Chapter Seventeen

Enna drifted in and out of waking many times before a distant explosion forced her back to consciousness. Opening her eyes she looked up at roof beams and smelt animals and dank straw and guessed she was in the upper level of the old barn. She was alive and tried to feel something about that but couldn’t. She closed her eyes again but darkness only focused the savage pain across her breast and between her legs. She did not need to check to know what was wrong because she had a very clear memory of what had happened to her, and how.

But the pain was inside too, a deep pain that moved like a stalking creature waiting to spring and feeling it there she was afraid, as afraid as she had ever been in her life.

The sound of gunfire woke her again. It was closer this time. She raised her head and looked down at herself without recognition. A man had carried her up here and covered her with this sheepskin jacket. She’d recognised him; but now, trying to picture his face, everything was blank and empty. She remembers that he’d cried a lot and asked her to forgive him, but she didn’t know what for. It wasn’t him who’d hurt her, she felt sure of that.

He’d left a woollen cap and a bottle of water beside her. Inside the cap are things she did recognise; some sterile wipes, painkilling drugs, a couple of what might be antibiotics. She swallowed the painkillers, then washed away the blood and dirt crusting her hands. Steadily, she started to clean herself, not hesitating at the damaged breast where fluid oozed from a ragged wound, teeth marks visible in the flesh.

Distant screams filtered through the rough wooden slats of the barn and with it the smell of burning fuel. Pale skin emerged from the dark red-brown stains as she wiped. Between her thighs fingers met gouged flesh and she cried out, tears running involuntarily down her face as she continued wiping, grinding her teeth.

But she was losing the real battle and she knew it. Her efforts were all on the outside while the small creature inside her was loosening its hold, slipping out of existence.