Page 27 of A Slow Fire Burning

Angela took herself upstairs; Carla could hear her running water for a bath. Carla made tea—black, there was no milk in the fridge, there was nothing in the fridge save for some ancient cheese and an open bottle of white wine. Carla took two mugs upstairs; she sat on the loo seat while her sister soaked.

“I didn’t even mean to get drunk,” Angela said to her. She was sitting up, dabbing gently at her bloody knees with a flannel. Carla could see her shoulder blades moving; they looked ready to break through the skin. “I had a couple of glasses—three, maybe? Something else in the pub afterward? It was a work thing, you know. No one saw me, I don’t think. At the taxi rank. God. I hope nobody saw me. It was just so sudden. One moment I was fine and then I sort of just...woke upand there was this man, towering over me, calling me a drunk....”

I thought you didn’t remember, Carla thought, being in the taxi queue. She said: “You weigh nothing, Angie. Had you eaten anything before you went out?” Angela shrugged. “How long... have you been like this?”

Angela looked back over her shoulder, her expression dulled. “Like what?” She turned away, her face to the wall. She picked at the mold on the grouting between the yellowing tiles.

Carla helped her out of the bath, fetched paracetamol from her handbag, found some antiseptic in the bathroom cupboard, which she applied to Angela’s cuts. She helped her to bed, lay at her side, holding one cold hand, her thumb gently stroking the back of her sister’s fingers. “I should have known,” she said, “that things had got so bad. I should have known.”

I should have forgiven you, she thought. I should have forgiven you by now.

They fell asleep.

•••

Angela woke hours later,a cry in her throat. Carla jerked awake in fright.

“Is he here?” Angela whispered.

“Is who here? Who? Angie, who are you talking about? Is who here?”

“Oh. No, I don’t know. I was dreaming, I think.” She turned her face to the wall. Carla settled back down, closing her eyes, trying to return to sleep. “Did you know,” Angela whispered, “that I was seeing someone?”

“Oh. Were you? I didn’t know. Has something happened? Did you break up?”

“No, no. Not now,” Angela said, her lips smacking. “Then. I was seeing someonethen. I never told you this, did I? He was married. He came to the house sometimes.”

“Angie.” Carla put her right arm around her sister’s waist, pulled her closer. “What are you talking about?”

“Lonsdale Square,” Angela said. Carla withdrew her arm. “When I was living in Lonsdale Square with Daniel after Dad died, I was seeing someone. The night before... the night before the accident, we were together, in the study. Watching a film, on the screen there, you remember?” The projectionist’s screen, their father had it installed, for watching home movies. “We were drinking, and...well. I thought the kids were asleep, but Daniel wasn’t. He came downstairs, he caught us.” Her breathing was slow, ragged. “He was so upset, Cee... he was just soangry, he wouldn’t calm down. I told him—my friend—to go. I told him to leave and I took Danupstairs. It took me a long time to calm him down, to get him to sleep. Then I went to bed. I went straight to bed. I never went back downstairs again, to the study. I never went back down to close the door—”

“Angie,” Carla interrupted, “don’t. Don’t do this. We always knew—Ialways knew—that you left the door open. It was—”

“Yes,” Angela said quietly. “Yes, of course you knew. Of course.”

SIXTEEN

Laura pressed her phone to her ear, hunched up her right shoulder so that she could hold it there, hands-free. She was in her bathroom, searching through the medicine cabinet for some antiseptic to put on the cut on her arm. In the sink, dampening, its ink blurring, lay a letter she’d received that morning informing her of a change of date for the hearing about the fork thing. As she swept little bottles off the shelves and into the sink, onto the letter, she started to laugh.

“The fork? The fork, the fork, the fork! The fork is a red herring!” She laughed harder, at the connection her mind had made. “Perhaps the fork was a herring fork?” (It wasn’t, it was a cocktail fork, she knew perfectly well.)

She released the phone from her shoulder grip and dropped it into her hand, looking at the screen to remind herself who she was talking to. She was on hold, that was it, she was on hold with the court people because she wanted to tell them that the date they were now proposing was not convenient for her. It was her mother’s birthday. They might go out for lunch! She laughed harder, laughed at herself. When had her mother last taken her for lunch?

Perhaps she could explain, though. Perhaps she could explain the whole fork thing to whoever would be, at some point, on the end of the line. Perhaps she could tell them the story; perhaps they’d understand. It was an easy story to tell, she’d told it before, a number of times, a number of versions: to the police, to the duty solicitor, to her psychologist (We need to develop strategies, Laura, to help you control your anger), to Maya at the launderette.

Tell it again!

She’d been in a bar, not far from where she was right at that moment. It was very late, she wasverydrunk, and she was dancing, slowly, on her own. Encouraged, perhaps, by the small group of people who were gathering to watch her, she performed, slowly and impromptu, a fairly professional-looking striptease. In the middle of this routine and without so much as a by-your-leave, an aggressively bearded twentysomething—drunk too, but less drunk than she—stepped forward, right into her space, reached out, grabbed her left breast, hard.

His friends cheered and everyone else laughed except for one girl who said, “Fuckinghell.”

Laura was thrown off her rhythm, she stumbled backward, grabbing on to the bar to steady herself. Everyone laughed harder. Suddenly, blindly furious, she lurched forward over the bar, groping for a weapon. She happened upon a cocktail fork, a two-pronged affair used for skewering olives, which she grabbed, lunging forward. The man dropped his shoulder, dodged to the right, lost his balance, flailed with his left hand, grabbed the bar with his right and there, she stuck him, right through the center of his hand. The fork went in—it really wentin, sank into his flesh as though it were butter—and it stuck.

There was quite a scuffle then, with lots of pushing and shoving and the young man screaming in pain. The bouncers waded in, oneof them wrapping half-naked Laura in his jacket and ushering her toward the back of the bar. “Did that bloke do this to you, love?” he asked. “Did he attack you? Did he take your clothes?”

Laura shook her head. “I took off my clothes,” she said, “but then he grabbed me. He grabbed my tit!”

The police were called, and while they were waiting, the two protagonists—the man with the fork in his hand and the half-naked woman with a bouncer’s jacket around her shoulders—were forced to sit almost side by side. “Fucking mental,” the man kept muttering. “She’s a fuckingmental. She wants locking up.”

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