.