Page 33 of A Slow Fire Burning

Her mother busied herself with tidying the get-well cards on the windowsill. “You know, I’m not sure. I didn’t actually see the car.”

Liar.

Janine, Laura’s mother, stood in the driveway in front of the house, shivering, wearing Ugg boots and wrapped in a bathrobe of chartreuse silk. Her skin was flushed with sex. They’d lost track of time; they were still entangled with each other when she looked over at her husband’s watch on her bedside and said, “Shit, Laura’s going to be home soon.”

Richard had dressed in a hurry, he almost fell over putting his trousers on, the pair of them were laughing, making plans for next time. She saw him out and kissed him as he got into his car. He told her he loved her. She stood on the driveway, her head tilted back, watching the snow come falling down, opening her mouth so she could feel the flakes on her tongue. His words echoed in her head and then she heard it and she knew: something terrible had happened to Richard.

She sprinted to the road. The first thing she saw was his car, his dark green Mercedes parked at an odd angle in the middle of the road and then, beyond that, Richard himself. He was kneeling with his back to her, his shoulders heaving, and as she reached him, she saw that he was sobbing, his tears falling onto the broken body of her child. “Oh God oh God oh please God no, please God no. She was in the road, Janine, she was in the middle of the road. Oh please God no please God.”

Janine grabbed his arm, started to pull him to his feet. “You have to go,” she was saying, her voice sounding weirdly matter-of-fact even to her own ears. “You have to get in the car and go, go right now. Go, Richard, I’ll take care of her. Go on!”

“She’s bleeding, Janine, it’s bad. Oh Christ, it’s bad.”

“You have to go,” she said again, and when he didn’t move, shestarted to shout. “Now, Richard! Leave! Just go now. You weren’t here. You were never here.”

Liar liar.

All that would come out later. Everyone told Laura (everyone being her parents and the doctor and her counselor) not to google what had happened, that it wouldn’t help, it would only upset her, frighten her, give her nightmares. Which Laura, who might have only just turned eleven but wasn’tborn yesterday, thought was bollocks, also quite suspicious, and she was right about that, wasn’t she?

The first thing she found when she googled herself was a news story with the headlineman jailed for hit and runand a picture of her looking like a twat in her school uniform, grinning goofily at the camera. She started reading:

Art dealer Richard Blake was yesterday sentenced to four months in prison for the hit-and-run accident which seriously injured local schoolgirl, Laura Kilbride, 11.

Laura read that sentence again.Richard?

But that couldn’t be right. She knew Richard. Richard was the man who taught the art classes her mum went to; Richard was nice. He had an open, friendly face; he was always laughing. Laura liked Richard, he was kind to her, they’d played football together once in the car park when she was waiting for her mum to finish up in the supermarket. Richard wouldn’t have done that to her. He would never have driven away without calling an ambulance.

The revelation about Richard Blake was quickly forgotten, though, in the shock of what was to come:

Mr. Blake, 45, who pleaded guilty to failing to stop and failing to report an accident, was conducting a relationship with the child’s mother, Janine Kilbride, at the time of the accident. Mrs. Kilbride, 43, who arrived on the scene shortly after the accident, called an ambulance to attend to her child, but told police she did not see the vehicle that struck her. Janine Kilbride was fined £800 for giving false information to the police.

When Laura looked back on that period, she identified the moment that she read that paragraph as the beginning of the end. Her body was already broken, of course, her brain function already affected, but that was the sort of damage from which a person can recover. Butthis? The knowledge that she been lied to, by both of her parents, by everyone who’d been caring for her, that was a knockout blow, the sort that lays you out, the sort from which you do not get back up. That knowledge, the sense of betrayal that came with it, that changed her. It left her marked.

It left herangry.

TWENTY

Miriam could recognize damaged goods when she saw them. People always went on about the eyes, about guarded expressions, haunted looks, that sort of thing. Possibly, Miriam thought, but it was more about movement, about the way you carried yourself. She couldn’t see it in herself, of course, but she could feel it—she might be old and heavy and slow now, but she was still on the balls of her feet. Still wary. Ready for that rush of blood to the head.

Miriam saw Laura creating havoc outside the launderette and seized her opportunity. She stepped in quickly, picked up Laura’s rucksack, apologized to the exasperated owner, and escorted the girl smartly away. She offered her a cup of tea on the boat, but Laura turned her down. Understandable, under the circumstances. When you considered the mess she got herself into last time she went down there.

They went to Laura’s place instead. An ordeal, to put it mildly. Laura lived in a council flat in a tower block over by Spa Fields, up on the seventh floor and the lift was out. Miriam was unsureshe’d make it all the way up; she had to stop several times, her breath short and the sweat pouring off her. Little toerags in the stairwell laughing, making jokes.Shit bruv, your nan’s having a heart attack.

When she got up there, though, the climb felt almost worth it. A stiff breeze, none of the stink of the canal, and a view—a glorious view! The spire of Saint James in the foreground, behind that the hulking brutalist towers of the Barbican, the quiet splendor of St. Paul’s, and farther still, the city’s shining glass facades. London, in all its glory, the one you forgot about when you lived with your nose so close to the ground.

Laura hardly seemed to notice. Used to it, Miriam supposed, and clearly in pain—the limp seemed to get worse with every floor they climbed. When finally they reached Laura’s front door, Miriam asked about it, politely, as a simple expression of concern, fully expecting a banal response—a twisted ankle, a drunken fall—and instead received a tale of woe she could scarcely believe. Awful parents, a terrible accident, virtual abandonment to her fate. Miriam’s heart went out to her. A start like that in life? No wonder she was such an odd fish.

Her sympathy for the girl swelled when she saw her pitiful little flat. Cheap, ugly furniture on a gray acrylic carpet, walls the yellow of nicotine. This was the home of a childwithout: no colorful throws or cushions, no ornaments or trophies, no books on the shelves, no posters on the walls—nothing whatsoever save for a single framed photograph, of a child with its parents. A relief from the bleakness until you got closer, as Miriam did, stepping over a pile of clothes lying in the middle of the living room floor, to see that the picture had been defaced, the child’s eyes crossed out, its mouth bloodied. Miriam peered at it and flinched. When she turned around, Laura was looking at her, a strange expression on her face. Miriam’s skingoose-fleshed. “Shall we have that cup of tea, then?” she asked, with forced jollity.

(Damaged goods, odd fish—who knew what was going on behind those pretty eyes?)

In the kitchen, tea drunk and an uncomfortable silence hanging over them, Miriam decided to take a risk, to speak up. “I know you, you know,” she said. In her pocket, she fiddled with the key, the one she’d taken from the floor of the boat, with the key ring attached.

Laura gave her a look. “Yeah. From the launderette. Duh.”

Miriam shook her head, a small smile on her lips. “It’s not just that. I know why you didn’t want to go down to the canal.” She saw the girl’s expression change, from boredom to consternation. “It’s nothing to worry about,” Miriam said. “I’m on your side. I know it’s you the police are talking to about him. About Daniel Sutherland.”

“How did you know that?” There it was, the girl’s body tensed, ready for the off. Fight or flight.

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