These days she took her comforts where she could, and they were always small. So small, in fact, that she was often unable to pinpoint them amid the general chaos of her existence.
The flames burned on, beautiful and pitiless, as if a great furnace door had been opened.
Only last week Lana had been sitting in the same position, sipping a similar glass of Chardonnay to the one she now held, when some kids had let off a firework in the street outside. The rocket had arced up into the sky and then turned slowly towards her window, striking the glass. The crack was still there: it was paper thin, barely even noticeable, but she saw it every time she looked through the window. She’d called the council, trying to get a workman to come out and replace the pane, but her request had been met with a wall of apathy.
“Little bastards,” she said, gripping her wineglass, not knowing if she meant the culprits or the council workers. The fire in the sky shimmered, as if in response, and then it dimmed before giving off another surge of brightness.
Kids, it was always kids. Places like these, council estates inhabited by the people society had shoved to the bottom of the pile, were full of ill-mannered kids out to cause trouble. Some of the parents didn’t care, many of the ones who did simply lacked the skills to manage, and the schools were unable to cope. The rest got lost in the shuffle.
It was just the way of things; there was nothing anyone could do about it. The situation had gone too far, the rot was set too deep, and the country had long ago accepted this kind of anti-social behaviour as the norm at a certain level of society. The level she and Hailey now occupied.
It seemed like there was a constant stream of bad behaviour on the estate: lighting fires, vandalising private and public property, killing house pets, bullying the incapacitated. It never stopped. There was no end in sight.
It all amounted to just another night in the Concrete Grove.
Hailey was in bed, dreaming of whatever she craved for these days — no doubt pining in her sleep for everything they had lost. Her bedroom door was closed, perhaps even locked. She had never locked her room at the old house in South Gosforth. Back then, there had been few secrets between mother and daughter. But now, in this new life, it sometimes seemed like secrets were all they had, the only things that kept them close. They shared nothing but the fact that they hid things from each other. The glue that bonded them was impure, toxic.
The details of what had happened to Timothy constituted one of those secrets. At first Lana had even tried to keep it from Hailey altogether, but once the newspapers and the local TV news started reporting the story, that soon became impossible. So she was forced to tell the child at least part of the truth — the fact that her father had been broken by life and chose a dark way out. The effort to keep the secret from everyone else — to remain tight-lipped around the estate in which they now lived — had finally brought them together again. The bond they shared was not the same as the one they’d had before, but it was all they could hope for under the circumstances. Quite frankly, Lana suspected that it was now the closest thing to love they would ever know.
She sipped her wine and wondered whether she could possibly summon any more tears, or if her well had finally run dry. Then, disgusted with herself, with her stupid self-pity, she emptied the glass and refilled it. She was getting drunk. Her eyes were heavy and her mind was blurred, as if layered in cotton wool. She could no longer trust her emotions, or her instincts.
But that was good: she liked being drunk. It made the lies seem more like truths.
That man. The one from earlier this evening. What was his name? Tom? He was nice. She smiled at the memory of his nervous grin, his loose limbs, dumb T-shirt and silly running shorts. Why was she thinking of him now, at her lowest ebb? Was it because, for some reason, when she had spoken to him she had felt less alone?
“Fuck,” she said, enjoying the way the word tasted of wine and stolen kisses. “Get a grip, woman.”
Now that she had time to think about him, Tom seemed even more attractive than he had when he’d brought Hailey home. After Hailey had gone to bed, Lana finally had the time to consider what she had felt as he stood there, bare-legged and shaking in her doorway. Clearly he found her attractive too — Lana was experienced enough to recognise the signs. But it was more than that, deeper. There was a connection between them, a quiet spark that had simultaneously slowed down and speeded up the short time they’d spent together. He was older than her, but that might even be part of the appeaclass="underline" a figure of authority to cling to in the night, when her demons came loping towards her out of the dark.
Lana struggled to understand the thoughts in her head. The wine, the night, the worry over Hailey and those weird fainting spells, it was all setting her off balance, confusing her to the point where she no longer felt that she could trust herself to do the right thing.
But what was the right thing? And how would she recognise it? There were no rules here, no written bylaws she could follow. Everything was fluid: even emotions were up for barter.
She took another mouthful of wine, held it, and then swallowed. The taste was good: bone-dry and woody, just how she liked it.
When the telephone rang she took a few seconds to register its quiet buzzing. Frowning, she glanced over at the handset where it rested on the windowsill. She stood and walked to the window, once again looking at the fiery darkness hanging above the distant silhouette of Far Grove.
Sirens drew close as she reached out to pick up the phone, as if the sound had been triggered by her motion.
“Hello.” Her voice was bounced back at her through the earpiece — a fluke of acoustics, or a fault on the line. “Hello,” she said again, and this time she was answered by a thick, heavy silence.
Feeling her heart swell in her chest, Lana waited. She knew who it was. There could be only one man who would call her so late, and project such a sense of menace down the line.
The line hummed. It sounded like distant wings, hundreds of them, beating so fast that it filled her ears with a single note.
“Do you have it?” His voice was like rocks splitting, concrete breaking under immense pressure.
There was no point in pretending, in playing dumb. “No. Not yet.” She closed her eyes. “But I will.”
She pretended that she could hear the sound of her own heart beating, and if she waited long enough it would rise in volume and drown out his words, silencing his threats.
“I want it tomorrow.” Again, that gritty voice: pure verbal hatred. “I’ll send a couple of the chaps round.”
Lana still could not open her eyes. If she did, she thought she might see him standing there, grinning, his hair slick with gel and his eyes blazing. “It’s too soon. I don’t have it. Please… just give me a few more days. A week.” She loathed the pleading tone in her voice, the fact that she was reduced to begging from scum like this, whining like a dog for scraps from the table.
“Tomorrow.” That humming. The sound was audible behind his voice. “The chaps’ll call on you. Be there or it’ll only be worse for you.” Then he hung up.
Lana stood there, bathed in distant firelight, her forehead sweating and her hand gripping the telephone receiver. She was unable to put the phone down. Her fingers refused to budge, to open and relax their grip.
“No,” she said, and the word was like an exhaled breath. It made as little impact on the world as a sigh. “I don’t have it.”
Finally, after what seemed like a long time, she was able to relinquish her grip on the handset. She put it back on the windowsill, carefully, delicately. She still had her eyes closed. Her lips were trembling. Darkness danced behind her eyelids. The world was unstable, as if someone had untied her from her moorings and she was beginning to drift, to move away from everything that had ever seemed safe. The darkness behind her eyes beckoned.