David dug beneath the cross, placed her in her grave, then backed away. In the garden, the doors to the summer house were wide open, but Tony wasn’t anywhere to be seen. The music was still playing, but quieter. David abandoned the idea of calm. He was tired of being calm. Where had being calm got him? He thrust his hand through the open window and dragged the needle off the record with a nasty ripping sound, pulled the record off the turntable and threw the entire thing across the garden into the bushes. That felt good. He picked up a palette knife from the grass, crossed to the stack of self-portraits on the lawn, and began gouging into one of Tony’s eyes, put the knife in and pulled down until the canvas flapped open, just like Marc’s skin.

Then he went to the shed for supplies. Lighter fuel, matches, a screwdriver; from the kitchen he could hear Tony on the phone, presumably to Catherine. His voice was urgent, scared. An emergency, yes, an emergency—

Scared? You should be. If Tony brought chaos, David could counter with rage. Emergency? OK. You’ll have an emergency. A Grand Old Emergency. That will be my gift to you, Tony. Old chum.

David walked slowly back to the summer house, taking time to drag the screw driver against another one of Tony’s half-finished oils scarring the yellow skin, the foggy pools of eyes. Humming, tuneless as an insect, he sprayed another with lighter fuel and threw a match at it, watching, with great satisfaction, the flames melting his face off. He tried to imagine that the fire was eating through Tony’s real face. He sprayed the fuel in joyful zigzags over everything else – Tony’s dusty, brittle canvases in the plywood frames, over his cheap, veneered occasional tables, over the piles of receipts, the old newspapers, the records, the radio, everything, and threw a match. Now for the summer house itself; he splashed the doorway, dripped a careful line of fuel in a line back out onto the lawn. Then, taking a deep breath, he struck one match, set alight all the rest of the matches in the box, waited until the box was aflame, and tossed it.

The small flame ran, thin, towards the doorway, caught and rushed inside and soon David heard the pop pop pop of Tony’s scattered cigarette lighters, exploding like little fireworks inside the summer house, saw the smoke boiling out of the open window. Such an exciting noise! So thrilling, so definite. He closed his eyes, smiled, and thought to himself, I should have done this years ago. The flames rose, thrillingly immense. I did this, he thought I did this. This is what happens when I get pushed too far… This should teach them. He closed his eyes, grinned. He felt very calm, very powerful. He hadn’t felt this good since stabbing Francis Brennan…

But when he opened his eyes, his smile faltered. The fire was… large, getting larger every second. Already it was between him and the house. He could faintly see the outline of his window before the black smoke billowed towards him, smarting his eyes. He heard Tony calling him from behind the wall of flame: ‘David! David!’ in a panicked bellow, and David felt fear then. All he could see was flame, and all he could smell was black, choking smoke. All he could hear was fire and his own name, and something awful, something shameful – small whimpering animal sounds that he dimly understood were coming from him, which he despised even as they got louder. Smoke had now completely obscured his view of his bedroom window – that neat, empty, fire-less sanctuary that he wished to God he’d never left, and then he tripped over something and landed spreadeagled on the ashy grass, one palm on a melting record, the vinyl burning like napalm. The smoke was thick with all the varnish and dirt burning off the furniture, and David retched and screamed, retched and screamed – screamed in pain and fury because he’d messed this up. He’d made a fool of himself. He’d done it all wrong.

Then Tony swam through the smoke. He was shouting and his eyes were red slits. ‘David! David, grab my hand! David!’

But David, confused now, stayed still. His instincts told him to hunker down like an animal.

‘David!’

And Tony gripped him by the hand and pulled, pulled him with surprising strength along the burning grass to the oak tree. Tony’s hair was on fire, and his grip was slippery and burning hot, and David saw, with horror, that Tony’s hand was melting, and he pulled away then, screaming, and kicked Tony away, back into the flames. He crawled backwards, heard Tony shouting, screaming. ‘SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP!’ David screamed back, and then something exploded and he lost consciousness.

The fire brigade found him curled up by Tinker’s grave, with Tony’s sloughed-off palm still in his.

* * *

He was in the hospital for three days. His burns, aside from the one to his hand, were not serious. However, the fact that he didn’t talk or open his eyes, suggested that smoke inhalation had affected him in some way the doctors couldn’t be sure of. They had to sedate him to check his airways; he fought them too much when he was conscious.

Eventually he was referred to a psychiatrist, who succeeded in getting him to open his eyes, but couldn’t get him to talk in either of their meetings. David did nothing but stare furiously at her. Shock. Trauma affects people in different ways… and did he have trouble communicating his feelings usually?

‘He can be withdrawn,’ his mother admitted. ‘I try to get him out and about – you know, friends, girlfriends and things like that, but he’s never been one for… he’s more of a loner, I’d say.’

‘Is there any chance that he had something to do with the fire?’ The psychiatrist’s tired eyes rested on hers.

Catherine kept her voice calm. ‘It was all just a terrible accident. I’m sure he’ll tell you that when he feels better.’

Later, Piers stopped the psychiatrist in the corridor. Suppose, just suppose, the boy didn’t recover his speech? Suppose the trauma was such that he might need specialist care? No, no, I understand that the NHS is too stretched… Home care? Well, it’s still all a bit of a muddle at home – fire damage and everything… not a quiet environment… And the stress on his mother would be… a more private environment? Where he’d have access to doctors, like yourself, to help him get over this… this phase?

And so David was packed off, bandaged and silent, to a private psychiatric hospital.

‘It’s got lovely grounds,’ Catherine told Tony, helping him move what remained of his belongings into David’s old room. ‘A pool, tennis courts. And he can have individual therapy until he feels more sociable.’

‘What shall we do with this?’ Tony pointed at ‘Precious Memories!’ His hand was a patchwork mess of grafted skin, shiny and pink as a pig’s.

‘I’ll put it in the small room, just in the meantime.’

‘Burn it, I would,’ muttered Tony savagely. He’d lost weight. His Chinese robe drooped on him. Catherine opened her mouth to say something, but nothing came out. Instead she shook her head and moved her son’s only personal possession out of the room, where it collected dust under the radiator of the box room for the next few years.

Tony decorated his new room in terracotta stucco. He covered the beige carpet with oriental rugs; one whole wall was dominated by a new sound system, complete with three-foot speakers, and Catherine replaced his melted records with compilation CDs.