Before the Fire (14 page)

He almost missed it. A practised move – the glasses disappearing into her bag instead of back onto the shelf without her missing a beat. Stick glanced over to the security guards, but they
were eyeing up three girls in hot pants standing by the rows of handbags.

J was still trying on sunglasses, frowning and shaking her head and pressing her finger against her lips as though she was wondering whether to buy this pair or the other. And then she walked
out, past the security guards and onto Market Street.

Stick hurried after her, caught her by the arm as she rounded the corner onto Spring Gardens. She launched into a run.

‘J!’

She half stumbled to a stop, turned. ‘You?’ Her cheeks darkened a shade.

‘You didn’t pay for those glasses.’

Her hand went immediately to her bag, as if she was shielding it from him. ‘Aren’t you supposed to be in Spain?’

‘Yes.’

J stared at him for what seemed like ages, and then she started laughing, still holding onto her bag, her face creasing up, and Stick started laughing too – he couldn’t help it.

When they stopped, the silence felt sharp and difficult and Stick wanted to laugh again, but it would just sound forced and stupid, and there wasn’t even anything to laugh about. He was
about to say he had to go and look for the oil burner when she said, ‘I owe you a drink.’

Stick touched his cheekbone where she’d hit him. ‘It didn’t even bruise,’ he said.

‘I know a place,’ J said. ‘I’ll get vodka.’

Stick listened to the hubbub of Market Street behind him. Tomorrow Owen Lee would stand in a courtroom and Stick would be there, breathing the same air, close enough to touch him.

‘Kieran?’

‘It’s Stick,’ he said.

‘What?’

‘My name. My real name. My mates call me Stick.’

The morning with the tiny silver bullets, Mac and he had run all the way to the edge of the school playground and Mac had turned to him and said, ‘What’s your real name?’

‘Kieran.’

‘No, your real name.’

He hadn’t understood.

‘You can’t just have the name they give you,’ Mac had insisted. ‘You’ve got to make your own.’ And then he’d looked Stick up and down and said.
‘How about Stick, cos you’re a skinny bastard? Stick. That’ll do.’

J nodded. ‘Stick,’ she said. ‘Will you come drink some vodka with me?’

He followed her between the tall windowless buildings of Spring Gardens, past the post office, through the quiet shaded back streets, the posh cobbled streets with their overpriced shops, and
then out into the hurry of Deansgate – a crowd already gathered outside the Wetherspoon’s, pints and fags in hand, a stale-pub smell leaking onto the street every time the doors
opened.

Stick waited outside the supermarket while J went in to buy vodka. He watched the city getting on with its day, people rushing about as though whatever they were doing was important. There was
something about it that made him feel desperate. Like he might cry if he let himself.

J came out with a plastic bag and a grin and they carried on along Deansgate, towards the Beetham Tower with its sharp edges – all the tiny flats like little glass-fronted rabbit
hutches.

She took him down past the crap Roman fort Stick remembered having to draw on a school trip once, down under the massive bridges, their arches soaring above them and J swinging the bag with the
vodka in it, twisting and turning her body through the shaded space. He followed her along a thin cobbled path by the canal until they reached a low bench tucked up against the wall, under a curved
pedestrian bridge.

J sat down and plonked the vodka bottle next to her. Stick stayed standing, watching two fag ends dance together in what looked like a gob of spit on the surface of the water.

‘This place used to be a shithole,’ J said, twisting the top off the vodka and holding the bottle towards him.

Stick took a drink, swirled it around his mouth and felt his skin tingle. He watched the fag ends touch and then drift apart, touch and then drift apart, and wondered what was making them
move.

‘It was all dirty and stinking, my dad says,’ J said. ‘Before they did it up.’ She held out her hand and Stick passed her the bottle.

They were on the bend of the canal, the water – a soupy green-brown – heading off in four directions. The three bridges crowded next to each other on their right, metal and brick,
arches within arches, the electric tram lines strung up like washing lines. Stick watched a man tying up his barge, looping thick rope around a metal post. Behind the man were warehouses with neat
brickwork and arched glass windows – a beer garden with red and yellow flowers, huge linen umbrellas, a stone fountain. ‘They did my estate up,’ he said. ‘Started the year I
was born.’ The year good things began to happen, his mum used to say; he hadn’t heard that in ages.

