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.
Belle didn’t answer. She was watching the man warily. He could be anyone. He could be a fucking serial killer, how the hell would she know? Maybe he got off on stitching girls’ faces up. Maybe he bloody enjoyed it.
‘I’ll get you some painkillers,’ he said, and was gone again, leaving the door ajar.
He was back within minutes, carrying a glass of water and a strip of paracetamols. He came over to the bed, sat on the side of it. ‘Here,’ he said, and pushed out two tablets from the silver strip. As Belle struggled to sit up, he put a hand behind her head and helped her.
‘Open,’ he said, and Belle obeyed, putting out her tongue. He put the tablets on it and handed her the glass of water. Belle took it unsteadily, washed the pills down. Lay back down, exhausted by this simple act.
‘You’re going to be fine,’ he said, and he stood up and left the room, closing the door quietly behind him.
Belle looked down at the dog. ‘Hey Trix,’ she said feebly.
Her voice sounded more like her own again. That was good. Half your face hanging off, you weren’t going to sound good, now were you? Trix’s tail thumped the cover once, hard. Then she put her head down on her paws, her dark liquid eyes on Belle’s face, with one ear erect and the other, which looked half-chewed, flopping over. A dog was staring at Belle, and she didn’t like it.
‘How do I look?’ said Belle. ‘Good, yeah? Miss Universe, what do you think?’
With sore eyes she looked around the room. There was a padded nursing chair between the two beds, and what looked like a dressing table – but the two struts at the back of it that had drop-down hinges fitted were intended for three mirrors. There were no mirrors hanging there. There was an old-fashioned silver vanity set on top of the dressing table, two brushes – but no hand mirror. Wasn’t there always a hand mirror with those things?
Had he taken them all away so that she couldn’t see herself in them?
Oh holy Christ, how bad is it?
But she already knew the answer to that. She just wasn’t allowing herself to take it in, not yet. She couldn’t.
Once again she raised a shaking hand to her left cheek. It took every ounce of courage to do it. Her fingers touched painful swollen flesh, and the hard raised nubs of the stitches. Flinching, she quickly put her hand back down.
Belle thought of the wreckage of her life. She thought of her mum, dragged from the gatehouse and . . . and what?
And Dad! Where the hell was he?
Belle started crying again. She cried until she had no more tears left. Then she fell asleep.