“No need to be like that, love, I was just —”

“You were just fucking WHAT?”

Heather threw her full weight into the side of the table, sending it crashing into the man’s thighs with enough force to scatter the empty glasses. There was a bright tinkling crash as two of them smashed to pieces on the floor, followed by the traditional cheer from the side of the pub that couldn’t see what was happening.

“Oi, you mad bitch!” The man staggered back, remnants of coke splashed brown against his cream-colored slacks. Heather walked around the table toward him, feeling like she was floating, filled up as she was with something dark and light. Almost as an afterthought, she picked up one of the empty glasses that was still standing, thinking to smash it against his giant, thick head.

“You’re fucking right I am,” she said, pleased with how calm her voice sounded. The bloke’s mates were all looking at her now, a few moving forward with their hands held up. “I am one mad fucking bitch, you hideous little prick.”

She lifted the hand with the glass, but then the brassy little landlady was there, hissing in her face to get out.

“None of that, thank you very much! Go on, get out, we don’t want that in here.”

Heather boggled down at the woman, and whatever had been inside her—some quick, calm, awful thing that had also been there on her last day in the newspaper offices—seeped away. She cast one more look at the bloke, who, with the landlady now safely in front of him, was calling her every name under the sun.

“What is it about men?” she said to the landlady, her voice soft. “Can’t even have a quiet drink without them ruining it.”

The woman gave her a sour look, and then Heather was back out on an unfamiliar street. It had been a bright afternoon when she’d gone inside the Red Lion, and now it was early evening, cold and dark, with a miserable light rain moving through the freezing air. Heather stood, breathing it in. As her temperature dropped, the adrenaline washed out of her blood, leaving her ashamed and tired and slightly numb.

Stumbling slightly, she made her way back to the bus stop.

Back at her mother’s garden gate, Heather paused to send off a final text to Nikki. They had exchanged texts all the way home; most of Nikki’s sounded worried, all of Heather’s were apologetic. She had promised, somewhat rashly, to make dinner for Nikki’s mum and Aunt Shanice in an attempt to say thank you for their kindness, and her head was full of how many people she owed apologies when she opened the front door. She clicked the hall light on and stopped, staring at the floor.

Petals, as red as droplets of arterial blood in the dim light, were scattered across her mother’s biscuit-colored carpet, leading across the hall and up the stairs. There was also a smell, a hot stench like old garbage or meat left in the sun too long. Heart in her throat, Heather made her way up the stairs, trying not to think of fairy tales where children followed a trail of breadcrumbs into the darkest part of the forest. Did Michael Reave have a version of that story? Of course he did.