Chris Cleave - Incendiary

I stayed in my room and ate crisps and sandwiches and drank the rusty water from the hand basin. It was weird just stuck there doing nothing. Knowing I could never go back to Scotland Yard again. I tried to sleep as much as I could so I didn’t have to think about it all. Every day I dozed on the bed and watched flames licking up the wallpaper and every night I lay awake listening to the backpackers laughing and shouting in the corridor. In the early mornings when there wasn’t anyone about to watch I crept out of the room and walked through the piles of cold puke to the bathroom at the end of the hall. It was a lonely 4 days Osama but I didn’t mind because after a while my boy turned up and we had a good talk.

—Mummy, he said. Where are we?

—We’re in a hotel darling.

—Why are we? he said.

—We’re hiding.

My boy’s eyes went wide.

—Why? he said.

—Because it’s safest that way. Mummy helped Petra to write a story for the newspaper where she works. The story is going to be published on Sunday. When that story comes out it’s going to be very bad for the men that hurt you and Daddy. Lots of people are going to want to talk to your mum.

—So we’re hiding! he said.

I smiled at my boy. It was so nice to have him there. He was beautiful with his bright ginger hair and his stubby little teeth. There wasn’t a scratch on him. I said he could eat all the crisps he wanted but he wasn’t very hungry.

On Sunday morning very early I checked out of the hotel and walked out onto Piccadilly Circus. I had one of those travelling suitcases on wheels that Petra lent me. I was dragging it behind me with the boy riding on top of it. He looked up at the huge electric billboards with his eyes all wide and his mouth open and his breath steaming in the cold morning air. The poor chap was only wearing his jeans and his Arsenal away shirt.

—Aren’t you cold? Don’t you want Mummy to find you a jumper?

The boy shook his head. He was too excited to be cold and I was just the same. At the first newsagent’s I found we were going to buy our copy of the Sunday Telegraph . I couldn’t wait to see our story splashed across that big front page under those nice gothic letters. I was so nervous I had the shakes and my tummy was going mad. I wondered what the headline was going to be. How I’d of done it was I’d of had a huge photo of that vicious tower of smoke above the Emirates Stadium with just 2 words over the top THEY KNEW. That’s how I’d of done it but then what would I know? Like I say Osama we always had the Sun in my family.

There were a few other people walking round Piccadilly Circus. I watched everyone’s faces to see if they’d heard the news yet but none of them looked like they had. We walked past a group of girls giggling on their way home from the clubs. Then there was a pair of tourists videoing the big electric Coca-Cola sign and the huge barrage balloon floating above with the faces of the dead Arsenal players on it. Then we went past a traffic warden. He looked more like he would of known what was going on.

—Morning. You heard the news yet?

The traffic warden stared at me.

—What? he said.

—About May Day.

—What about it? he said.

—You haven’t seen the papers yet?

—No, he said. What’s in them?

—They knew. They knew May Day was going to happen but they didn’t do anything to stop it.

The traffic warden looked at me for a moment with my Adidas trackies and my suitcase and then he shook his head and smiled.

—You look after yourself alright love? he said.

—I’m not bonkers or anything. It’s the truth.

—Of course it is, he said. You take care now alright?

The traffic warden turned away and walked off towards Regent Street. My boy looked up at me.

—That man didn’t believe you Mummy, he said.

—No love. You can’t blame him. He will when he has a sit-down with the papers.

I smiled at him and we headed off up into Soho. On Warwick Street I took a deep breath and I went into a newsagent’s.

I stood there looking at the front page of the Sunday Telegraph for quite a while. There was something wrong with it you see Osama. The picture on the front was a row of houses all with For Sale signs on them. The headline was HOUSE PRICES SLUMP AS BUYERS FEEL THE PINCH. I shook my head. I didn’t see what that had to do with May Day. I checked the date on the top of the paper. Then I opened it up and looked on every page. Nothing about May Day. I felt sick. I kept wishing I’d wake up and still be in the hotel. Only once I’d started thinking like that I thought if this really was a nightmare then I might as well wake up in bed with my husband before May Day ever happened. When I thought about my husband I wanted to scream and I started to pull all the other papers off the racks to see what was in them. They were all the same. It was all HOUSE PRICES PLUMMET except for the Sunday Mirror. The Sunday Mirror said MILLIONS IN OUR LIFE-CHANGING GIVEAWAY and it had a photo of a family on the front page lounging around on deck chairs by a pool. There was a mum and a dad in the photo and it looked like they’d spent some of their MILLIONS on fancy cocktails and instead of faces they had shiny silver foil so you could see your own face there. THIS COULD BY YOU IN THE MIRROR the paper said and there was a little boy with ginger hair larking about in the pool. I suppose he must have been about 4 years and 3 months old. I threw the Sunday Mirror down on the floor and I screamed and the newsagent came out from behind his counter.

—Oi darling, he said. You pay for them papers or you put them back.

I fell on my knees and looked at the headlines laid out on the floor all around me and I just went off on one I don’t know if I was screaming or laughing.

—Oh for fuck’s sake, said the newsagent. This is a newsagent’s not a nuthouse. Go on piss off.

I stood up and ran out of the shop dragging my suitcase behind me. My boy was hanging on for dear life while the suitcase banged up and down on the pavement.

—Mummy! he shouted. What’s wrong?

I stopped running and looked at my boy and then I put my hands up to my mouth and screamed. It was his face you see Osama. His lovely ginger hair was burned to thick black tar dripping down his face. His skin was raw with burns and one of his eyes was boiled white as an egg. I screamed again and left the suitcase where it was and ran up Warwick Street with my boy running after me and all the cardboard boxes and the homeless in their cheap nylon sleeping bags going up in flames as he brushed past them.

I stopped at the first phone box I came to and jammed 30p in the slot and called Jasper and Petra’s flat but it was just the answering machine and the phone ate my money. Both their mobiles were off too. I tried again and again all through that day to call Jasper and Petra. I spent all the money I had in phones. I should of still had the wad of cash Petra and Jasper gave me only that all went on drinks in the Travelodge and the Regent Palace Hotel. They told me not to use my bank card so that was still under my mattress. I was too scared to go back to Bethnal Green till I knew what was going on so I just wandered round Soho. You wouldn’t like Soho Osama I reckon there can’t be one single place in it that isn’t forbidden by your prophets for one thing or another except maybe Soho Square and the trouble with that is it gets pretty crowded. It was the longest day.

By the time it got dark I was hungry and my boy was so starving he’d given up howling and he was just sitting there on the pavement very quiet and pale. Even the flames on him were starved. It was just his fingertips burning with flickering little flames like candles. I had to get some food for him but I was skint. So we just sat there for a while in some doorway or other getting hungrier and colder and just hoping something would turn up. But nothing did turn up and when my boy started to shiver I started to beg. I wonder if you know what that felt like Osama to have my poor boy’s eyes on me while he watched his mummy kneel down on the pavement on Wardour Street with a McDonald’s cup in front of her to beg spare change off the old pervs coming out of the sex shops.