A voice like gravel, tight with suppressed rage, said “Get up, slut.”

 

A gentleman to the end, he helped her to roll over by planting his heel solidly on her hip and pushing.

 

“Where you been?”  His voice was also thick with alcohol, slurring and barely understandable.

 

“I’m sorry Anth, I had to go.”

 

“The only place you gotta go is where I tell you.  Did I tell you to go out?”

 

“No Anth.”

 

“Then where’d you go to, whore.”

 

The blow landed at the side of her head and dazed her.  She sat there, jaw slack.

 

“Waste of time talking to you, stupid bitch.  Get off your fat lazy arse and get me some food.  I haven’t eaten since lunch, thanks to you.”

 

He yanked her to her feet and launched her towards the door.

 

“Then, when I’ve had something to eat, we can play” he shouted after her, leering.  She shuddered, knowing that when Anth wanted to play, the outcome was never good for her.

 

She walked stiffly down the hallway towards the kitchen.  Her ribs hurt as she breathed, and when she held them, sharp pains stabbed into her side. 

 

In the kitchen, she placed the chip-pan on the hot plate and went in search of frozen chips, almost falling into the small freezer when she bent over it, and the pain shot waves of nausea through her stomach.

 

Anth rolled into the kitchen, swollen with drink and anger.  One day, she thought maliciously, One day, you’ll go into a rage and burst a blood vessel.  Don’t expect any help if you do.

 

“So?” 

 

“So what?”

 

“Where have you been?”  He loomed over her, gently stroking her hair.  She daren’t flinch away, even though that was what she most wanted to do right then.

 

“I’ve been to the hospital”

 

“Liar”

 

“I have.  Uncle Tom’s ill.  He doesn’t have long to live.”

 

“Lying bitch” he spat.  “You’ve been with a man.  Frank saw you go out.  You’ve been with a man, whore.”

 

“I haven’t!  Please listen.  That was the reverend Rosewood.  He came to take me to Birmingham – that’s where Uncle Tom is, you see.”

 

Anth felt the thrill prickling up his spine.  The game was afoot and waiting to be stalked.  This was the best part of the game.  This was the part that made him feel huge and powerful.

Despite the drink roaring through his veins, blurring his vision and making him stagger, he was still enjoying this.  Trouble was that combined with his naturally jealous nature, by now he was really believing his jibe about her being seen with a man, and was working himself up into a genuine rage.

 

“Lying Bitch.  You’ve been on the game, haven’t you?  Was he any good?  Come on now, what’s it like being laid by a preacher?  Was he as good as me?”

 

“Anth, will you listen to me please?”  Terrified, she shrank into the corner, trying to make herself as small a target as possible.  Her ribs ached with every breath she took.  “Please listen.  Uncle Tom’s dying.  He wanted to see me before he died.”

 

The fat was hot now, it was making happy little chuckling noises in the pan.  Anth, however, was also making happy little chuckling noises as he moved across the kitchen towards her.

 

“Why?  If this is another lie, you know what will happen, don’t you?”

 

“I know, but it’s true.”

 

Anth’s curiosity overcame his anger.

 

“Old Tom?  What’s the old fart want YOU for?”

 

He wavered unsteadily as he tried, with the great solemnity of the very drunk, to stop the kitchen from revolving around him.

 

“He is…..”  Beryl felt sick.  As well as the pain in her side, she knew that if she told him what her uncle had wanted her for, he would take the gift from her by force.

 

“He what?”  His voice returned to the tone of gravel, tight and dangerous.  She would have to tell him.  It was all hopeless.  Far from bringing her her hearts desire, it would end in sorrow, with Anth taking it from her, and the nightmare never ending.

 

“He wanted to give me something”  she said, her tone low and resigned.

 

“What?”

 

“It was a stone, a good luck piece.”

 

“You’re lying to me, you F***ing cow.  You know what happens when you lie to me.”

 

“No, I’m not, Anth, it was an Emerald”

 

He stood there, looking at her, swaying unsteadily, and gawping like a goldfish.

 

“Where is it?  Show it to me!”

 

“Please? Don’t take it off me?”  She knew as soon as she said this that he would do it anyway – just to hurt her.

 

“Where is it, bitch?”

 

“Anth, no, not now, when you’ve had something to eat, please?”

 

"Show me the damned stone."

 

“Anth, the chipfat……….”  She was more afraid of the pan catching fire at this moment, than anything else.  Anth ignored her, he smelled fun – and by now was convinced that she had been turning tricks with the preacher and was withholding money from him.

 

He lunged for her, grabbed the front of her dressing gown and hauled her to her feet.  The effort almost pulled him off HIS feet, he was so drunk.  The dressing gown twisted open and the velvet bag slipped out.

 

Reaching for it, he over balanced and struck his head on a cupboard.  She took advantage of his temporary distraction to bolt down the kitchen and into the bedroom.  Once there, she pushed the bed in front of the door and then sat behind it to add her weight to the blockade.

 

Back in the kitchen, Anth shook his head to clear the fuzz from it, then staggered down the hall to the bedroom, where he tried the door.  Finding it blocked solid, he rattled the handle and mouthed obscenities at her.  When this didn’t work, he wove his way back down the hallway and took a run at the door.

 

He bounced off it and fell to the ground.

 

With a bellow like an enraged bull, he took another run at it.

 

The bed nudged Beryl in the ribs, grinding them together and driving her pain through the roof.

 

Again, Anth hit the door with an enormous force, making it shake in the frame and bouncing the hinges loose.

 

With a triumphant roar, he took another run at it, tripped over his own feet and smacked up against the door head first – and lay still.

When it went silent outside the door, Beryl sat quiet waiting for the assault to continue.  As time passed and nothing happened, she started to think that perhaps the drink had gotten the better of him and he had gone to sleep.

 

She got to her feet and tried to move the bed, but every attempt to move sent waves of pain through her back and chest, and she was having trouble getting enough breath into her lungs.  Finally, she just lay on the bed and drifted  into unconsciousness.

 

Back in the kitchen, heat was building up in the chip pan and before long, smoke started rising from the surface.  Then with a “Whoooomph” it caught fire. 

 

Burning fat flowed out of the pan and across the worktops, finding more things to consume.  Soon the kitchen was full of flame and fury and tendrils of thick, black oily smoke were beginning to explore the hallway, idly billowing outwards across the ceiling, slowly filling the hallway. 

 

Anth’s unconscious body gently accepted the questing smokes, drawing them deeply into his lungs where they silently and efficiently made sure that he never woke again.

 

She woke up again shortly afterwards, to find that thin tendrils of oily smoke were filtering under the door and sliding across the floor.

Like a slither of snakes winding and knotting, panic moved within her, robbing her of volition.  What should she do?  Was this a trick to flush her out?  Was Anth waiting outside for her?  But what if it was a real fire?  Shouldn’t she get out?  But Anth could still be waiting for her, even if it was a real fire!

 

Trapped in this quandary, she did not at first hear the fire engine sirens coming closer through the darkness.  When she did hear them, she knew with a sick feeling that the fire was real and that Anth had bailed and left her to die.

 

She listened in fearful silence as the sirens arranged themselves around the parking lot outside the flats and shouts and bangs echoed below the window.

 

The muffled sound of running footsteps along the balcony was followed by a fusillade of blows against the door.  Muttered voices in the hallway gave instructions and exchanged information, all of which may just as well have been in a foreigh language as far as Beryl was concerned.

 

Relief flooded through her, washing the panic away.

 

Climbing to her feet, she staggered across to the window and started screaming through it.