Split Second (2 page)

‘Youth unemployment is now running at sixty percent and the Government has the audacity to—’

I moved away. I wasn’t interested in politicians and their talk, though at least Roman Riley’s party organised handouts. The Government only ever took things away.

Still furious with Mum, I wandered to the far corner of the market, idly looking at a rack of cheap jumpers, then a big display of discounted jackets. They were all hideous. I sighed. Mum wanted
me to wait nearby. Well, tough. I headed towards the exit, passing a stall selling African-print T-shirts, then another steaming with the scent of coconut curry. I stopped at a sign advertising
free noodle soup –
one person, one cup
– hesitating as I wondered whether to get some.

WHAM!
The blast knocked me off my feet. I slammed down hard on my back, onto the floor. Winded, I lay there, stunned. What was happening?

Voices rose up around me, shouts and screams. An alarm. Footsteps pounded past me as I struggled up onto my elbows. An elderly woman had been knocked over too. We stared at each other, then
turned to look across the market. Smoke was pouring up above the stalls two or three aisles away.

‘What
was
that?’ I said.

The elderly woman was struggling to her feet. I jumped up.
Mum
. I raced back through the market. People were staggering past, going in the opposite direction. Thick clouds of dust
swirled around us. Jackets and jumpers from the stalls I’d passed before were scattered across the floor, blackened and ripped. I headed for the section of the market where the smoke was
coming from. My head throbbed. Was the explosion gas? An accident? A bomb?

‘Did you see what happened?’

‘Call an ambulance!’

‘Help me!’

People all around me were yelling. Screaming. I raced towards the smoke. I had to get back to the free food stall. Find Mum. Rubble was all around, counters from stalls splintered and on their
sides, clothes and food strewn across the dirt-streaked floor. A man staggered out of the smoke, blood pouring from his face. Another man followed, holding a little boy in his arms, his jacket
covered in dust, his eyes wide with shock. Two women held another up between them. More people, blocking my way. I pushed past them into the next aisle.

Mum had been right there, exactly where the smoke was coming from. Terror tightened my throat. I had to find her. My eyes were watering from the thick air. It was hard to breathe. I pushed
through the crowds. People were rushing past me, desperate to get out of the market. Injured people, terrified people.

I forced my way past them. The smoke was even thicker as I passed the tattoo stall. The TV was smashed on the ground, the woman from the stall bent over, groaning. I held my hand over my mouth,
choking on the dust. I stumbled, unable to see anything through the smoke. I stopped for a second, trying to make myself focus. The thin, piercing alarm stopped. An announcement sounded, telling
everyone to leave the market.

‘Make your way to the nearest exit. Make your way to the nearest exit.’

I headed left, towards the free food stall. A small fire was burning out of a pile of cables. Shards of plastic crunched under my feet. Everywhere was blood and dust and metal. Hell. A shoe on
its side with a broken heel. A torn poster showing just one side of Roman Riley’s face above the words:
Future Pa
—

The smoke cleared slightly. I saw the leaf green of Mum’s coat. Her arm flung out behind her head.

And I knew.

I knew but I couldn’t face it.

‘Mum!’ I yelled, and time slowed down as I moved towards her. ‘
Mum!
’

I felt the bomb as much as I heard it, the ground shaking under my feet as I ran. I was on the first floor, at the far end of the market. The explosion had come from below. Two
women on the other side of a trestle table stacked with bottles of half-price toilet cleaner looked up as I passed, their faces echoing my own shock and fear.

Was I too late?

‘Lucas.’ His name came out as a whisper as an alarm pierced the air. I raced to the stairs. A security guard – a different man from the one I spoke to before – was
stopping people from going down. Everyone was shouting. It was pandemonium.

‘I think my brother’s down there,’ I yelled, trying to shove the security guard out of the way.

‘It’s too dangerous,’ he said, pushing me back.

I swore, forcing my way past him and onto the stairs. I sped down the steps. Smoke rose up from the ground floor. Had Lucas been there when the bomb went off? Fear gripped me. It was impossible
to think. All I knew was that I
had
to find him. I reached the ground floor. Smoke swirled everywhere. People staggered past, covered in dust. Screams echoed in the air, as the alarm
switched to a tannoy announcement urging everyone to leave the market.

