A Lovely Way to Burn (4 page)

‘We’d only been going out for four months,’ Stevie said. ‘I can’t even tell you who you should be contacting.’

‘In that case it was good of you to call us.’ The policeman took a hanky from his trouser pocket and dabbed some of the sweat from his face. He glanced back into the apartment, perhaps checking that the paramedics weren’t about to begin manoeuvring Simon’s body through the hallway before she was gone. ‘Plenty of people would have walked out the door and saved themselves the trouble of all this.’

‘Is that what you would have done?’

The policeman considered for a moment, and Stevie realised it was the real man, not the uniform, who was about to speak.

‘No,’ he said. ‘I would have done exactly what you did. But I’m in the job. I know how things go. Some people take fright at the thought of the authorities. They’d rather disappear, or phone it in anonymously.’

‘I waited in the living room,’ she said, and suddenly it seemed terrible that she had left Simon alone, after all those days and nights of being on his own. ‘I didn’t stay with him.’

‘It wouldn’t have made any difference. The fact that you phoned us might, though, to his loved ones.’ The policeman covered his mouth with his hand and coughed. ‘Sorry, allergies.’ He touched his handkerchief to his forehead again and asked, ‘What about you? You’ve had a shock. Is there someone at home to look after you?’

‘I live alone, but it’s okay, I’m used to it.’

‘Me too,’ the policeman said. ‘No one to find me either.’

Five

Stevie took off her clothes, stuffed them in the washing machine and pulled on her dressing gown. Her flat was hot, and she poured herself a glass of water. The surface of the liquid trembled and it was difficult to raise the glass to her mouth. She remembered that there was some Valium at the back of the cutlery drawer, left over from when her mother had died. Stevie found the packet, swallowed two pills, then climbed into the shower and turned the water up as hot as she could stand it. She closed her eyes and raised her face to the spray, letting it drench her hair, trying to empty her mind of everything, except the sensation of the water pounding against her flesh.

Later, she wrapped herself in her towelling dressing gown and telephoned the station to tell them she was sick and wouldn’t be able to appear tonight, and very possibly not the following night either. Then, to her surprise, she was sick, gut-wrenchingly, jaw-stretchingly, horribly sick. Her bowels clenched and she realised that her body was determined to expel everything from its system.

When it was through Stevie drank a little water, pulled on an old pair of pyjamas and climbed into bed. The room seemed to tip and she saw Simon’s face again. His mouth had been slightly open, his lips pulled back, showing his teeth. Another wave of nausea washed over her. She ran to the bathroom, only just making it in time.

A long, sleepless day was followed by a feverish night punctuated by nightmares. She became part of a floating world, a place without edges or gravity, where nothing was bound to the earth and objects and people drifted free of time and place. She saw Joanie and Derek, dressed up for a night on the tiles, and knew that they too were dead. The new security guard put his hand up her skirt and whispered that she was a stuck-up bitch and he was going to give her another one, just like the other one. The sun turned orange and a voice in her head, that wasn’t her own, told her it meant that she was going to die.

Some time in the early hours Simon walked into her bedroom. He was wearing the doctor’s coat she had never seen him in and was fully restored. She noticed the red Biro in his breast pocket and the careless line of ink above it, where Simon had replaced the pen minus its cap. He gave her a smile, and then opened the door and left. It was these details that spooked her when she woke: the line of ink, the closing door.

There was vomit smeared, nuclear yellow, on the pillowcase. Stevie pushed the pillow under the bed and stumbled to the kitchen, the dreams still tugging at her consciousness. There was sick in her hair, but she was too weak to shower again. She tried to comb it out with her fingertips and then stuck her head under the tap. The cold water scalded her skin. She drank some and immediately threw up in the sink. Her ribs ached worse than when she had been swept overboard during a white-water raft race and tumbled half a mile downstream, slamming against riverbed boulders all the way. The memory of the water, its centrifugal force, made Stevie dizzy and she threw up again.

