Aoife tasted smoke long before she saw the fire.
Even with the window jammed shut, it seeped in under the crooked frame, the way everything from outside did in this house – arguments on the street, sirens, laughter, the boys singing sectarian songs when they were drunk enough to forget the neighbours’ politics.
She lay flat on her back, one hand spread over the small, hard curve of her belly, and watched the orange flicker crawling up her ceiling. Bonfire night. Again. Another year, another pile of pallets and flags and fury set alight while the city pretended it was all just tradition.
Her mobile buzzed once on the pillow. Then twice, impatient.
Cillian: I’m outside. 2 mins. Cillian: You sure?
She could see him in her head as clearly as if he’d already climbed in the window – hood up, fringe damp from the drizzle, that worried line between his eyebrows he only got with her. To everyone else he was pure charm, all sharp cheekbones and easy grin. For Aoife he was just the boy who held her hair when she was sick in the river and who had cried, actually cried, when she whispered she was late and it wouldn’t stop.
Her stomach tightened. Not just fear this time. A little flutter, low and strange.
“I’m sure,” she whispered to the quiet room, to the walls, to the baby. Then, properly, thumbs moving.
Aoife: If we don’t go now they’ll send me away. I’m not giving you up and I’m not giving this baby up.
The three dots appeared. Disappeared. Appeared again.
Cillian: I’ll be at the corner. Da’s still out looking for Gareth. Pack light.
A crash sounded from downstairs, cupboard door against wall. Her mother’s voice, sharp and exhausted, floated up through the gaps in the floorboards:
“…you think I’m lettin’ her walk about the town like that? Sixteen and up the pole, Mary next door’ll have a field day—”
Her father’s reply was a low rumble. Aoife didn’t catch the words, but she heard the part she needed to: “clinic”.
She moved.
Schoolbag first. She emptied her books out onto the bed, leaving a scatter of margins full of little storyboard squares and scribbled dialogue, and stuffed in what mattered: jeans, two T-shirts, the black hoodie Cillian liked because it smelled like her shampoo, the notebook with all her film ideas, the cheap camcorder she’d saved for all summer. The charger. A spare battery. All of it on pure muscle memory. She’d been packing in her head for weeks.
Her fingers trembled when she opened the top drawer and took out the folded strip of paper towels with the two faint pink lines dried into them.
For a second she just held it. The whole reason everything was collapsing – and the whole reason she was going.
Footsteps thundered up the stairs. Her door rattled under a fist.
“Aoife. Open this door right now.”
Her mother.
Aoife shoved the test into the notebook, zipped the bag, and swung it over one shoulder.
“One second!” she called, voice higher than normal. If she saw her mother one more time, if she saw the disappointment sitting sour behind her eyes, she’d break. And if she broke, she’d stay. No. No, she wouldn’t.
She pushed the window up. The swollen frame fought her. For a panic-bright second she thought it would stick and that would be it, fate deciding for her, but then it lurched open with a squeal.
The noise covered the sound of her door being unlocked from the outside. The key scraped. Aoife swung one leg over the windowsill, feeling the cool Belfast air slap her flushed face, smoke and wet tarmac and someone’s chip shop all mixing in the night.
“Aoife, I swear to God—”
She didn’t wait to hear the rest. She dropped.
It wasn’t far – just the small back extension roof, then the wall, then the alley – they’d done it a hundred times as kids when they weren’t supposed to be out at the lake. The difference now was the bag and the baby and the way her heart felt like it was trying to punch clean through her ribs.
Her trainers hit the extension roof with a hollow thud. Dust puffed. She scrambled to the edge and climbed down the old iron drainpipe, palms burning.
By the time her mother got the window open, Aoife was already in the alley, breath coming in sharp bursts, hugging the shadows between the back gardens.
The fire at the end of the street was huge now, taller than the houses, sparks raining up into the low clouds. She could hear them shouting, the beat of a drum, the crack-snap of something thrown.
Of course Gareth would be there.
She thought of him automatically: all swagger and smirk, Union Jack bandana tied round his wrist like a badge of honour, never happier than when he had an audience. Cillian’s big brother. A brick wall in human form. He’d teased her for months when she started hanging around the Rowans’ house with her camera and her stubborn Catholic vowels.
