The Blame Game. C.J. Cooke
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‘What do you think I’m here for?’ he says. ‘I’m your protector.’
I roll my eyes. ‘I’d like to see you try and walk away from your bookshop. Even if it is burnt to a crisp.’
The words are out before I’ve a chance to haul them back into my mouth and lock them into the box of unmentionable things. The bookshop. We’ve not spoken about it the whole time we’ve been on holiday. Not a single mention of the fire that gutted Michael’s beautiful bookshop which he has single-handedly built up from scratch to become one of the best independents in the region. A three-storey Mecca for bookworms, the jewel of our town, now in ruins: black, cooked. For one awful moment I’m wrenched back into that night when we saw the flames dancing high into the night sky.
The phone woke us in the middle of the night. It was Mr Dickinson who owned the pet store a few shops along. He’d spotted smoke from the street, then drove down to check his own shop. He said he was about to call the fire brigade, but he wanted to let us know, too. We raced down there, both of us betting on a manageable fire, one that we could tackle ourselves with a couple of fire extinguishers that Michael had tossed into the boot of the car. When we arrived, smoke was already curling out from beneath the front door, orange flames dancing in the first-floor windows. Michael started to unlock the front door but I grabbed his arm.
‘Don’t go in,’ I said. He ignored me and pushed open the door, determined to damp down the flames. I watched, helpless, as he ran inside with the fire extinguishers and took to the stairs. Thick black smoke was funnelling down the stairs and beating across the ground floor, and I could hear the crackling sounds of the fire upstairs destroying the new café, chewing up the beautiful sofas and coffee tables that had only recently been installed. Sirens of fire engines screamed in the distance. I covered my mouth with my hand and tried not to breathe in the smoke, but with every second that went by it seemed to grow thicker, and my lungs ached for fresh air. I couldn’t call out to Michael. He was still on the first floor, and to my horror I could see flames at the top of the stairs.
Just when I thought I would have to go up there to drag Michael out he appeared, an armful of books pressed to his chest, struggling to breathe. He stumbled down the stairs, dropping the books and falling into my arms.
The shop was destroyed, our livelihood annihilated. Some kind stranger set up a JustGiving fund and within a few weeks we had raised eleven thousand pounds. Possibly enough money to recoup some stock, pay some creditors. But there’s the mortgage, the loss of income … The insurance company are still determining the cause of the fire.
The mood has dipped. I try to think of something to say that will swing it back again to the blissed-out vibe we’d enjoyed here since our arrival. It strikes me why we’ve avoided talking about the fire out here: the contrast between this heavenly place and drab, icicled Northumberland make it feel as though we’ve stepped into another realm. There are no reminders here. But silence doesn’t lie. We both know we have to go back and face it all.
‘I should have installed CCTV,’ he says in a low voice. ‘Everyone said to do it and I got lazy.’
‘There’s no guarantee that cameras would have picked up anything,’ I say, recalling how we sat in shock at the fire station, covered head to toe in black soot like two Victorian chimney sweeps. The deputy station chief educated us brusquely about the many causes of accidental blazes: sunlight bouncing off a mirror and hitting newspaper reduced a sixteenth century Scottish castle to embers. Hair straighteners left too close to a notebook on a teenager’s dressing table took out a row of houses. Our fire could have been down to a faulty storage heater or a loose wire.
‘They’d have caught who started the fire,’ Michael cuts in, swinging his legs over the side of the hammock to sit upright. I reach forward and stroke his back.
I recall with a shudder the police calling both of us in for separate interviews. They asked whether someone had a grudge against us. If we had upset a customer or laid off an employee. Just weeks before I’d persuaded Michael to sack one of our part-timers, Matilda. She doesn’t do anything, I protested. You’re barely paying yourself a salary as it is. The bookshop isn’t a charity for lazy eighteen-year-olds who sit around all day reading Tolkien.
Michael pointed out that she was Arnold’s daughter, and Arnold had been the first to help him out when he set up the shop, but I won in the end. Matilda was sketchy about her whereabouts at the time of the fire – her parents confirmed she’d been out of the house, and it turned out she’d been with a boy. But for a horrible few days it seemed that perhaps Matilda could have been responsible for the blaze.
‘We never ruled out arson,’ Michael says when I remind him that Matilda was found to be innocent. ‘Until the investigation closes, every possibility is on the table.’
‘Maybe it was a group of kids messing around,’ I say to his back. I desperately want him to lie back down with me, to recapture the idyllic mood.
‘We both know kids didn’t start that fire, Helen,’ Michael snaps, getting out of the hammock.
‘Michael?’
I’m taken aback by the sharpness of his tone. As I watch him head back into the hut I sense he’s exhausted, worn thin by worry. But I wish we could discuss this. Every time we start to talk about something that cuts deep he just walks away.
28th August 2017
We’ve got a mutiny on our hands right now.
‘Pleeease can we stay here, Dad?’ Saskia howls in the kitchen as I make breakfast. This morning our butler (yes, an actual butler – I feel like a Kardashian) dropped off our food parcel, containing waffles (round, so we can tell Reuben they’re pizzas), maple syrup, coconuts, dragon fruit, freshly baked bread, eggs, salad, blueberry pancakes, pineapple, the most mouth-watering bacon I’ve ever tasted in my entire life, and a bottle of wine.
‘I’m sorry, my love,’ I say, hugging Sas to my side as I heat the waffles on the hob. She smells of sunlight and the ocean. ‘I’m afraid we can’t change our flight. We’ve got today and tomorrow and then we have to head off to Mexico City to fly home.’
‘But Daa-aad, I don’t want to go home. Jack-Jack doesn’t want to go, either.’
‘Hmmm,’ I say, tipping waffles on to a plate. ‘So, nobody wants to go home? What do you suggest we do then?’
She does the same thing as Helen when she thinks. Screws up her nose like there’s a bad smell. Face just her like mother’s, too. Same twinkling blue eyes that show every emotion and absorb every last detail. Same dimple in her left cheek and buttery curls to her shoulders.
‘Can’t we just buy a house here?’
‘You’d miss everyone, I think. So would Jack-Jack.’
She gives a dramatic sigh, seven going on seventeen. ‘Like who, exactly?’
‘Well, СКАЧАТЬ