After the Fire Read Free

stairs. Strange how you resented it, though, when it was broken again. It was the disappointment, that was all. The hope and then the disappointment. Debbie had had just about enough of disappointment.
    She hurried to the door and lifted her anorak off the hook, wondering if she needed to get anything else. It was no joke, going up and down all those stairs. On the other hand, it gave her time she wouldn’t otherwise have. No one would expect her back for ages.
    Debbie left the flat with an unusual feeling of freedom. On her own, for once. No one talking to her. No one asking her to do anything or get anything. No one interrupting her. She took her time about heading for the stairs. What was wrong with taking a few minutes for herself? Time to think.
    Except that her thoughts weren’t all that comforting, when they came. And even though she knew she had time, she couldn’t enjoy it. She was going to have to run down and back up again to make up for the three or four minutes she’d stolen for herself.
    Debbie started towards the stairwell, hurrying past a man who was walking up, his head bent, a cap pulled down low over his eyebrows. She didn’t really notice him. Afterwards, she couldn’t remember if he’d been carrying anything. She couldn’t remember much at all.
     
    In the flat opposite the lift, Melissa Pell listened. Her wooden spoon circled in the pan of baked beans, slowly, as she strained to hear over the hiss of the gas flame. The television was on in the living room, but it wasn’t loud. She liked to be able to hear Thomas playing. She liked to be able to hear any other noises too. Anything unexpected. Anything unusual.
    The trouble was that Murchison House was full of unexpected and unusual noises. Screaming and shouting in the middle of the night. Footsteps in the corridor, slow or fast. Doors slamming without warning. The hum and whine of the lift lumbering up and down, the judder as it stopped opposite her door. She was on edge all the time.
    ‘Mummy!’
    Melissa started, flicking some lurid orange sauce on the cooker. She went to get a cloth. ‘You gave me a fright, poppet.’
    ‘Sorry, Mummy.’ He sounded it, too.
    It was all wrong, Melissa thought, that a three-year-old should know to be really sorry for scaring his mother. She made an extra effort to sound cheerful as she rubbed at the ceramic hob. ‘That’s all right. I just wasn’t expecting you to burst in here.’
    ‘I didn’t mean to burf.’ The consonants always foxed him when they came together. It was babyish and she hated correcting him. She wanted to keep him, her sweet-smelling delicate boy, just as he was, for ever.
    ‘Burst,’ she said clearly.
    ‘Burft.’
    That was as close as he was going to get, Melissa knew. She grinned at him and went to rinse out the cloth. The water rattled into the sink. She could hear his voice, but not what he was saying to her.
    ‘Hold on a second.’
    ‘Is it ready, Mummy?’
    She turned just in time to see him grabbing the handle of the saucepan to tilt it towards him. The sauce was heaving with bubbles, hot as lava. She had no breath to scream at him, no time to inhale. She lunged across the small kitchen and grabbed the handle of the saucepan, pushing it onto one of the rings at the back, out of Thomas’s reach, where it should have been all along.
    It was as if her husband was in the room, leaning close to her, shouting in her ear.
What the hell do you think you’re playing at? Careless, that’s what you are. And a bad mother. Selfish, too. Do you really think this is the best place for the boy? Even if you can’t stand me, don’t you want what’s best for him? Can’t you even cook his dinner without putting him in danger?
    She was never going to get away from him. Even if she was hundreds of miles away from him, he was still there, in her head. She was never going to be free.
    Thomas was looking wounded. ‘You snatched it.’
    ‘I had to, pet. It’s hot.’
    ‘You’re not