‘No, no,’ I say. ‘I think he and I were friends when we were children. But my memory isn’t so great, and I thought if I came back here, it might jog it.’
‘What’s your name, son?’
‘Damon Lister.’
His puffs out his cheeks with the speed of a finger snap. He props himself against the railings with one hand and raises the phone a second time. But this time it’s as if he’s ready to hurl it at me.
‘And you have the nerve to comebackhere, after ... afterwhat happened?’ he shouts. Spit flies from his mouth and there’s wildfire in his eyes. ‘Go on, get out of here. Fuck off!’
I’m taken aback by his change in temperament. I’m no threat to him, but I raise my hands to my chest in a gesture of surrender to make it clear.
‘I have no idea what you’re talking about,’ I say.
‘Don’t play dumb with me,’ he hisses. ‘Bad apples never fall far from trees.’
‘Mate, calm down.’
‘I’m not your mate!’ he shouts, and he starts dialling three nines on the phone’s keypad.
His raised, greatly agitated voice is drawing an audience. Two front doors along this row have opened.
‘You alright, Jim?’ asks a heavy-set man in a vest that barely covers his midriff.
‘I’m leaving,’ I reply, and hurry past that onlooker and the next, baffled by how badly that went and the questions it has thrown up. What did he mean by ‘what happened’? Was he referring to Callum’s murder? And who is the bad apple, and who the tree? Callum can’t be either, as he’s already referred to him as a lovely kid. It seems clear that one of them is me, or at least might be.
When I turn to take one last look back at the flats, my heart fills with warmth when I catch sight of Mum stepping throughone of the doors and closing it behind her. Her halter top exposes portions of her back, and her skin is covered in horrendous burn marks. In that moment it all comes flooding back and hits with me with the force of a speeding train.
I remember how Mum died.
No overdose of prescription medicine, no hanging from a light cord or hacking at her wrists in the bath. Her death isn’t the straightforward suicide I’ve spent so much of my life believing it to be.
Chapter 33
Damon
I am watching a twelve-year-old me, standing at the rear of the flats, staring up at the fifth-floor window where Mum’s bedroom is. The first drops of rain begin to fall from a charcoal-grey sky, landing on my forehead and trickling down my cheeks. I’m too transfixed by what’s happening to wipe them away.
Mum appears from behind the window’s net curtain, and even from this distance I can sense her panic. Her arms sway over her head as if trying to get my attention. Then she begins banging on the window with both fists, trying to break the glass. She is terrified of something.
She vanishes, only to return carrying a dining room chair that she hurls at the window. It rebounds off the reinforced safety glass and falls out of sight. It takes several more attempts before the window finally shatters, madly glittering glass showering to the ground in front of where I stand, as hard and fast as the sheets of rain now pouring down.
The sudden rush of oxygen from outside causes a plume of black smoke to swallow her in its rush to escape. Only then do I understand our home is on fire.
‘Mum!’ I scream and try running towards the stairwell that will take me upstairs to our flat. But someone grabs my arms, pulling me in towards them and holding me there.
‘It’s too dangerous,’ a man’s voice warns. I don’t look at him because I’m transfixed by Mum.
A flash of lightning illuminates the sky, swiftly followed by a crack of thunder so loud it pulses through me.
‘Help me!’ she yells again and again before more smoke appears, choking her. She has something in her hand that she holds to her ear. I assume it’s a phone and she must be talking to an emergency services operator.
Only then do I notice a crowd of neighbours gathering around us as others pour from the building while alarm bells ring, their end-of-the-world racket joining the thunderous rain to drown out the worried chatter of frightened tenants.
‘Let go of me,’ I yell to the man who has me in his grasp. ‘I have to help her!’
But he holds me fast.
I hear others shouting back to her, urging her to hang on, promising that firefighters are on their way to rescue her. I doubt she can hear them above the roaring flames.
