Before the Fire (20 page)

She stood up then and put her arms around him in an awkward hug, so his head rested against her stomach.

‘There’s your present still,’ she said, after an age. ‘Let me get it.’

She came back with a silver-wrapped box, a silver gift tag taped to the top:
Kieran, All grown up! Happy Birthday! Mum xxx.

It was a watch. Armani. Proper nice. Expensive. Silver and black with green-tipped hands you could see in the dark. It was cold against his wrist. A bit big – he was a skinny bastard
– but on the tightest setting it’d do. It had a nice weight.

‘Thanks.’ He tried to smile.

‘It suits you.’ She was waiting for him to say he was coming home – he could tell.

‘I thought I’d get some stuff from upstairs. Some clothes.’ He didn’t look at her. She didn’t say anything.

Upstairs, he stood at his bedroom window, staring at two footballs and a squashed Coke can stranded on the school roof. Inconclusive. He repeated the word over in his head. Inconclusive. He
wanted to punch his fist through the glass. A pigeon landed on the back fence and tipped its head up towards him. He hated it. He hated the fat bastard pigeon. He wanted to kill it, put his hands
around its neck and squeeze, or – better – smash its head with a rock until its eyes popped out.

If they let Owen Lee out of jail he’d find him and kill him, Stick told himself. He turned away from the window, ripped the newspaper article off the wall and shoved it into his pocket.
Then he lifted up the sports bag, which he’d still not unpacked, and walked back downstairs.

Alan was in the hallway. Mac’s ma must have left already.

‘Can we go?’ Stick said, opening the front door.

Alan raised his eyebrows, then held up his hand and went into the living room. Stick waited, kicking at the plastic pot by the front step, listening to their lowered voices.

‘I’ll ask Shelia to come tomorrow,’ Alan said as he pulled off the estate onto Queen’s Road. ‘She’s busy, but we go back a long way.’
He drove slower than anyone Stick knew – seemed oblivious to the cars that came right close to his bumper, the drivers that glowered and swore at him. ‘Trish is very open to it.’
He lifted both hands off the steering wheel and sighed. ‘And Shelia is a truly remarkable woman. She can see people. Really see them.’ He lowered his voice and leaned a little towards
Stick. ‘Your nan’s a bit sensitive about it,’ he said, nodding. ‘Women are, aren’t they? Exes and that, they get themselves in a tizz, think it means you don’t
love them.’

‘Shelia’s your ex?’

‘Five years.’ Alan let out another sigh. ‘She taught me a lot.’ He reached over and tapped Stick on the knee. ‘Don’t ever think a woman can’t teach you
things, son.’

Stick twisted the bezel on his watch, listened to the
scratch scratch
of the metal turning. ‘She reckons she can talk to dead people?’ he said.

Alan nodded. ‘Those that have passed over, yes. She has a real gift. Had it since she was a little girl. Five, she was, when her spirit guide came through.’

‘Must get a bit crowded,’ Stick said. ‘With all the dead people.’

Alan smiled, like he knew something Stick didn’t. ‘Different realm, Kieran, that’s the thing.’

‘When you’re dead, you’re dead.’

Alan pulled into the car park below the flats and turned the engine off. ‘It’s about opening your mind, Kieran. That little leap of faith.’

Mac was dead. Sophie was dead. End of.

‘You’ll see.’ Alan smiled. ‘Wait for your reading and you’ll see.’

Stick lifted his bag off the back seat and got out of the car.

‘She tunes in,’ Alan persisted, following him up the stairs. ‘Sometimes the spirits will send messages. She can guide you.’

‘I don’t need guiding.’ Stick opened the front door and headed for the spare room.

‘We all need guiding, Kieran,’ Alan called after him. ‘Every one of us.’

Shelia was fat – soft, fleshy fat – big cheeks, big neck, big breasts. She smelt of talcum powder and perfume and her face was thick with make-up – pale
foundation dusting the fine hairs along her jawbone.

She came for lunch, sat at the table pulling bits off her sandwich before eating them and going on about Libya, Egypt, Syria. ‘All this unrest,’ she kept saying. ‘I had a boy
come through yesterday. Sixteen. Shot in the head.’

Alan fussed around her like she was a member of the royal family –
more tea? Another sandwich? Anything else you need?

Mrs McKinley asked endless questions: ‘So can you see them? Or just hear them? Or is it more that you just feel they’re there?’

Stick kept his head down, didn’t eat much.

