Smoke billows from the Underground entrance and rolls onto the pavement, thick and black. Onlookers press their faces against the shutters, hoping to see twisting, charred passengers burning inside; many of them get their camera-phones out and set them to zoom. Some passers-by turn their bodies towards the gates for a moment. They enjoy the fleeting warmth. The paving is slick with thawing ice and Maddie steps carefully as she turns away from the gates and checks her watch. A cab driver will charge double once he sees the swell of impatient commuters but a bus will take her twice as long and Oliver will have to let himself in. A ‘latchkey-kid’, for many reasons, is a dangerous thing to be. Maddie’s mother repeats the phrase with increasing regularity, her fearful sermons driving Maddie to sign Oliver up for afterschool sessions in chess, football, percussion—anything to keep him busy until five o’clock. It isn’t only the studies, with their aggressive charts screaming correlation between children left home alone and drugs, sex and general bad behaviour. It is everything else out there too. She calls a cab.

‘Bloody terrible.’

Maddie pretends to look through her handbag for her purse. This is why she doesn’t sit at the front.

‘I said, it’s bloody terrible.’

She says nothing.[private]

‘The fire.’ The driver gestures to the station as they pull away. ‘People died, you know. ‘Bout thirty of them last I heard. It was on the radio.’

‘I didn’t see anyone.’

‘They’re pulling them up from the other side, that’s why the crowd’s not so bad. They’ll be round there, looking.’

Maddie glances back at the numbers on the street. A man pushes the crowd aside with one hand, the other holds a phone to his ear.He is crying and does not wipe his face. For a moment he catches her eye, and she looks back down into her handbag. The journey home is slowed by ambulances and police cars. It always is.

Outside her neighbour’s house is a group of teenagers. They sit on the garden wall and jeer when Maddie passes but none of them move toward her. Once safe inside, the chain on the door behind her, she relaxes. During the day her hair is knotted on the top of her head, two pencils holding it in place. It is an affection left over from art school and fits with how she thinks she should look; Maddie believes in the pleasure of stereotype. Hair pencils, check. Floaty skirts, check. Too many rings, check. Here stands art teacher. She lets it down to wash it, leaving it to dry on her shoulders as she changes into a pair of Simon’s jogging bottoms and an old charity hoodie. She is grating potatoes when Oliver arrives.

‘Mum, you dressed up! You should’ve told me dinner was a formal event’. Maddie pretends to clip her son’s ear for cheekiness and swoops down to kiss his forehead. After going through the usual sarcastic exchanges (‘how was school?’ ‘Incredible. It was just wild.’), she sends him upstairs to change out of his uniform. Simon is late but this isn’t unusual for a fireman. She lays the table and prepares the meal while Oliver watches cartoons. Maddie sips green tea with lemon and the roast beef dries out. She douses it with gravy and returns it to the oven. The cartoons turn to teen shows and Oliver eats a bag of dubiously orange crisps. The News comes on. Maddie cracks each of her knuckles, pushing the fingers back one by one. When one doesn’t crack, she pulls it hard until it makes the satisfying pop. She does her toes. Finally, she calls Simon.

‘Honey, where are you?’

‘Maddie? Maddie?’ The line crackles and shifts like it’s trying to escape. ‘I’m sorry, there are so many tonight—’

‘I know. I saw one on the Underground. How long are you going to be?’

‘I don’t know, it’s worse—’

She loses him and calls back.

‘I’m sorry, Maddie, it’s bad. I think it’s all going to kick off. Lock the doors and put the chain on. Don’t wait for me, have dinner and I’ll call later.’

Oliver wanders into the kitchen to eavesdrop. He tries to lean his body against the counter in a lazily graceful lounge, but hasn’t reached that stage of adolescence yet. He is still only five foot one. A child.

‘Be safe, Simon. I love you.’

‘Me too, give Oliver a hug from me.’ He hangs up. Oliver shuffles over and she squeezes his shoulders. She tells him Simon will be coming in late and Oliver shrugs; he hears things at school, knows a little about what’s going on. Nobody knows much. For the firemen, the policemen, the paramedics, the doctors, the nurses—the hours get longer and later. More people die. This, everybody knows.

They eat dinner in near-silence. The television chatters in the background and Maddie keeps forgetting to tell Oliver off for leaving it on. Instead she adds salt to her food until it is inedible and then throws it away. Oliver eats all of his and then seconds. He says he is going to be as big as the new Batman actor and Maddie doesn’t know what the actor looks like but nods anyway. After dinner Oliver goes to his room to play video games and Maddie slips into the attic to paint.

