He Said/She Said(73)

‘How has this all gone wrong so quickly?’ I said. ‘I thought she was my friend. I didn’t even know her.’

To his credit, he didn’t say – he has never said – I told you so.

*

No room should be more familiar in the dark than one’s own bedroom but suddenly it was as strange as a hotel room in the middle of the night. The smoke was a spur in my throat and pins in my eyes. I managed to pull on a long T-shirt and the knickers that were still on the floor where I’d left them.

‘Kit!’ I shook his shoulders. ‘Something’s burning.’ That was an understatement. The whole flat was on fire. ‘Kit, for fuck’s sake, wake up!’ He had never seemed heavier, or more asleep, and for a few awful darkening seconds, I thought he was dead. ‘KIT!’ I smacked him full in the face and he coughed himself awake, assessing the situation in seconds. He pulled on his shorts, immediately wide awake, focused.

‘It’s coming from the staircase,’ he said. ‘Get on the bed.’

He forced open the window that doubled as a fire escape; it turned the whole flat into a flue, sucking the smoke through our bedroom and bringing with it a huge cascade of orange flame. We both ducked as things escalated next door. There was some kind of explosion; even through the boom we heard the glass shatter in the sitting room. Smoke scraped me out from the inside. ‘All our stuff,’ I gasped. I meant just one thing: the photograph of me and my mum in Greenham Common. The thought of her picture blackening and curling seemed intolerable; preventing it felt worth risking my life. It can’t have been more than three seconds but grief is cunning that way. Like smoke, it finds and fills the tiniest spaces. Kit pulled at my T-shirt; it tore as I made for the sitting room, just as the orange dragon of flame bounded up to the bedroom door.

‘What the fuck are you doing?’ His voice cracked with the effort of shouting.

‘I need my mum,’ I said. He knew me well enough to infer the thought process behind the words and acted with superhero speed, charging past me and pulling the bedroom door closed. The sound he made as his bare left hand closed over the red-hot door handle was like nothing I ever want to hear again. The scream broke his voice; it cracked halfway through and gave way to ragged breathing. He pushed me with his right hand towards the fire escape. The metal staircase to the street was engulfed with smoke and hot to the touch, so Kit shoved me roughly through to the safety of the rooftops. We climbed, half-dressed and in bare feet, across to where the tiles were cool and tried to make sense of what was happening underneath us.

‘I’m sorry,’ I wanted to say, but I had no voice even to whisper.

No other floors seemed to be affected but tongues of bright fire streamed from our balcony. The pavement below was dotted with people in nightclothes and dressing gowns. Someone I didn’t know said, ‘It’s ok, they’re on the roof!’ and then raised their voice to where we were. ‘The fire brigade are on their way.’

We could not reply. It took everything we had to breathe. There was a sweet, meaty smell, like barbecued pork, on the air, and I remember looking around me, surprised that you could smell cooking at this hour; surely all the restaurants were closed. It wasn’t until I looked down and saw his bubbled flesh that I realised I could smell the seared flesh of Kit’s left palm.



Blue lights circled across the common. The ladders went up and the hoses went on. You could hear the sizzling from the pavement. Kit and I sat on the back step of the ambulance, oxygen masks around our necks and blankets over our shoulders. One paramedic treated Kit’s hand while the other called the A&E department at Bart’s. I was appalled that I had risked both our lives for a photograph.

‘Your landlord’s got a lot to answer for,’ said one of the firefighters, helmet off, sweat carving red tributaries on a blackened face. ‘I’ll bet you anything it’s electrics. I can’t think of anything else that’d cause a fire like that in a stairwell. You can see where the plaster’s come off the wall; that wiring’s got to be sixty years old.’

‘It’s the force as much as the heat,’ said the paramedic, gently wrapping bandages around Kit’s palm, making him whimper in pain. I’d never seen beads of sweat on anyone’s face before, but his forehead was studded with fat droplets that looked solid as set wax. I could hear him grinding his teeth with the effort of not screaming. The firefighter was called away by a colleague. ‘If you’d only touched it we’d be talking about a little sting. You must’ve given that door handle a good yank. Mind you, if you hadn’t, you’d be toast now.’

Another firefighter approached us, his gloved hand flat.

‘We’ve found the culprit.’ In his palm sat a tiny charred pink disc that I identified in seconds as a Blood Roses candle, or rather its remaining base. Even smashed and charred it held a ghost of its scent. I didn’t need to meet Kit’s eye to know that he knew it too. ‘If it was up to me I’d have these things banned. They’re the new cigarettes in terms of starting fires. Well, you won’t be doing that again in a hurry, will you?’ He leaned down like we were naughty five-year-olds. ‘What were you even doing, burning it on the stairs? Seriously, what were you thinking?’

‘Why did you . . .?’ I asked Kit, just as he said, ‘Why on earth would you . . .?’ Our voices were not our own, our vocal cords tattered by smoke. My own anger was reflected in his face. ‘I didn’t,’ he said.