She found a plastic bowl, set it by the bed and continued to retch into it long after she had forgotten to try and keep herself hydrated. She slept again and woke to the knowledge that she had soiled herself. Stevie dragged the sheet from the bed, wiping herself as clean as she could with its hem, and crawled on to the bare mattress. There was a noise in her head like a telegraph machine in some old movie, and she realised that her teeth were chattering. Recent nights had been too warm for anything but a sheet, and she had packed her duvet away weeks ago. Now she pulled it from the blanket box at the end of the bed and drew it over herself, not bothering to find a cover for it. A telephone was ringing somewhere far away, but it seemed more remote than her dreams, and it didn’t occur to Stevie to answer it.

The next time Stevie soiled herself she cried, but all she produced were dry sobs she didn’t have the energy to maintain. She kicked the duvet from the bed and pulled on her dressing gown. Her movements were all instinct now, memories of how she should act.

She woke and turned over, wondering why she was so cold.

Her mother stroked her cheek and sang a song Stevie had forgotten, her mother’s voice stretching the tune the way it always did.

There was a dog in the room. She could hear it panting. The room was black, the dog hidden in the darkness, but Stevie saw the gleam of its eyes and knew that it was waiting for her to fall asleep.

She had to stay awake.

She closed her eyes and slept.

She slept.

She slept.

She slept.

She woke, wondering where she was.

She turned over, closed her eyes and slept.

Her mother was at her bedside again, her face old and yellow, the way it had been towards the end. She touched Stevie’s face and said, ‘I would like to have died in my own bed.’ Stevie said, ‘I know,’ and closed her eyes.

She woke and slept and woke and slept and woke to find her things floating around the bedroom the new dress she had bought last week its arms swaying in time to a beat she couldn’t hear and then perhaps could the sound of her heart creaking on in her chest her necklaces and bracelets had escaped their box and were exploding likes lomo fireworks she watched them fascinated shoe shoes shoes boots shoes and sandals span through the air her panties bras and tights got into the act the pair of stockings she had bought as a treat for Simon but had decided were a cliché tangled together then apart teasingly he would have liked them the dog was in the dark again panting ready to pounce as soon as she closed her eyes she was cold cold cold and shouted to her mother to close the window but her mother was dead and the window already locked and bolted to keep her clothes from flying away it was dark and then the sun shone through hurting her eyes she rolled over and slept again rolled over and slept woke to the dark and then the sunlight rolled over and slept.

Stevie dropped her dressing gown beside the shower, and stepped naked into the spray. Her body was covered in an angry, red rash that was starting to blister. She remembered radiation victims she had glimpsed in a documentary about Japan. The stained gown lay at her feet, like a dead thing. The atomic bomb had vaporised people, leaving their shadows fixed to the ground.

She abandoned the gown on the floor of the cubicle, wrapped herself in a towel and fell into bed in the guest room she used as an office. The urge to be sick surged over her again, but her stomach was empty and all she produced were painful heaves. Her body clenched as if it wanted to expel her internal organs and she groaned out loud. It occurred to Stevie again that she might die and she thought vaguely of phoning a doctor, but she was tired and weak, and gave herself over to Fate more passively than she would have thought possible. Somewhere a mobile phone was ringing. She wished that Simon would answer it so the noise would stop. A deep and dreamless sleep that was a kind of death overtook her.

Six

Stevie woke, stiff and thirsty, unsure of how long she had been asleep. She took another shower. The rash was still there, but it was less angry, the blisters that had made her think of radiation sickness already fading of their own accord. She rubbed the blandest moisturiser she could find on to her skin, extra gently around her ribs which were still tender from throwing up, and pulled on an old tracksuit, soft and baggy from over-washing. Stevie texted Joanie to ask her to let the station know that it would be a day or two more before she could return, then she lay down on the couch, dragged a throw over herself and fell back to sleep.

Later she made herself a cup of weak black tea and turned on the television. Later still she put together a pot of noodle soup from a packet she found at the back of the cupboard. Stevie ate cautiously, unsure if she would be able to keep it down, but to her surprise she found that she was starving and it was an effort not to wolf another bowl.

