Lara stood in front of the bathroom mirror, pills in her shaking hand. She stared at the reflection, barely recognising herself. Her swollen eyes, her tangled hair, her hollowed cheeks. Days of crying—rivulets of despair changing the landscape of her face.
There were other marks too. Three fingers of bruises on each of her upper arms from his tight grip when he’d tried to shake sense into her. A patch of hair missing from above the left temple where it had been ripped out by his exasperated clenched fist.
She hiccupped a sob. She felt like crying again but no tears came. There were simply no more tears left. She was empty.
Who was this person in the mirror?
She lifted the handful of pills to her mouth and forced them in, some spilling into the sink with tiny rattling noises. The others clung to her lips and tongue. She raised the glass to flush the pills down.
But she couldn’t swallow.
She gagged. Dropped the glass into the sink where it cracked in two. Tried to spit out the tablets. But they were sticking. Panicking, she cupped her hands and splashed in water, washing the last of them out into the sink.
Her legs shaking now, she gripped the sides of the sink and stared at herself again, gazing right into her own eyes.
You can do this.
A voice. Her own?
You can do this, Sprout.
Sunny!
Lara almost smiled as her big sister’s voice rose up from somewhere in her memories, floating through time to right now, right when she needed to hear it. It was exactly what she needed.
She didn’t want to die.
But she knew one thing for sure: Dave wanted her to die and to take the child with her, the child that so disgusted him. If she didn’t take care of it herself, then he would find a way to make it happen.
She had to escape, right now.