Soul Fire

believer in messages from the bloody afterlife. I should have known . If he was
trying to get a message to anyone, it’d be me, not some little English kid.’
    I say nothing.
    ‘But here you are, eh, Alice?’ The cynicism’s gone. All I can hear is sadness.
    We sit there in the dark as more bangers explode outside. ‘Here I am.’
    ‘His dad was old-school. They came here from the countryside down south, and his dad brought values that would make Hitler seem moderate. I thought that’s why J ended it. He’d
realised he couldn’t ever be happy living this double life.’
    ‘Couldn’t the two of you have gone somewhere else?’
    Gabe sighs. ‘Don’t you think I tried to persuade him? There was Australia for a start. Or anywhere in Europe. I didn’t care. I just wanted . . .’
    I think of Danny, and how torn I feel between the Beach and ‘real’ life. Yet the Beach always wins. ‘To be with him?’ I finish for Gabe.
    ‘Anywhere would have been home with him there. But he wouldn’t leave his sisters. I thought maybe he might go when they were older. And then . . .’
    ‘He didn’t kill himself.’
    ‘No? How did he tell you that, Alice? One knock for yes, two for no?’
    I ignore the sarcasm. ‘He was fighting with his father. It went too far. Javier was pushed, and there was no barrier on the roof. Nothing to stop him falling.’
    For a moment Gabe does nothing. Then he punches the flint wall so hard that a stone falls away, but he doesn’t seem to feel any pain.
    ‘The bastard .’ He pulls out a chair, sits down, head in hands.
    ‘Have you ever met his father?’
    ‘No. I . . . I did see where it happened. The address was in the paper. There was nothing there, not even flowers. I went to the beach and collected a bunch of shells, and I scattered them
where I thought he must have landed, on the street. Bet you think that’s dumb. They’d have been smashed to pieces by a moped within minutes.’
    ‘Nothing’s dumb when you’re grieving.’
    He looks at me. ‘I looked you up online, Alice. Your sister. So you know how it feels, don’t you?’
    I reach for his hand and he curls his fingers round mine the way a baby does, and won’t let go.
    ‘I’m going there now,’ I say. ‘To Javier’s place. I want to see if his father’s still there and if his sisters are all right.’
    It’s a risk, telling him. If Gabe didn’t already think I was crazy, I bet he does now.
    But his fingers stay tight around mine. ‘And what will you do if they’re not?’
    I don’t have an answer. Instead I say, ‘I’d really like it if you could come with me. I think it’s the right thing. For both of us.’

You’re leading me on a merry dance, Alice.
    It’s too hot for this. Up and down the backstreets of this grubby, beautiful city, as though you’re searching for something you’d lost. Or someone.
    Who are you looking for? Me, perhaps?
    All you have to do is look behind you.

41
    It’s lucky Gabe knows where he’s going because I am totally lost now. Every street looks the same: the tall buildings, the washing lines, the kids playing in the
road.
    Except that the kids in this street might be Javier’s sisters.
    ‘I think Karina would be eleven, Rosa eight,’ I say, and Gabe gives me an odd look but doesn’t ask how I could know that.
    There is a girl of about eight leaning against the building, watching kids in Barca football shirts kicking a ball around. She’s facing the sea so I can only see the back of her head,
silhouetted against the setting sun. She has long dark curls and for a moment I imagine she’s holding a new cat toy, to replace the one Javier said his father had cut up out of spite. Except
that was Karina’s toy, wasn’t it?
    Then the ‘toy’ moves and I realise it’s a young ginger cat.
    ‘Could that be Rosa?’ I ask Gabe. He doesn’t answer, and when I turn back to repeat the question, I realise he’s staring at the girl so hard that she must sense it too.
She looks round, right at us.
    She’s striking rather than pretty. It’s not her features that tell me I’m right, though. It’s her gaze. Pure defiance.
    ‘Jesus. She’s the spit of him,’ he says.
    ‘Do we talk to her?’
    Before we can decide, she puts the cat down and it trots behind her as she walks into the apartment building, out of sight.
    ‘Did you see the way she walked?’ Gabe whispers. There was a self-assurance about her that reminds us both of her big brother.
    I try not to