“Wait till Da hears you’re bringin’ a wee Taig home,” he’d laughed, but there’d been a mean edge to it, something brittle. The row that followed had nearly split the Rowan house in half.
Now Gareth was the reason Mr Rowan wasn’t home. Out looking. Out checking the bonfires and pubs and corners where his oldest liked to throw his weight around.
Aoife slipped onto the main road, keeping her head down as she passed the groups heading in the opposite direction. Boys in football tops, girls in too-thin jackets, everyone riding that wired edge that came every year with the marching and the flags. Her belly felt exposed, even under the baggy hoodie. She flattened her hand over it.
“Just a few more minutes,” she murmured. “We’re nearly gone, mo chroí.”
At the corner by the off-licence, a figure leaned against the lamppost, hood up. For a half-second, with the glow from the firelight behind him, he looked like Gareth. Tall, broad shoulders, that rowan-tree silhouette.
Then he straightened and she saw him properly, and the relief was physical.
“Jesus, Aoife,” Cillian hissed, pushing off the post. “You scared the life out of me. You alright? Did they—”
“I’m fine.” The lie was automatic. “They don’t know I’m out yet.”
He searched her face the way he always did, as if he could read the truth in the tiny muscles.
Behind him, further up the road, blue lights flickered. Police cars trying to inch past the crowds.
“You hear anything about Gareth?” she asked, because it was there anyway, between them like a fourth person.
His jaw twitched. In the glow, his eyes were darker than usual, stormy instead of soft.
“Da says he’s just off getting blocked with the lads. But Ma’s in bits. They had a row before he left. About the march, about.” He flicked his eyes to her, then away. “About us.”
Guilt crawled over her skin like ants. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t.” He shook his head, quick and sharp. “We’re not doin’ that. We can’t fix Gareth being a gobshite. We can fix this.” His hand slid to her stomach, gentle. “We’re fixin’ this.”
For a second, right there under the lamppost, it was just the two of them and the small curve between them and the idea of a future that wasn’t small streets and whispered shame.
Then a bottle smashed somewhere up ahead. Someone roared. The blue lights stuttered and stopped.
Cillian’s hand tightened. “Come on. Bus leaves in twenty. If we miss it, that’s it. I had to nick Da’s card to book the tickets as it is.”
“The train to Dublin?” she asked, even though she’d gone over this plan ten times with him.
“Train to Dublin, ferry after. We’ll figure the rest. London, maybe. Film school. You’ll boss the lot of them and I’ll just… stand behind you and look pretty.”
He tried to grin. It didn’t quite land.
They started walking, keeping to the far side of the road, away from the pull of the fire. But the city had other ideas. The closer they got to the bus stop, the more the crowd thickened, funnelling them toward the open ground where the bonfire burned.
“You sure there’s no other way?” she muttered.
“Either we go round and miss the bus, or we cut through,” he said, jaw clenched. “I’ll keep you on the outside. We’ll be fine.”
He’d always believed that about himself, that he could keep people safe just by putting his body between them and the world.
They slipped into the edges of the crowd. Heat slammed into her first. Then the noise – chanting, singing, the high shriek of somebody too drunk to feel their own voice tearing. In the centre, the fire roared, built on tyre stacks and pallets, flags snapping and curling in the flames.
Aoife kept her eyes on the ground, on the worn toes of her trainers. One hand gripping the strap of her bag, the other wrapped around Cillian’s fingers like a lifeline.
“CILLIAN!”
The shout cut through everything. A voice she knew too well.
They both turned.
Gareth stood on the far side of the fire, up on one of the lower pallets. Union Jack scarf tied at his throat, bottle dangling from one hand. His face was flushed, hair damp with sweat, eyes bright in a way that made Aoife’s stomach turn.
“Is that you with her again?” he yelled, pointing the bottle their way. “You can’t even leave your wee Taig whore for one night, can you?”
The people nearest him laughed nervously. Some looked away. The word hung in the air, foul, heavy.
Aoife froze. The baby shifted inside her, as if flinching too.
