The Lying Game

I reach out for the bedside light, but the switch clicks uselessly before I remember about the electricity. Damn. Fatima took the lamp to bed with her, but in any case, I have no matches. No means of lighting a candle.

I lie still, listening, trying to work out who is speaking. Is it Kate, ranting to herself, or has Fatima or Thea gone up to confront her for some reason?

‘I don’t understand, isn’t this what you wanted all along?’ I hear. It’s Kate, hoarse and ragged with weeping.

I sit up, holding my breath, trying to hear. Is she on the phone?

‘You wanted me to be punished, didn’t you?’ Her voice cracks.

And then the answer comes. But not in words, not at first.

It’s a sob, a low groan that filters through the darkness, making my heart leap into my throat.

‘It wasn’t supposed to be like this.’

The voice is Luc’s, and he sounds beside himself with grief.

I don’t think. I slip out of bed and go to Fatima’s door, rattling the handle. It’s locked, and I whisper through the keyhole, ‘Fati, wake up, wake up.’

She’s there in a moment, her dark eyes wide in the blackness, listening as I point to the creaking boards above. We hold our breath, trying to listen, trying to make out who’s speaking.

‘What did you want then?’ I can hardly understand Kate, she’s crying, her words blurred with tears. ‘What did you want if not this?’

Fatima’s fingers close on my arm, and I hear her intake of breath.

‘Luc’s up there?’ she whispers, and I nod, but I’m trying to hear Luc’s words, between the sobs.

‘I never hated you …’ I hear. ‘How can you say that? I love you … I’ve always loved you.’

‘What’s going on?’ Fatima whispers frantically.

I shake my head, trying to replay everything from last night in my mind. Oh God, oh Kate. Please tell me you weren’t …

Luc says something, Kate’s voice rises above in anger, and then there’s a crash, and a cry from Kate – of pain or alarm, I can’t tell – and I hear Luc’s voice, too choked for me to make out words. He sounds on the verge of losing it.

‘We need to help her,’ I whisper to Fatima. She nods.

‘Let’s get Thea, and we’ll go up together. Strength in numbers. He sounds drunk.’

I listen as I follow Fatima down the landing, and I think perhaps she’s right. Luc is beside himself.

‘It was only ever you,’ I hear as we run down the stairs. His words are anguished. ‘I wish to God it wasn’t, but it’s true. I would have done anything to be with you.’

‘I would have come for you!’ Kate sobs. ‘I would have waited, made him change his mind. Why couldn’t you have trusted him? Why couldn’t you have trusted me?’

‘I couldn’t –’ Luc chokes, and then his words come faintly as I run down the corridor to Thea’s room. ‘I couldn’t let him do it. I couldn’t let him send me back.’

Thea starts up from bed as we burst in, her face wild with fear, changing to shock as she sees Fatima and me standing there.

‘What’s going on?’ she gasps.

‘It’s Luc,’ I manage. ‘He’s here. We think – oh God, I don’t know. I think we might have got it all wrong, Thea.’

‘What?’ She’s out of bed in an instant, pulling her T-shirt over her head. ‘Fuck. Is Kate OK?’

‘I don’t know. He’s up there now. It sounds like they’re fighting. I think one of them just threw something.’

But she’s already out of the room, running towards the stairs.

She’s barely reached the bottom step when there is another crash – this one much louder. It sounds like someone pulling over a piece of furniture and we all freeze, just for a moment. Then there is a scream, and the sound of a door opening, running footsteps.

And then I smell something. Something that makes my heart seem to clench in my chest. It’s the smell of paraffin. And there’s a strange, alien noise as well. A noise I can’t place, but it fills me with a dread I can’t explain.

It’s only when Kate comes running down the stairs, her face full of horror, that I realise what I can hear. It’s the crackle of flames.

‘KATE?’ FATIMA SAYS. ‘What’s going on?’

‘Get out!’ Kate pushes past her to the front door, flings it open. And then, when we don’t move, she shouts it again. ‘Didn’t you hear me? Get out, now! There’s a lamp broken – there’s paraffin everywhere.’

Fuck. Freya.

I bolt for the stairs, but Kate grabs my wrist, yanking me back.

‘Didn’t you hear me? Get out, now, Isa! You can’t go up there, it’s dripping through the floorboards.’

‘Let me go!’ I snarl, twisting my wrist out of her grip. Somewhere, Shadow has begun barking, a high repetitive sound of fear and alarm. ‘Freya’s up there.’

Kate goes white, and she lets me go.

I’m halfway up the stairs, coughing already at the smoke. Burning drops of paraffin are falling through the gaps in the boards above, and I cover my head with my arms, though I can hardly feel the pain in comparison with the stinging in my eyes and throat. The smoke is already thick and acrid, and it hurts to breathe – but I can’t think about that – all I can think of is getting to Freya.

I’m almost at the landing, when a figure appears above me, blocking my route.

Luc. His hands are burnt and bleeding, and he is bare-chested where he has ripped off his shirt to smother the flames on his skin.

His face changes as he sees me, shock and horror twisting his features.

‘What are you doing here?’ he shouts hoarsely, coughing against the fumes.

There’s the sound of breaking glass from above, and I smell the raw, volatile stink of turps. My stomach turns over, thinking of the rows of bottles in the attic, the vat of linseed oil, the white spirit. All of them dripping through the boards into the bedrooms below.

‘Get out of my way,’ I pant. ‘I’ve got to get Freya.’

His face changes at that.

‘She’s in the house?’

‘She’s in your room. Get out of my way!’

There is a corridor of flame behind him now, between me and Freya, and I’m sobbing as I try to push past him, but he’s too strong. ‘Luc, please, what are you doing?’

And then, he pushes me. Not gently, but a proper shove that sends me stumbling down the staircase, my knees and elbows raw and scraped.

‘Go,’ he shouts. ‘Go outside. Stand beneath the window.’

And then he turns, puts his bloodied shirt over his head, and he runs back down the corridor towards Freya’s room.

I scramble up, about to go after him, when a floorboard from the attic above falls with a crash, blocking the corridor. I am looking around for something, anything, to wrap around my hands, or something I can use to push the burning wood out of the way, when I hear a noise. It is the sound of Freya crying.

‘Isa, the goddamn window!’ I hear, above the roaring sound of the flames, and then I realise. He can’t get Freya back through that inferno. He is going to drop her into the Reach.

I run, hoping I am right. Hoping I will be fast enough.

OUTSIDE THEA, FATIMA and Shadow have retreated to the bank, but I don’t follow them across the little bridge, instead I splash into the water, gasping at the coldness, feeling the heat coming from the Mill against my face and the freezing chill of the Reach against my thighs.

‘Luc!’ I scream, wading through the water until I am waist-deep, beneath his window. My clothes drag against the current. ‘Luc, I’m here!’

I see his face, lit by flames behind the glass. He’s struggling with the little window, warped by damp from the recent rain and stuck fast. My heart is in my mouth as he thumps his shoulder against the frame.

‘Break it!’ Kate shouts. She is struggling through the water towards me, but just as she says it, the window flies open with a bang, and Luc disappears back into the smoky darkness of the room.

For a minute I think he’s changed his mind, but then I hear a sobbing, bubbling cry, and I see his silhouette, and he’s holding something, and it’s Freya – Freya screaming and bucking against him, coughing and screaming and choking.