The lamps do the best job they can at filling the room with light. Maddie’s easel sits in the brightest spot, a small oil heater by its side. The heater is singly there in hope of a placebo effect, it is too expensive to warm the whole room. Maddie does not paint to music; the only sounds are the shudders of chilled breath and the cars on the street below. She is carefully sanding the acrylic underpainting, preparing it for the soft butter oils, when Oliver appears at the door.

‘I’m going to bed.’ His lips pout in childish exhaustion and Maddie regrets taking her watch off. She wonders if he has been on the Internet and what he has read.

‘I should’ve sent you to bed ages ago. Night, sweetie. Sleep tight.’ She kisses his forehead and he slumps down the stairs. To his retreating back, she calls, ‘Don’t forget to lock your door!’

She goes back to her painting. She means to produce something cheerful and light, something to hang in the house to brighten up the walls not yet painted. She keeps reaching for the other scale however. The charcoal grey, the lamp black, the brown madder. She lays the paint on thickly, ignoring the ‘fat over lean’ and slicing through it with an artist’s knife.

Then, a heavy thump and the shriek of breaks.

Maddie ignores it, hoping for a dog or a cat (too big for a cat) but then there is shouting, immediate and desperate—and laughter.

‘They’ve hit someone.’ It barely escapes her lips, overwrought with
a huge swell of fury and repulsion. ‘They’ve done it again’. She throws her knife down and storms towards the window, slowing as the usual squeal of giddy tyres in exit doesn’t come. The laughter increases as someone begins to plead for help. She crouches down, close to the wall, and peers through a gap in the blinds.

Someone is lying in the road, one of the teenagers. The driver, a heavy man in a suit, is clutching onto the steering wheel with pale meaty hands. His jowls are wet with tears and she watches his mouth form a wet chant, ‘I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I’m so—’. He shakes his head then throws it back, his shout muffled through the glass, ‘Help me!’ The rest of the teenagers rock his car, three on each side. The largest repeatedly slams his fist into the driver’s window. ‘Open up, fatty! We need your insurance details.’ His friend moves away from the car then reappears with a brick, passing it to him. He slams it into the window, again and again. The glass explodes under his hand, shattering onto the driver and the tarmac. It glitters in the lamplight as two members of the group chant, ‘Kill the pig! Cut his throat! Kill the pig! Bash him in!’ between giggles. They hook vicious arms under his and attempt to drag him through the car window.

Maddie drops down and takes her mobile out.

‘Hello, emergency service operator, which service do you require?’

The phone is slippery in her hands. ‘Police, maybe an ambulance, I don’t know what—‘

‘Just a minute, please.’

She waits, waits, waits. The phone goes dead. She calls back and the line
is busy. She calls Simon and his phone is switched off. There is no-one left to call; she leaves her phone ringing, hoping to get through, and peers back through the blinds to check on the man.

The street is empty. She stands up straight and separates the blinds further with her fingers. The car is still there, its front door open, but the group and the man have gone. She leaves her brushes cloying with paint and heads downstairs to check windows and doors. She will drink more tea and keep calling for help. This is what you are supposed to do.

Maddie rushes to close the kitchen blinds. On one hand, she might see the poor man but on the other, he might not be alone, and she would rather the group didn’t know she was inside. She pulls on the fraying string, trying to block horror films from her mind. A face at the window. The one with the brick.

The kitchen still smells of cooking, onions and beef fat behind the artificial scent of citrus. A car alarm goes off. She flicks the switch of the kettle, drops a sweet-smelling teabag into a cup. Doesn’t react. Another car alarm joins it. More alarms sound, and her hand shakes as she pours the steaming water. When she goes to pick up the tea her arm jolts, and the tea drips off the counter and onto the floor. She leaves the cup on the side and runs to check the chain is on the front door. All the windows are locked and all of the blinds and curtains are closed. She goes to check the back door, jogging lightly enough to still her rising panic. There should be a curtain over its window, attached to Velcro to ensure their constant privacy, but it hangs uselessly where it was last pulled aside.

Two men are by the door.

She is still, and prays shadow is enough to keep her hidden.

They are not her neighbours. Her neighbours are a young family, the little girl not in school yet. She listens to the men’s’ footsteps as they cross her neighbours’ garden path. They move heavily. One of them drags something metallic against the ground and it scrapes the crazy paving, skrik, skrik. She stares at the floor, at a tear in the linoleum, because if she looks up and sees their silhouettes she’ll know they can see hers. Their words are angry and abrupt, dogs barking in the night. It is strange to hear the venom but not the meaning. Simon had meant to put up a higher fence between the two houses since they moved in. There is a half-metre tall length of chicken wire where something solid and strong should be. She hopes her neighbours are out, but hopes more that the men don’t change their minds and try the house to their right. It would be a hop, that’s all. One hop.

