They said the fire started downstairs. I got down on my hands and knees in front of the little Sony to watch Fabulina’s house go up in smoke. The winter branches of the bougainvillea blossomed and blazed. The eaves sprouted orange bracts of flame. The house was apparently unoccupied, they said, condemned for demolition. I felt a wrench in my stomach and then a flood of relief. The flames would be licking the hall-stand, igniting the scarves and parasols, lighting the hair on the toppling porcelain dolls, bounding up the stairs. They would be prying into the boxes of love letters. Tonguing at the wigs and padded brassieres — Fabulina’s famous boobalinas. Dancing in her frocks. Curtains of fire billowed from the windows. The upstairs balustrade crashed to the ground. The angel would be waiting in the bedroom with outstretched arms and Fabulina, liberated from the photograph albums, would be twirling across the ice in a sequined jump-suit, young and handsome, with just a suspicion of mascara.
He must have gone, I thought. He must have left. They said the house was unoccupied. He must have gone before the fire started. Part of me wanted to believe this and part of me wanted Sykes immolated, stewed in his own juice. The wounds in me had almost healed but the scars they had left were sore and ugly, like the memory of a disease. Or the ache in a limb once broken. I had slotted myself back into everyday life — working, eating, sleeping. Turning the pages of the days. But there was no denying the shrapnel embedded in my heart.
The next afternoon, after work, I went to look at the remains of Fabulina’s house. It was cordoned off from the street and there was a constable stationed in front of the singed bamboo hedge. I wondered if this was standard procedure in the case of a house fire. Peering through a gap in the hedge from the other side of the road, I saw the fallen beams, the smoking embers and, presiding over the devastation, the scorched angel, skewed in a crazy lurch where it had plummeted to earth. It had lost its wings.
The policeman sauntered over. He had sour eyes and the beginnings of a paunch.
‘Can I help you?’ he said looking me up and down in a way that made me feel guilty and somehow ashamed. I wanted to say: Yes, I’ve come to pay my respects to Fabulina, one of the most fabulous queens who ever stepped into a pair of size ten slingbacks and who would have given you the best blow-job you’re ever likely to get in your repressed life you constipated little male impersonator.
‘Just passing,’ I said, turning away. I wished Grace was there. He would have delivered a barb. I looked back to see the cop talking into his mobile phone and I was engulfed in a rush of fear. I started to walk as quickly as I could and then, nearing the end of the street, broke into a run. I was convinced the policeman was after me. Halfway across the intersection, I turned back to look and I was met by a surge of glass and metal. For a split second I saw my open mouth and flailing arms reflected in the windscreen, superimposed on the open mouth and flailing arms of the passenger in the car. It was a woman. She had red hair. Then the car swerved and its flank struck my thigh, spinning me into the air. I came down heavily and lay there for a minute, winded. Then I heard the car pull to a halt and a door slam. I picked myself up, tottered unsteadily at first, and began to run towards the sidestreet. My legs seemed to be working but my right arm sang with pain and something was running down inside my sleeve. I could hear them shouting. A dog was barking.
I crashed through a low hedge into someone’s front garden and bending over skirted the house. There was a belt of shrubbery separating the house from its neighbour and I crawled into the undergrowth. I waited there, like an animal gone to ground, until darkness descended and the cold came up out of the earth. I wanted to bury myself under the fallen leaves and hibernate until the spring came and everything would be different; I would be different. I would emerge from my chrysalis and take wing.
Escape into the bright air of a new life.
I got up stiffly and flexed my legs. I tried to move my arm. It ached but there was a degree of mobility. I could unclench my fingers. My fist was full of dried blood. I pushed through the bushes into the back yard of the neighbouring house. The windows of the villa were illuminated and as I crept past, I looked in. This inner city suburb had recently become fashionable and the slums and squats and boarding houses had been snapped up and gentrified. It would only have been a matter of time before Fabulina’s house was gutted and renovated. I was secretly glad that it had not suffered this indignity, that her memories had been shriven in flames.
In the bright window I saw a family sitting around a kitchen table. An amber lightshade hung low, casting a golden lustre over the table. The plates and glasses gleamed and steam rose up from the dishes in the centre. I could smell the roasted lamb spiked with rosemary and garlic. The father was carving the meat, his glossy blond hair falling forwards. The mother had her back to me. She raised a glass full of red wine and laughed. A little boy with yellow hair was saying something, telling his parents about his day at school, perhaps, his knife and fork clutched proudly in his fists. And that little boy was me.
The beautiful table full of food, the luminosity, the radiance of the holy family filled me with a jealous rage. I wanted to pound on the glass, to shatter the glass and scream: Where do I fit in? Why am I not included in this happy picture? What went wrong? I skulked off into the night.