Sammy woke up next morning to the noise of someone being violently sick in the upstairs toilet. He padded in his socks through to the kitchen and stuck the kettle on, yawning. Well, she was alive. He brewed up, slopped in milk and took one mug through to the lounge. Hearing the toilet flush and sounds of movement, he took the other mug upstairs and found Milly sitting on the edge of the bed in yesterday’s clothes, red-faced and looking like she’d been dragged through a hedge, her light brown hair hanging in her eyes, her clothes dishevelled. He put the tea down on the bedside table.

‘Thanks,’ she whispered.

‘Feeling better?’ he asked.

She shook her head.

‘Take some aspirin. And lots of water. Flush it all through, yeah?’

She nodded.

‘You staying on here?’

Another nod from behind her hair.

‘Look,’ he said. ‘I know it’s been bad. But it’s going to get better now.’

Milly said nothing.

‘Right. I’ll leave you to it then. OK?’

‘OK,’ she said, then looked up at him. ‘Thanks,’ she said, but he had already turned away, gone out of the bedroom door and down the stairs.

Minutes later, she heard the front door close behind him.

114

Time passes fast sometimes, when you’re having fun. When you’re not, it drags its heels and you just want it to go, to be over. That was how Belle felt when she woke up. She was in a single bed, one of a pair. A threadbare towel was draped over the pillow beneath her head. She was still wearing her rag of a summer dress. It was dry now, stained all to hell, and stiff with her blood. Her head throbbed and her face was awash with pain all down the left side. Sooner or later, the pain would go; but for now, she was in the thick of it, gripped by it, consumed by it.

She thought of her mum and cried. The tears stung her face like a hot brand. She raised a hand to touch her left cheek, then dropped it again because she was too scared to go there. Sore-eyed, agonized, she lay there and watched the first faint threads of daylight penetrate the thin curtains at the bedroom window.

It will pass, she told herself.

But right now? She didn’t believe it. She was wide awake and in pain again. Sleep was better, you couldn’t think when you were asleep. You were out of it. She wanted so much to be out of it.

‘Oh, you’re awake.’

It was the bearded man, standing in the half-open door. As he stood there, the dog slid past him and came into the bedroom.

‘Trix,’ he said warningly.

The dog bounded up onto the bed, turned in a circle and lay down at Belle’s feet, tail thumping the coverlet.

‘Looks like you got a fan,’ he said.