Their mumbles stop and the metal object is raised into the air. A spade. It crashes down into the neighbouring back door.

One of the men enters the house and as he does, the light cast from her neighbour’s back room catches his face. Around fifty, grey, she has seen him walking his dog down roads not far from here. His dog, like him, resembles a bear. She used to think this was a friendly face—they have exchanged smiles and nods in the past. His friend, wolfish with shaggy black hair, slips through the door after him.

When the garden is empty, Maddie exhales. There is a wardrobe in the hallway, to hang coats and jackets. She heaves its right side then its left, dodging its weighted swing in order to drag it to the door. Each thud of the wardrobe is timed to the skrik of the wolf’s spade; she can still hear it punctuating his every step inside the house. Once the entrance is blocked, she heads towards the front door. If the men are dissatisfied with her neighbours, it won’t stop them from getting inside her house. But it might give her a chance to run.

The front door, with its slither of stained glass at the top, is worrying. She wants to block this too but if Simon came home he would need a way in, and if the men next door got in, she would need a way out. The kitchen window is too small for somebody to fit through and the living room window is boarded up. On Bonfire night, it was smashed and a wheely-bin was emptied through it. A few stains on the carpet and the wooden planks nailed into place are the only signs left; the planks should’ve been replaced long ago but there is a waiting list for these things now. They have locked their bedrooms at night ever since. If there is a fire it is better to jump from a window then to risk letting an intruder in. You hear stories.

She pushes the sofa in front of the door. It is skewed as there is no way of fitting it in perfectly, but she wedges a small chest of drawers into the awkward gap. As a barrier it is fairly pathetic, but she is also going to arm herself. She has seen the films and she is no pretty blonde, crying in the airing cupboard with her arms over her face. She has a knife, fat and glistening in the kitchen drawer. It has a rubber handle so it won’t jump in her grip and the blade is sharp and impressive. She could wave it in someone’s face and it would scare them off all right, and she could stick it in a gut and it would kill.

Simon had bought the knife during a survival kick. He’d come home excited, with it still in its cardboard packaging and a rabbit all wrapped up in wax paper. Oliver had watched in disgusted fascination as Simon had skinned the thing then filleted it, drawing the knife from rib cage to pelvic bone. The knife was big and clumsy, made for larger prey than rabbits, and Simon had made a mess of it. Maddie hadn’t liked it anyway; it made Oliver too squeamish to eat and it took a bloody long time, but it made Simon feel manly. She could tell in the way he described to Oliver everything he was doing, in a voice only a touch lower than usual, and in the way he washed and dried the knife without touching the rest of the washing up. The sex had been particularly good that night, and she’d let him use the knife a few more times before sending him to the supermarket instead of the butchers. Now she is pleased. If somebody tries to get at Oliver, she’ll kill them with that big knife.

She takes it from the drawer. It is heavier than she imagined, and she doesn’t know how to hold it. Underarm, like a shiv, or overarm, ready to slash. She chooses underarm, her mind filling with images of clumsy and horrific accidents which could occur overarm. It is ridiculous; her hand is deadly and her feet are still in bobbly slipper socks. She feels like laughing. She does laugh. It is a small, dry, wracking laugh and as it forces itself out, ha, ha, ha, it is joined by another sound. A quiet knock, knock, knock, through the wood of the front door.

It could be the wolf or the bear. But it is delicate. Again, knock, knock, knock. It is quick and steady like her heart beat, and she hesitates only briefly before replying. Tap, tap, tap. Nothing. She croaks out, ‘Hello?’ With hope, ‘Simon?’ In response, a hand slams against the panel of glass above Maddie’s head, sending it over her shoulders. Shrieks and hollers come from the other side of the door, whooping laughs and vulgarities. She cannot tell how many are out there, but they pound on the wood in a hail of violence. She runs upstairs towards Oliver’s room. From the stairs she can see the tops of heads behind the door, at least ten of them. Each one is dangerous; she can feel the spite coming off them like heat. They’ve got power behind them, riled and rabid and they will tear the door off with their fingernails if they need to. On the landing, she can still hear them, every kick thundering through her house. Her head pounds as ideas rush to develop, blocking each other’s path until her thoughts become nonsensical fragments, ‘Scream-run-jump-hide-attack-Oliver-Oliver-Oliver’. Oliver. She races to his door but stands, panting, outside without knocking.