I ran past the clothing stalls on the ground floor. The smoke was coming up from the middle aisle near the tattoo stall where I’d seen the girl arguing with her mother. People were
shrieking and moaning, rising like ghosts through the smoke. I elbowed my way through the crowds, past the tattoo stall and around the corner, past splintered wood and twisted metal. A bag of
potatoes lay on its side, the food spilling out. Two middle-aged women were on their knees, scrabbling around in the dirt, picking up potatoes. I reached the Future Party’s food stall and
stopped. A ripped poster of Roman Riley had fallen to the ground. Just beyond it the security guard I’d spoken to earlier lay spreadeagled, face up. The man was motionless, his eyes open but
unseeing. I shuddered.

Please let Lucas not be here.

And then I saw him, just a few metres away. He was lying on his back, his legs twisted awkwardly under him. A woman was bent over his body. I ran over, choking on the acrid smoke that rose up
around me, filling my lungs. The woman pressed her fingers against Lucas’s neck. She was feeling for a pulse.

I dropped to my knees. Around me the alarm, the shouts, the screams, the smoke all faded away.

‘Lucas?’ I leaned closer. There were no marks on Lucas’s face, but his eyes were shut. ‘
Lucas
?’ I turned to the woman. ‘He’s my
brother.’

‘He’s alive. Unconscious, but alive.’ The woman looked at me. ‘I’m a nurse. He’s alive.’

I nodded, trying to take it all in. It was like a scene from a film. Terror and noise everywhere. But Lucas was alive.

A man in a suit was trying to usher people away through the smoke and the dust and the rubble. The nurse shook my arm. ‘I’m going to check on the others,’ she said. ‘Stay
with your brother.’ She hurried away.

An empty plastic bag lay on the ground beside Lucas. I stared down at its ripped handles. I hadn’t found Lucas in time. His eyes were still closed. Around us the dust swirled through the
air. The noise was indescribable: the screams, the screeching alarm. Across the market the girl with the wild, honey-coloured hair was crouched over the woman she’d been arguing with just
moments before. Her mouth was open in an agonising scream.

‘Mum!’ she was crying. ‘
Mum!
’

I couldn’t bear to see her face.

The nurse was with the girl’s mother now. She was shaking her head. I glanced at the girl again. Her hands were over her mouth.

Firemen appeared. Paramedics. I had no idea how much time had passed since the bomb. My brain seemed to have stopped working.

The shock settled with the dust. A paramedic knelt down beside Lucas and I leaned back to give him room.

I looked around.

Blood in the dust. The air full of death.

And Lucas there, in the middle of it.

Lucas. My brother. The terrorist.

(n. a searching inquiry for ascertaining facts)

I slammed the door and stomped away, into my bedroom. Outside, I could hear Aunt Karen sobbing. I felt like crying myself. Just for a moment. Then I forced the impulse away. I
never cried. Not anymore. After months when I did nothing but shed whole rivers of tears I had finally realised that it made no difference.

Mum was dead. She was never coming back.

And no-one was going to face justice for murdering her. A little known far-right group – the League of Iron – had claimed responsibility but no-one had been arrested for the crime.
The police insisted that they were still investigating but Aunt Karen was certain the officers in charge had turned a blind eye because so many of them actually supported the League of Iron’s
nasty, racist views. I thought it was more likely the police were just very busy. There were riots in the cities every few weeks and, since the latest round of cuts, fewer officers to deal with
them. The bomb that killed Mum wasn’t even the only explosion in recent months – though it had been the worst, leaving four dead and seventeen seriously injured.

Afterwards, Aunt Karen had brought me to live with her despite the fact that she was even worse off than Mum had been. We survived on a series of tiny benefits and the kindness of our
landlord.

A timid tap on the door. I turned to face Karen as she peered into my bedroom. I hated that room. It was basically a storage area which I had to share with the landlord’s spare china and
lots of Karen’s clothes. Racks of these filled the long wardrobe – ancient dresses and tops that she never wore but couldn’t bear to throw away.

‘What?’ I said.

