Every Sunday evening, May pours herself a drink. Nothing fancy, mind. A dash of gin, a jiggle of ice. Always just the one. Anything more makes her groggy, especially at her age. But it’s almost Christmas. She’s helping with the young lads and Nancy’s been pouring wine. May babysits when she can, to make things a little easier on poor Nancy when it’s busy at work. It’s the neighbourly thing to do – even though their houses are almost five miles apart. Say what you like, and the villagers did gossip, but Nancy Wills wasn’t a bad sort.
Considering.
May watches the young mother stoop down by the fireplace and throw a jagged log deep into the hottest part of the fire. The weight of it sparks hundreds of tiny embers which scatter like fireflies, dancing bright against dark soot. Hugh had been here too, until an hour ago when he’d left for his work night out, waving to five-year-old Joey on the trampoline outside. While May had changed the baby’s nappy upstairs, she’d overheard both Nancy and Hugh arguing. It ended, as the couple’s fights usually do, with the angry slam of a door. After a grim-faced Nancy leaves the house, May takes another sip of red and enjoys the release. But the peace is short-lived. Vee, Nancy’s sister, drops in with gifts for the kids. A peace offering, she says, whatever that means.
When the house has finally settled, May smooths her patterned skirt and hooshes her behind a little deeper into the cushions on the armchair closest to the fire. She refills her glass from the wine bottle next to her on the sideboard and watches the hypnotic shards glow spectacularly against the hearth.
She dozes off.
Jolting awake, she’s suddenly aware of a smoke alarm beeping urgently. Nancy is standing in front of her, screaming. The room is engulfed in thick, black smoke. It’s far too hot.
That’s when May thinks of the little ones upstairs.
Both women stare at each other in horror, paralysed by the realisation. Then Nancy pushes past her and, tucking her face into the bend of her elbow, begins to make her way upstairs. May watches the young mother disappear into the haze like a ghost into a cloud, one arm extended ahead of her. Reaching out.
Nancy feels her way upstairs, disorientated and desperate. She knows this house by heart – every landing creak, every scuff of carpet. At the top, gripping the wooden banister, she makes a sickening, split-second choice. Eyes streaming, she bursts into Joey’s bedroom, calling her five-year-old son’s name, praying he isn’t too scared to move. He does that sometimes – hides if he’s frightened. She’s tried giving him coping mechanisms for his anxiety. Hugh thinks she’s reading too much into it, but all she knows is that Joey’s behaviour isn’t like her friends’ children and that worries her sometimes.
‘Joey,’ she screams, thick smoke catching in the back of her throat. She tries to force her streaming eyes to make out the familiar sprout of his curls.
‘Joey,’ Nancy croaks again. She makes it to his bed and roots around the soft fold of the sheets with her palms.
Empty.
She tries to scream his name again, but her roar is punctuated with violent coughing. Dread frays the corners of her mind. Her breath is sticky and her lungs painfully tight. The next bedroom, her and Hugh’s, faces onto the back garden. Nancy’s legs give way and, blinded by black plumes, she crawls the last few metres towards the door, pushing desperately against it, clawing her way towards the baby – towards her younger son. The blast of heat is cruel against her skin. She cries out as the smoke clings to her, seeping into every pore.
What she sees in that moment will haunt her for the rest of her life.
Flames arch high around the window of the bedroom, licking at the walls and ceiling viciously, leaving black claw marks. Her drapes sway grotesquely with the force of the fire. She’ll never forget that sound – the whoosh and crackle that pulled everything towards it. When she re-lives this night, over and over, Nancy will wonder if she’d just gone upstairs a few minutes earlier, what might have been. Or if she hadn’t forgotten her phone and returned to the house. She’ll go over every smoke-filled second wondering if she could have saved him, had she made a different choice. Acrid smoke chokes as she drags herself around the side of the double bed.
Everything is black or blackening.
Reaching what she thinks is the chest of drawers, she hauls herself upright, and with the last of her energy hooks both arms heavily into the tiny cot that sits next to the bed. The flames have reached the other side now. Her bedclothes flare brilliantly, momentarily lighting up the swirls of fog. She wants to lie down, to float away into this great mesmerising heat. Her hand loses its grip on the edge of the cot. But it’s the feel of those tiny spindles that spur her on – the memory of the last few weeks spent poking her hand in through that narrow gap between them, to stroke his warm, velvety palm.
With one final push, she leans low into the cot, searches the bedding with both hands, carefully. Then frantically.
How could she even consider life without him?
