Before the Fire by Sarah Butler Page B

‘And I for one have every intention of doing this. Kieran, I would very much like you to stay.’
    Stick’s mum had started ushering him towards the door, but Stick looked at his nan, all dressed up and hopeful-looking, and imagined Mac stood by the electric fire shaking his head,
saying,
Stick, dude! Chill out, man
. His anger leached away as quickly as it had arrived and he sat down heavily on the sofa.
    ‘Will you stay?’ his nan asked.
    Stick shrugged.
    She smiled. ‘We’ll do it in the kitchen,’ she said. ‘I thought that would be best.’
    It was, Alan explained, a compromise: a metal bowl of water with red and yellow food colouring dropped into it. ‘To represent the fire,’ he said. ‘Usually,
there’d be a fire. But we thought—’ He glanced at Stick’s mum and then smoothed his hair against his neck and stared at the water. ‘Fire symbolises the sun. We jump
over the fire and strengthen the power of the sun.’
    Stick’s mum put her arm around his shoulders and squeezed. He didn’t step away. The food colouring did look a bit like swirls of smoke in the water, turning orange where one crossed
the other. The bowl was balanced on a wooden chopping board in the middle of the floor.
    ‘We jump,’ he said. ‘And then we write what we need – our wishes – and we burn them in the flames. You first, Kieran.’ Alan waved Stick towards the bowl.
‘Feet up. Knees up. Feel the power of the sun.’
    Mac would be pissing himself at this: red-cheeked, his stomach wobbling under his T-shirt, a hand slapping at his side. Mac would jump; he wouldn’t think twice about it. And so Stick
jumped. Feet up. Knees up.
    Alan clapped his hands together. ‘Great stuff. Mandy?’ Alan beckoned but she shook her head. Stick’s nan stepped forwards and jumped.
    It was Alan who knocked it over. His heel catching the edge, coloured water spreading across the pale floor.
    ‘Fucking hell,’ he snapped. Stick and his mum backed towards the cupboards.
    ‘Not the end of the world, nothing a mop won’t fix. Go on, do your wishes.’ Stick’s nan hustled them into the dining room.
    Four pieces of paper – pale pink, with faint flowers printed across them – had been laid out like place mats on the glass table, four sharpened pencils next to them.
    ‘Sit, sit.’ Alan looked pissed off. ‘You’re to write something you want to invite into your life.’ He pointed to the pieces of paper.
    Stick’s mum wrote something on hers and folded it in half before Stick could read it.
    Stick stared at his paper for a long time, listening to his nan in the kitchen – the slop and slap of the mop and her humming under her breath.
    ‘Ready?’ Alan said.
    Stick folded his piece of paper in half and then half again.
    ‘I suppose we’ll just have to put them in the water.’ Alan didn’t sound convinced.
    Stick’s nan reappeared in the doorway. ‘All good as new,’ she said.
    ‘We’ll go first.’ Alan beckoned to Stick and he followed him into the kitchen. Alan closed the door behind them. The bowl had been refilled with non-dyed water. Stick could see
a faint orange stain on the floor.
    ‘Let’s use the cooker,’ Alan whispered.
    Stick wondered what he’d been like as a teenager. A bit of a geek. A bit of a goth. Bullied, probably.
    Alan lit the smallest gas ring and held out his hand for Stick’s paper. ‘I won’t read it,’ he said, and so Stick passed it to him, watched him hold it against the burner
until it caught, the flame creeping upwards. He waited until it was close enough to scorch his fingers and then dropped it onto the cooker top, where it burnt itself up into nothing but soft grey
ash.
    ‘Now don’t tell me what you wrote,’ Alan said. ‘You mustn’t tell your wish to anyone.’
    Stick looked at what was left of the paper. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, isn’t that what they said at funerals?
    ‘Now mine.’ Alan repeated the process with his own folded paper. ‘And then I’ll get