Fighting Back (7 page)

I awoke in the middle of the night. The house was
silent. But something had awoken me. What?

There was no sound. Nothing. It was my imagination. I turned over, ready to go back to sleep when it hit me.

The smell. Smoke! I could smell smoke! The flat was on fire!

Chapter Eighteen

I scrambled out of bed, shouting, racing for the front door.

‘Mum! Mum!’ I screamed. When I saw the front door was ablaze I really began to panic. How were we going to get out? Mum was bleary-eyed as she opened the door of her bedroom, but her eyes snapped open when she saw the flames. Her scream joined mine.

‘What are we going to do?’ I yelled at her.

I ran to the balcony and threw open the doors. Ming was already on his balcony in his pyjamas. His face was chalk-white.

‘Fire!’ I screamed at him. ‘Our house is on fire!’

‘My maw’s already called the fire brigade.’

‘We can’t get out, Ming,’ I couldn’t keep the panic out of my voice. ‘The front door’s blazing.’

He reached out a hand. ‘Come on then. Over here.’

I think my heart stopped beating then. I was sure of
it. I looked down. Thirteen floors. I couldn’t. I knew I couldn’t jump from my balcony to his.

‘Come on!’ He screamed at me through clenched teeth. ‘I’ll get you. I promise.’

His hands were already reaching out to me. Both of them, thrust towards me. ‘Jump, Kerry,’ he said, his voice urging me. ‘I promise I’ll not let you drop.’

For a moment, I almost did. I almost reached out and leapt for his hands. Then I thought of Mum here in the flat and I began to back away, shaking my head. I was staying with Mum, no matter what.

I turned back into the flat and coughed as the smoke hit me again. I couldn’t see Mum anywhere, until suddenly she appeared from the bathroom.

‘Wet all the towels, Kerry. Wet everything you can find. Throw them over the fire … and buckets of water too. Get them.’

Already I could hear shouts from the landing. Mum didn’t shout back. She was too busy throwing wet towels over the blaze and running back to the bathroom for more.

I was choking with the thick acrid smoke. Too afraid to move. Mum returned and threw more towels on the flames. She glanced at me. ‘KERRY!’ I had seldom
heard such force in her voice. ‘Get more towels NOW!’

That made me move. I ran to the cupboard, pulling towels from the pile and running back to the bathroom with them. Mum had the bath running and I threw the towels into the water while Mum carried each one, soaking, back to the blaze.

By the time the door was broken down, the fire was out. Mum was standing with me, her face black. All her energy had gone again. She stood motionless, her eyes vacant.

‘Mrs Graham … are you all right?’

Mr McCurley was first in the door. His arms encircled my mother. Mum pulled herself roughly from his touch. He looked hurt and surprised.

‘I’m fine!’ Mum snapped. She glanced at me. ‘We’re both fine.’

‘Well, let’s get you out of here. Come into my place. Get some tea.’ It was the first real kindness we had been shown here, and it sent me into floods of tears. Mum hugged me close.

‘The poor wee thing’s in shock,’ Mr McCurley said, leading us out of the smoking flat and on to the landing. The neighbours had all gathered there. There was shock on their faces, and something else. Something I
couldn’t understand … not then.

In the distance I could hear the fire brigade wail towards us.

Suddenly, I felt Mum stiffen beside me and I looked up at her. Her eyes were alive again, and angry. I followed her gaze. Sandra was at her doorstep, a mountainous marshmallow in her pink fluffy dressing-gown. She was white with shock. Had our fire affected her so much?

Mum broke from me and ran to her. Sandra took a step backward and almost tripped.

‘You!’ Mum screamed. ‘You did this!’

Mr McCurley tried to hold Mum back. She struggled to break free of him, free to get to Mrs Ramsay. ‘Somebody put something through our letterbox and started that fire. It was you! YOU!’ She looked round at the neighbours. ‘You heard her threaten me. “You’re going to be sorry you tangled with Sandra Ramsay!” ’ Mum mimicked her voice perfectly. ‘You heard her.’

The neighbours’ eyes moved to Sandra for an answer.

She leapt forward. ‘My friends know me better than that. I might punch you in the face, but I wouldn’t do it behind your back.’

Then Sandra turned her attention to me. ‘Should you not be taking care of your wee lassie?’ she said coldly. Her voice was shaking. ‘Ha! But I forgot. You can hardly take care of yourself.’

