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BELLE – NOW
‘Mummy?’ Belle says, her voice wavering.
‘It’s OK, love. He can’t get in.’
Belle curls up into a ball, watching as her mother pulls a rickety wooden chair over to the door, wedging the back of it under the doorknob beside the brown armchair already blocking it, using her weight to hold it in place. She’s never seen her look so panicked.
‘I…I’m so scared…’ She covers her face then drags her palms down, smudging her lipstick as she hears the bashing sounds on the door, watches as it bounces in its frame. Her mum gets out her phone, her hands shaking as she taps on the screen.
‘Get some sheets or towels from the bedroom, Belle. Block up the gap at the bottom of the door.’
Belle doesn’t move. She can’t. Something is stopping her, fixing her body into a curled-up shape, her knees drawn up as she sits on the floor. The noxious smell of burning fills her nostrils as she watches clouds of smoke roll in under the door, billowing upwards to the ceiling. She attempts to stand, wobbling from whatever it was Luba had given her to take earlier, to help her relax, but she drops to the floor again, her head feeling empty and not like her own.
‘Oh, Belle…’ her mum says, reaching out to pass the phone to her. She sees her hand rise up to take it. ‘Ask for the police and the fire brigade when they answer. Give them the address.’
Belle stares up at her, wondering why her mum has four faces, all swirling around her in a haze.
Belle…do it!she hears, though the words sound as if they’re coming from somewhere else. Her mother’s lips are out of sync. She stares down at the phone in her hand, wondering where her mother is going as she rushes off.
‘Hello…?’ Belle tries to say when she thinks she hears a voice on the line. Though she can’t be sure. She puts the phone to her ear but then realises it’s upside down. When she tries to turn it around, she drops it on the floor. She just stares at it, not knowing where she is, but one thing is for sure, when she looks up, the sky above her is so beautiful – a shimmering mass of stars and rainbows and sparkles that take her breath away as she stares at them in awe.
‘Belle!’ she hears a voice yelling. Slowly, she looks round and sees a woman on her knees shoving a duvet at the base of the door. Then she realises it’s her mother.
‘Don’t do that, Mummy,’ Belle says, her voice not sounding like her own. ‘You’ll make all the stars go away. Can you see them?’
‘Belle, love, you’re not making sense. Come on…’
She feels firm hands under her armpits and she’s scooting along the floor on her bottom, her mum dragging her towards the low doorway on the other side of the room that she’s bumped her head on loads of times already. Perhaps that’s where the stars have come from. She giggles.
‘Belle, get up. Can you stand?’
‘I don’t want to go to bed,’ she says, pouting. But then something in her mother’s expression gives her a moment of clarity and she screams, the shrill noise piercing her ears, even though it sounds as if it’s coming from far away. Belle hauls herself up onto a bed. It smells funny, she thinks. Like smoke. Like bonfires. Like the stove at home when her dad lights it. ‘What are you doing?’ Belle says, watching as her mother shoves all the mess on the floor aside – shoes and plates and mugs and make-up and towels, as well as her bag with all its clothes spilling out. Then she flings back the rug, searching around. ‘Mummy, I don’t feel well.’
‘It’s OK, sweetie. Help will come. How long did the fire service say they’d be?’ She glances up at Belle.
‘Fire service?’ Belle says, feeling a frown on her face. She shakes her head, suddenly feeling sick.
‘Where’s my phone?’ her mother says, her face crumpling in panic.
Belle glances back to the low doorway again, narrows her eyes. ‘Phone?’ She’s not sure what she means. ‘Look,’ she says, smiling. ‘The stars are coming in here too.’ A wall of dark smoke drifts through the door, floating near the ceiling. ‘Will it thunder?’
‘Belle, get a grip,’ her mother says. ‘We have to get out of here. I need you to be strong.’
‘What…what are you doing?’ Belle says, getting down on the floor beside her mum. She’s got her hands under a loose floorboard and is yanking it up with all her might, making grunting noises. Or perhaps it’s all the banging she hears from the other room, though that could be a thunderstorm. She doesn’t understand anything any more.
Then she sees the knife. Shiny and glinting as brightly as the stars as her mum holds it up.
‘Get up, Belle. Stand, now!’
Belle does as she’s told, though her legs feel ten miles long as she stares down at her feet. ‘Mum, you broke the floor.’ She points at the uplifted floorboard, wondering if she’ll get in trouble. ‘He gets so angry,’ Belle says. ‘He’ll be mad as hell.’
‘Jack?’ her mum asks, wrapping Belle’s arm around her neck and shoulders again. She feels herself being lugged away, back into the other room, her mum panting from the effort.
For a moment, Belle wonders who Jack is, why his name seems so familiar yet also so frightful. ‘But I love him. And I love you and—’
Belle screams as the door bends and buckles from a loud crash on the other side. Then her mum lunges for something on the floor – her phone. Her hands are shaking as she taps on the screen, then she hears her asking for the fire service, the police,please send help now, hurry…she begs, giving the address.
‘Stay back, love,’ her mum says, but Belle doesn’t want to stay back. Something is beginning to boil inside her – a feeling that even the drugs Luba gave her can’t suppress, nor the vodka she knocked back with that other girl when they were getting ready.
