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For someone who hasn’t had a stable home in years, Kammy’s beyond thrilled by the prospect of owning this shitty, rundown caravan.
It needs some major TLC and it’s not big enough to swing a cat in, never mind throw a housewarming party, but there’s a bed and a stove and a toilet that works just fine after he unblocks it, and it’s his.
His home. A proper place of his own.
He’s named her Phoenix — and she is a her, fine specimen that she is — because it feels a bit like having her is like being reborn from the ashes of all the bridges he’s burned.
For the first few days he parks it outside Wishing Well Cottage and nips into the main house every now and then for supplies or social interaction, but the whole you can stay as long as you like thing seems to have an undisclosed expiry date because he can see the twitch in Cain’s eye and the throbbing of the vein in his forehead when Kammy interrupts his alone time with Moira or happens to be in the shower when Cain’s gotta spring a leak.
So he makes his excuses — “It’s not you, it’s me,” he says, like he’s breaking up with an entire household at once — and moves the caravan up to Emmerdale Farm after Aaron says it’s okay. Says it’s the least they can do for dobbin’ him in to the coppers when he was innocent, and Kammy doesn’t argue that he’s been treated like that by worse people than Aaron Dingle in his time because he’s worried that absolving Aaron of all of his guilt will make him rescind the invitation to set up camp on his land.
Robert’s land, technically speaking, but it’s not like he’d ever go against Aaron’s wishes. Honestly, the bloke acts like the sun shines out of his boyfriend’s arse and Kammy doesn’t really get it because he’s met Aaron, the mardy sod, but they seem marginally less unbearable in each other’s presence, so he’s not about to question a good thing.
He’s heard about what Aaron was like in the years when Robert was locked away in the middle of nowhere, and it makes present day Aaron seem like a saint by all accounts. And that’s before they touch on Robert’s own time in prison, and the husband he obviously married for protection and to stave off the loneliness which must’ve seeped in through the cracks in stone cell walls like mould, toxic and inescapable.
Why people thought Kev was a real threat to Robert’s relationship to Aaron, Kammy’ll never know. Other than matching surly scowls and a shared love of wearing black and walkin’ Robert Sugden down the aisle, Aaron and Kev were about as opposite as two blokes have ever been.
Aaron’s his soulmate. Kev was like a sticking plaster, Kammy thinks, just there to stop the bleeding.
Not that he’s an expert or anything.
Although Kammy’s love life is sort of poppin’ right now, what with him getting to call the best girl he’s ever met his girlfriend. Tinkerbelle Dingle — adorable, by the way, and very apt for her — is his girlfriend!
Tonight, Belle’s come over with a takeaway pizza from The Hide. Between devouring slices and washing them down with cans of cheap lager that Moira offered him as a ‘going away gift’, they talk about life; about the past and the future and everything in between. About family and friends.
It’s nice.
Kammy hasn’t talked to his family in a long time. Hasn’t seen any of them since he’d been hauled away by the police as his little sister stood there crying, blood rolling in rivulets from a slash on her forehead after she’d wrapped a stolen car ‘round a tree like a fuckin’ amateur.
That blemish on his criminal record hurts. It makes him look like some rookie and not a bloke who learned to drive hotwired cars before he even sat his GCSE exams.
“Maybe you should get back in touch,” suggests Belle, and there’s a hesitance in the words like she doesn’t know how he might react. It makes sense after all she’s been through, after all the eggshells she’s been forced to tread on, but it makes Kammy’s heart pang that she feels she has to be that way with him.
“They wouldn’t wanna hear from me,” he denies. “I’m a disappointment to them. To my whole community.”
“Don’t say that.”
Belle looks like she might cry. She’s beautiful. Soft features, soft smile, soft eyes. A stark contrast to Kammy’s rough, jagged edges — he hopes to God he never cuts her, never hardens any of that softness that makes her so wonderful.
Kammy shrugs one shoulder, tries to pretend he’s unaffected despite the heavy burden of shame that’s hung ‘round his neck like a millstone since he walked out the house and never went back.
“It’s fine. I’ve got you, don’t I? Not like I need anyone else.”
Belle smiles. “Yeah. You've got me.” She lowers her voice to a whisper, adds, “But it’s okay to want more, you know? You deserve more.”
Her kindness is too much, seeps into all the cracks in Kammy’s facade and lights them up like her words are formed from tiny little sparklers.
He opens his mouth, doesn’t have a grand speech prepared but he wants to say something profound enough that she understands what she means to him, but Belle’s gaze gets stuck on something out the window behind Kammy’s head, and her expression goes from happy to horrified quicker than he can process the switch.
“Oh my God!” she exclaims, one hand over her mouth, the other reaching over to grip his where it’s resting on the foldout table. “Is that smoke?”
