15

I’ve been trying to track a few things down since the crash. Where the truck was coming from, where it was meant to be going. It’s not easy, even if that’s more or less what I do for a living anyway. My head’s not in the game at all, and I keep on seeing that brief flash of recognition on Maddy’s face as she turned towards me. The smile lighting up her eyes as she started to say my name. But how could I possibly have taken any of that in? It all happened in an instant.

Then again, details have a way of imprinting themselves in your memory at times like that. It’s life afterwards that chunks up into blocks of unpleasantness with big gaps of nothing in between. The story of my life, in undigested, bite-size pieces.

Like the house in Essex. Like Maddy.

Her presence emboldened me, as I think mine emboldened her. So when the opportunity presented itself, I dared take it, rifling through the pockets of the man’s discarded trousers while he slept, his sick appetites sated at least for a while. The slim, brass cigarette lighter was a prize beyond reckoning. Did I voice my plan to Maddy as we passed it back and forth? Was it some telepathy we shared? I don’t really know. And neither do I know what exactly I was thinking when I flicked open the lighter. How could I have possibly known how it worked? And yet somehow I managed to coax a flame out of it, orange and flickering.

The curtains caught easily, the room lighting up in seconds as the fire ate its way through everything it touched. It seemed alive, vengeful. Almost as if it was my own anger and hatred released. It grew with terrible swiftness, devouring everything it touched.

I remember hugging Maddy tight, kissing her on the forehead as the heat grew ever more unbearable. Soon it would take us, too, and the pain would be over. And yet the flames seemed to skirt around us as they searched the room for yet more things to eat. The man, asleep at first, then slowed by smoke and a lack of air, screamed as he burned. I remember the smell of his hair, the way his skin bubbled and his eyes turned white like the poached eggs we sometimes had for breakfast. His death sent a little thrill through me even as I knew that mine would come soon enough, that Maddy, too, would be eaten up by the fire. And still we knelt in the middle of the room, our tiny bodies hugged together so tightly we might have been one.

And that’s how they found us. The only two survivors of a blaze that claimed many lives. I thought that house had taken everything from us, but I was wrong. Up until the fire we at least had each other. Then they cut us apart.

If I thought the house in Essex was bad, the care system really wasn’t much better. OK, so I came into it as damaged goods, but really you’d think they might have worked that out from the beginning and made some kind of adjustment for it.

The first foster family were nuts. Ted stayed at home all day while Margaret went to work. I never found out what she did. To be fair, they didn’t abuse me, but neither did they exactly lavish me with attention. I’d spent my entire life being fed, washed and occasionally presented to some sick old man as a plaything. I had no idea how to look after myself, and they really didn’t know how to deal with that. The regular visits to the doctor must have rung some emergency bells somewhere in social services, as I was moved on fairly swiftly.

Pete and Jemma tried to be nice, but I was just beginning to understand both what had been done to me and that I was free of that life. Sometime round about my eighth birthday I started to go off the rails, and I spent the next four years on heavy medication, making life hell for anyone who tried to care. I lost count of the number of homes I went through, never staying anywhere for long. The only constant was the policeman. Gordon. He’d bring me photographs, men, women, children, always the same question. Had I ever seen them before?

I never had, probably wouldn’t remember anyway. At the time, I didn’t know what it was all about. Now I can see the ongoing investigation, the search for any clues as to how Maddy and I had ended up in that house. How that house could have existed in the first place in a world that grown-ups tried to pretend was good and fair. At least Gordon cared, even I could see that. Not that it did him any good. He aged a decade in every six-month gap between our meetings. At the last one, he told me he was retiring and I’d be seeing a new policeman after that. I never did. Not for a long time, and my stays with foster parents grew ever shorter.

And then when I was about twelve I ended up with Sheila and Jean.

Odd enough that a lesbian couple could have foster kids, but something about them worked for me. It might have been that I had a new doctor by then, new meds. New country, too, since I ended up here in Scotland. Whatever it was, I started to be a bit more reasonable around then. And Sheila was a wizard with computers. Taught me everything I know. She gave me a direction for the rage, a sense of purpose I’d been lacking.

Or it might just have been that I was growing up, coming to understand the injustice done to me, Maddy and all the other kids who died in that fire I started.

Whatever the reason, though, Sheila gave me the knowledge and the tools to fight back. I’ll always be grateful to her for that. And so I’ll try to put Maddy’s face from my mind, if only for a moment. Concentrate on the job at hand. Track down the bastards responsible for her death and make them pay.