Page 35 of A Slow Fire Burning

Miriam didn’t want to argue—they’d only just made up from the last fight, over a boy called Ian Gladstone whom Miriam had liked for ages and with whom Lorrie got off at a party. Miriam found out about it later.I’m sorry, Lorrie said,but he’s not interested in you. I asked if he liked you and he said no. It’s not my fault he chose me.

They’d not spoken for a week after that, but neither of them really had any other friends, and it wasn’t like Ian Gladstone was even worth it.He kisses like a washing machine, Lorrie said, laughing, making circles in the air with her tongue.

A small thing, then.

At the farmhouse, Jez rolled a joint. He was sitting on a legless sofa in the main room of the house, his long legs bent, knees up by his ears. He licked the paper, running his fat tongue along the glue-tipped edge, rolling the cigarette gently between forefinger and thumb. He lit it, took a hit, and handed it to Lorraine, who was standing awkwardly to one side of the sofa. Miriam loitered near the door. Lorraine took a toke, two, then waved it at Miriam, who shook her head. Lorraine widened her eyes—Come on—but Miriam shook her head again. Jez hauled himself up to his feet, took the joint from Lorraine, and wandered slowly out of the room, heading deeper into the house,away from the front door. “Anyone want a beer?” he called out over his shoulder.

“Let’s go,” Miriam hissed to Lorraine. “I want to get out of here.” Lorraine nodded okay. She looked out the dirty window, toward the car, and then back at Miriam.

“Maybe I should say we need to go back to school?” she said.

“No, let’s just—”

Jez came back, too quickly, holding two beers. “I think,” he said, not looking at either of them, “Lorraine and I are going to spend a bit of time on our own.”

Lorraine laughed and said, “Nah, that’s all right, I think we actually have to get going now,” and Jez put the bottles down on the floor, stepped quickly over to Lorraine, and punched her in the throat.

Miriam’s legs were jelly; they wouldn’t work properly. She tried to run but she kept stumbling over things, and he caught her before she reached the front door, grabbing hold of her ponytail and pulling her back, ripping the hair out of her head. She fell to the ground. He dragged her back into the heart of the house, through the filth on the floor, the cigarette packets and the mouse shit. Lorraine was lying on her side, her eyes were open, wide and wild, she was making a weird, rasping sound when she breathed. Miriam called out to her and Jez told her if she opened her fucking mouth one more time he was going to kill her.

He took her into another room, an empty one, at the back of the house, and shoved her to the ground. “Just wait here,” he said to her. “It won’t be long now.” He closed the door and locked it.

(What won’t be long?)

She tried the doorknob, pulling at the door, then pushing it, running at it, crashing against it.

(What won’t be long?)

She couldn’t be certain, but she thought she could hear Lorraine crying.

(What won’t be long?)

Behind her, there was a sash window, big enough for her to climb through. It was locked, but the thin pane of glass was old and cracked. It wasn’t double-glazed. Miriam took off her T-shirt and wrapped it around her hand. She tried to punch through the glass but she was too tentative. She didn’t want to make too much noise. She didn’t want to hurt herself.

She told herself that whatever was coming, it was going to be worse than a cut hand. She told herself that she didn’t have a lot of time. She had only as long as he took with Lorraine.

She hit the window again, harder this time, and then she really went for it and her hand went smashing through, one jagged peak tearing into her forearm, causing her to cry out in shock and pain. Desperate, she stuffed the bloody T-shirt into her mouth to stifle her own cries. She stood stock-still, listening. Somewhere in the house, she could hear someone moving around, a creaking, a heavy tread on the floorboards.

Miriam held her breath. Listening, praying. She prayed he hadn’t heard her, that he wouldn’t come downstairs. She prayed and prayed, tears seeping from her eyes, the smell of her own blood in her nostrils; she prayed that he would not come for her.

It was still light out. Miriam ran to the car first, but he’d taken the key from the ignition. She ran on. She ran along the winding dirt road, blood dripping from the cuts to her arm and her torso where she’d scraped herself climbing through the window. Blood ran down her neck and her face; it oozed from the wound on her scalp where he’d pulled out her hair.

After a while, she was too tired to run, so she walked instead. She still seemed a long way from the main road; she hadn’t rememberedthe drive to the farmhouse being this long. She wondered if she might have taken a wrong turn. But she couldn’t remember a turn, couldn’t remember any junction at all; there was this road and only this road and it seemed to go on and on, and no one would come.

It was dark by the time she heard thunder. She looked up, at the cloudless sky, at the bright stars above, and realized it wasn’t thunder at all, it was a car. Her knees buckled with the relief. Someone was coming! Someone was coming! Joy clouded her mind, only for a brief moment before a howling gale of cold fear blasted the clouds away. The car was coming from behind her, not from the main road but from the farm, and she started to run, blindly, off the road. She scrambled over a barbed wire fence, cutting herself again in the process, and flung herself down into a ditch. She heard the car’s gears grind as it slowed, its lights illuminating the space above her. It passed.

Miriam lay in the ditch for a while after that; she couldn’t really be sure for how long. Eventually, though, she got up, and she climbed back over the fence, the flesh of her arms and legs and torso torn, her knickers soaked with urine, her mouth sticky with blood. She started to run, she fell, she got up. She kept going. After a while, she reached a petrol station. The man there called the police.

They were too late.

The One Who Got Away

She has been crying for a while now, this girl, crying out. She calls for help and bangs on the door until her fists bleed. She says her friend’s name. Quietly at first and then louder, and louder still, over and over, she calls her friend’s name until it echoes through the house and silences the birds and silences everything but her pitiful cries.

In this silence, a door slams and the sound of it is deafening, earth-shattering, a sonic boom. Louder than anything the girl has ever heard in her life.

Her crying stops. She hears movement, footfalls, quick and urgent and coming her way. She scrabbles backward, falling, twisting, ferreting into the corner of the room, where she presses her back to the wall, braces herself with either hand. Bares her teeth.

The footsteps slow as he approaches the door. She hears the scrape of boots against the stone, the rattle of the key in the lock, a click as it turns. Her blood is roaring and she is ready. She is ready for him now. She hears him sigh. Hush, now, big girl. Hush, now, ugly girl. It’s not your turn. There is another rattle, another click, and her blood subsides, her insides seem to shift, a wave breaking a dam. Hot piss drips onto the floor.

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