Page 23 of A Slow Fire Burning

They were so stupid.

The One Who Got Away

She wakes.

Joints stiff, hip aching, part blind, unable to breathe. Unable to breathe! She jolts, rocks herself upright, into a sitting position, her heart thundering in her chest. She is dizzy with adrenaline. She inhales sharply through her nose. She can breathe, but there is something in her mouth, something soft and wet, a gag. She retches, tries to spit it out. Hands behind her back, she struggles, pushing through pain. Finally, she pulls her right hand free, takes the rag from her mouth. A T-shirt, she sees, faded blue.

In another room, not too far away, someone is crying.

(She can’t think about that now.)

On her feet. Her right eye will not open. With her fingernails, the girl delicately picks a crust of bloodfrom her eyelashes. That helps, a little. It opens, a little. Now she has perspective.

The door is locked, but there is a window, and she is on the ground floor. The window is small, granted, and she is not slender. It is not quite dark. Toward the horizon, over to the west, a murmuration forms, dissipates, re-forms. The sky fills with birds, empties, fills again, and it is beautiful. If she stays right here, the girl thinks to herself, right here on this spot, if she watches, it will never grow dark, and he will never come for her.

The sobbing grows louder and she steps back from the window. She can no longer see the birds.

Like the door, the window is locked, but the glass is a single pane, breakable. Breakable but not silently breakable—will she have time to get out before he comes? Will she be able to force her flesh through that small space at all? Her friend would be able to. Her friend is slender, she did ballet until she was thirteen, her body bends in ways the girl’s does not.

(She cannot think of her friend now, of the way her body bends, of how far it might bend before it breaks.)

The crying stops, starts again, and she can hear a voice, saying, please, please. The funny thing is (not funny, not really) that it’s not her friend’s voice, it’s his voice. He is the one who is begging.

THIRTEEN

Laura woke up on the sofa, fully dressed, her mouth dry. She rolled over and onto the floor, grabbing her phone. She’d missed calls: from Irene, from two different numbers she didn’t recognize, from her father. She dialed her voicemail to listen to his message.

“Laura,” a voice that was not her father’s said, “it’s Deidre here, I’m calling from Philip’s phone. Mmmm.” Among the many teeth-grindingly annoying things about Deidre was her habit of punctuating her speech with a weird humming sound, as though she was about to burst into song, if only she could find the right note. “We got your message, and the thing is, Laura, the thing is that we already agreed, didn’t we, that we wouldn’t just be handing over money every time you get yourself into trouble. You need to learn to sort these things out for yourself. Mmmm. My Becky is getting married this summer as you know, so we’ve considerable demands on our finances as it is. We have to prioritize. Mmmm. All right then. Good-bye, Laura.”

Laura wondered if her dad had even heard the message, or whether Deidre listened to them first, and screened out the ones shedidn’t deem important. She hoped that was the case; it was less hurtful that way, to imagine that he didn’t even know she was in trouble. Shecouldcall him. She could find out for sure. She just wasn’t quite sure she could stand to.

Her heart in her mouth, she scrolled through the BBC news site looking for stories about Daniel’s murder but was disappointed. No updates since yesterday; the police were pursuing a number of different lines of inquiry, they were appealing for witnesses to come forward. She wondered how many there would be, how many people had seen her that morning, down on the towpath with blood on her lips.

She distracted herself by texting Irene.So so sorry I’ve had some problemson my way now get yr shopping list ready see you v soon.Usually, she’d ask Irene to text her shopping list so she could pick up the groceries on her way over, but this time, she was going to have to ask for the money up front.

A woman, familiar in some vague way, opened Irene’s door when Laura knocked. “Oh,” Laura said. “Is... is Mrs. Barnes in? I’m Laura, I’m...” She didn’t finish her sentence because the woman had already turned away and was saying, “Yes, yes, she’s here, come in,” in a tone that suggested annoyance. “Looks like your little helper has turned up after all,” she heard the woman say. Laura stuck her head around the living room door.

“All right, gangster?” she said, grinning at Irene, who usually laughed whenever she said this, but not this time. She looked quite anxious.

“Laura!” she exclaimed, raising her crooked little hands into the air. “I’ve been so worried. Wherehaveyou been?”

“Oh, I’m sorry, mate.” Laura crossed the room to give Irene a kiss on the cheek. “The week I’ve had, like, you would notbelieve. I’ll tell you all about it, I will, but how are you? You doing all right, yeah?”

“Since yourfriendis here,” the other woman was saying, her voice clipped, cut-glass, “I think I’ll get on. Is that all right?” she asked, tilting her head to one side. “Irene?” She slung what Laura judged to be a very expensive handbag over her shoulder, collected a couple of shopping bags from the doorway, and thrust a piece of paper in Laura’s direction. “Her list,” she said, fixing Laura with a withering look. “You’ll see to that, will you?”

“I will, yeah,” Laura said, and she glanced at Irene, who pulled a face.

“I’ll show myself out,” the woman said, and she stalked smartly from the room, slamming the front door behind her. A moment later, Laura heard another door slam.

“Who isthat?” she asked.

“That’s Carla,” Irene said, raising an eyebrow. “Carla Myerson, my friend Angela’s sister.”

“Warm, isn’t she?” Laura said, giving Irene a wink.

Irene harrumphed. “Somehow in Carla’s presence, I always feel looked down upon, and I don’t just mean because she’s tall. She talks to me as though I’m a fool. An old fool. She drives me potty.” She paused, gently shaking her head. “But I shouldn’t be unkind. She may not be my favorite person in the world but she’s had an awful time of it. Her sister passing away, and then her nephew.”

“Ohyeah,” Laura said as the truth dawned on her.Thatwas why she looked familiar; she looked a bit like him. Something around the eyes, the set of the mouth, the way she tilted her chin up a little when she spoke. “Oh God. I didn’t think about that. So she’s his aunt?”

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