Cathy struggles out from beneath Andrew’s slumped weight, her eyes round and wide as saucers. Her cheek oozes a thin stream of blood.
“I’m okay,” I tell her, but my voice is a rusty saw. She rushestoward me, her hands outstretched, and then I have nothing to say at all, leaning into her and feeling her gently press my scalp, my jaw, checking me for injury.
She studies the hole in my head with her brow furrowed, muttering, “You poor thing, you poor little thing,” over and over again.
I examine the slit in her cheek. He caught her on a downward stroke, but it looks as though she pulled away in time to stop it going too deep. It’s a laceration. Nasty, but it’ll heal. I can tell by the look on her face that I haven’t got quite so lucky.
“He’s put a hole in you,” she tells me slowly and with uncharacteristic patience. “Oh! I think I can see the bone. It’s making me feel funny.”
“Don’t look, then.” I smile, and the tears spill out of her eyes and I’m helpless to stop them. “I’ll tie something round it, like Rocky.”
“Rambo,” she corrects me, laughing. It feels so good to hear her laugh that I almost forget where we are, the brisk, chattering wind that gusts fitfully through the open door.
“He’s still alive.”
We both look up at Suzie. She has her fingers pressed to Andrew’s neck. When she stands, I’m amazed to notice that despite everything, she still looks immaculate, like she has just walked into a studio set.
She brushes her hair back from her face and turns to Maria. “That’s quite a swing you’ve got there.”
“It’s the pivot that makes it effective.” Maria beams, looking at me, and I realize she is repeating the same words I’d used. It makes me feel a little sick, thinking of the wet crunch as she’d hit him.
“Suzie, your arm—”
“It’s my wrist. I think I’ve cracked something, but I’ll live. Allthe same, we should get to high ground and call him an ambulance. They might be able to get the helicopter out for Andrew if—”
“Fuck him,” Cathy interrupts bluntly. “He imprisoned my sister and tried to kill her. Let him rot.”
Suzie looks like she might argue that, but already Cathy is turning away, putting her hands on mine. Her eyes are filled with tears.
“We’re going to get you home, okay? We’re going to make sure you get through this.”
“And Maria,” I tell her. She looks at me doubtfully, then to Maria, thin and pale, a wraith in a flannel shirt and saggy leggings, bouncing on the balls of her feet. Her eyes are bright and hectic in her gaunt face.
“We can have the police come back for her.”
“No. She leaves with us.”
“Hazel.” Cathy lowers her voice, holding my gaze. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
I look over to where Maria is standing, still clutching that pillowcase in one hand. As she sees me looking, she reaches inside it, producing a large rock. I know it right away. A chunk of granite as big as a fist, studded with quartz.My mother gave it to me. Said it had magical powers.
Slumped against the wall, Andrew stirs. His eyes flicker. There is a dent in his temple where that magic rock had struck him, deep enough to hold a glass of water. That funny feeling my sister described to me when she saw the white of bone? I get it now. Like everything has gone fuzzy on the edges. Thick, heavy-tongued. I watch with abject horror as his eyes open. His left iris starts to drift away, as if trying to look at that awful crater in his head perhaps, while the right remains fixed on me, the pupil fat and bloated.
“We need to go.”
“Can you walk? It’s a long way to the car, and it’s started snowing again.”
“I just need to get on my feet.” I have to tear my eyes away from Andrew and that dent in his skull, his hair matted with gore. Suzie helps me up and I test my weight carefully. I think the adrenaline is keeping me going, and that is good. I have to work with it.
“Maria, is it?” Cathy turns to the girl, speaking loudly and slowly, enunciating every word as if Maria is hard of hearing. “Have you got something warm you can wear, sweetie?”
I take another look at Maria. She is still standing with that rock in her hands, a big smile fixed to her face. There’s a prickly sensation in my lower back where my scar is, a deep, uncomfortable itch. I try to ignore it, but it burrows deeper.
“Upstairs,” I tell Suzie. “There’s a whole wardrobe of stuff in her room. Last door on the right. Grab something, anything. None of it fits.”
Suzie brushes past us, heading up the stairs in her neat little white trainers. Now I’m on my feet I feel better, able to think more clearly. I glance at Andrew. That slippery, off-kilter eye, the depression in his temple—it makes me feel like fainting.
He sees me looking. Gives me a dark, ugly smile. Blood seeps between his teeth.