He looks concerned. ‘Nina, there’s a phone call for you,’ he says.
‘Who is it?’ I ask as I follow him to the library reception desk.
‘I don’t know, but she said it was urgent and that she didn’t have your mobile number any more.’
‘Any more,’ I repeat, my curiosity piqued. I head behind the counter and pick up the receiver. ‘Hello, Nina Simmonds speaking. How can I help?’
‘Oh Nina, thank God. It’s Barbara, Elsie’s daughter.’
‘Hi Barbara,’ I reply with genuine surprise. I can’t remember the last time we spoke, and it’s certainly never been by phone. ‘Is everything all right with your mum?’ I quietly hope that it’s not and that she’s called to tell me Elsie has suffered a particularly painful death.
‘You need to get home right away.’
‘Why, what’s wrong?’
‘I’m so sorry to be the one to tell you, but there’s been a fire.’
‘A fire,’ I repeat, the words failing to register even when I say them aloud. Perhaps I misheard her. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Nina,’ she says more firmly. ‘Your house is on fire.’
MAGGIE
I stand by the window and take in the view over my street one last time.
All I’ve loved about this ordinary little cul-de-sac in this ordinary little town I now hate. It’s not the street’s fault, it’s not the house’s fault. It’s all my fault. And hers. If I had a second chance, I’d do everything differently. I’d have found Nina the help she so badly needed and I wouldn’t have let my grandson slip through my fingers. Of all our stories, his is the most tragic. He lived the life I wanted for him when I let him go. Yet he still found his way home. He went full circle and left the world from the same place as he entered it.
I slowly make my way down the stairs and to the first-floor landing. For reasons unknown to me, Nina never bothered to fill in the hole I had dug out of the plasterboard, perhaps thinking there was little point, as no one was likely to enter this house again.
I tear many pieces of cardboard from the soundproofing egg boxes and push them through the hole and into the other side of the wall. Then I remove a box of matches from my pocket. Nina had been too concerned with trying to get one up on me with the incarceration anniversary cake to notice as I swiped the matches from the table.
I strike one, light a piece of cardboard and then drop it through. I put my ear to the wall and listen to the fire crackle as it spreads to the other pieces. The carpets in this house are so old they’re not fireproofed. They stretch all the way downstairs to the ground floor and to the doors of the lounge, kitchen and basement. It won’t take long before the wooden doors go up in flames either. I take Nina’s memory box, rip its paper contents into pieces and scatter a trail of them up my stairs. I strike another match and watch in delight as her past slowly takes light. Now she won’t even have those first thirteen years of innocence to cling on to.
Then I retreat to my room, careful to leave the door open. I lift myself on to the bed, lie back and close my eyes. I take a little comfort from knowing it will be the smoke that kills me, not the flames. I’m sure my lungs will burn for a few moments as I cough and splutter, but this really is the best way.
There is nothing I can do for myself and there is nothing more I can do for Nina. She thought that she was lacking a son and that when she found him, it was the missing piece of her puzzle. But she was so, so wrong. What she was actually missing was a self, only she couldn’t admit or confront it, even when she sent Dylan to his death.
She wasn’t the only one who was wrong about herself and what she needed, because so was I. Only now can I see that my knowledge gave me the freedom I craved. Not in a physical sense; but up here in my head, here where it counts, I have always been a free woman. All along, it’s Nina who has been incarcerated. Without offering her insight or nudging memories, it ismewho has keptherlocked up in her own prison. I have created and nurtured this monster and now I am extricating myself from its grip.
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.
