Chapter 16 #2
‘She’s been out in the sticks for a wee bit too long, eh.’ Vish informs Lily, like she couldn’t have guessed that for herself.
‘I wouldn’t worry, I only started doing it since Samuel taught it to the kids and now all they want to do is shake my hand.’
‘It’s good to teach the little hellions some manners, they were getting too caveman.’
Lily gives Vish a pointed look. ‘Is that why you taught Elsa to call Liam a bawbag and cheers every time she takes a sip of juice?’
He shrugs, ‘it’s tradition. Can’t have a Glasweegan lass not properly educated. My maw would come back from the grave to clip me around the ear if I didn’t pass on her wisdom.’
Lily shakes her head gaze flicking to me as if to say can you believe this guy.
What she probably doesn’t know is I can. I’d met Mrs Atwal, Vish’s mother, and she was one strong-willed woman. It wouldn’t surprise me if she managed to come haunt her son for his behaviour.
The thought sobers me as memories of my own mother come to the forefront of my mind, ones that I had carefully shoved away due to the many difficult emotions I haven’t allowed myself to process yet.
‘You’re pregnant…’ Lily whispers, but I catch it despite how quiet she said it. As if she hadn’t meant to voice her thoughts aloud.
In my grief-stricken memories, I’d absent-mindedly began to stroke my bump, taking comfort in the feel of my wee boy shuffling about. He’s probably wondering what I’m doing at this hour, disturbing his slumber with my gitters.
At least I have my love for him to keep me going.
I tense seeing sadness cross Lily’s face as she continues to stare at my bump and unease creeps up my spine. Sensing the mood shift, Vish loops his arm with mine.
‘Fancy a midnight walk?’
‘Sure,’ I give him a curious look, and he subtly shakes his head.
‘Lil, you on watch?’
Lily blinks a few times, shaking off whatever thoughts had consumed her and I watch as she plasters a mask of happiness over whatever had overtaken her just now.
‘Yes, doing the rounds. Sorry for scaring you…’
‘Isla,’ I tell her. ‘Was nice to meet you, Lily.’
‘See you around,’ she waves as she takes the exit I had come through.
‘What was that?’
Vish guides me through into another carpeted hallway, this one a red tartan and then out into the crisp night time air.
‘Lily, she… she lost her baby, darling.’ I can hear the emotion that clogs his throat, and my heart sinks at his words.
Oh Lily. No wonder she looked the way she did when she saw my bump. I can’t imagine how it must feel for her, how awful it would be to lose a child.
‘She’s had it hard and I can’t imagine you’d ever recover from something so awful but she’s healing in her own way. His memorial is with the others and I think when she had somewhere to remember him, it helped a little.’
‘There is a memorial?’
Vish nods, to a high stand on a section of the stadium. ‘Ru made one for you… when he thought… You were the first one that was made.’
‘What?’
I have a memorial?
‘C’mon.’
Vish leads us over to the other side and up more stairs. Despite climbing so many already today, I ignore the burn in my thighs, too focused on what I’m about to find.
Up ahead is one of the most heartbreakingly beautiful things I have ever seen.
Lit by candlelight, perfectly arranged is a memorial of every loved one that has been lost. Each person has a story, one attached with so much grief it is unimaginable.
Names and faces, photos and drawings they are all there. And each one breaks my heart.
A sob lodges in my throat as the words mammy painted in glitter catch my eye, one far too much like the signs on each of the doors in my corridor.
Scattered around it are various paintings, stick figures, birthday cards and more.
Oh Elsa, my heart hurts just imagining her running up here, glitter flying from her as she brings her drawing to show her mammy.
I force myself to look over the others, far too many of them.
I get it, I’m beginning to understand what this place is built upon.
Love and grief, the hope for a better future if not for ourselves but for our loved ones that couldn’t see it.
Then it hits me, through watery lashes my name finds me and what restraint I managed to hold back before comes tumbling down.
Vish doesn’t push for me to leave, he doesn’t even speak until I’m ready to. I’d broken down as soon as I’d seen my name, not able to bear getting a closer look at first, but I couldn’t hold out. Not when I see the unopened letter sat beneath my name.
Ruairdh was never an artist and I don’t ever remember him having a particular way with words, but reading his grief-filled letter broke me, then put me back together again.
He hadn’t left me, not in the fire — turns out he tried to walk through the flames to get to me — and not a second since.
Ru had never let me go, not even when he thought I’d left this earth and died in the fire.
His confession of guilt, begging to turn back time and insist I stay with them all those years ago, to sleep downstairs instead of in my room away from them.
He spoke of his regret and how he wishes he’d known it would have been safer to stay attached to his side.