Cillian didn’t let go of her hand. He moved in front of her, shoulders squared.
“Shut it, Gareth,” he shouted back. “You’re langers. Get down before you break your neck.”
“Oh, listen to him,” Gareth jeered, wobbling theatrically. “Big man. Thinks he’s better than us now. Thinks he can run off with some Fenian wee—”
He staggered. The pallet shifted under his feet. A nearby lad grabbed for him and missed.
Everything after that happened in jagged, out-of-order frames.
Gareth slipping, arms pinwheeling. The bottle flying, smashing near Aoife’s feet, glass skittering. Cillian swearing, shoving through bodies, letting go of her hand. Her own scream, ripped from somewhere deep. A crack – wood? Bone? She couldn’t tell. Then blue lights closer, much closer, and someone yelling to get back, get back now.
The pallet tower didn’t fall. Gareth did.
He hit the ground hard on the other side of the fire, out of her line of sight. For one horrible second, there was silence. Then shouting, proper panic. A crush of bodies, phones in the air, everyone surging toward the edge where he’d disappeared.
Aoife tried to follow. The crowd closed around her, hands and elbows and breath and heat.
“Let me through – that’s my—”
“Move, girl!”
She stumbled, one arm wrapping protectively around her stomach. The fire’s heat shoved at her. Smoke clawed down her throat.
She lost sight of Cillian.
“Cill!”
No answer. Just the roar of the flames, the gulls shrieking overhead, the sirens finally properly wailing now as the police cars and ambulance fought the bodies to get near the fallen boy.
Someone grabbed her elbow. For a second she thought it was him, relief flaring – then she looked up into a stranger’s face. A police officer, visor down.
“Back!” he barked. “Back, love, you’re not helpin’ anyone here.”
“My— my boyfriend, he—”
“Back,” he repeated, and bodily steered her away, using his own weight to shift the crowd.
She could have fought. She should have. But the world had gone high-pitched and far away, and every breath hurt.
She stumbled out to the edge of the open ground, onto the grass, doubling over and coughing.
When she lifted her head again, the ambulance doors were slamming. She didn’t see who they loaded in.
Cillian was suddenly there, dropping to his knees in front of her, hands on her face.
“Are you alright? Are you cut? Let me see—”
“I’m fine, I’m fine,” she gasped, though her chest felt like it was caving in. “Gareth—?”
He swallowed. His eyes were wild.
“They’ve got him in the ambulance. He was breathin’ when they… I don’t know. I don’t know.” His fingers dug into her shoulders. “Da saw us. He saw us with him. If they start askin’ questions… if they find out about—” He glanced at her stomach. “We have to go. Now.”
“We can’t just leave,” she whispered. Her voice broke on the word. “What if he—”
“If we stay, my Da will blame you,” he said, blunt and desperate. “Your Da will send you away. They’ll say it’s all because of you and me and this.” He pressed his palm over the curve of her, gentle and shaking. “We said we were goin’, Aoife. We said we weren’t lettin’ them decide for us. That hasn’t changed.”
But it had. Everything had.
Behind them, the fire crackled and spat. The city shouted. Somewhere, a mother was being told her son had fallen.
Aoife shut her eyes. She saw Gareth’s sneer, his arm round Cillian’s shoulders in old photos, his stupid scarf. She saw her mother counting pills at the kitchen table. Her father’s set jaw. A leaflet for a clinic half-tucked under the sugar bowl.
She saw a tiny hand, not yet born, reaching for hers.
When she opened her eyes again, she felt older, tired all the way down to the bone.
“Alright,” she said. “We go.”
He stared at her for a second, like he’d been expecting her to say no, to choose the good girl ending.
Then he nodded, once, hard, as if something inside him snapped and reset.
“Bus first,” he said. “We’ll call from the ferry. We’ll explain when we’re… when things are clearer. We just need time.”
It was a lie and a promise at the same time. She could taste both.
He helped her to her feet. Hand in hand, they walked away from the fire, away from the shouting, down toward the bus station and the rest of their lives.
Behind them, in the orange glow, smoke curled into the low Belfast sky like a question mark that would hang there for years.