Instantly on high alert, Kammy whirls around. He sees it for himself: a plume of thick, grey smoke billowing above the nearest barn. The pinks and oranges of the evening sky dull into the background, smothered by the darkness.
“Shit,” he curses. “Fuck. Not again.”
He stands up, almost does himself a mischief when he whacks his head on one of the cupboard doors. Belle follows in his footsteps, more graceful even as she trembles violently enough to make the caravan shake.
Not exactly the sort of rockin’ he’d been hoping the caravan might see tonight, that’s for sure.
“Just stay here,” he pleads as he steps out into the warm evening air, Belle hovering in the doorway. “It’ll all be okay, I promise.”
“You can’t promise that,” Belle refutes. “And I don’t think you should go alone. Anything could happen.”
“I’ll only tackle it if I think I can,” he reassures, mentally planning his route to the fire extinguisher he knows is hidden to the left of that door.
Robert must’ve spent a small fortune kitting the farm out with them after the second fire — when he realised that this was less kids being kids and more arsonists trying to raze the place to the ground.
Inside the barn, the fire blazes without mercy; flames licking up wooden walls and destroying hay bales and overturned crates and probably the last of Robert’s sanity. The bloke’s been teetering on the verge of a breakdown for months, even Kammy’s noticed that much, and this might finally be the match that blows his mental health to kingdom come.
He thinks he remembers Sarah saying something about one of her relatives dying in a barn fire. Stands to reason they’re probably related to Robert — or otherwise to Aaron, because she’s a Sugden and a Dingle, and that’s just a headtrip, honestly — and it makes the whole situation infinitely worse because if even Kammy knows this lore then the arsonist surely must as well.
Whoever’s targeting the farm is cauterising an old wound; the acrid stench of burning flesh a real, visceral thing wafting up Kammy’s nose, cloying, suffocating. He can’t imagine how Robert must feel every time they discover a new fire on his land. A new barn with the same memories burned into his retinas. Into his nightmares.
Everyone knows Robert doesn’t sleep well.
It’s one of those open secrets: something everyone knows but nobody mentions because what do you even say to that? “Sorry your life’s shit, mate. Have you tried countin’ sheep?” doesn’t seem like it’d be all that helpful, not in the least because Robert’s got enough of the woolly fuckers to keep him awake all night counting — Kammy should know, considerin’ the little bastards used to keep him awake with their bleatin’ at all hours.
There are no sheep in this barn, though. Hasn’t been any livestock at risk during any of the fires, funnily enough… Almost like the arsonist knows where the animals are kept. It’s summat to think about, Kammy decides, although he’ll probably hold off on that until he’s not at imminent risk of first degree burns to his beautiful face.
The fire extinguisher is exactly where Kammy thought it would be, and he grasps it with two hands, pulls the pin and aims at what he thinks is the base of the inferno. Left to right, right to left. He sweeps until the foam runs out, the fire not completely diminished but better, more manageable with the couple of buckets of water he finds next to a trough.
There’s blood rushing in his ears, pounding and oscillating as if twisting his veins into new and complicated shapes. Somehow, by some divine miracle, Kammy still makes out the unusual noise coming from the back corner, where the flames hadn’t quite touched. It sounds a bit like a wounded animal, a high-pitched whine, something distinctly distressed, and then, clearer than the polluted sky above the barn —
“Help! Please!”
Human. The sound is coming from a human.
Kammy pulls his hoodie up over his mouth and nose, distantly hears Belle frantically explaining the situation, so something must’ve alerted Aaron and Robert to come rushing out. He hopes the arsonist didn’t sneak past him and up to the main house to start gettin’ all pyromaniac on their actual gaff.
Mostly ‘cos they don’t deserve it, no matter how moody the pair of them are. Doesn’t help that Kammy uses it as a base, and it’d be rotten luck to lose the place now he’s finally managed to get inside the front door.
It’s easy enough to spot the figure crouched low in the corner, with their bright yellow anorak and a flash of ginger hair peeking out beneath the hood. The small body is wracked with tremors, like the ground is quaking beneath them, hands wrapped around their knees like they’re holding all the pieces of themself together.
It’s a kid.
Kammy’s heart lurches, misses a beat then starts jackhammering at triple the pace to compensate. He imagines this little boy is one of his nephews, thinks about how terrified his sisters would be if their boys were in a situation like this; wherever this boy’s parents are, they must be beside themselves with worry.
“Hey,” he says, slow and calm and very un-Kammy-like, it must be said. “You’re alright, mate. No need to be scared.”
“It wasn’t me,” the boy manages to choke out around a heaving sob. “I promise!”
Kammy shakes his head. “Don’t worry about it, I believe ya. And even if it was, gettin’ you outta here is more important than that right now, yeah?”
“Are we gonna die?” the boy whispers quietly enough that he might hear the sound of Kammy’s heart shattering if he strains his ears.
