Soul Fire

loud as a giant’s. We keep climbing, even though I can’t breathe.
    Finally, just as we reach the top landing, I hear wood split and metal groan as Zoe’s front door is forced.
    ‘Now we wait,’ says Lewis, as calmly as though we’re waiting for a bus.
    I have to clamp my jaw together with my hand to stop my teeth chattering.
    The police stay less than twenty minutes though it feels like forever. Lewis and I don’t speak, though he holds my hand and after a while it stops trembling.
    Finally we hear voices in the stairwell – two men and a woman, I think. They’re chatting, even laughing, as we hear drilling and clanking metallic sounds. Then the front door closes.
Lewis helps me up. My foot’s all pins and needles because I haven’t moved a muscle while we’ve been wedged into the corner on the cold floor.
    ‘Let’s see what they’ve done,’ he says.
    When we get down to her landing, the door is bolted with a huge padlock and chain. We’re not getting through there again. We head down the stairs and back through the front door, into the
street, where traffic’s still passing and the ladies of the night are still chain-smoking, as though nothing’s changed.
    ‘That padlock. That’s because it’s a crime scene, isn’t it?’ I whisper, once we’ve gone a whole block.
    ‘You watch too much American telly, Alice Forster. It’s because they forced the door, that’s all.’
    ‘How can you be so sure? Do you do this kind of thing regularly?’
    ‘Clearly not.’ And then he chuckles to himself.
    ‘Why the hell is that funny, Lewis?’
    ‘Because if I really was a career burglar, or spy, or whatever, I definitely wouldn’t have broken in and left my bloody fingerprints all over the flat, would I?’
    ‘What?’
    ‘We should have worn gloves, Ali. But never mind, it’s too late now and they’ve got no reason to dust her place for prints.’
    As we walk back towards the sea, the moments in Zoe’s flat seem completely unreal. So do Lewis’s actions. He was so detached, like a burglar or something.
    Except for that one moment when he had to admit that Zoe’s death couldn’t have been an accident.
    ‘I think I should go back to the others,’ I say, when we reach the point where we’d turn right for his hotel and left for the hostel. ‘Thanks. Like always, I don’t
know what I’d do without you.’
    ‘Life’s never boring with you around, kid,’ he says.
    I frown.
    Lewis hits himself on the forehead. ‘Yeah. Mr Insensitive, that’s me. But the truth is, Alice, I don’t know Zoe. Obviously it’s totally bloody awful that she’s
hurt, but if it’s a choice between her being trampled or you, then . . . I can’t pretend I’m not thankful you’re OK.’

50
    Back in our room, no one is asleep, but we’re pretending to be. And at least we’re all here: Cara, Sahara, Ade. The way everything else is right now, that feels
like something to be grateful for.
    At about four in the morning, someone squeezes into my bunk with me.
    ‘I had a bad dream,’ Cara whispers. Her skin is damp and she smells of wood smoke. I guess we all must smell the same but it’s more noticeable on someone else.
    I cling on to her and she clings on to me. Her breathing slows and I catch another smell, of alcohol. A cocktail. Tequila sunrise?
    And then I remember: Javier .
    I freeze. If it’s four here, then he may have left the Beach already. How could I have forgotten?
    Except I know how I could have forgotten. What happened with Zoe was about the living. I can still have some influence there. What’s happening to Javier between dusk and dawn is now beyond
my control.
    Rest in peace, Javier.
    I close my eyes but the tears still escape, running down my cheeks and onto the sheet. I try to sob silently, so I don’t wake Cara.
    Somehow the night ends and daylight comes. The four of us sit on plastic chairs outside the hostel, waiting for the police to arrive. The beach is busy again, with smart pensioner couples taking
the early sun, suave family men with immaculate wives and toddlers, the chiringuito owners opening up.
    ‘It was very modern,’ Cara says, when no one else seems to be able to find words. ‘The hospital. The doctor seemed to know what he was doing. Maybe she’s better off in
that place than she would have been in a grotty old hospital at home.’
    Except none of this would have happened at home.
    The city is every bit as beautiful as it was yesterday, but my eyes are raw from