A punch to the back of the head. Effective. Dulling. My face smacked against the chipped linoleum. My brain told me to sleep. Concussion slipping over me like a hood. A voice pushed through – my own voice, the words I’d spoken to hundreds of kids who’d fallen out of trees or down cliffs, had been pulled from crushed vehicles, were sinking into fever. Stay awake. Stay with me. Listen to the sound of my voice. He stood above me, one foot on either side of my ribs. In a single, surging move, giving it everything I had, I sprang upwards, toppled him into the wall and was immediately wrapped in his embrace. We wrestled in the kitchen, clawing, snarling. I heard Hugh Jackman’s ice cream container hit the floor along with a set of knives, a coffee mug, papers. I palmed at my attacker’s face, used the momentum to shift around him, felt the drywall crunch as he smashed me into an embrace again.
‘Get off me! Get the fuck off me!’
The howling, snapping words were unrecognisable, even as they flew from my lips. A dog that never barks, never growls, suddenly backed into a corner. We tumbled into the counter. I grabbed what came under my hand, a jar of sugar I kept for guests’ coffee, and smashed it against the top of his head.
It was enough. He slumped sideways in the dark. I danced past him, sprinted across the living room and threw myself at the door, unlocking it with slippery, shaking hands.
I ran out into the night and didn’t look back.