Deciding that some good ol’ deflective humour is the best course of action, Kammy assures, “‘Course we’re not. C’mon, little dude, give me some credit. I’m basically a fireman.”
The boy peeks up at him, green eyes bloodshot and wide with something akin to hope. “Have you done the proper trainin’ then?”
“Well, no,” concedes Kammy. “But I dressed up as one for Halloween once, and I put out most of this fire, so…”
There’s a trace of a smile tugging at the boy’s lips, and it’s a familiar expression. Kammy’s fairly sure this kid’s a veritable stranger, but there’s something about him that he can’t quite put his finger on. Maybe they’ve just met before in passing at the park or in the shop or he’s the sprog of one of the customers at the garage.
“Okay,” the boy decides, quite serious. He can’t be older than seven or eight, but there’s a maturity about him that Kammy sees in himself sometimes, beneath the bravado and the swagger and the I’m fine’s.
When he reaches out, the boy falls willingly into his arms. He wraps his skinny arms around Kammy’s neck and clings on for dear life, legs following suit around his waist once they’re stood up and carefully making their way out of the smouldering wreckage of yet another decent barn.
It’s a real estate travesty for the homeless community. Those barns are ideal for a shelter and a place to store your stuff when they aren’t under threat.
Joe Tate must be fuming — finally acquires the land he wants then watches his investment burn to ashes right in front of his eyes. Everyone’s so sure that the enemy must be Robert’s, which makes sense given everything, but Joe owns that place and he’s got no shortage of people out for his blood ‘n’all.
The boy’s not particularly heavy, thank God, so the added weight isn’t a massive hindrance as Kammy scurries through the barn and back to the exit, where he immediately finds a safe place to put the boy down, except —
Well, he’s deceptively strong, clearly, because Kammy’s a buff young lad, but try as he might, he just can’t seem to shake off this little limpet of a thing wound tightly around him like a sniffling scarf.
“Hey, we’re outside now,” murmurs Kammy, instinctively raising a hand to card through tangled strands. There’s a slight wave to his hair that curls around his ears, more ginger than blonde under the glow of the evening sky.
“There are people here,” the boy whispers shyly, face tucked into Kammy’s neck.
Kammy chuckles. “They’re alright, honest. There’s a proper pretty girl over there you’ve just gotta see — back off though, she’s mine, yeah? Can’t have that cute face stealin’ her away from me, you hear me?”
The answering giggle tickles neck and fills him with a sense of great accomplishment. Knowing he’s helped put the kid at ease, that he’s done some good in a recent spell of mistake after mistake, bolsters some of his sense of self-worth, which Kammy’s willing to admit has slipped a bit due to the embarrassment of recent revelations.
Belle should wear high heels or summat — or a bell, though that might be a little too on the nose — because her footsteps are light and dainty and Kammy almost sends the pair of them sprawlin’ to the ground when she suddenly appears by his side, one eyebrow raised in question.
“Who’s your friend?”
Kammy opens his mouth, realises in the chaos he’d never actually bothered with the formal introductions, and has to ask, “Er, good point. What is your name, squirt?”
It looks for a moment like the boy’s sucking his thumb, but he’s just chewing anxiously on a hangnail. It’s the sort of nervous habit Kammy’s mum would’ve corrected with some tough love and a speech on all the bacterias and infections and dangers of doing it, and, though he finds himself inexplicably missing the lectures, he elects for the more tender approach of gently tugging the thumb from between his teeth.
One of the front ones is missing. Kammy idly wonders what the going rate for the tooth fairy is these days. Maybe if he yanks out the useless ones in the back he can shove them under his pillow and afford an afternoon of skivin’ off work to take Belle out for the slap-up meal she deserves for puttin’ up with him.
Before the boy can so much as utter a syllable, though, there’s a choked off gasp behind Kammy, and he turns around in time to see a slideshow of emotions playing out across Robert’s face like a video stuck on repeat.
Surprise into happiness into melancholy into confusion.
It’s a wonder his facial muscles have any energy left to let his mouth form words, but he manages to stammer out a, “Seb?” so small and fragile that it makes this grown man look like the sort of delicate China his mum would secure with bubble wrap and keep in a cabinet far away from the grabby hands of enthusiastic children.
“We’re saving it for a special occasion,” she’d say, but it didn’t come out for birthdays or graduations or ‘welcome home from youth offenders’ reunions. Didn’t come out for Dad’s funeral, either. Could’ve made an appearance at a party thrown when the community realised Kamal Hadiq wouldn’t be showing his face ‘round there anymore, but he wouldn’t know.
“Dad?” Seb asks, fear melting away to a sort of awestruck fascination.
If Robert and Aaron have got any fancy China knockin’ about the place, Kammy’d like to think today’s the day they take it out of its cabinet.
Maybe they’ll even offer him a cuppa for his troubles. Savin’ their kid’s life — that’s gotta come with some decent perks.