Then what broke me and my hardened feelings towards him was his promise never to forget me, all written beautifully beneath my name.
I’d sobbed the entire way through reading it, then when I’d read and reread until my tears had finally dried up, I sat clutching the tear-stained paper like it was my lifeline.
All these years I had thought the worst of him, of them both. I’d thought he cared more about saving himself than me but I couldn’t have been more wrong.
‘There are more.’ Vish says, cautiously breaking the silence.
‘Wha… what do you mean, more?’ I sniffle.
Scratching his dark brown hair, his teeth clamped together, deciding if it is worth telling me or not. ‘Ru wrote to you every week, darling. Every single week.’
He couldn’t have, surely that would be too much.
‘He may be an asshole, and half the time he has no idea how to express his feelings properly.’ Vish awkwardly chuckles, ‘I mean how the fuck he pulled Fauna I have no clue…’ I scowl at the mention of my best friend but he has a point so I stay quiet.
‘But he loved—loves you. You’re his baby sister, Isla.
And it has torn him apart these past years thinking he couldn’t save you. ’
‘I thought he left me,’ I whisper not wanting to say the thought that has plagued me aloud.
Vish crouches down beside me, expression torn. ‘If you want to hate anyone, hate me.’
Confused, I furrow my brow not following his meaning.
‘I knocked him out the night of the fire. I dragged him away from the house. I am the reason we left you there.’
Vish was the reason they left me alone to fend for myself?
‘I didn’t know what to do, darling. Please, I promise you.
If I’d known you could have gotten out, I would have been right up there with him, but the fire was up the stairs.
We tried to get through it but Ru looked like he was about to burn alive.
He wasn’t listening, he wouldn’t leave. I had no choice. ’
His eyes swell with unshed tears, the clear night sky shining on the watery surface.
‘The cunts that started the fire were outside waiting for us… I … I had to get Ru away and safe and I promise you, as soon as I did I went back to get you but the house was completely ablaze. The flames were at your window …’
Vish’s hand covers his mouth and a tear finally spills over his lashes, quickly streaming down to his chin.
‘I climbed out, hurt my ankle when I jumped.’ I explain, ‘I’d heard a group of people out the front shouting about seeing someone so I ran.
I guess I left you too.’ I finally admit not only out loud but to myself.
‘I’ve blamed you both for leaving me. That night, I got picked up by the army and I’d always thought that if you were with me, that wouldn’t have happened.
I wouldn’t have been alone. I was in so much pain with my burns…
’ I run a finger over the scarred flesh of my hand.
‘So I turned that pain into resentment for you both.’
The admission churns my stomach. Selfish, that’s what I have been. I’ve spent this time thinking I’m the only one who has been hurt when they have too. We were terrified kids back then watching our neighbours and family die around us. They weren’t to blame for my suffering, no one was.
‘I’m so sorry, Isla. We should have never left you alone, not with what was going on.’
It’s easy looking back on it now to say it was a stupid and reckless move. Why, in a time of such violence and death, would you leave a child alone upstairs, but the world was different back then.
‘How were any of us to know what would happen to the world?’ I shrug, knowing deep down that although it was a traumatic and life-changing situation, none of us is to blame. We were kids living sheltered lives, how were we ever to know what would happen.
We sit in silence, for a while watching the starlit sky as the hours tick by.
A shudder eventually takes over me, the chill finally getting to my bones, now that the adrenaline of my emotions has calmed down.
‘I think I should go back now.’ I announce, standing.
Vish nods, his eyes still rimmed red.
Our steps are the only sound as we make our way back in silence, neither of us finding any words of comfort as we each process our trauma.
The hall is warmer, more welcoming this time as I enter it. Maybe it's to do with the lighting or perhaps it's to do with the big doofus standing outside of my bedroom door for the second time today that warms my heart.
‘Were you planning on knocking, or staying out there all night?’ I ask.
Sheepishly, Liam smiles. His cheeks red from either being outside or embarrassment, I’m not sure.
‘I wanted to give you these. I found them amongst some stuff.’
‘It couldn’t have waited till morning?’
‘Yeah, they probably could have come to think of it.’ He chuckles, one large hand holding out the stack of books, the words pregnancy and baby catching my eye.
Taking the stack, I look up at him, but he’s busy glaring daggers at Vish, who is standing behind me, a silent conversation happening between them that feels all too heated for me to be here. Liam’s body is ridged and I watch as his thumb swipes back and forth over his knuckles.
Fuck it’s hot in here, between these two… I need to leave, like right now.
Quickly muttering a thanks, I squeeze past the man who makes me feel too much and slip into my dark room.