The act of eating seemed to wear her out and she curled up on the couch again, thinking about the soiled sheets and pillowcases she had stuffed beneath the bed, but lacking the strength to do anything about them. She turned on the television, and remembered the hang of Simon’s head, the sneer of the smile that was his and not his.

Stevie woke to the sound of Big Ben and the frantic jingle that announced the news. The headline story was of a cache of bomb-making material found in the home of a white supremacist somewhere in the Midlands. Stevie muted the sound, pulled her hair back, shoved her feet into her trainers and padded down to the shops beneath her apartment. It was cool outside. The stars were hidden by the sodium glow of the streetlamps but she thought she could feel their presence sharp and prickly in the firmament. She didn’t believe in God or an afterlife, but her mind was so full of Simon that it was as if she could feel him, standing just beyond her sightline, watching to see what she would do next.

‘I don’t fucking know what I’ll do,’ Stevie whispered, and then felt bad, though Simon would have laughed.

She bought a pint of milk, drank a glassful and went to bed in the spare room.

Stevie checked her mobile phone the next morning and discovered a screed of missed calls and texts. She spooled through them, wincing at the sight of Rachel the station producer’s number, repeated over and over like a warning. Then she curled up on the couch and turned on the television again. The bomb-making story had given way to an explosion in a fireworks factory somewhere in the Far East, the sound was too low for her to hear where. She worked her way through her messages, looking for Joanie’s name, wondering if her friend had mislaid yet another phone. Stevie wanted to tell Joanie about Simon, to dilute the shock of his death by saying it out loud.

The doorbell pealed, loud and insistent, ringing on longer than was polite. Stevie muttered, ‘Speak of the Devil and smell smoke.’ She padded through to the hallway, wondering how bad the apartment smelt and hoping Joanie didn’t have a bottle of Cava tucked in her bag. The bell rang again and she shouted, ‘I’m coming,’ in a voice that sounded torn.

The woman at the door was a little older than Stevie. She was dressed in a no-nonsense navy business suit and a frothy white blouse that made her look top-heavy.

‘I’m looking for Steven Flint.’

She held a large handbag, decorated with unnecessary gold chains and buckles and stamped with the Chanel logo, in front of her, as if preparing to ward off an attack, or perhaps launch one of her own.

Stevie took a step backwards, keeping a hand on the door, ready to close it. She said, ‘I’m sorry, I don’t buy things on the doorstep,’ even though she instinctively knew the woman wasn’t out to sell her anything.

‘I’m not here to try and persuade you to change gas suppliers.’ The woman’s laugh was harsh and incredulous, but there was an edge to it that told Stevie she was nervous. ‘This is the right address?’ She took a piece of paper from her pocket and looked at it. ‘Steven Flint does live here?’

‘What do you want?’

The woman hesitated and an expression that might have been sympathy flitted across her face. ‘Are you his wife?’

‘I’m Stevie Flint.’

It wasn’t the first time her name had led people astray. When she was a journalist, before the Internet had closed the newspaper she was working for and made all but freelance work (and precious little of that) impossible, it had occasionally opened doors.

The woman looked confused. ‘I was expecting a man.’

‘No, Stephanie Flint, Stevie for short.’

The woman stared at her and Stevie was reminded of a computer rebooting after a tricky download.

‘I’m Julia Sharkey, Dr Julia Sharkey, Simon Sharkey’s cousin.’ She faltered again. ‘He asked me to give you something.’ And a single tear trickled down the side of her cheek.

Stevie made them both a coffee, though she knew she wouldn’t be able to stomach hers, and they went through to the lounge. She saw Julia Sharkey taking in the room: the cream rug and the Heal’s couch; the Timorous Beasties blinds; the coffee table that was like the one Stevie preferred in John Lewis, but was actually from Ikea; the 1960s Ercol sideboard she had found on eBay.