That took the fight out of my mother. She allowed herself to be half carried, half dragged, into Mr McCurley’s flat.

Chapter Nineteen

We were still there, drinking tea, when the police arrived. Sergeant Maitland and PC Grant – did they never go off duty? Even in shock, I was glad I had been sleeping in my lilac silk pyjamas rather than the flannelette nightdress old Auntie Jenny had got me for Christmas.

Sergeant Maitland crouched down in front of Mum.

‘The firemen say you’re right, Mrs Graham. Someone did start that fire deliberately. It seems someone doused some rags in flammable liquid, set them alight and pushed them through your door. We’ve found an empty kerosene can on the stairs.’

Mum gasped. ‘And I know whose fingerprints you’ll find on it!’ she shouted.

His voice was soft. ‘That was a very serious allegation you made out there.’

‘It was the truth,’ Mum insisted. ‘After everything
that’s happened, you must believe me now. I want her charged.’

He drew in his breath. ‘The thing is – she says you’re the one who should be charged.’

Mum almost exploded at that. ‘Me! Charged? After what I’ve been through?’ She reached out suddenly and hugged me tight to her. I began to choke. ‘After what
we’ve
been through! She has the cheek to want me charged?’ All at once, she stopped, puzzled. ‘Charged with what?’

He hesitated, as if he was afraid to tell her. ‘Mrs Ramsay thinks you might have started the fire yourself.’

Whoops! Big mistake. Wrong thing to say. Mum was off again. She jumped from her chair and almost sent the Sergeant, still crouching, flying across the floor.

‘I started a fire? Risked my life, my daughter’s life? Nonsense. How can she say that? Why? Tell me that. Why would I do such a thing?’

‘You did manage to put the fire out yourself.’

‘Just as well. No one else was going to do it for me, were they?’

‘And you were heard to say you’d do anything to get out of here. All the neighbours can verify that.’

And suddenly I understood the look I had seen in
their eyes. It was suspicion. Suspicion that Mum had started the fire. But after everything that had happened to us, how could they even think such a thing?

I jumped to her defence. ‘That’s stupid. What would be the point of her doing that?’

The Sergeant shrugged. ‘Maybe two birds with one stone. You get your own back on Mrs Ramsay – ’

‘I don’t care tuppence for Mrs Ramsay!’ Mum snapped at him.

‘– and you’d be rehoused. Fire-damaged property.’

I saw Mum straighten, suddenly quiet.

‘We’ll be looking into the whole matter,’ Sergeant Maitland said, ‘but for the moment –’

Mum interrupted him. ‘And will I?’

‘What? Be charged?’ There was almost a smile on his face. As if he wanted to reassure her not to worry.

She brushed that aside. ‘No. No. Will I be rehoused?’

His almost-smile disappeared. All the warmth and sympathy went from his voice. ‘No, Mrs Graham. You will not be rehoused. Workmen will be up tomorrow to repair any damage. There’s already a new door fitted temporarily. So, for the moment,’ there was a distinct coldness in his tone, ‘you’re stuck here.’

‘You don’t seem to be considering the most obvious possibility,’ I shouted. ‘The Laffertys!’ I was angry. Angry that Mum was even a suspect.

The Sergeant looked straight at me. ‘You’re right, Kerry. A distinct possibility. A fire like this is a notorious way of warning people to either shut up or get out.’

‘Then why are you accusing me?’ Mum began.

The Sergeant touched her arm. ‘The Laffertys will have cast-iron alibis. No one will have seen them. No one ever does. And there will be no fingerprints for us to find.’

‘All because of that silly incident in the shop? No!’ Mum wouldn’t be convinced.

The Sergeant shook his head. ‘And today young Tess Lafferty received word she’s to appear in front of the children’s panel because of that “silly incident”. Bit of a coincidence, don’t you think?’

I waited until the police had gone before I asked her. ‘Just promise me it wasn’t you, Mum?’ I had to say it, though I knew it was impossible. But I knew too how desperate she was.

There was a hurt look on her face when she answered me.
Et tu, Brute?
she said. I hadn’t a clue what she was talking about. She was obviously in shock.
However, I took that as a ‘no’.

In spite of the fact that Mum might be an arsonist, Mr McCurley offered to put us up for the night, which I thought was very generous of him. Mum refused curtly. ‘I don’t need any help from any of you!’ she snapped.

She was being unreasonable and stupid, but in a way I couldn’t blame her. I couldn’t sleep thinking about what might have happened if we hadn’t woken up in time, if Mum hadn’t been able to put out the fire.

