It felt strange, being out in such a crowd, and I wasn’t sure I liked the press of bodies, but I wasn’t scared or anything. I just wasn’t used to normal life. I hadn’t gone far from the house in the weeks since I’d got home from hospital. I’d forgotten that people gathered in jostling hordes, laughing and swearing, sparklers fizzing and sputtering in their hands, fundraising buckets rattling hopefully. Just visible beyond the black mass of bodies was the glow of a massive hellish bonfire, throwing whirls of sparks skywards. Above us was a Hallowe’en sky, ominous clouds floodlit by a now-you-see-it-now-you-don’t moon, while beneath my feet the park grass was turning to beaten mud. From the burger van drifted an overpowering fried-onion smell, nauseating and enticing all at once.
Looking round for Allie, I saw that Shuggie was with her. They were too far away to hear, but Shuggie was keeping up a stream of consciousness in her ear. Allie seemed to be ignoring him, then she rolled her eyes, shook her head, hid her grin. After a bit she laughed, then dug him in the ribs. I never knew anybody could look as smug as Shuggie did then.
The raging bonfire, the eerie glowsticks, the moonlit sky: all were abruptly eclipsed by an explosion of light. Another rocket went up, and another, filling the sky with red and green fire, and the jostling and cursing melted into oohs and aahs and applause.
My eyes stung with the awe and wonder of it. Fireworks. So ordinary, so prosaic, so once-a-year predictable. So beautiful. How did somebody think of fireworks? I bet it was somebody who nearly died.
A hand on my arm. ‘Hello.’
I stopped looking at the fireworks. ‘Hello, Orla.’
‘I’m really sorry,’ she said, as if she wanted to get it out quickly.
‘What for?’ I said. I was going to be cool about this. Definitely. Very cool.
Besides, I couldn’t get out more than one syllable at a time.
‘I never came to see you.’ Withdrawing her hand she folded her arms, looked over my shoulder.
‘Why did you never come?’ So much for being cool. I sounded like a whipped puppy that could speak English, just.
She stayed silent for ages, staring past my shoulder. It gave me the excuse to watch her face and feel the love that went down to my bone marrow. It was a cruel sort of love: it liked squeezing my scar, too. Ouch. Oh, so what. I’d get over it. If I watched that hard beautiful face long enough I’d get sick of it. For sure. Even the nose ring.
Not yet, though.
Orla opened her mouth once, twice. At last she got it out.
‘It was kind of like Aidan. Kind of the same. And I thought you were going to die. That’s why and I know it’s not an excuse and I’m sorry. Right?’
‘Right,’ I echoed.
‘Anyway, I think I’m bad for you. I make you feel bad ’cause of Aidan.’
‘No, you don’t.’ Oops, uncool. ‘Whatever.’
She tugged angrily at her platinum flick of hair. ‘I mean, when you feel guilty you do such fecking stupid things, you. So it was kind of my fault.’
‘Not,’ I said.
The rockets had stopped exploding in the sky, the moon had sailed back into view, and now white curls of light whooshed close to the ground, squealing and whooping. Bored with the lesser spectacle, a toddler on its father’s shoulders started whingeing, and the man jiggled it up and down so hard I thought it was going to fall off him. I pretended to be fascinated, because I’d changed my mind: anything was better than looking at Orla.
‘See if you’d died –’ she said suddenly, and clamped her lips together.
I never got to find out, because the boring fireworks faded out and the rockets started up again, bigger and better than before. The child shut up and goggled at them.
‘Allie says my brother’s gone,’ said Orla, folding her arms and bouncing up and down on her toes as if she was trying to keep warm. It wasn’t the least bit cold.
‘So she says.’
‘Maybe it was because he saved Allie,’ she said, ‘so he had to look after her.’
‘Or maybe the other way round,’ I said. How fanciful. I blushed. ‘Sort of.’
Another silence, punctuated by explosions of light in the air, applause, the giggling shriek of a girl. I wanted Orla to go away, and I desperately wanted her to stay.
‘Did it never occur to you to wait for the police?’ she barked at last.
‘They wouldn’t have come. Not fast enough. Even Shuggie knew that.’ I chewed hard on my lip. ‘Even when Shuggie got them, they didn’t know where to start looking.’
‘Neither did you, you eejit.’
‘I did when I thought about it.’ Shrugging, I said mechanically: ‘Anyhow, you’ve got to look after yourself.’
‘So why don’t you let people do it?’
I blinked. ‘What?’
‘You. You’re always looking after people.’ She sounded kind of angry about it. ‘Allie, Kev, Shuggie. You can’t trust yourself to turn your back on them, can you? Can’t trust them.’
‘That’s not fair,’ I began.
‘Yeah. Completely fair. What are you saying, everybody’s on their own? If you really think that, Nick – and you don’t – then look after yourself. Look after yourself. You’re not a frigging superhero. You’re not starring in your own movie. You couldn’t have saved my brother, OK?’ She rubbed her eyes with her fist. ‘You couldn’t look after bloody Aidan on top of everybody else, for God’s sake!’
Running out of words, she blinked. I swallowed hard.
‘It wasn’t your fault,’ she said.
‘It wasn’t yours.’
‘Yeah, but I know it.’
‘Me too,’ I said. ‘Seeing as you’ve explained it all so tenderly.’
‘You big stupid delusional tosser.’ Orla took hold of my face. ‘I love you.’
So fireworks exploded, and the sky lit up, and the crowds applauded and whooped and stamped their feet.