Karen wiped her tear-stained face. ‘I can’t cope with you anymore, Charlie,’ she said. ‘I’m at the end of my tether.’

‘What, because I junked you and your stupid friends earlier?’ I could hear how harsh my voice sounded and, inside, I felt bad for being mean. But I couldn’t seem to stop
myself.

Karen’s lip trembled. ‘Please don’t talk about my friends like that,’ she said. ‘And I had them round for
you
. Because it was Friday and the weekend and
last
weekend you didn’t leave your room.’

‘So what?’

She was right, of course. I hardly ever went out. Losing Mum hadn’t just meant moving to Karen’s tiny flat in Leeds but also leaving my old school and friends behind. Not that I
missed anyone. My friends all treated me differently after Mum died, like they were scared to come near me. The girls at my new school in Leeds, on the other hand, delighted in taunting me.

I’d never been to a single sex school before and I hated how bitchy it was. The girls here teased me constantly about my London accent, the way I’d use a long ‘a’ when
they said it short and flat. They didn’t even know I was called Charlie instead of Charlotte. Not that I cared. I didn’t care about anything.

‘I cut back on cigs this week to make sure I could afford that pudding.’ Karen’s mouth trembled again. ‘I think the least you could do is say sorry.’

I peered past her, out to the tiny kitchen, where the remnants of the chocolate trifle Karen had bought lay where I’d thrown it onto the grubby floor. Mum would have
made
a
trifle. Mum would have kept her kitchen floor clean.

It suddenly struck me that of all the many reasons I felt angry with Karen, by far the biggest was that she simply wasn’t Mum. It was ironic, really. Karen and I had got on well once, when
Mum and I used to visit her. Karen was Mum’s younger sister, with no kids of her own. She had been fun back then, at least I’d always thought so. But Karen was also kind of scatty
– forgetful. Not about big emotional stuff, but about the small things that make life easy, like paying bills on time and not losing mobile phones and remembering when someone’s told
you ten times already they need new shoes for school.

Mum had been great at all that stuff.

Not that I’d ever appreciated it.

An image of her unhappy face, just before she’d turned away from me in the market, flashed into my head. I hadn’t even really wanted that stupid tattoo we’d been arguing
over.

A miserable fury filled me again.

‘Charlie?’

‘I just didn’t want to join in earlier,’ I said, struggling to keep my temper. I knew that the rage I felt was out of all proportion. Karen had only been trying to be nice.
But, again, I couldn’t stop myself. ‘They’re your friends, not mine.’

Karen gazed at me and, though she doesn’t look anything like Mum, for a moment I saw Mum’s sorrowful expression in her eyes.

It hurt too much to look at her.

‘Go away,’ I said. And I slammed the door in her face.

The next day was Saturday. I spent the whole morning asleep then the whole afternoon reading in my room, only coming out for some toast and a cup of tea. The kitchen was a mess
as usual: a huge splodge of trifle still lay on the floor, dirty plates from last night were stacked in the sink and an ashtray overflowing with cigarette stubs sat on the table. It was funny, I
thought as I wiped up the trifle, how Karen was always complaining about being poor, yet spent masses of money every week on her ‘cigs’, as she called them. I expected her to come in
and talk to me again at some point during the afternoon but she didn’t appear until the evening. I was truly bored by then, with another whole day stretching ahead of me before school on
Monday morning – and nothing to do.

I was just poring over my bookshelves, trying to pick another book to reread. I used to have an e-reader with loads of more grown-up novels on it but Mum had pawned it just before she died
– so I was left with just the childhood books I’d loved from years ago. Right now I was rereading
The Suitcase Kid
by Jacqueline Wilson.

I heard the doorbell, then voices. A minute later Karen knocked on my bedroom door. She didn’t smile as she asked me to come with her into the living room.

‘There are some people here to see you,’ she said.

‘What?’ Who on earth could be here to see me? I felt like refusing, but Karen was already heading for the living room. Anyway, I was curious.

A man and a woman were sitting on the sofa. They stood up as I walked in. The man looked vaguely familiar, the woman less so, but I couldn’t place either of them. They smiled at me. I
glared back and the woman looked down at the threadbare carpet. Karen cleared her throat.