I wanted it to be Sandra who was responsible. I would even have preferred it to be Mum.

But if it was the Laffertys … then just how far would they go?

Chapter Twenty

Mum just couldn’t come to terms with the fire. For the next couple of days she lay on our couch, drinking tea. The television had almost broken her, the fire had finished the job. The Laffertys had won.

All she wanted was out of here.

‘If your father was here, we could go to him. After all, it’s your safety I’m thinking about. Only for him, you wouldn’t be here – it’s all his fault anyway.’

‘It’s not, Mum,’ I tried to tell her. ‘It’s the Laffertys. That’s the only people who are to blame. If you have to blame someone, blame them!’

That only made her angry. ‘Oh, of course, don’t say a bad word about your wonderful father!’ The same conversation over and over again. Always finishing with: ‘It was her next door that started that fire.’

But it wasn’t. Ming assured me of that.

‘What are we going to do, Ming?’

‘It’s over, Kerry,’ he answered. There was even a hopelessness in Ming’s voice I didn’t understand.

It was as if something really awful was hanging over us. I had never felt so depressed in all my life.

Our door was mended. They even sent people to clean the flat for us. But nothing helped. Mum still lay along the couch, her eyes rimmed with red, never changing out of her dressing-gown. It was me who had to go to Ali’s for anything we needed. It was me who had to venture out, even though I was terrified I might bump into the Laffertys. Mum couldn’t do anything except cry, and blame Dad for everything that had gone wrong for us.

I prayed every night for Dad to come back for us. I missed him, wanted to talk to him so much. He had always been there for me, a tower of strength whenever I needed him. He wasn’t here now, and I needed him more than ever. I almost felt like throwing darts at his picture too.

Then one day I came in from school and there was Mum on the couch with the duvet cover pulled up around her.

‘You’ll have to go down to Ali’s. We need milk, and something for the tea,’ she murmured.

All at once I decided I wasn’t going to take it any
more. I sat in the chair across from her. ‘No,’ I said.

She turned to me very slowly. ‘What?’

‘I said no. Why didn’t you go down and get something? You’ve been in all day.’

‘I’m never going out there again, unless it’s to leave this place.’

‘But I have to go, is that it? I have to go out and risk seeing the Laffertys, is that it?’

She waved her hands about to shut me up. She didn’t want to talk about it. But I did.

‘I don’t care what you do,’ she said.

‘I know that,’ I shouted at her. ‘As long as you can lie in here and lock yourself away, you don’t care what happens to me!’

She suddenly sprang into life. ‘I tell you what! Why don’t you run back to your daddy? I’m sure he’ll cook up a nice meal for you.’

‘He always did!’ I yelled. And it was true. How often could I remember Dad coming in and him and me in the kitchen making a meal? He was a good cook. Had he only learned because Mum wouldn’t?

‘Well, just pop over to America and live with him – I hope the swim across doesn’t tire you out,’ she snapped at me viciously.

‘I wish I could,’ I screamed at her. I was crying now. Couldn’t stop myself. ‘He wanted me to.’

‘I wish you had.’ She was crying too. ‘And you seem to forget something, Kerry – I’m the one that stayed with you! I might not be your wonderful father, but I didn’t leave you.’

‘I didn’t leave you either, Mum. I stayed with you!’

At that moment the doorbell rang.

Through her tears Mum shouted, ‘If that’s anyone complaining about our shouting at each other, I’ll kill them!’

I opened the door to find Mrs Ramsay standing there, looking very uneasy. Lucky it was me opening the door. If it had been Mum, Sandra would have gone bouncing headlong down the stairs. I stared at her in surprise.

‘Mrs Ramsay.’ I swallowed, then whispered, ‘What are you doing here?’

‘I want to speak to your mother.’ And she was pushing past me and thundering into our living-room. The room was a mess, I was never so aware of it until now. Cushions scattered everywhere, dishes lying on the floor, clothes draped over furniture. Mum had never been quite as bad as this. I began lifting things and stuffing them under cushions as soon as I followed Sandra in.

‘Who was it, Kerry?’ Mum asked. She had her back to us, wiping her eyes with a tea-towel.

‘It’s me, and I’ve come here with the best intentions, so hear me out!’

Mum sprang round and almost made a leap at Sandra. I ran towards her and held her. ‘Please, Mum. Listen.’