‘My mum reckons it’s better,’ he said. ‘I reckon they should knock it down.’ He imagined Mac’s block of flats falling to the ground. He’d seen a
programme about demolition once – men in yellow jackets and hard hats talking about how they laid the explosive here, and here, and here, so the building would collapse without killing
people, without trashing everything else around it. They’d shown the same block of flats go down again and again, in slow motion, the whole thing crumbling like someone had punched it in the
stomach and it had sunk to its knees in defeat. ‘Nah,’ he said. ‘It’s all right. Is what it is.’ He sat down next to J. ‘Where do you live?’

‘In a house.’ She took the sunglasses out of her bag and put them on. ‘I say, have you seen my latest Hollywood blockbuster, darling?’ she said, standing up and flinging
her pink doll’s hair left to right.

‘You’re a nutjob,’ Stick said, and then, when she pouted and pulled a face he said, ‘They’re nice. You’re a nutjob with good taste.’

J pushed the sunglasses up onto her head and sat back down, her knee not quite touching his. ‘What happened to Spain anyway?’

Stick opened his mouth and then closed it again.

‘Fell out with your buddy?’ J asked.

Stick took the article about Owen Lee from his pocket and handed it to her. He regretted it immediately, but then he saw how carefully she unfolded it, and the way her nose wrinkled a little as
she squinted her eyes to read.

‘He killed someone?’ J pointed at Owen Lee and glanced at Stick. ‘No?’ She examined the paper again. ‘No. Your mate’s Iain McKinley,’ she said.

‘Mac. He’s called Mac. Was.’ Stick rubbed at his nose, and then thought that that was what his dad always did and so he shoved both hands under his thighs and stared at the
canal.

‘Serious?’ J said.

A goose cut a V through the water, honking loudly. The man who’d tied up his barge earlier came out onto the towpath, wearing a green jumper and a white shirt underneath with the collar
turned up. Stick watched him walk towards the pub, talking into his mobile phone, and wished for a minute that they could swap places. The man looked like he had a job and a house, a wife and a
kid, a boat and a wallet full of cash, a best mate who was still alive.

‘They got this guy though, Owen Lee. That’s good,’ J said.

Stick swallowed. ‘They should hang him,’ he said. ‘It’s not right, is it? You kill someone and then you get given somewhere to live and have your meals cooked for you
every night.’

J laughed. ‘Eye for an eye.’

‘What?’

‘My dad’s into the Bible. He fights with my gran about it – my mum’s mum. She says too much bad has come from people who hide behind God. She’s into politics and
justice and writing to people in prison.’ J stopped. ‘I mean – people who – fuck, I don’t know, but not people like your guy. She wouldn’t write to
him.’

‘It’s the court case,’ Stick said. ‘Tomorrow.’

‘Already?’

‘A hearing or something.’ Stick took out his tobacco and papers, rolled two cigarettes and handed one to J. He lit his and sucked at it, hard, so the tobacco crackled and the paper
disintegrated fast.

‘So you’ll see him,’ J said. ‘Owen Lee?’

‘I want to hear him say it.’ Stick took another mouthful of smoke, another mouthful of vodka. ‘And why. I want him to say why.’ He stared at the light reflecting off the
water onto the bottom of the bridge – shimmering white lines and shifting patches of dark in between. ‘They’ll send him down. Life, I reckon.’

J scratched at the vodka bottle’s label with her finger.

‘They’ve got evidence,’ Stick said. ‘But he won’t talk, that’s what Mac’s ma said. He just sits there like a twat and says nothing.’ He looked at
the canal. The fag ends had gone and a plastic cup floated in their place, catching the sun. ‘Not that she’s seen him. She’ll see him tomorrow. She’s not, like, been at the
station with him, but there’s this police bloke called Rob, and he tells her what’s going on.’ Stick stopped talking.

They sat in silence, watching the light on the water; a yellow tram whisper across the bridge; a woman with a wheeled suitcase struggling over the cobbles on the opposite side of the canal.

‘I lied,’ Stick said.

J glanced over at him but said nothing.

‘That other time I met you. Mac was dead then.’ Stick thought about the rotting handbags and the broken-down walls and J sitting up on the brick window ledge. ‘I said I was
going to Spain but he was already dead.’

J nodded and said, ‘Malaga. Costa del Sol.’ She smiled. ‘I googled it when I got home. Looks nice.’

