Page 43 of A Slow Fire Burning

“Fucking hell,” Laura said.

“Indeed,” Irene replied. “Do you know,” she said, “I think you ought to go upstairs and get out of those wet things, hang them in the airing closet, and run yourself a nice hot bath. I think you should stay here with me this afternoon, don’t you?”

Laura smiled, squeezing tears from her eyes. “I’d like that.”

Above the sound of the second downpour, Irene could hear Laura singing, her voice truer and sweeter than Irene would have imagined. She took her time; it was almost an hour before she came back downstairs, wrapped in a pink terry cloth robe that had been folded up in the airing cupboard, unused for the best part of a decade. Something about the sight of this tiny young woman in her old robe was extraordinarily touching to Irene. She felt a wave of emotion come over her, a feeling she imagined might almost be maternal.

She said none of this to Laura, who she suspected might be embarrassed by such a declaration. Instead, she said: “Do you know, it’s very odd, this book”—she brandished the manuscript Laura had brought with her—“this memoir. I was reading through it and—”

“You can’t have read it already,” Laura said, flinging herself lengthways onto the sofa and rearranging the cushions beneath her head.

“Well, I was just skimming through it—it’s actually not badly written, a little overwrought, perhaps—but the odd thing is that some parts of it feel terribly familiar, though of course the idea of someone escaping from a serial killer isn’t exactlyoriginal, only...” She tailed off, frowning, peering up at her bookshelves over the rim of her glasses. “There’s something that’s bothering me and I just can’t put my finger on what it is, I...”

Laura closed her eyes and snuggled down on the sofa, pulling Irene’s robe down over her knees. “Oh,” she murmured, “this is, like, heaven. I am just so knackered, you know what I mean? I just want to lie here forever.”

“Well, you’re welcome to stay. You could even spend the night,” Irene suggested, “if you like. I could make up the spare bed.”

Laura didn’t answer, but with a smile upon her lips said, “I always feel safe here, you know? I feel like no one can get at me here.”

“No one’s going togetyou, Laura,” Irene said. “Why ever would you think that?”

“Oh, they will,” Laura said, pulling the robe up so that it covered her chin. “They will. They always do.”

While Laura slept, Irene read. A number of the scenes in the manuscript were terribly familiar—two girls hitchhiking on a hot summer’s day, a chance encounter, a sudden descent into violence occurring at a remote farmhouse, tender young limbs slashed on broken windows—it was all standard horror film stuff, she supposed, but there was something that snagged on the memory, and that was the singing. A refrain played on the radio, sung by one of the characters (could you call her a character, if this was a memoir?), was familiar to her; it reminded her of something, rang a bell from somewhere.

On the sofa, Laura stirred. She turned over so that she was facing away from Irene and began, very gently, to snore. Irene felt again the pull of affection, a twinge in her stomach that she thought of as maternal, but then what did she know? She couldn’t say what it was, only that she felt the same urge to protect the girl as she’d felt toward poor Angela.

She cast her eye once more over Angie’s books, the ones she’d not yet finished sorting through. She really ought to get on with that because those books had been lying around for weeks. Perhaps she might ask Laura to take that first pile up to the Oxfam shop on Upper Street.

And then she saw it. On the top of the charity shop pile:The One Who Got Awayby Caroline MacFarlane. Theo Myerson’s crimenovel! It was staring her in the face. She got out of her chair and picked up the book, a hardback copy, hefty and well bound. She turned it over, reading the words on the back cover, in bold blood red:

On their way home from school, a girl and her friend were abducted.

The girl made it home. The friend did not.

This girl is a victim.

This girl is grieving.

This girl is damaged.

This girl is vengeful.

This girl is guilty?

This girl is the One Who Got Away.

Irene rolled her eyes—she’d thought it was drivel when she’d first read it on publication; her view had not changed. Returning to her chair, she opened the book, flicking through it to find the passage she felt sure she remembered, something about a song, a snatch of a lyric. It was there somewhere, though not at all easy to find in this novel, whose story jumped about, the point of view occasionally switching from victim to perpetrator, the timeline jumping about all over the place. Very confusing and, if you asked Irene, irritating. She remembered hearing Myerson, once he’d been unmasked as the author, defending it on a radio program, saying something about playing with perceptions of guilt and responsibility, challenging the reader’s expectations, all that sort of guff. Nonsense. Experimentation for its own sake, who did that serve? What was wrong with the traditional crime novel, after all, with good prevailing, evil vanquished? So what if things rarely turned out like that in real life?

Irene was interrupted in her reading by an odd buzzing sound. She looked up and saw a light flashing on Laura’s phone. It quietened andthen, after a moment, started up again. On the sofa, Laura stirred. “Oh, that’s me,” she groaned, rolling over toward Irene and promptly falling off the edge of the couch. “Fuck’s sake,” she mumbled as she crawled across the carpet to pick up the phone, “I was completely out.” She squinted at the screen. “Yeah?” she answered. “Who? Oh, yeah, sorry. What’s that? Oh, no I’m not there at the moment, I’m with a friend. I can... but I... but... What,now?” She closed her eyes for a second. “Do I have to?”

She ended the call with a heartfelt sigh. She looked sleepily up at Irene. “Told you,” she said, trying to smile despite the telltale crack in her voice. “I told you they always get me, didn’t I?” Wearily, she dragged herself to her feet. “I have to get going,” she said. “That was the police.”

Laura left in a hurry, dismissing Irene’s concerns. “It’s nothing to worry about, mate,” she said as she ran upstairs to get her clothes. “Nothing to worry about,” she said again when she came back down.

“This is about Daniel?” Irene said, and Laura pulled a face.

“Yeah, of course it is! Of course it’s about Daniel—I haven’t slept with anyone else who’s carked it lately, have I? I’m a witness, that’s all; I was the last person to see him, you know,alive. It’s nothing to worry about.” Irene saw her to the front door. Helping her into her still-damp coat, she asked if Laura had a solicitor. Laura laughed, started off down the lane, limping a little more than usual, and then she turned back, a grin on her face, all traces of tears banished. “Does the pope shit in the woods?”

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