“Can’t we go another way?” I asked, but Emily shook her head.
“Not a chance. There’s no way out of the estate the other direction, it just goes around in a big circle. We want to get back to mum and dad’s, we have to drive past them. Are you up to using a shotgun?”
I shook my head. The thought of hurting anyone else was almost enough to make me weep. I’d always thought I was strong, and maybe I was, but I challenge anyone not to crack up in the face of what I was going through right then.
“Fine, well just keep your head down if it goes wrong. Hang on.”
She turned the corner and I couldn’t help but stare. Not only was the house I’d torched in flames, but the fire had spread to the next one and was threatening a third. Thirty or so people had formed a bucket chain, using what little water was available from water butts and bottles, but they stood little chance of dousing the raging inferno.
“What the hell did you do?” Emily breathed, picking up speed and jinking to avoid the few people running across the road to add their paltry water supplies to the chain.
“I…” I stopped, seeing something that cut through the fog in my mind like sunlight on a rainy day. Picked out in the headlights was a man I recognised as Jamie, two children in his arms and tears running down his face past a huge grin as he clutched them to his chest.
The children were squirming, clearly unsure why their dad was making such a fuss, but to me it was as if a huge weight had been lifted from my chest and suddenly I could breathe again.
“I did something really fucking stupid,” I said, “but it worked.”
I could hear the crackle of flames through the window, bringing back vivid images of Brighton on fire, but then the night was split by a huge shout.
“Fucking stop them!”
The man in the white vest ran out into the road and scooped up his golf club from where it lay by the fire, running after us and hurling it as hard as he could in our direction.
It went wide, curving off into a front garden and burying itself in a hedge, but I breathed a huge sigh of relief as we turned the corner and the street and its occupants were lost from view.
“You want to keep your speed down love,” Ralph said, as calmly as if he were giving a driving lesson and not escaping from a bunch of violent looters, “there’s a few cars abandoned on the road and it won’t do us much good if we crash.”
“Yes dad,” she replied in a weary tone, “I’ll be careful. Shall I take the long route or the short one?”
He hesitated for a moment. “The short one, I reckon. Your mum’ll be fit to burst with worry, let’s not keep her waiting longer than we have to.”
She nodded and took a left, heading down country roads that to my eye looked identical to the ones we’d followed the other way that morning.
“How long will it take us to get back?” I asked, looking down and realising that the front of my t-shirt was stained with vomit.
Ralph saw where I was looking but didn’t comment, instead opening the Bergen and pulling out a plastic water bottle which he passed to me.
“About half an hour, maybe forty minutes, we don’t get no interruptions on the way,” he said as I almost ripped the top off the bottle and drank most of it in one go.
The warm, plastic-tasting water was unbelievably good and I drank a little more before pouring some on my t-shirt and trying to get the worst of the vomit off.
When I’d finished I looked up to see Ralph watching me, his brow furrowed.
“What happened back there?” He asked bluntly. “You sort of fell apart for a while.”
I shrugged, still uncomfortable with how close I’d come to committing one of the most heinous crimes I could imagine.
“I set light to one of the houses to distract them,” I said finally, “but when I told the guys who were guarding you, one of them started panicking because he thought his kids were in there and I…” I tailed off, unable to finish the sentence, but Ralph was looking at me with a surprising amount of compassion and not a little understanding.
“Well,” he said, clearly uncomfortable with showing his feelings but needing to make his point, “I don’t rightly blame you for feeling like you did, I reckon I would’ve felt the same. I take it that was him in the street trying to squeeze his kids to death?”
“Yeah, so they’re ok, but when I think how close it came…” I stopped again, feeling absurdly close to tears. “You must think…”
“That you’re a good man who did what he could when he could have run away and left us,” Emily broke in, glaring at the mirror. “You made a tough call in a difficult situation, but the result is that we all got out ok and no one died, so I call that a win, don’t you?”
I couldn’t fault her logic, and I was emotionally mature enough to know the difference between genuine remorse and moping, realising that I was getting perilously close to the latter.
“You’re right,” I said, forcing myself to smile, “and I have to say that I was pleasantly surprised at how well you handled yourself today.”
“Oh really? How do you mean, precisely?” There was something in her tone that made me realise I was walking into a trap, but I couldn’t for the life of me see what it was or why it was there. It reminded me of the sudden arguments I’d had with Angie, and the conversational pitfalls I’d never seen until too late.
“Well,” I said, trying to find my feet again, “I mean, you were decisive, calm and clear-headed while we were being chased by a group of thugs. Most people would have panicked and come apart, but you, well, uh, you did well.”
“For a woman?” She asked tartly.
“For anyone! Why is this suddenly about you being a woman? You handled yourself at least as well as any man I know today.”
“Just as well as, not better than?” She asked in the same tone.
“Well, er, maybe, yes. Look, whatever I said that annoyed you, I’m sorry, I was just trying to pay you a compliment. After all, it’s not like you’ve been through anything like that before, I should think, and I was impressed is all.”
I heard a noise from the seat next to me like a set of rusted gears straining against each other. For a horrible moment I thought Ralph was having a heart attack, then I realised that he was laughing, his eyes dancing with merriment.
“What?” I snapped, feeling like the butt of a joke that everyone else got but I didn’t. “What’s so funny?”
“Not been through anything like that before?” He wheezed, and I looked at Emily to see her grinning in return. “Have you met my daughter properly?”
“Properly?” I still didn’t get it, and the longer they chuckled at each other the angrier I became. “We didn’t quite have time for proper introductions, no.”
“Well then,” he said, placing a conciliatory hand on my arm, “allow me to introduce you to my daughter, Sergeant Emily Morris, 1st Battalion, Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers. I reckon she’s seen a damn sight more trouble in worse places than you or I could think of, so today might have been rough for you or me, but to her it was just a walk in the park.”
Chapter 18
The rest of the journey passed in silence, broken by Ralph’s occasional chuckles. I was already thoroughly embarrassed by my attempt to congratulate Emily on how well she’d coped, and the laughter really wasn’t helping my mood but I let it pass unchallenged.
Looking at it from her point of view, I supposed my comments could be seen as rude, although I preferred to think of them as uninformed.
Thinking back, I was surprised that I hadn’t worked it out for myself. Not only was she cool and capable under fire, as it were, but her house had been neat to the point of severity and now I thought about it she had that unmistakable military air about her.