Mrs McKinley’s reading lasted nearly an hour. She came out crying and laughing and saying, ‘He’s OK. My boy’s doing OK.’

And then it was Stick’s turn – even though he’d said no, he wouldn’t bother but thanks anyway. His nan had leaned over and said, ‘Go on, Kieran. She is good.’
And he’d ended up saying, ‘Fine. All right,’ going into the dining room and closing the door behind him.

He sat opposite Shelia at the glass table. ‘It’s rubbish, right?’

She blinked, flashing patches of pearly white eyeshadow.

‘I won’t say anything,’ Stick said.

‘I usually start with these.’ Shelia picked up an oversized pack of cards with blue swirled patterns on their backs.

‘Do you make a lot of money?’ Stick asked.

Shelia shuffled the cards, straightened their edges and then fanned them out. ‘Pick six.’

‘Because I’m not sure it’s right.’

Shelia put the cards down. ‘Not right?’

Stick gestured towards the closed door to the living room. ‘Her son’s dead. They’re about to let the bastard who killed him out of jail, and now she’s smiling and talking
shit about Mac being happy, Mac being safe.’

‘He’s a nice lad.’

Stick narrowed his eyes. ‘You’ve never met him.’

‘He’s got a good sense of humour. You must miss him.’

Anger, like a fish in his stomach – a quick flash of silver. Stick snatched the top card off the pack and turned it over. It was upside down. A man dressed in black sat on a white horse,
holding a black flag. Stick turned it round. ‘Death,’ he read. ‘Give me a fucking break.’

‘Reversed.’ Shelia nodded. ‘It makes sense.’

‘What, I’m going to get stabbed too? Great.’

Shelia shook her head, the flesh at her neck wobbling a little. ‘It’s about change,’ she said. ‘When it’s reversed it means you’re resisting.’

Stick pushed the pack towards her, half the cards spilling off the top.

Shelia restacked them. ‘I know you’re angry,’ she said. ‘Of course you are. The anger is all part of it.’

They stared at each other. ‘Do you want me to invite the spirits, Kieran?’

Stick snorted.

She looked past him, her forehead tensing up as if she was concentrating, as if she was listening to someone. After a while, she nodded. ‘A girl?’ she said. ‘Young. 2001? Does
that mean anything to you?’

‘No.’

‘Try to go with it, Kieran.’ She spoke quietly, gently. ‘Try to think. I have a girl here. She’s with a woman, an older woman.’

‘I thought you were supposed to be talking to Mac?’

‘She’s smiling. I’m getting an S. Does that make sense to you?’

Stick pushed his hands against the table, shoving his chair back so he could stand up.

‘Kieran. Kieran.’ She held up both hands. ‘She wants to talk to you.’

‘You can fuck off.’ Stick backed towards the door. ‘I’m only here because of my nan. I don’t want to be here. I’m not interested.’ He could feel his
heart in his chest, his legs shaky with adrenaline. ‘Let’s just wait five minutes and then we can say it didn’t work out,’ he said.

Shelia was doing the listening pose again, tilting her head so her right ear was higher than her left. ‘Sophie?’ she said.

‘Oh, please! Do you think I’m thick?’

She shook her head. ‘No, not at all. Do you want to speak to Sophie?’

‘Alan tells you about Sophie and then you pretend a fucking ghost told you? This is rubbish.’ He heard his voice cracking around the words, like he was about to cry. ‘I told
you, it’s not right.’

Shelia spread both hands palm down on the tabletop, her bracelets clattering against each other. She had pudgy fingers, like a baby’s. ‘OK, Kieran. I’ll tell her not this
time.’ She closed her eyes, nodding again, as though she was having a conversation in her head. ‘It’s a shame,’ she said. ‘She’s a lovely girl.’

‘Stop saying that. Sophie’s lovely. Mac’s lovely. They’re dead, aren’t they? They’re not fucking here.’

Shelia kept her eyes closed and Stick stared at her, waiting. Eventually she blinked a couple of times and smiled at him. ‘I’m not asking you to believe anything, Kieran. I just pass
on messages. That’s all I do. Sometimes people aren’t ready. That goes for spirits and those earthside.’

Stick stared past her through the window – white clouds sketched across the sky; lines of traffic crawling along the road. He sat back down. ‘So what message did Mac have for
me?’ he asked.

‘I’m tired now, Kieran. It’s tiring.’

‘If Mac was here he’d have said something to me.’

‘It was Sophie.’

‘But before.’

‘He was here for his Mum.’

It was bollocks. All of it was bollocks.