Mac would have liked her, Stick thought. Mac would have definitely liked her.

‘You got a boyfriend?’ he said, and then felt himself blush. He scraped his foot against the ground.

J shook her head. ‘Why?’

‘Just wondered.’ Stick bit at his bottom lip, hard enough to hurt. He stared at the boat with its black sides and red painted flowers. ‘Can I have your number?’ he said,
trying to get the words out fast. ‘I just thought – I could message you. See if you’re about.’

‘I don’t have a phone.’ J aimed a kick at a pigeon pecking by their feet and it backed off, flapping its wings.

‘How can you not have a phone?’

She opened both palms.

‘I don’t know anyone who doesn’t have a phone,’ Stick said.

‘You do now.’

‘You’re not normal, do you know that?’

J smiled like he’d paid her a compliment.

‘So if I want to see you again then I just have to hang around that dump and hope you turn up?’ Stick said.

‘Do you want to see me again?’

Stick looked at the ground – tiny green ferns growing up between the stones. ‘Whatever.’

‘People didn’t used to have mobile phones,’ J said.

‘Well, what the fuck did they do?’

J shrugged. ‘Organised stuff in advance.’

Stick looked at her.

‘So, like, I say, I’ll meet you at Piccadilly Gardens, one o’clock, Saturday,’ she said.

‘And I turn up and you’re not there.’

‘Or you turn up and I am there.’

‘Or I turn up and you’re there but I can’t find you because you’re sat in one bit and I’m in another bit, and by the time I’ve trekked the whole way round the
place you’ve got bored and decided I’ve stood you up and you’ve fucked off home.’

‘Or I say we’ll meet at the statue.’

Stick frowned at her. She was pretty and at the same time not, he thought, with her pointy face and her freckles and her too-tight clothes and her too-thin body.

‘One o’clock Saturday?’ he said.

‘Yeah.’ She shrugged. ‘Why not? You can tell me about the court thing.’ She stretched out her hand. ‘Deal?’

He shook her hand, made sure he didn’t hold on to it too long in case she socked him in the face again.

‘I’ve got to go,’ she said, getting up. ‘You can keep the rest of it.’ She pointed at the bottle, and then she was gone. Stick made himself wait a minute before he
twisted around. When he did, kneeling up on the bench to get a better view, she’d already disappeared.

The envelope was still lying in the hallway when he got back, half pissed. He sat on the bottom of the stairs and ripped it open. A GC Windows catalogue and a note from his
dad:
Kieran, Something to whet your appetite! Let’s discuss on Sunday? Dad x.
The catalogue was printed on thick glossy paper. The front cover had a photo of a blonde woman standing
in front of a house, her hand touching the living-room window, her mouth stretched into a false smile.

Stick shoved the catalogue and the note back in the envelope and carried it through to the kitchen. Babs stood by the sink, looking hopeful. There was still food in her bowl, but he shook in
some more dry stuff and crouched next to her, stroking her head and neck as she inspected it.

‘I’ve met a girl, Babs,’ he whispered.

The cat selected a brown biscuit shaped like a fish and crunched it between her teeth.

‘Got a date,’ Stick said. ‘Sort of.’ He smiled and then stopped himself. ‘Plus they’re going to nail the fucker that killed Mac. They’re going to send
him down.’

Babs pushed her head against his palm and purred. Stick looked at the envelope on the floor next to him. His dad had written his return address on the back like an idiot.

‘He wants me to work for him,’ Stick said. ‘Thinks I’m some kind of charity case. Thinks I can’t sort my own shit out.’ Babs lowered her nose and started
eating again, then turned away from her bowl and wandered into the hallway.

Stick picked the envelope off the floor and took the catalogue out again. He tried to imagine himself in a suit, holding a briefcase and ringing a stranger’s doorbell.
Hello, can I
interest you in new windows?
He shook the thought away, folded the catalogue and the envelope in half and shoved it into the bin.

The hearing was in the old court building, which stood like an ugly sister next to the new one with its jutting green and yellow glass cubes. Stick walked along a low covered
walkway, past tinted windows blocked by vertical blinds, into a foyer spattered with photocopied signs.
Mobiles off. Empty your pockets through security.
Stick put his phone in a plastic
box and walked through the metal detector arch. No one pulled him aside or asked why he was there.