“Get away till I get a look at her,” he said.

He smelled of drink. It tainted the air around them. She kept her gaze away from him as she slid off the bed and went to the corner where Noreen already stood. Noreen took her hand, pressed Joy’s fingers between hers. Joy wiped tears from her cheeks with the back of her free hand, sniffed, and exhaled, the air fluttering from her chest.

Tam came to Mary’s side and touched her forehead. He leaned down, one hand on the thin mattress, and turned her face towards his. With his thick fingers, he prised open one eye, then the other, peering into them, his tongue clicking behind his teeth. Finally, he stood upright and shoved his hands down into his pockets. He didn’t look at them as he spoke.

“Pneumonia, I’d say.”

“Give her medicine,” Noreen said. “She’ll die if you don’t.”

“She’ll probably die if I do,” he said. “Maybe the best thing for her.”

Those words cut Joy deep, even as she remembered her hand at the girl’s throat, the wicked idea taunting her.

“No,” Joy said, her voice welling deep in her throat. “She has to live. Give her the medicine. Let her live. Please.”

His shoulders rose and fell once as he breathed in and out, an impatient breath, weary.

“Whether she lives or dies is nothing to do with me. If it was, I’d get it over with. No point making a cratur suffer, whether it’s got two legs or four.”

Joy went to speak, to curse him, to call him the foulest names she knew, but Noreen squeezed her hand, hissed through her teeth. Ivan might have forgiven her curses, but Tam would not. Tam would beat the life from her where she stood. He might do them all, the three of them, kill them stone dead and put them in the ground with Esther and the policeman.

And would that be so bad? All she had to do was scream at him, call him the fucking bastard that he was, and wait for his hard right hand.

Noreen knew her thoughts and grabbed her wrist, squeezed so hard the pain cut through to her right mind. Joy looked down at the sodden wood floor, clenched her teeth together hard enough to bring an ache to her jaw, hard enough to cause the blood to thrum in her ears and pulse behind her eyes.

“She’ll hardly make it through the night,” Tam said, as if it were a blessing, then he went to the stairs, climbed and locked the door behind him.

Joy felt her legs melt away and Noreen’s arms around her, guiding her to the bed while she whispered about prayer and the mercy of Jesus.

28: Sara

28: Sara