Lisa Ballantyne - Guilty One

He paused at the door before he turned the handle. His heart was thudding and he bit his lip. There would be no roast beef. Still he thought about her throwing open the door and holding him. Maybe she didn’t have a boyfriend just now. Maybe her friends weren’t round. Maybe she was clean. Maybe she would make him toast and they would sit on the couch together watching Crown Court. He felt a strange burning in his chest. He held his breath.

When he opened the door and stepped into the hall, it smelled damp and charred. He peered inside the living room but everything was black. He didn’t cry. He walked inside. The kitchen was gone. He placed a hand on the wall and then looked at his black palm. The air was still damp with smoke and it caught the back of his throat. In the living room, the couch was scorched to a spring skeleton. He climbed upstairs. The carpet squelched with water and the banister was charred. The bath and the sink were black with soot. In one of the bedrooms, the glass of the mirror wardrobe was broken, but he managed to slide the door open a little. Her clothes were still inside, unburnt. Daniel slipped inside the wardrobe and pressed her dresses against his face. He slid down to crouch among her shoes and sandals. He put his forehead against his knees.

He didn’t know how long he was crouched in the wardrobe, but after a while he heard someone on the stairs. They were walking from room to room shouting, ‘Is anyone in here?’

Daniel wanted to find out where his mother had gone, but when he walked into the passage a man grabbed him by the collar and pushed him against the wall. The man was only a little taller than Daniel. He was wearing a white vest. Daniel could smell the man’s salt sweat over the charred smell of the house. The man’s stomach pressed against Daniel as he held him to the wall.

‘What the hell are you doin’ in ’ere?’ the man said. ‘Scram, go on.’

‘Where did me mam go?’

‘Yer mam? Who’s yer mam?’

‘She lived here, her clothes’re still here.’

‘The junkies burned the place down, didn’t they? Out of it, all of them. They didn’t even know the place was on fire. I had to call the fire brigade. The whole bloody row could’ve gone up.’

‘What about me mam?’

‘I don’t know anything about yer mam. They took them all out on stretchers – still bloody out of it probably. One of ’em were burnt to a crisp. It were right disgusting. Couldn’t tell if it were man or woman.’

Daniel twisted away from him and ran down the stairs. He could hear the man calling after him. He started to cry on the way down and then he slipped and fell down a few of the steps. He scraped his arm, but he didn’t really feel it. He got up and ran out of the door and through the grass, stumbling again on the traffic cone. His feet slapped on the pavement. He didn’t know where he was running, but he was running as fast as he could. His satchel must have fallen off somewhere, in the wardrobe or on the stairs, and he felt light and fast without its uneven weight. He ran right down Ponteland Road.

It was dark and he was sitting on the kerb on the West Road when a policewoman came up to him. He didn’t look at her, but when she asked him to go with her he went because he was tired out. At the station they called his social worker and she drove him back to Minnie’s house.

*

It was after ten by the time they arrived in Brampton. The town seemed so dark, the green of the fields black against the night sky. Daniel’s eyelids felt thick and he tried to keep them open as he looked out of the car window. Tricia was talking to him about running away and about borstal and how he would be going there if he couldn’t stay put. He didn’t turn to look at her as she spoke. The smell of her perfume hurt his nose and his head.

Minnie was standing outside her front door, with her big cardigan wrapped round her. Blitz ran up to Daniel when he got out of the car. Minnie reached out to him but he twisted away from her and walked into the house. The dog followed him. Daniel sat at the bottom of the stairs waiting for them to come in, playing with the dog’s ears, which were like squares of velvet. Blitz lay on his back so that Daniel could scratch his stomach and even though he was tired he got down on his knees to do it. The white hair on the dog’s stomach was dirty from the yard.

He could hear Minnie and Tricia outside the door. They were whispering. School. Mother. Police. Fire. Decision. Although he was straining, these words were the only ones he could hear clearly. He had asked the police and his social worker about his mother. The police didn’t bother to try to find out, but Tricia told him in the car that she would look into what had happened to her and would tell Minnie if she heard anything.

‘Why are you going to tell Minnie, why won’t you just tell me?’ Daniel had shouted at her.

‘If you don’t behave yourself, you’re going to be in a Youth Custody Centre next year and that’ll be you until you’re eighteen.’

Minnie closed the door and stood looking at him with her hands on her hips.

‘What?’

‘You look like you’ve had a hard day. Let me run you a bath.’

He thought she was going to say something else. He had prepared himself for harsh words. He went into the bathroom and sat on the toilet seat as she agitated bubbles in the bath. The mirror steamed up and the air smelled clean.

She took a face cloth and soaked it in the hot bathwater.

‘Your nose is looking pretty nasty. Let me wash away some of that blood before you get in. Bit late, but we’ll put some ice on it. We don’t want you to have a squashed boxer’s nose, do we? Not a good-lookin’ lad like you; wouldn’t be right.’

He let her tend to his nose. She was gentle and the cloth was warm. She rubbed away the dried blood and then washed around his nose.

‘Does it hurt, love?’

‘Not really.’

‘You’re a brave soul.’

He could smell the gin on her breath when she leaned close to him.

When she was finished, she ran her hand through his hair and rested her palm on his cheek.

‘Do you want to talk about it?’

He shrugged.

‘You went to find your mother?’

‘She wasn’t there.’ His voice thickened.

She pulled him into her gently, and he felt the rough wool of her cardigan against his cheek. He started to cry again, but he didn’t know why.

‘There,’ she said, rubbing his back. ‘Better out than in. Tricia’ll let me know what they find out about your mum. You’re going to be all right. I know it doesn’t seem like it, but I could tell from the first minute I met you that you’re a very special boy. You’re strong and you’re bright. You’ll not be little for ever. Whatever anyone else tells you, being grown-up’s a lot better. You get to make your own decisions and live where you like and with who you want and you’ll be grand.’

The bathroom was wet with steam. Daniel felt so tired. He laid his head against her stomach and cried. He put his hands round her hips. His hands couldn’t meet in the middle, but it felt good resting on her stomach and feeling the rise and fall as she breathed.

He sat up and wiped his eyes with his sleeve.

‘Come on. Get in there, and get warmed up while I make you some supper. Just leave those dirty clothes on the floor. I’ll bring your pyjamas down.’

When she left, he undressed and stepped into the bath. It was too hot and he took some time lowering himself into it. The bubbles whispered at him. His arms were a right mess: grazed from the stairs and bruised from the kicking. He had bruises on his side and his ribs too. It felt better once he was in the bath. He lay right back and let his head slip under the water, wondering if this was what it felt like to be dead: warmth and silence and the lap of water. He felt the pressure in his lungs and sat up. He was wiping the bubbles off his face when Minnie came in again.