It struck Benito that she had gone with that rather than the concrete revelation that her brother was a criminal.
Maybe she’d known that all along too.
“Beni?”
“Hmm?”
“Can’t you talk to Mickey?” Gianna repeated. “Tell him you’re sorry, but it’s okay now? And you’re not going to do that stuff anymore?”
Benito shook his head. “It’s too late. What I did . . . it really hurt him. More than I can explain. And I knew it would before it happened, and I did it anyway. We can’t come back from that, G.”
“You can try.”
“No. It’s over, okay? Just let it go.”
Gianna looked as though she might cry. She left the room. Rosetta took the pasta plates to the kitchen, and for a few minutes, Benito was alone. He shivered, cold again for no reason.
The cat took advantage of his distraction and reclaimed his belly, settling in for a good dig about.
Benito tried to anchor himself to the tiny pinpricks against his skin but found himself drifting, spinning until Gianna came back with a bar of Dairy Milk.
“For your broken heart,” she said.
Benito shook his head at her grave expression. “You’re trippin’, girl.”
“You’re sad, Beni. Why won’t you admit it?”
Benito had nothing. He set the chocolate on the arm of the sofa as Rosetta returned to the room and turned the TV up. No one spoke. EastEnders came on. Benito stared at it, unseeing and unhearing until somehow, in a place that hadn’t been his home for more years than he could remember, he fell asleep.
He dreamed of looming shadows and dark country roads.
Of running through fields and choking on the thick mud slowing him down.
He woke coughing, eyes streaming, head pounding, and his vision blurred. A piercing shriek rattled his brain, forcing him awake when all he wanted to do was close his eyes and sleep forever.
Yeah. Fuck it. Sleep.
Benito sank back into the couch, down and down and down, the ancient cushions sucking him in. It should’ve been a pleasant journey to the bottom, but it felt like freefall, and not the good kind. Also, the persistent shriek wouldn’t quit, and a tapping sensation on his cheek had joined the party.
Groaning, Benito forced his eyes open again. Round, green irises awaited him, inches from his own. It took Benito a long, sluggish moment to place them as Sullivan’s and that the batting on his cheek was the cat’s paw insistently punching him in the face.
“Fuck off.” Benito hooked his hands beneath the cat. Lifted him to fling him off, but nothing happened. His arms didn’t move the way he asked them to, and the cat stayed put, yowling.
Benito blinked hard, fighting the scratching burn that filled his eyes, his throat, his chest. He couldn’t see. He couldn’t breathe. He was nothing but the obnoxious screech of the smoke alarm he’d screwed to the ceiling after the third time Gianna’s dad had passed out drunk with a lit cigarette in his hand.
Smoke alarm.
Somewhere in the thick sludge Benito’s mind had become, the words meant something. His heart beat louder.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
The cat hit him again, and finally it clicked.
Fire.
Fuck.
Fire!
Benito rolled from the couch, dislodging the cat, and landed on his knees. He hooked the cat under one arm and scrambled forward, barrelling into Gianna’s room. “Get up. There’s a fire. We need to get out.”
Gianna stirred.
Benito shook her, and she bolted upright. “Get up. Hold the cat and wait here. I’ll get Mum.”
He left Gianna, shutting the door behind him and staggered into the hallway. “Mum! Mum! Wake up. We have to leave.”
Rosetta heard him and opened her bedroom door, already fastening her robe around her waist. She coughed into her hand. “Gianna!”
“I got her.” Benito ducked into the bathroom and grabbed two towels. He soaked them and passed one to Rosetta. “Hold this over your mouth and keep your hands on me, okay? Follow me. I don’t know where the fire is, so we’ll have to go slow.”
“It’s not in here?” Rosetta shouted over the smoke alarm.
“No. It’s out there somewhere.”
“Shouldn’t we stay here?”
Images of Grenfell Tower ambushed Benito. He gripped Rosetta’s arms and shook her. “No. There’s cladding on this building. We need to get out.”
Rosetta nodded and hooked her fingers into Benito’s belt loops.
He dashed back to Gianna’s room and wrapped the damp towel around her face. “Hold on to me,” he ordered.
Fear filled her young eyes. Suddenly she was six years old again and waiting on Benito to make everything okay.
He gripped her chin. “Don’t let go. Not for anything.”
There was no time for anything else. He pulled Gianna in front of him and guided her to the front door with Rosetta behind him.
He opened it slowly, bracing for whatever was on the other side.
Carnage greeted them.
Heavy smoke.
Stumbling bodies.
The orange glow of flames somewhere below them.
Panic seized Benito’s heart. The flat was already too smoke-filled for them to survive long, but to get out, they had to pass through thicker smoke and heat. What if it overcame them? What if they passed out before they reached the bottom?
Just go. Get them out. Keep moving till you get there.
It was all they had.
Benito urged Gianna forward and they inched down the stairs, step by step, over and around anyone who got in their way. People shouted. Hands reached for them. Benito shoved them aside, not caring who they left behind until Gianna and Rosetta were safe.
The smoke was densest on the third floor. Heat enveloped them, and flames crackled at the windows, creeping up the building, sparking the flammable cladding as it went. A loud bang busted the glass.
Gianna jumped and the cat escaped her clutch, disappearing into the murky gloom. “Sullivan!” she wailed. “Sullivan! No no no! Beni, he’s gone. We have to find him.”
“No. We have to keep going.”
Benito forced her on, taking her sharp elbows and fists as she flailed against him, hardening his soul to her heartbreak. She loved that cat so fucking much, but he loved her more.
Rosetta still clinging to his back, he pushed on, herding them to the ground floor, and fought his way to the exit.
Fresh air hit them, and they staggered into the night, coughing.
Gianna kicked and screamed, tossing her damp towel aside. “Sullivan! Sullivan! We have to go back for him.”
Benito dragged her away from the building to the chicken shop where a crowd had begun to form. Good Samaritans eased Rosetta away from him, guiding her to safety while he fought with Gianna. “Stop. You can’t go back, okay? He’s a clever cat. He’ll find his own way. He’s probably already out here.”
“He’s not, he’s not. I saw him. He ran up the corridor.”
“Which corridor?”
“By the fire. I saw him, Beni. He went past the blue doors.”
Benito turned back to the tower block. Fierce flames were creeping up one side, enveloping the cladding. It wouldn’t be long before the entire building was acting like a chimney, drawing the blaze to the sky.
Now or never. Benito marched Gianna to the pavement and sat her down. “Wait here. Don’t move unless a firefighter or a fed tells you to, you hear me?”