‘I’m in here. You’ve had a shock, I’m making you a sugary tea.’
I went into the kitchen and put the milk back in the fridge. ‘I don’t want any sugary tea. I just want you to listen to me.’
By the time I’d closed the refrigerator door, she was back at the table with a piece of paper.
I snatched it from her hands. ‘Will you just keep still and stop moving around. I can’t keep track of you.’
Elsie became very quiet, and she watched me from the corner of the room. ‘I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do,’ she said eventually. ‘Tell me what to do.’
‘I just need you to listen. He confessed it to me, now I need you to help me decide what’s best. Jack would know. If Jack was here, he’d have a plan.’
‘He isn’t, though, is he?’ she said. ‘It’s just you and me, and all those secrets. Who will ever believe us?’
‘Someone has to, surely? For Ruth Honeyman? For Beryl?’
She didn’t reply.
‘I don’t understand why you’re here,’ I said. ‘If you’re not going to help me.’
‘I’ve helped you already. I helped you to find out the truth. That’s exactly why I was here,’ she said. ‘Haven’t you been listening?’
When I looked down, I realised my hands were shaking, and I had ripped the paper into tiny pieces.
‘I think you need to lie down, Florence. Just for half an hour. Give your mind a rest.’
I didn’t remember getting into bed. But I found myself lying there somehow, in curtained light, thinking about Ronnie.
I stood on the bridge for a while after he’d fallen. Instead of finding help, I decided to find Elsie. She was the only one who would understand. The only person I could tell. Not my father, who was too forgiving. Not Gwen, who would fashion an excuse for me, but Elsie.
Elsie was my best friend.
She was the only person who would have the right words.
Because Elsie always knew the right thing to say to make me feel better.
I started to run back to Elsie’s house, along the pavements and the cobbles and the dark streets. I’m not sure what I noticed first, but I think it was the smell. I couldn’t understand why I’d started to cough, why I found it more difficult to breathe, but as I grew closer, it was everywhere. Black smoke. Filling the streets. Twisting and winding its way through the night. Then I heard it. The crack of the flames. The whip of orange and red against the sky. I knew. I knew before I’d even turned the corner. I knew, because I remembered looking into the coals and losing my judgement in a fireplace full of thinking. I didn’t put the guard back across. I poked at the fire and left it to smoulder, and a spark must have caught the carpet. Elsie’s house was burning to the ground, and it was all my fault.
The fireman saved almost all of them. Almost a whole family.
All of them except one.
I never usually slept in the middle of the day, let alone fully dressed, and when I woke, the sheets were twisted and unhappy and there was a lacquer of sweat on my forehead. Elsie had gone. I knew straight away, because the flat felt empty of her.
‘Are you there?’ I shouted, just in case. ‘I’m going to tell everything to Miss Ambrose.’
My voice fell into the silence.
‘I need you to come with me.’
When I got out of bed, I tripped over the bedspread on the floor and I felt the pain shoot up my leg. It didn’t seem to matter, though. The only thing I could think about was finding Elsie. I went outside into the courtyard and looked at all the flats. I wanted to knock on Elsie’s door, but I couldn’t decide which one was hers. She always came to visit me. She said my window had the better view. My eyes tried to find their way inside each house, through the glass and past the curtains, but all I could see was myself reflected back, potted plants on windowsills and bottles of washing-up liquid, and other people’s empty lives. Jack would know which door to knock at, and I had to keep telling myself that he wasn’t there to ask. My mind couldn’t find its way out of sleeping, and each thought I had needed to be pulled through the slurry in my mind.
Perhaps Elsie had gone ahead. Perhaps she had thought for herself for once, and was already with Miss Ambrose, waiting for me.
HANDY SIMON
Simon had never seen anyone arrested before. It wasn’t like the television. There were no handcuffs, and he didn’t hear anyone use the word ‘nicked’. It was the same policemen from the other day, but this time, they didn’t remove their hats.
Ronald David Butler.
He didn’t look like a Ronald Butler. Although, to be fair, he didn’t really look like a Gabriel Price any more either.
‘Surely there’s been some mistake?’ said Miss Ambrose, when her jaw had recovered.
Gabriel Price (or perhaps Ronnie Butler) didn’t say anything. He almost looked as though he’d been expecting it, but of course, he couldn’t have been. No one else had. Simon and Miss Ambrose had been clearing away the funeral plates. They were all helping, to be fair. Even Cheryl. Every time he turned around, she seemed to be there, and when he was stacking all the cups and saucers, she’d come right up to him and they’d had a long conversation about how sad it was and what a shame you didn’t realise how interesting someone’s life was until the vicar read it all out from a pulpit. He was just going to move on to the side plates, when she asked him what he was doing that weekend.
‘Nothing much,’ he said, because she’d caught him off guard.
‘Are you going to the cinema at all?’ she said.
He told her he hadn’t been planning to, and she just laughed and shook her head. ‘Well I’d like to,’ she said, ‘if you fancied it?’
He said he would. Very quickly, before she changed her mind.
‘You seem brighter than usual,’ he said. ‘What’s put a smile on your face?’
She thought for a moment, and then she looked at him and said, ‘It was Florence, actually.’
‘Florence?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Florence. She asked about Alice. No one ever asks about Alice.’
Simon hesitated. ‘We don’t know what to say, Cheryl. None of us. We don’t want to make you upset, we just can’t find the right words.’
‘That’s because there aren’t any,’ she said. ‘There never will be. And sometimes, even if you don’t have the right words, it’s better to use the ones you’ve already got, rather than say nothing at all. It upsets me more not to talk about her, because it pushes her further and further into the past.’
Simon wondered how someone so small could carry around so much grief all by themselves. ‘You can talk to me about Alice any time you want,’ he said. ‘I’d love to hear about her.’
Cheryl reached up and kissed his cheek. ‘There’s so much more to you than first meets the eye, Simon.’
Simon was clearing away the last of the plates, and thinking about Cheryl, and trying to hold on to the feeling of kindness on his face, when Gloria looked out of the window and said, ‘The Old Bill are here,’ because she watched too many television dramas. Simon tried to head for the kitchens with an armful of crockery, but he was intercepted by Gloria and forced to sweep crumbs from a tablecloth instead. He decided the best course of action was to focus the whole of his attention on the crumbs, but when the police asked for Gabriel Price, he turned around and stared. He couldn’t help himself.
‘Gabriel Price?’ said Miss Ambrose. ‘Our Gabriel Price?’ As though there was an entire squadron of them somewhere, waiting to be called upon.
The policeman nodded.
Miss Ambrose sent Gloria to go and get him, and everyone looked at each other. Simon resorted to hand-picking the crumbs from the carpet, and Miss Ambrose read a notice she’d written herself only ten minutes earlier. The policemen just waited. They were obviously used to silence, and didn’t feel the need to fill it up with polystyrene words.