Before the Fire (12 page)

Stick reached forwards and scooped a bit of icing off the side of the leftover cake. ‘I don’t want to sell windows.’ He sucked his finger, the sugar dissolving against the top
of his mouth.

‘You don’t need to decide now.’

‘I don’t want to do it, Dad.’

‘I spoke to your mum.’ He hesitated. ‘She thought it was a great idea. And Jen – she thinks it’ll be good for – that it’ll be a good thing.’

‘No.’ Stick shook his head. ‘No.’ He took another bit of icing.

‘Can you not do that?’ his dad snapped.

Stick sucked his finger and then wiped it on his trousers. His dad sighed. ‘It’s a good, respectable, dependable business – the windows trade.’

‘I said, no.’

His dad picked up the knife and cut a thin slice of cake, which crumbled into pieces. He piled it all into the palm of his hand and ate it in one go. ‘So perhaps you can enlighten
me,’ he said, when he’d finished chewing.

‘What?’

‘If you’re going to just dismiss this offer without a minute’s thought I’m guessing you must have another idea.’

Stick glared at the table – the cake and his empty wine glass, the stupid salt and pepper grinders which lit up when you used them.

‘I know you’ve got a lot on your plate, Kieran.’ His dad kept his voice low, like he was trying to calm an animal. ‘But you’re eighteen in, what, three weeks? And I
know, I know Iain’s dead and it’s awful, but the world’s not going to stand still for you. I’m just trying to help.’

Stick scratched at his cheek, didn’t look up. ‘I don’t need your help,’ he muttered.

‘I can’t hear you when you mumble, Kieran.’

‘I said, I don’t need your fucking help.’ Stick met his dad’s gaze and held it, his jaw set.

‘Everything all right in here?’ Jen stood in the doorway. ‘You told him about the trainee job?’

Stick’s dad nodded.

‘Exciting, right?’ She looked between Stick and his dad and stopped smiling.

‘Tell her, Kieran,’ his dad said, and when Stick didn’t speak he turned to Jen and said, ‘He doesn’t want to do it, apparently,’ in a hurt-sounding voice.

‘Your dad pulled a lot of strings to sort that out, Kieran.’

Stick pushed his chair back and stood up. ‘When you two have finished organising my life, and making out I’m too shit to do anything except sell fucking double glazing, let me know,
won’t you?’

‘Kieran.’ Jen glared at him. ‘Apologise to your father.’

‘I’m going home.’ He leaned on the word home.

‘I said, apologise to your father.’

‘And I said, I’m going home.’

Jen was stood between him and the hallway. He was taller than her.

He pulled his hood up. ‘I need to get past.’

She looked at his dad, as if to say, come on, do something, stand up for yourself. But he wouldn’t, he never did. He’d be sat there with his hands on the table and a poor-me
expression on his face. Jen blinked and stepped to one side and Stick walked slowly down the hallway to the front door, putting on a deliberate swagger.

‘Bye, girls,’ he shouted.

Bea ran out of the front room and grabbed him around his knees. ‘You haven’t played tickle.’ She frowned up at him. ‘You said you’d play tickle.’

Stick glanced back towards the kitchen; Jen was watching them. He unwound Bea’s arms from his legs. ‘I’ve got to go, buzzy bee,’ he said.

Bea grinned and started running up and down the hall, making buzzing noises. ‘I’m a buzzy bee, buzzy bee,’ she shouted, but when he undid the latch on the front door she ran
back to him and said, ‘Play tickle, Kiery. You said.’

‘Next time.’ Stick gave her a weak smile. She pulled a face. Stick glanced up at Jen, who was still watching. ‘I’m sorry, Bea, I am,’ he said, and left.

Mrs McKinley asked Stick if he’d carry the coffin from the hearse to the grave.

‘Not on your own,’ she said and tried to laugh, but it ended up more like a sob.

Stick nodded. ‘Yeah, course, it’d be an honour.’ And then he bit at his lip because he sounded just like his dad. They were on the balcony in her flat. She stood with her back
against the living-room window, her hands wrapped around a cup of tea. Stick leaned on the rail, facing her.

‘We’re having the service by the –’ she coughed – ‘the grave. I can’t be doing with –’ She shook her head. ‘There’ll be six of
you,’ she said. ‘You, Aaron, Keith, Mikey, his Uncle Tim.’ She hesitated. ‘And Paul.’

‘Paul?’