There’s nothing. She feels nothing at all. Just the cruel curl of empty blanket, the crisp sheets she tucked in so neatly just hours ago.
Her lungs are screaming. The flames are at her feet. She understands that this is all her fault. She thinks of Joey and how she finds him in her room sometimes, watching his baby brother sleeping. She tries to call both her sons’ names again and again but there is no more left of her voice.
Nancy traces the small rectangle of the cot again with both hands. She fills in the spaces where the baby should have been with flattened palms, tapping and fanning. She uses the bony part of her shoulder to stem her streaming eyes. Head bent low, she can just about see the outline of it.
There’s no doubt in her mind. The cot is empty. The baby is gone.
Then the baby blanket goes up in flames and her sleeves are on fire. She opens her mouth to scream but her body is ablaze. She stumbles backward, intense pain ripping through her. Everything is lost. The light fades, turns inside out. Then suddenly there’s nothing left at all.
The Christmas air stings Nancy’s cheeks as the fireman holds her back from her burning house, both his hands wrapped around her waist as she tries to run back inside. Eight-foot flames lick maliciously from its roof. They’d only just got to her in time. Emergency sounds rise and fall around her.
‘It’s okay,’ he’s saying gently. ‘It’s okay. It’s going to be okay.’ But she cannot imagine anything worse than this moment. The trauma unfolding beneath that dancing orange finale – and she, watching it happen, a helpless spectator. Nancy strains against his grip, a guttural sound ringing in her ears between coughs. She claws at his arms. Then she feels the pain – the scorching sting of the skin, the fire in her fingers. Blue lights melt into vivid reds, twisted shadows distort. Someone says her name. Hugh stands helplessly as the angry amber flashes against night sky. They should have been out looking for Santa among the stars.
‘The baby’s gone,’ Nancy cries over and over. ‘I can’t find Liam or Joey,’ she repeats frantically. ‘They’re gone.’ Someone is screaming too close to her. Her eyes roll with the violence of the pain, and she folds back into it. Only then the wailing stops.
At the hospital Nancy is sedated. Wrapped tight. There are confusing beeps and agonising bandage changes. Nancy wonders why nobody can answer her questions until she realises that she isn’t awake at all. Strangers’ faces float above her, whispering, hurting her kindly. She senses a window to her left where daylight stings. The smell of one of the nurses becomes familiar; oaky – like leather and a tree she can’t remember the name of. She tries to respond to the gentle sentences that go up at the end, but her body is dragging her back down into the silent pit where she knows she’s safe from reality, from the truth of why this is happening to her.
Eventually Nancy becomes aware of her sister’s presence. Vee, born Vera, is older but smaller than Nancy, with soft brown eyes and graceful movements. Right now, she’s pressing her fingers to her temples, breathing wet, fretful sighs. Nancy’s movement jars her, and she lifts her head. Vee’s fingers are long and thin, spiderlike.
‘Oh God, Nance,’ she sobs, and she reaches out, rests her hand protectively on her sister’s shoulder. Nancy hasn’t seen her in weeks. Not since that final argument. But now the world is too bright and Nancy flickers on the edge.
As she descends back down, one word catches her, forces her eyes open.
‘And Joey has been asking…’ her sister is saying. ‘But I’m not sure you should…’
Nancy turns her head towards her, wincing at the stiff material compressing her face. She tries to speak, closes her eyes with the effort of it for a moment and then tries again.
‘Joey?’ she manages to croak. Nancy’s hands are bandaged too – but she lifts her arm, tries to reach out, as if for him.
‘Joey is with Hugh,’ Vee says, her eyes brimming with tears. ‘He’s safe with his dad.’ She takes her sister’s arm and rests it back down on the bed gently. ‘He’s okay, Nance, he’s not hurt.’
Nancy cries silently.
‘The baby?’ she mouths, her words slightly garbled. ‘Baby Liam?’ But Vee seems to understand. She squeezes her lips together.
‘We won’t talk about that now,’ she says delicately. ‘We need to get you better. Rest now, Nancy girl.’
Though too weak to allow herself to explore the meaning wedged between her sister’s whispered words, Nancy knows that Vee’s presence here means something terrible has happened. Because Vee had vowed never to see or speak to her again.
‘I’m so sorry.’
One sister looks at the other, who shakes her head and closes her eyes.
Despite her agony, Nancy knows that the bitterness remains between them, jagged and cold. Things between them would never be the same after what they had decided to do.
She wants to ask if Gerald has come to see her. But even in the haze of pain and grief, she knows she absolutely can’t.