Private Lives

Chapter 21

Seb hears the first scream from the fireworks as the front door clicks closed behind him, Rosie’s crumble tucked into the crook of his arm.

It doesn’t sound real at first. It’s a TV turned up too loud, the neighbours’ Halloween projection going wrong, maybe a teenager trying to freak out their friends. But then it comes again – the long howl followed by staccato bangs that Seb feels deep in his heart is unmistakable. It’s a sound that belongs in soggy fields, up in the night sky, with the satellites and weather and other things Seb doesn’t really understand. It’s a sound no one should ever hear so close.

But the idiot setting off the fireworks is doing it in town.

From the top of the steps in front of his house Seb can see a pop of colour lighting up the sky just above the houses a few roads away, a tail of smoke lifting lazily into the air.

A bolt – painful and sudden – cracks down Seb’s spine.

What the fuck is happening? Why is the sky right by his mum’s so bright?

He jumps down the steps. The movement shakes him awake and he starts running down the rain-slicked pavement, the crumble shattering where he drops it on the tarmac.

As he runs, he passes a group of people in the middle of the road, Halloween masks lifted from their faces, their eyes wincing as they ask each other the same muffled questions.

‘Was that …?’

‘No!’

‘Fireworks? What the hell!’

Seb takes the same route he took just a few short minutes earlier, but this time he doesn’t care who sees him, who might shove a camera in his face and call him a pervert.

And as he runs he tries to ignore the images his brain keeps insisting he must see. Eva flicking lights on in the sitting room before walking into her kitchen to heat the stew. Rosie kicking her boots off in the hall, the kids following, limp with exhaustion behind her.

Back at Eva’s, her message said. Are you coming?

He almost knocks a woman over, a hand over her mouth, staring at the flashing sky. She swears at him but he doesn’t care. He’s just a road away now.

He runs faster.

And as he runs he sees Rosie bending down on one knee to help Greer take her boots off. The older two with coats still on, slumping down in the armchairs in front of the wood burner, their teeth gummy with cheap sweets, wiping sticky fingers on the furniture, their Halloween make-up smudged.

I’m coming, Ro, please wait, I’m coming.

But as he runs he watches Rosie look up, surprised, as behind Greer Eva’s letterbox creaks open and the first fizzing firework is shoved inside, just behind their little girl.

He skids on some leaves, almost falls as he turns into St John’s Terrace. But he doesn’t stop or even slow.

He runs. His body strains against its own limitations. Air is forced into his lungs. He makes himself go faster as more and more fireworks are shoved inside, screaming, louder even than his children’s screams.

And then it’s in front of him. The neat, familiar little row of houses.

His mum’s is popping, alive with colour. The windows are bright, shattering as gaudy pink and blue fountains spill and shriek and turn crazy corkscrews up, up into the night sky while the body of the house, already in flames, spits and crackles like it’s in agony.

Inside. He’s got to get inside.

There are more people here. Some of them are crying but most are silent, awed by the horror in front of them.

He won’t stop until he’s inside with them, until he can trade places or lie down with them. There is no other choice, no other way. He is desperate for the heat on his own skin, for the smell of himself burning, the smoke polluting his lungs.

He tries to pull his arm away, but it’s weighted, someone hanging off it, slowing him, and as tries to shrug them off again it takes longer than normal to recognize the voice.

‘Dad!’

There he is.

‘Daddy!’

There they are.

His boy, his daughters crying and clutching Eva. He reaches for each one of them, pressing his hands against Greer’s cheeks, kissing Sylvie’s face and pulling his son tightly against his own heaving body before drawing his mum close too. He needs to feel the solidity, the realness of them, because what if this is his brain’s way of tricking him, telling him they’re safe just to stop him from going inside?

It’s Sylvie who pulls away first, the fire flickering against her skin, her face frozen. ‘Mum went ahead of us, Dad. She went ahead.’

Seb looks at Eva but her face is a mask of anguish and he realizes that if she weren’t inside, Rosie would of course be here, with them. He pulls away from them almost as quickly as he drew them towards him.

He’s running before they can say anything.

I’m coming, Ro.

He won’t let her leave them, he won’t let his children grow up without her, because this fire is for him, not her, and as he runs closer, he glances up briefly to the sky, to the unfathomable mystery, and makes a kind of cosmic promise. Me for her, OK?

Me for her.

The house has stopped thrashing now, giving in to the roar of the flames, resigned to its end. All that’s left are great rolling waves of fire cresting and breaking from the blue, quiet heart of the fire. He pictures himself pushing Rosie out to safety, her ribcage filling with clean, nourishing oxygen.

There are noises behind him now, shouts and screams for him to stop but he doesn’t, he won’t. Smoke rasps through him; he feels his skin prickle as though blistering already. He runs through the gate; the fire is dancing around the front door, so he follows the path to the back but again someone grabs his arm. Harder, rougher this time, pulling him to a stop. It’s a firefighter, bulky in all their gear, but Seb can just make out their eyes, they’re trying to tell him something and then he hears her, he hears her, Rosie shouting his name, but he can’t trust it. He needs to see her before he can stop. Again, the firefighter pulls his arm, rougher this time, forcing Seb to turn. Rosie is behind him, pressing against another firefighter, still calling his name like it’s the only word she knows.

His heart is a wild thing as he moves towards her, slowly, like he’s worried she’ll vanish. He takes in her face first, streaked with black, eyes lively with shock. Terrified, but unharmed. He looks over the rest of her and she’s saying, ‘I’m OK, Seb, I just burnt my hand, I’m OK.’

He glances up, again, to the sky.

Thank you. Thank you.

‘I thought, Rosie, Jesus Christ, I thought you were inside, I …’

And through it all – the shouts from the people watching, the roar of the fire and the wail of alarms – there’s perfect silence as Rosie looks up at him, her face filled with something transcending fear or relief or even love. It’s only later that Seb will find the right word. Acceptance. They reach for each other at the same time and in the flickering light as so much is destroyed Seb knows that something more precious has also been saved.