‘His dad,’ she said. ‘Iain’s dad.’

Stick frowned.

‘I know,’ she said. ‘But I couldn’t not call him.’

Stick turned and looked down at the estate: the Queen’s with its St George’s flag snapping in the wind and three guys he didn’t recognise puffing away by the back door; someone
pinning up a notice outside Talbot House; washing hung out in a V in the Sweeneys’ yard. He could hear the diggers working on the tram line behind the block. It was as though nothing had
changed. Stick wanted to shout, ‘He’s dead. He’s fucking dead, do none of you know that?’ loud enough to echo off the houses, loud enough for them to hear in town.

His mum asked if his dad had given him money for a suit and when Stick said no she’d pulled out her purse and made him take fifty quid. It was enough to get one from
Primark. The jacket was a bit tight under his armpits, but it was all right. It’ll do for job interviews, even, his mum had said – with a different tie. Stick tried to imagine himself
in an interview but he could only think of the common room at the college he’d stuck out for a single term: frayed chairs, dark-blue carpet, cork noticeboards. He couldn’t even think of
a job he’d want to apply for.

On the day of Mac’s funeral, Stick sat in his suit, staring at the black-and-white newspaper picture of Owen Lee, which he’d Blu-Tacked back onto his bedroom wall. Mrs McKinley had
called to ask if he wanted to talk to Rob about the court hearing, about what to expect, but he’d said no. He was going to see Owen Lee. He was going to get some answers. That’s all he
needed to know.

‘Will you be OK on your own, love?’ his mum said as he came downstairs. The front door was open and Stick could see the taxi pulling up outside.

‘I won’t be on my own, will I?’

‘I just meant in the taxi. I would have come, except you know what work are like.’ She tugged at his jacket, smoothed her hands down the lapels. ‘You look smart,’ she
said. ‘You look right smart.’

It was the same place Sophie was buried, a big, well-kept place north of town. Stick stared out of the taxi window and watched the houses get posher: bay windows and loft conversions and
repointed brickwork. He recognised the cemetery as soon as they got there: gold lettering on a black board at the entrance; low gates that wouldn’t stop anyone from climbing over; the road
snaking up between neat grass verges. The whole place was neat – he remembered that too. It looked like someone had gone round with a ruler and a pair of scissors, making every blade of grass
exactly the same height. They passed the bit full of trees, flowers tied to their trunks or in vases shoved into the circles of soil around their bases. Sophie was in that bit, but Stick realised
he’d never find her grave even if he spent all day looking.

And then the taxi turned a corner and Stick saw not trees and plaques but gravestones, in small groups on a shallow hillside like they’d clustered together for safety. He wanted to leave
– open the car door and walk back to town, let them all get on with it without him. He wanted to go back to the place near Strangeways and find J and say he was sorry and then drink vodka
with her until he could forget that Mac was dead. But she thought he was in Spain, and he didn’t even have her phone number.

Outside the car, the air was cool on his cheeks, a breeze fussing at his hair as he walked up towards two massive black Mercedes and a hearse with a white coffin lying in the back. He headed
straight for Aaron and Shooter, who were both in smart black suits, their hair slicked. They touched fists and nodded, then stood in an awkward silence.

‘Is his dad here?’ Stick whispered and Aaron tilted his head towards a tall man with balding blond hair, a beer belly, features too big for his face. As Stick looked, Paul lifted his
hand up and out, gesturing into the sky as he spoke, the same way Mac would have done, and something inside Stick pulled tight.

‘His mum’s proper drugged up,’ Shooter hissed, flicking his eyes left.

Mrs McKinley stood propped up on either side by her sister and Lainey. She was wearing the too-expensive dress and had painted her lips a bright, bloody red. Her eyes were dull, her mouth slack.
She looked like she’d fall if either of them let go.

A man from the funeral home gathered the six of them together and handed out pairs of white cotton gloves. ‘Just take one handle each,’ he said in a low voice. ‘Up on the
shoulder. Walk slowly. Follow the person in front.’

Paul ground his cigarette out with his toe and turned to the group. ‘Check your shoelaces, lads,’ he said. ‘We don’t want anyone falling over.’

Stick looked down. He was wearing his old school shoes, polished by his mum but they still looked knackered. The laces were tightly knotted.

‘And bend at the knees. You should always bend at the knees when you’re lifting something heavy.’