If she wakes him, what can he do? He will no longer be behind the safety of the door, peaceful without the knowledge of what is downstairs. If she wakes him and they get in, will he try to be a hero? The thought of the pack downstairs falling on her son makes her sick. She backs away from the room. As she does she notices the hallway window. Instead of being black with night, it is grey. Grey and shifting, a flickering light cutting through the dark. She has seen that sky before and a glance out of the window confirms it. Smoke pours from her neighbour’s windows and she opens the window to see the flames tear at the walls of their daughter’s bedroom. She cannot see anybody inside; what first forces her mouth open to scream is only a doll, but she shakes with the shock anyway.

It is too much. She rocks on the spot and takes her phone out again. Dials and listens to the engaged tone, to Simon’s answerphone message over and over again. Her eyes close and she holds her knife out, half-expecting someone to climb through the open window. She leaves a message for Simon. If he has a truck, he can save them. Save them from the flames, save them from the beasts below. With the window open all she can hear are sirens and alarms, wails and howls. The city burning into madness. She takes a last look out of the window. Small dark figures, like toy soldiers, dart through the streets. They wind through the bushes in gardens and climb the toy fences. It could be the winter, the cold, the economy, the rich, the poor, the war, the media, the sickness, the young, the blacks, the whites, the browns, it could be fucking lot of it. Any reason, anything spouted from the lips of people with their carefully formulated guesses or the nutters on the underground. She’d heard every theory, and she agrees with every one of them.

She used to be happy. Even when arguing with Simon, she’d make him a coffee or a sandwich—they had the comfort of knowing no argument would lead to their end. Nothing was taken seriously. They were in love. They are still in love, but it is harder. They feel the weight of it threatening to crush them in their beds and they no longer reach out for the other. Oliver is better than they are, more hopeful, and it will finish her if he joins the others his age and goes out into the night. She can barely see it. He still has the baby skin, the rounded belly, the excitement when it is Christmas, or Easter, or even bloody Pancake Day. If they watch a film and a sad bit comes on, he will still occasionally squeeze her hand, swipe it with his thumb once or twice, and let go. If she squints though, the threat is there. He is her baby, but babies grow into those at the front door.

A scream forces her eyes open. She feels tired and wary. It is a young woman’s scream, slicing its way up Maddie’s spine. She is at the front door, Maddie can hear her shrieks coming clearly through the shattered window, catching on the fragments of jutting glass. She takes slow steps down the stairs. She can’t ignore the girl but what can she do to help? Then, through the gap in the door she sees the girl’s thrashing body, her wrists held by multiple hands. Maddie cries out and rushes towards the door, forgetting herself and holding the knife up in blind rage. She’ll cut their hands off, that’s what she’ll do.

As she reaches the door, the girl’s arms reach through the gap at the top and long fingernails claw at her hair. The screams descend into laughter. The girl’s twisted face is at the window—she is held up by the crowd. She reaches for Maddie, trying to shred her face and tear at her scalp. Maddie swings upwards and catches the girl’s arm with her knife; she lets out a real scream and withdraws her bleeding arms. The banging on the door gets louder and Maddie hears the thud of metal on wood. It won’t be long now that they have tools. She feels something wet near her temple and touches it. Her fingertips come away stained with blood. She feels again, more thoroughly. A patch of hair is missing, snatched by the harpy at the door, and Maddie hears her giggling, pleased with her prize. She stumbles to the kitchen and takes a tea towel. Holding it to her head, she climbs the stairs again. Behind her the sofa has started to shift with the vibrations of the door. With each slam of whatever they throw against it, it juts forward a centimetre more. By the time she is at the top of the stairs, the chest of drawers has slipped down into the gap. It too jumps with the door. She ignores it, and looks ahead at the landing. She notices the border wrapping around the wall. Cypress trees, green and gold, outstretched over her head. Simon and Oliver put it up days after moving
in; she remembers them taking turns up the ladder, trying to get it perfectly straight for her. She grips her knife harder and listens to the splintering of wood. The crash of the door, like thunder, colliding with the sofa. She hears the drum roll of running feet.[/private]

About Jade Moulds

Jade Moulds is 25 years old and currently lives in Cambridge. She graduated from Anglia Ruskin University's Creative Writing MA with a Distinction last year and has since been working on a collection of short fiction. She has been published in several literary magazines and was shortlisted for the HG Wells Short Story Prize in 2013.

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