heroic. But when she was properly awake – ‘I’m always a heavy sleeper,’ she said – she realized that at this point the fire was not to be seen, not actually there to be fought. Then she did as she had been drilled and directed; she moved as fast as she could to the nearest safe exit. She assumed, of course, that Lynette was ahead of her; yes, the door of their room was closed, there was no reason why she should open it, she knew she must not go back for anything. ‘We were told that at the practice,’ she said. ‘Claire was the fire-warden for our floor, and I remember the rehearsal. Even on that night I heard her shouting, Leave it, save yourself, leave it all, don’t go back. And so, of course, I didn’t.’
Then once out in the street, in the press and confusion, with the groups of drifting girls, some crying, most distraught; in the cold, under the streetlamps . . . there was no reason to miss Lynette. Why look for Lynette, among so many others? There was no chance of looking for her really . . . When she thought to search, when she’d thought to call out for her, a fire officer had come along and ordered her down the street . . .
Eva was screaming: she was screaming so hard her body doubled up and she convulsed. Someone in uniform threw a blanket around her. An ambulance rumbled up. We were distracted; so we did not see the very moment when Claire began to run. ‘Lynette, don’t die,’ she yelled: ‘I’m coming.’
Our heads and bodies swivelled. We forgot Eva the faintee; we gaped as Claire charged back towards the burning building, her big fleecy slippers slapping the ground at every stride. She meant it; she was going for Lynette. She would die in there, if that was what it took. But what was the point? I would have run in there myself; I valued my life so little. But I knew Lynette was beyond rescue now; I had seen her head on fire, and then a blaze burst out between her ribs.
The firemen caught Claire easily, and turned her back. The warden and an ambulance man supported her as they walked her away, each holding an elbow, hustling her down the street as if she were the last recalcitrant drinker in a closing bar. I saw her eyes, which were empty; her mouth moved.
There was a breath at my shoulder. I felt it. It was familiar. I wanted to hug the breather. ‘Karina,’ I said. ‘Thank God.’
‘All right, Carmel?’ Karina was wearing a vast flannel nightdress, a marquee: the kind of nightdress grandmother is wearing in her cottage, when the wolf comes calling. She was holding something over her arm; it was a strange draping softness, something limp and slaughtered. My hand crept out to it: Lynette’s fox fur. In this light, you could not see its colours; it could have been the corpse of a dog. I glanced down. From its pocket there drooped, there depended, a key fob. C21 was written on it. It was the key to the door of their room.
‘Why don’t you put it on? Put the coat on, since you’ve saved it?’
My voice was choked and frail, far away; I hardly recognized it as mine. Karina turned her head, looking where I looked. Her eyes fell on the key fob. She reached to retrieve it. It slithered from its pocket. It clattered to the ground. It lay in the road. I stooped to pick it up. Karina put her foot on it. Crouching, I looked up into her face.
Then a gust of wind came bowling along the street. It rippled the nightdresses of shivering girls, slapped at bare blue legs. It raised the hairs, the short hairs on my neck. It took Karina’s vast nightgown and pasted it against her body. I looked up, along her bulk. My head was in the shadow of her great belly. She must be five months, six months gone. She must have been pregnant before ever we saw London.
I squatted at Karina’s feet. I saw the classroom, our first classroom; smelt coal and milk and baby-skin. There was the fat smell of wax crayons, the aroma of pencils, the forbidden coldness of a pencil point against the tongue. Tens and units on the blackboard: a blue worm of Plasticine curled on the floor. I saw Karina with her doll, the baby doll in the back of the lorry. Her tongue between her teeth; mother and baby, out for a tow.
I saw my foot swing. I saw it catch the lorry’s underside and hurtle it into the air. I saw the rubber trajectory of the pink pseudo-flesh, and the baby face smashed down on to the hard floor.
Now, I stared up at Karina. She was huge, womanly, brooding. The cold of the night had struck into my bones. Karina’s expression was hooded, complacent. She knew I would not give her away. After all, I said to myself, I don’t know that she is a murderer. Just because she has the key, it doesn’t mean she turned it in the lock.
Behind us, someone else fainted. It was a girl from B Floor, one of the fire-escape mob. I moved to take the fox fur from Karina’s hands, to throw over the casualty; but I thought better of it. ‘Put it on. Hide yourself.’
Something which will not be possible for much longer, I thought. Well, that’s your problem. If I speak out, you’ll give birth in Holloway. I saw, in my mind’s eye, Lynette at the window; her flying arms, the flickering of her melting flesh. It will always be in my mind’s eye, of course. I never for a moment doubted that she would die, knew – unlike Claire – that she was ablaze from inside, and that we had caught her in the act of dying, roasted in the wreck of the third floor. I saw Claire’s mad fleecy slippers slapping towards the blaze. Claire did not come back, next term; I did not inquire after her. I remembered what Sue had said once: she’s really, really a Christian. Always doing good unto you. I’d have liked to keep in contact, but, in my situation, it didn’t seem appropriate. Knowing what I did.
Two men jogged up with a stretcher. Stone-faced, they swept up the fallen girl from the ground; swept her up as if they were sweeping the streets. ‘Back, girls, back,’ called the warden. The street seemed full of swirling smoke. A siren was wailing, getting closer; lights were on in the buildings around, and a forced, yellow day was beginning, a floodlit day, where all motives and deeds would be exposed. There was a tune in my head, at the back of my mind, and then it was in my mouth: before I could stop myself I sang out. I was back in my grandad’s yard, the Catherine wheel fizzing damply, the sparklers swirling our names in the air, Carmel and Karina, Karina and Carmel:
‘Pepper box, pepper box,
Morning till night . . .’
‘Let’s run,’ Karina said. ‘Come on, Carmel! Run! Something might blow up.’
She flung out her hand. I seized it. When the windows blew the noise had knocked us back but when that was over we’d crept forward again; the crowd was eddying, uncertain, confused, unwilling to dramatize, each member of it dreading to appear foolish by a break for safety. But Karina had me by the wrist; she towed me past the barriers, pulling strongly, knowing I was weak. ‘Steady, girl!’ someone said, but she lashed out at him: with her fist I mean, not her tongue. I gasped and begged as we flew along the street; she didn’t hear me.
We halted at last, under trees, under a deep roof of green. I was half-dead. My chest sobbed, my heart was bursting. I folded up and retched again, producing only stained saliva; my knees gave, but Karina caught me, so I fell not on to scarring pavement but on to London turf. My head dipped towards the pigeon droppings; Karina saved it in her palm. ‘Sit up, lovie,’ she said. We raised our faces; I thought that dew dripped on to them, and into our hair.
A good many things went up, in the blaze at Tonbridge Hall. My love affair, and my anorexia, and my hopes of being the first woman prime minister: my cousin’s duffle coat, and my notes on the Carbolic Smoke Ball. Julia lost her medal, but has no doubt won another since; the Segals lost their daughter. At the inquest Mr Segal wore a stiff, expensive dark suit; he was dark himself, a squat, vehement man who knocked away one tear with a violent back-of-the-hand. Lynette’s mother did not disappoint us; tall, frail, veiled, she had sharp shins in pale, expensive stockings, and high-heeled shoes and a bag that might have been made of some rare lizard.
