Where There's Smoke

The word was like a shout in the silence. Kate pressed back against the wall. A dull glow came from beside her. She turned towards it and found herself looking at the lamp on the table. The room came into being around her as it grew brighter, small beds and cuddly toys. Mickey Mouse capered on the lampshade. Ellis stood in the doorway with his hand on the dimmer switch. His eyes were red from the petrol. She could see the dark splashes of it on his clothes. He stepped into the room, bringing a stronger reek of it with him. Kate stepped to one side, hoping to dart around him to the door, but he moved to block her. The knife was still gripped in his hand. Kate saw the dark smear on its blade. She backed between the bookshelves and the table again. Ellis stopped in the middle of the room. “You shouldn’t have d-done it.” He sounded calmer. Kate wasn’t sure whether he meant run, or have an abortion. She couldn’t speak. “You’d n-no right,” he said. “It was my b-baby. You’d no right.” She shook her head, but he wasn’t looking. He was staring at her arm. “You’re bleeding.” He sounded surprised. Kate looked down. There was a gaping slice in the left sleeve of her coat. Her arm was soaked in blood. She had forgotten about it, but now it began to throb again. The pain goaded her.

“What are you looking so upset about?” she demanded. She wiped her hand on her bloody sleeve and held it up to show him. “This is what you wanted, isn’t it?”

A stricken expression crossed his face. “I–I didn’t mean to.”

“You didn’t mean to? What the fuck did you mean, then?”

Suddenly the weeks of fear boiled over. The sight of him infuriated her. “Is this my fault?”

She thrust out her injured arm. “Is it? Did I make you cut me?”

“N-no, I—”

“So who made you? Who made you do any of this? Who made you kill Alex Turner?”

He tore his eyes from her arm. “I t-told you! I d-didn’t want that!”

“He’s still dead, though, isn’t he? You didn’t want to, but you still did! And his wife was pregnant, did you know that?”

Kate could tell that he hadn’t. He looked stricken.

“N-no!”

“She was eight months pregnant! She might even have had the baby by now, and Alex Turner’s never going to see it because you killed him!”

“N-no!”

He shook his head, violently. “I–I didn’t...”

“You killed him, and now you want to kill an innocent family as well!”

“Shut up!”

He took a step towards her, but she was reckless now. “Why? You’re going to burn me anyway! You’ve already cut me! What else are you going to do?”

“I don’t know,” he shouted. “Leave me alone!”

“Leave you alone?” Kate stared at him. “For God’s sake, just listen to yourself! Think what you’re doing.”

His features were contorted with pain. Seeing him, the anger drained out of her.

“Put the knife down.” She almost called him Alex, and in her haste to cover the slip she spoke without thinking. “You need help.”

His head jerked up. “What f-fucking help? People asking stupid qu-questions, telling me what my fucking p-problem is? They don’t want to help. They just want me to behave. So long as I don’t b-bother anybody else, they don’t care! But nobody cares whether I’m bothered! Nobody c-cares about me!”

I cared. The thought went unspoken. “Lucy and Jack did,” she said instead.

“No, they d-didn’t! I thought they did, but they didn’t! That’s why I c-came here, but they’re like all the rest!”

“What about Angus and Emily?”

“I don’t want to t-talk about it!”

“So you’re just going to kill them, too? Burn them, like you did your own family?”

Shock bleached his face. “Who t-told you that?”

“Never mind who told me, it’s true, isn’t it?”

“N-no!”

“Yes, it is! You set fire to the house while your mother and father and your brothers were asleep, and then you stood and watched them burn!”

“I d-didn’t! It wasn’t like that, it was an accident!”

“An accident that you set fire to the house?”

“Yes! No! I d-don’t—” His voice was anguished. “I didn’t mean to hurt them. I just wanted them to take n-notice of me. They were always fighting, and leaving me with M-Michael and Andrew and — and they’d d-do things to me, and then I’d try to tell my m-mum and dad and they wouldn’t believe me! Even though I kept telling them, they wouldn’t. And then my g-gran tried to help, she tried to t-tell them, and they started shouting, and — and then Gran was on the floor, all blue her f-face was blue. And they said she was — she was dead, and nobody — nobody c-cared except me. So I lit the fire, and I thought, N-now they’ll listen, now they’ll know, they’ll be sorry...”

His eyes were focused on something Kate couldn’t see. “And it started b-burning, and I could see right into the flames, like it was another world, all clean and pure. I watched them, and... and nothing worried me any more. They got bigger and bigger, until there wasn’t anything else, and they were... they were beautiful.”

“But it isn’t beautiful afterwards, is it?” Kate said.

His face clouded, losing its transcendent quality. “No.” For a moment he looked like a young boy, lost and scared.

“You didn’t mean to hurt them,” Kate said.