Mac would have laughed at that – ‘You’re right, I’m a heavy bastard.’ Stick saw Shooter’s mouth twitch. He almost laughed himself but if he started maybe he
wouldn’t be able to stop, so he held his face tight and turned with the rest of them to where the coffin now sat on a flimsy metal table with thin concertinaed legs.

It must have cost a fortune. Polished white wood. Each panel edged with a carved border. Gold handles. He imagined white satin padding inside. And Mac. In the dark. Nailed in. Stick turned to
the man from the funeral home. There are stories, he wanted to say, where people are still alive, even though everyone – doctors, parents, everyone – thinks they’re dead, and they
get put in a coffin and then wake up and can’t get out. Fingernail scratches on the inside. He didn’t say it, but as he curled his fist around the handle – which felt fake, which
felt like it would break – he pictured Mac punching his way out, the wood splitting and him sitting up, roaring with laughter.

‘One, two, three. And lift.’

He was a heavy bastard. Stick wavered and fidgeted with the rest of them. Got it on his shoulder, the wood pressing hard onto the bone. A slow shuffle up the narrow road to the left of the
grassy slope. He was behind Mac’s dad, and stared at the back of his head, the neat line of newly cut hair, a red spot on his neck.

They turned right, along a strip of concrete marked with painted numbers and lines, the coffin hard and unstable between them. He’d have a bruise on the top of his shoulder – they
all would, the blood colouring beneath their skin. Mac was there, in the box, he was right there. Dead, Stick told himself. Dead. But it made no sense.

He didn’t see the hole until they were almost standing in it. Deep. Straight-edged, with wooden shuttering flat against the sides to stop the whole thing collapsing. Almost worse than the
hole was the massive pile of earth next to it. Someone had covered it over with a sheet of bright green fake grass, as though then people would think it was just a hill rather than however many
tonnes of soil ready to be shovelled back on top of Mac in his expensive white coffin.

Another crappy metal table had been set up on the concrete strip and they lowered Mac onto it. Without the weight of him on his shoulder Stick felt too light – untethered. He glanced at
Mac’s dad, who had a fag in his mouth, clicking the lighter against its end and sucking the smoke in hard. The drivers, with their grey suits and black leather gloves, carried the flowers
from the hearse and laid them to the left of the grave. And then other people started walking up and adding more flowers and the pile kept growing – red, yellow, pink, purple – like Mrs
McKinley’s living room. Cellophane and handwritten cards. Stick looked down at his white gloves. He hadn’t brought anything.

Next to the hole were three new graves. Two still had flowers heaped over the mounds of dry soil, dead stems in water-stained wrappings. Stick thought about the coffins underneath, choked with
earth. There was a wooden cross with a cheap-looking brass plate at the head of each. Stick peered down at one:
Alice. Fell asleep, April 2011
. Why did they write that kind of shit on
graves?
Iain McKinley, fell asleep, 18th June 2011
. They wouldn’t write
stabbed by some cunt while wearing coconuts and two grass skirts
. They should write that.

There must have been fifty, a hundred people jostling to get around the grave. And more kept arriving, standing close together and craning their necks to see. The man from the funeral home
looped straps through the coffin’s handles and motioned the six of them to step closer.

‘Take a strap. Keep it slow and steady. It’ll rock a bit but don’t panic. You just need to line it up with the grave and then slowly lower it down. OK?’ He looked each of
them in the eyes.

Stick tried to stop his brain from freewheeling. He took the strap and tried not to think that it had been used for this before, for other people: old people, kids – it happened all the
time, death, didn’t it? He let out a noise as he took Mac’s weight, didn’t mean to, but a couple of the others did the same, a kind of grunt. Slowly. Slowly. There wasn’t
much room between the side of the hole and the coffin. Down. Down. It was deeper than six feet. Must be dug deep so they could bury his ma on top of him. Stick let the strap slide a bit too fast
and the coffin lurched and wobbled. He gripped his hand into a fist and it steadied.

And then it was done: Mac at the bottom of the hole, and the funeral-home man gesturing to Stick to drop the strap so it could be pulled out, rolled up, ready for the next poor dead bastard who
needed it. Stick took off the gloves – his hands felt cold and naked without them.

A priest was standing at the head of the grave with his Bible open and ready. He looked up at them all and then started bollixing on about the uncertainty of life and the certainty and comfort
of death. Stick wanted to jump down into the hole with Mac, but he kept himself upright, kept himself still, listened to a bird trill away to itself in the trees up at the top of the hill.