‘I think we’re done, Kieran.’ Shelia stood up and opened the door into the living room.

Shelia left in a noisy flurry of hugs and thanks and promises.

‘Wonderful,’ Alan said, turning away from the front door, his hands lifted into the air like he was some crazy preacher guy. ‘Isn’t she just wonderful?’

Stick’s nan ushered them back into the living room, her mouth set.

‘She’s an angel,’ Mrs McKinley said. ‘She could see him. Imagine being able to see him.’ She looked around the room as if Mac might be there, reaching for a biscuit
from the plate on the coffee table – taking three at once. ‘She told me the clothes he was in when he died. She couldn’t have known that, could she?’

Newspaper reports. There’d have been something somewhere. And Mac wouldn’t be wearing the coconuts and the grass skirts in heaven or wherever, everything still covered in blood and
shit.

‘Did he say anything about the coffin?’ Stick asked.

Mac’s ma frowned, then shook her head.

If it had been Mac he’d have had a go at her about spending so much money. He’d have told her to stay away from Luke Croft and his dodgy loans. If it had been Mac he’d have
stayed and talked to Stick.

‘And you, Kieran?’ Alan said.

‘Nothing.’ Stick twisted the outside of his watch round and round. He could sense them all watching him. ‘I’m going out,’ he said. ‘I’m going for a
walk.’

He left, marched down the overheated, overscented communal hallway, through the parking area and onto Ashton Old Road. Lorries and cars racing past. An old woman with a tartan shopping trolley
creeping towards the bus stop. Stick headed away from town, past the shitty industrial estate, the old red-brick terraces, the crappy shops. He went all the way to J’s house, stood ringing
the doorbell again and again, but no one answered. So he bought himself wings and chips and ate them sat on a low railing by a scraggy-looking strip of grass, staring at the traffic, breathing in
the petrol fumes and the smell of fried chicken, his fingers slick with oil.

And then he took the picture of Owen Lee out of his pocket. He ripped the paper in half, and half again and again, until no one could have known it used to be a face, dropping the pieces on the
ground.

The top drawer of the chest in his nan’s hallway was stuffed full of candles – had been even before she met Alan. Stick eased it open and took the first two he
saw, slipped them into the pocket at the front of his hoody and went into the spare room. There was no lock, so he unplugged the tall metal lamp and jammed it under the door handle. He put the
tissue box with its lacy cover on the floor and placed the two candles on the bedside table. Tea lights with purple wax. He put them so close they touched, then moved them further apart. It made no
difference, but he still couldn’t decide.

He lit the first one. The flame flared briefly, melting the wax from the wick into a small blob on the candle’s surface. Then it wavered and shrank, hesitated like it was thinking of
giving up, until something invisible happened and it climbed again, stretched tall and yellow, turning the wick from glowing red to black. He lit the second and then sat on the bed, his back
against the wall, staring at the two flames: long and thin with pointed yellow tops, the slightest of movements left, right, but otherwise quite still. He strained his ears, but could only just
make out the sound of the TV in the living room. No one was going to come in, but he still couldn’t help imagining it: his nan and Alan standing in the doorway laughing at him –
‘That’s not how you do it, Kieran, do you know nothing?’

The flames held their shape. He thought about Shelia, the way she looked at him and then seemed to go into herself. He stared at the candles but nothing happened.

They were making him mental, the lot of them were. His dad was right: he needed a job, he needed to get the fuck away from there. Stick leaned forwards and blew out the candles. He’d call
J, see if she was back. See if she wanted to go out. Or stay in.

But he didn’t get his phone out. He sat on the bed, and after a while he lit the candles again and the room filled with the smell of hot perfumed wax.

‘Come on then.’ He said it out loud, but as quietly as he could, hating the sound of his own voice. He coughed, held his hand against his mouth. His stomach didn’t feel
right.

‘Mac?’ He coughed again.

‘Sophie, then?’

The candle nearest to him flickered like someone had breathed on it. Stick swallowed.

‘Sophie?’

Nothing. The flame stayed still.

‘Mac?’

It felt the same as it had on Blackpool beach, the sadness like a heavy stone dropped into his stomach, the ripples reaching out to his edges.

‘I could do with—’ He stopped. ‘I could do with getting hammered,’ he said and sniffed. ‘I could do with sitting on your balcony getting stoned and throwing
stuff.’ He laughed. ‘I’m burning candles, for fuck’s sake.’ Stick looked upwards, as if Mac was there and could hear him better if he looked his way. ‘What is
wrong with me?’