What Lies Between Us(96)

For the first time, I am putting myself before Nina. I am taking control of my future by ending it, here and now. I am doing this for me and I am doing it for the memory of my grandson. I take in the deepest of breaths and smile because I know, at last, there are so very few of them left.





NINA


My taxi is halted at the entrance to our cul-de-sac by a uniformed police officer. I throw a twenty-pound note over the driver’s shoulder, open the door and run towards the blackened house a hundred metres away. I’m stopped by two more police constables and a line of yellow tape tied between two lamp posts on opposite sides of the street.

‘I live there,’ I yell, pointing to the building ahead. ‘My son and my mum were inside. Where are they now?’

‘Let me see what I can find out,’ says one of the PCs calmly. ‘But until we’re given the all-clear by the fire officers, I’m afraid you can’t go any further.’

As he leaves, the other officer says something to me, but I’m not listening. I’m focused on two ambulances with their rear doors wide open, parked behind the fire rigs. Four paramedics chat among themselves while they await further instructions. I don’t see Dylan or Mum inside either vehicle. Perhaps they are being treated inside the house?

I look back at it and gawp, wide-eyed at the enormity of what’s happening. My family home, the place where I loved my father, lost and found my son and punished my mother, is grey, black and charred. Fire officers in yellow coats and hard hats enter and exit what’s left of it. The blaze has been extinguished but has left an unrecognisable charcoal shell in its wake. The air around me smells like burned wood and acrid plastic. There is glass from broken windows and roof tiles scattered across the lawn and pavement. Water trickles past my feet, carrying away small shards of debris that once formed part of my home towards the drains and out of sight.

‘Please let them be okay, please let them be okay, please,’ I say aloud and pray that for once in my life, God is feeling charitable. ‘They’re all I have.’

It’s only then that I notice the neighbours lined up in the street, watching me talking to myself. They are staring at me with a mixture of pity and relief that it’s not their property in ruins. Barbara looks at me with sympathy but Elsie shoots me a glare of disdain, like this is my doing and that finally I have my comeuppance.

The little girl, the one Maggie was convinced was being abused, is also here, staring at me, hollow-eyed. There’s a patchwork of yellow-and-blue bruising leading up the child’s right arm and under her T-shirt. Her mother is resting her hand on the child’s shoulder but as I look more closely, her knuckles are bent and white, as if she’s digging her fingertips into the girl. In that moment I know I should have believed Maggie.

I want to say something to the girl, but a uniformed fire officer is approaching me. ‘Are you the homeowner?’ he asks.

‘Yes, well no, it’s my mum’s house, but I live here with her. Where is she? Where’s my son?’ I am so frightened of what he’s going to tell me that I want to be sick.

He escorts me under the taped-off area towards the ambulances and out of earshot of spectators. ‘Can I ask your name?’

‘Nina, Nina Simmonds,’ I stutter. ‘Why isn’t anyone telling me what’s happened? Where is my family?’

‘Ms Simmonds,’ he says softly, ‘I’m sorry to tell you but my team has discovered two bodies inside the property.’

My legs buckle beneath me and I drop to the floor like a bag of spanners. I hear him shout something and a paramedic rushes towards us. The two men lift me to my feet and help me towards the ambulance. I sit on the tailgate; I’m crying and hyperventilating and I struggle to get my breath. They encourage me to inhale deeply but when I do, smoke and perhaps the burned bodies of my family catch in the back of my throat. Twice, I’m sick into a bag. All I can think about is how frightened Dylan must have been when he understood he was powerless to stop what was happening around him.

‘Would they . . . would they have suffered . . .’ I begin, but I can’t finish.

‘It’s likely smoke inhalation would have got to them, not the fire itself,’ he says. It offers the tiniest shred of comfort. ‘But we won’t know until the autopsy.’ I shudder at the thought of them cutting into my perfect little boy.

‘How did it start?’

‘There will be a full investigation in due course but at the moment, we are working on the theory that it might be the result of arson.’

‘That doesn’t make any sense. It’s impossible.’

The officer hesitates, mulling over his words. ‘It appears to have been started deliberately from somewhere inside the property.’

‘What? Where?’

‘A preliminary map of origin suggests it was the partition wall between the first floor and the staircase leading up to the attic.’

‘Mum’s bedroom is up there, but she doesn’t have access to anything flammable.’

‘Is she a smoker? Does she use a cigarette lighter, or matches?’

‘No, she’s not . . .’

And then it hits me with the weight of a wrecking ball. Our dinner last night. I was too busy goading her by lighting a candle on her three-year anniversary cake to remember to put the matches back inside my pocket. Mum must have grabbed them while I was distracted. She has set fire to the house to kill herself and get away from me. Only she has taken with her the grandson she didn’t know was in the basement. Even in death she has found a way to devastate me once more.