and capable, at the helm.
My nanny voice would be a lot happier if I were more like her. You reassured me, touchingly, that you wouldn’t be.
A nurse is with her and I see they’re debating the phone, with Sarah flashing her warrant card, but the nurse is clearly adamant and Sarah leaves again. You spot her as she leaves, but stay with me.
We return to that camping trip to Skye – to arching blue-grey skies and still blue-grey water and huge blue-grey mountains, their soft colours so alike that they are almost indistinguishable from one another; to Jenny and Adam and you and me, softly coloured, not separated from each other. A family.
We leave my ward and Skye, and I see Jenny waiting for me in the corridor.
‘So, what’s happening to you?’ she asks me, her voice anxious.
‘They’re doing scans and what not,’ I say.
She hasn’t been giving us romantic privacy, I realise, but medical privacy; like me staying out of the room now when I take her to the GP’s.
‘And that’s it?’ she asks.
‘So far, yes. Pretty much.’
She doesn’t question me more closely – afraid, I think, to know any more.
‘Aunt Sarah’s in the family room,’ she says. ‘She’s been talking to someone at the police station. It’s funny, but I think she knows I’m here. I mean, she kept kind of glancing around at me. Like she’d caught a glimpse.’
It’ll be sod’s law if the only person who has any real inkling of Jenny and me turns out to be your sister.
It must be late evening now and in the family room, someone – who? – has brought a toothbrush and pyjamas for you and put them neatly at one end of the single bed.
Sarah closes the phone as she sees you.
‘Adam’s at a school-friend’s house,’ Sarah says. ‘Georgina’s on her way from Oxfordshire and will pick him up. I thought it would be best if he was in his own bed tonight and he’s particularly close to Grace’s mum, isn’t he?’
In all of this Sarah has found space and time to think about Adam. Has had the kindness to worry about him. I’ve never been grateful to her before.
But you can’t take Adam on board, not with me and Jenny already weighing you down this heavily.
‘Have you spoken to the police?’ you ask her.
She nods and you wait for her to tell you.
‘We’re taking statements. They’ll keep me fully informed. They know she’s my niece. The fire investigation team are working at the scene of the fire.’
Her voice is police officer, but I see her reach out her hand and that you take it.
‘They’ve said that the fire started in the Art room on the second floor. Because the building was old, it had ceiling, wall and roof voids – basically spaces connecting different rooms and parts of the school – which means that smoke and fire could travel extremely fast. Fire doors and other precautions couldn’t stop its spread. Which is one reason it could overwhelm the whole building as quickly as it could.’
‘And the arson?’ you ask, and I can hear the word cutting at your mouth.
‘It is likely, more than likely, that an accelerant was used, probably white spirit, which causes a distinctive smoke recognised by a firefighter at the scene. As it’s an Art room, you’d expect to have some white spirit, but they think it was a large quantity. The Art teacher says that she keeps the white spirit in a locked cupboard on the right-hand side of the Art room. We think the fire was started in the left-hand corner. A hydrocarbon vapour detector should give us more information tomorrow.’
‘So there’s no doubt?’ you ask.
‘I’m sorry, Mike.’
‘What else?’ you ask. You need to know
‘The fire investigation team have established that the windows on the top floors were all wide open,’ Sarah says. ‘Which is another signifier for arson because it creates a draught, drawing the fire more quickly up through the school; especially given the strong breeze today. The head teacher told us that the windows are never left wide open because of the danger of children falling out.’
‘What else?’ you ask and she understands you need to know.
‘We think that the Art room was deliberately chosen,’ she continues. ‘Not only because there was a chance that the arsonist could get away with it – the use of an accelerant being camouflaged as it were by Art supplies – but because it’s the worst possible place for a fire. The Art teacher has inventoried what materials were kept.
‘There were stacks of paper and craft materials, which meant the fire could take hold easily and spread. There were also different paints and glues, which were toxic and flammable. She’d brought in old wallpaper samples for a collage, which we think were coated in a highly toxic varnish.’
As she describes an inferno of poisonous fumes and choking smoke I think of children making collages of hot-air balloons and papier-mache dinosaurs.
You nod at her to go on and she sturdily continues.
‘There were also cans of spray mount in the room. When they are exposed to heat the pressure builds and they explode. Vapours from the spray mount can travel long distances along the ground to an ignition source and flash back. Next to the Art room was a small room, little more than a cupboard, where the cleaning materials are kept. They too would have contained combustible and toxic substances.’
She pauses, looking at you; sees how pale you are.
‘Have you eaten anything yet?’
The question irritates you. ‘No, but-’
‘Let’s talk more in the canteen. It’s not far.’
It’s not up for negotiation. When you were younger, did she bribe you to eat then too? A favourite TV programme if you finished your shepherd’s pie?
‘I’ll tell them where you are, just in case,’ she says, preempting any arguments.
I’m glad she’s making you eat.
She goes to tell the staff in my acute neurology ward where you will be; you go to tell the burns unit.
Once you’ve gone, Jenny turns to me.
‘It’s true, what Mrs Healey said about the windows not being left open. Ever since that fire-escape accident, they’re paranoid about children falling and hurting themselves. Mrs Healey goes round herself, checking them all the time.’
She pauses a moment, and I see that she is awkward. Embarrassed even.
‘You know when I went to your bed?’ she says. ‘Before Dad got there?’
‘Yes.’
‘You looked so…’ She falters. But I know what she wants to ask. How come I am so undamaged compared with her?
‘I wasn’t in the building as long as you,’ I say. ‘And I wasn’t so close to the fire. And I had more protection.’
I don’t say that I was in a cotton shirt with sleeves I could pull down and thick denim jeans and socks with trainers, not a short, gauzy skirt and skimpy top and strappy sandals, but she guesses anyway.
‘So I’m the ultimate fashion victim.’
‘I’m not sure I can do gallows humour, Jen.’
‘OK.’
‘Positive and even silly,’ I say. ‘That’s fine. That’s great. And black humour, that’s alright too. But when it becomes gallows – well, that’s my line.’
‘Point taken, Mum.’
We could almost be at our kitchen table.
We follow you into the absurdly named Palms Cafe; the Formica-topped tables reflecting the overhead striplights.
‘Great atmosphere,’ Jenny says and for a moment I can’t work out if this statement is because of her relentlessly positive attitude, inherited from you, or her sense of humour, which she gets from me. Poor Jen, she can’t be positive or funny without one of us taking the credit for it.
Sarah joins you with a plate of food, which you ignore.
