Tom Mitchell - How to Rob a Bank

‘Just a second,’ shouted Beth. ‘I’m not decent.’

There! Under the desk! A pink aerosol can!

‘Not decent? Haven’t you got Dylan in there, young lady?’ her mum asked.

Beth stepped forward and the door opened, striking the back of her head.

‘Ow!’

I sprayed a feeble burst of aerosol as Beth rubbed her head. And Beth’s mum took in the full vision of the darkened room and she wasn’t impressed.

My cheeks burnt red.

‘What’s going on?’ she asked, eyeing the strange pile of newspaper strips. ‘And why does it smell of yoga in here?’

‘Hello, Mrs Fraser,’ I said. ‘How are you?’

My voice wavered. Beth’s mum looked like Emma Stone in her mid-forties. Emma Stone in her mid-forties narrowing her eyes.

‘Dylan Thomas,’ she said. ‘Are you writing any poetry yet?’

‘Not yet,’ I said.

She nodded.

‘Why are you holding Beth’s deodorant?’

I had nothing to say. I looked to Beth. She looked at me.

‘Muuuum,’ she said after a while.

‘I was sweaty?’ I offered.

Her mum’s eyes narrowed further, a slit of iris remaining, until –

‘You two! I’m not angry! I understand.’ She grinned. ‘I was young once … if you can believe that.’

My cheeks exploded in embarrassment. Beth mumbled something unintelligible and I couldn’t help noticing how she scrunched up her nose in disgust.

‘I’ve got Pringles downstairs,’ Mrs Fraser said.

With her hand on the doorknob, she stood back to allow us through. Neither of us looked at the bin as we passed.

We were sitting at the dining table, eating Pringles, drinking Coke and listening to Mrs Fraser tell us how important getting a good set of GCSEs is when we first saw the dark mass of smoke spread its tendrils down from the staircase to the carpet. Mrs Fraser, with her back to the stairs, thought Beth was joking when she stood and pointed and shouted ‘Look!’

‘Never mind all that,’ Mrs Fraser said. ‘I want to know how you plan to pass English when you never do any reading.’

Like someone had started a bonfire on the stairs, the same thick, earthy clouds of smoke blossomed towards us.

‘Oh my days,’ I said when I saw what Beth was pointing at.

The dark smoke moved silently and stealthily like dry ice at a school musical. There was something unreal and uncanny about the way it thickened into the space.

When Mrs Fraser saw it she screamed, ‘Don’t panic!’

She ushered us from the room and out of the house, panicking and shouting, ‘The White House is on fire! The White House is on fire! Don’t panic! Don’t panic!’

Outside, stood Harry. We rushed past as he pointed at the smoke spilling from the front door and whispered in awe, ‘So not lame.’

In 1814, British soldiers burnt down the White House. It must have looked like this. But bigger. And with fewer Nissan Qashqais parked outside.

That very afternoon, Beth’s house, Pringles, scented candle, posters of Andrew Garfield, Lionel Messi and all, burnt away to nothing but ashes and twisted metal. The destruction was complete.

And my thumb and forefinger hurt for days.

A few days after the fire, I saw Beth walking through the rec with a thick black sports bag over her shoulder. Harry trailed close behind, pulling a grey wheeled suitcase. It bounced across the uneven turf. He raised two fingers at me. I didn’t know where they were going or where they’d been.

I’d called out. ‘Do you want a hand?’

I wanted to say more, to apologise to Beth, but didn’t know which words to use. They all seemed wrong. And I had no idea how much Harry knew. I didn’t want to mug myself off.

‘Sorry for burning down your house, yo!’ would be a stupid thing to shout, however much I wanted to.

Beth stopped. She smiled as if a dentist had asked her to show off her gums, i.e. not very convincingly.

‘Really?’ I called, jogging to catch up.

‘It’s all good,’ she said. ‘We’re in a sweet flat with views across London.’

Harry stood at her shoulder, nodding like a broken doll.

Her home, the burnt one, had gone viral. Images of the tiny, fiery White House had swept through Twitter, with jokes about Trump and everything.

‘Tell him about your stuff,’ said Harry.

He’d swapped his nodding for a pulling-legs-off-a-spider grin.

‘It’s nothing,’ said Beth.

She dropped the sports bag. It wheezed as it hit the grass.

‘What about your stuff? Did you manage to save anything?’

Beth squinted but it may have been because of the sun. And the water in her eyes was probably due to hay fever too. Not that she ever got hay fever.

‘No,’ she said. ‘It’s all gone. My clothes. My books. My stuff. But, you know, someone said your possessions end up possessing you, so …’

Her voice tailed off. I felt that churning in my stomach, a Vindaloo guilt like I’d eaten a secret curry the night before.

‘At least you’ve got your phone,’ I said, because of all the things to lose, your phone’s got to be the worst.

‘Yeah,’ said Harry. ‘At least you’ve got your phone, Beth. Everything else is up in smoke, but you can still Instagram.’

Beth shushed Harry. Not only did it stop him talking but it also stopped him smiling.

‘It’ll be fine,’ I said because that’s what you say when bad things have happened. ‘Your mum and dad will work something out.’

(They had money, after all.)

‘Yeah,’ said Beth. ‘And it’s sunny out and the end of the summer is, like, weeks away and we’ve got sick views and I can always buy new clothes, so …’

But her heart wasn’t in her words.

I watched them fade from the rec, a panting Harry following like a squire to his knight. Why’d I mention her phone? How was that any help? The word on the street was that faulty wiring was the cause of the fire but my scented candle had so burnt down Beth’s house. I mean, the wick was still smoking when I’d thrown it in the bin. It was the cause of the fire, for sure. So sure that I’d spent the time between being picked up from the blazing home (a crowd had formed outside pointing at the flames licking up from the windows) and seeing Beth in the park expecting a knock at the door from the police or, worse, Beth’s angry dad. I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t even focus on Football Manager .

I’d destroyed Beth’s house and everything in it.

(But if she’d lost all her possessions, what was in the bags? I bet Harry was sucking up and, like, offering to lend her towels and all sorts.)

On the way home from the rec I stopped at the corner shop to buy a Lion Bar in the desperate hope that sugar would make things better. I told myself the whole faulty wiring thing was reason to be happy, even if it weren’t true. It’s a post-fact world , I thought. I still felt supernova guilty, but at least I wasn’t going to prison. Prison would be bad for a boy of my imagination and size. And, anyway, houses have insurance, Mum said, and Beth’s family would be able to claim expensive things had been destroyed, so—

‘It’s not all bad,’ Mum had said last night, sipping wine. ‘Remember the time we were broken into and you claimed for a Blu-ray, Kay?’