The Crane Wife(55)
Author: Patrick Ness

As evidence, here she was in George’s sitting room, an action that made perfect sense and also none whatsoever, and frankly she’d had just about enough of that feeling lately. She’d also had enough of the endless dreams she’d been having – ridiculous dreams, of being made love to by whole countries, of flying through impossible landscapes, of being shot by arrows, for Christ’s sake – and what it really boiled down to, she supposed, was that she was exhausted by it all. She had nothing more to give, and even she knew she’d had very little to give in the first place.

So here she was, in George’s house, and an anger was rising in her. Anger at all that had happened. Anger at all that had stopped feeling familiar and liveable. Anger, too, because she couldn’t even properly account for how she’d arrived here tonight. Or why.

Her eyes flashed green. On an impulse, she picked up the matches she’d seen lying on a side table.

She lit one.

The fire began like that. Or that. Or that. Or that. Or that.

And it burned.

Amanda glanced in her rearview mirror. JP was still asleep in his car seat, having not even really woken as she picked him up out of bed, jammies, blanket and all.

It was only JP that made any of this seem real. The tangibility of him was undreamable, his smell of milk and sweat and biscuits, that heartbreaking cowlick up the back of his head, and – she frowned in a little flash of shame – that stain of cranberry juice on his upper lip that she really should have washed off before bed.

She set her eyes back on the road and took a corner as swiftly as she dared. No, if he was here, then she was here. But nothing else about this made any sense at all. Rachel (Rachel!) calling at this hour of the morning, screaming her head off in terror and alarm and – this was the part so difficult to process, the part that would take so very much unpacking at some unspecified date in the future – doing it at George’s house.

It didn’t compute. Not in any way. Why would Rachel be parked outside George’s house?

Why would Rachel be the one who saw the fire?

Even Rachel hadn’t seemed to know. She’d said it outright. ‘I don’t know what I’m doing here,’ she’d shouted, ‘but you have to come!’

There’d been something in her urgency that had struck Amanda as utterly true, beyond all manipulation, beyond whatever crazy bullshit Rachel was entirely capable of pulling. Rachel’s terror had reached right through the phone and sunk into Amanda’s guts like a frozen stone.

So here she was, driving as fast as she could get away with.

‘Come on,’ she said, cutting across a surprisingly late night taxi. The driver gave her two fingers, which she absentmindedly returned.

Her father didn’t live all that far from her, three miles at most – though in this city that usually meant thirty minutes anyway – but she sailed through the nearly nonexistent traffic, cresting the small hill that took her down to her father’s house.

Where she saw the pillar of smoke.

‘Oh, shit,’ she whispered.

It stretched impossibly high in the air, straight up, too, on a clear, windless, freezing night, like an arm reaching up to heaven.

‘No,’ she whispered as she took the last few turnings. ‘No, no, no, no, no, no, no.’

She pulled around the last corner, expecting to see–

Not this.

There was nothing in the street. No fire engines, no neighbours out in nightgowns and slippers watching the blaze.

No sign of her father or Kumiko.

Just Rachel, frantic, beside her own car, as George’s house blazed in front of her.

Amanda screeched to a stop in the middle of the road.

‘Maman?’ she heard from the back seat.

She turned to him. ‘You must listen to Mama, JP. Are you listening?’

His eyes were locked solidly out the window, hypnotised by the fire.

‘JP!’

He looked back at her, frightened.

‘Sweetie, you do not get out of that seat. Do you hear Mama? Whatever you do, you do not get out of that seat!’

‘Un feu,’ he said, eyes wide.

‘Yes, and Mama has to get out of the car for a minute, but I’ll be right back. I’ll be right back, do you hear me?’

He nodded and gripped his blanket around him. Hating herself for leaving him there, hating Rachel with irrational zeal – and perhaps a little bit rational, too – for being the person who brought her to this place, Amanda leapt out of the car.

‘WHERE’S THE FUCKING FIRE BRIGADE?’ she screamed.

‘I called them,’ Rachel said, looking stunned. ‘They’re on their way.’

‘I don’t hear any sirens! Why am I here first?’

‘I’m sorry, I panicked, I called you and then it took me a minute to–’

But Amanda had stopped listening. Flames were leaping out of the sitting-room window, and it looked as if they might even have reached the stairs. There was so much smoke, though. So unbelievably much.

‘GEORGE!’ she screamed at the top of her lungs. ‘KUMIKO!’

‘They’re still in there,’ Rachel said behind her.

Amanda turned on her. ‘How do you know? And what the f**k are you doing here?’

‘I don’t know!’ Rachel shouted back. ‘I don’t even remember how I got here. I was just here, and there was a fire and . . .’ She trailed off, her face so scared, that Amanda turned back to the house without pushing her further.

At last she heard faint sirens, but in the distance, too far, arriving too late.

Something was wrong here. Something more wrong than just the fire, which grew even as she watched it. Lights were starting to come on in nearby houses, but she had a weird feeling they’d only been woken by her shouting and then noticed the fire.

She looked back at Rachel, whose expression was almost that of a madwoman. She went to speak to her, to demand what she knew, but then a loud exploding sound came from the house. They couldn’t see exactly where it came from, but it boomed across the night nevertheless.

The house blazed even more, almost disappearing behind smoke and fire. If Rachel was right – and Amanda knew somehow she had to be – then her father was in there.

George. And Kumiko.

And the fire brigade, their sirens still far in the distance, were going to be too late to save them.

She grabbed the front of Rachel’s blouse with a fist so tight Rachel cried out. ‘You listen to me,’ Amanda hissed, their noses actually touching. ‘JP is in my car and you are going to watch him right now, and I swear on my life, Rachel, that if anything, anything happens to him, I will put a knife through your heart.’