Masters And Lovers 1-4 novel Chapter 78

*****

They’re coming….

How many has he got out there…?

She shifts, opens the door a crack, peers out. She can see…. five…. No, six…. Drinking, eating curry and pizza, laughing and farting and cracking crude jokes she doesn’t understand but knows she doesn’t want to hear….

“There she is!” A finger points to her.

“I’m…. I’m just going to the bathroom.”

“You do that, then come in here.” Adam looks at her, the threat in his eye.

She slips around the back of the couch, staying as far away from them all as possible, opens the bathroom door then locks it behind her. The lock is flimsy a tiny thing perhaps two inches long in a cheap gilded alloy. The door even flimsier, a cardboard honeycomb type that wouldn’t stand a minute against a determined man.

She opens the window, looking down at the two-storey drop. There’s a fine brick outcrop just below her, barely a ledge. Just a toehold.

She looks left and right. And up.

Left: nothing but thirty feet of brick wall.

Right: a window, a few feet away, open by the barest of cracks.

Above: a gutter. Cracked and splinter plastic, leaking green down the brickwork.

There’s a bang on the door.

“You coming out or what?”

“I’ll just be a minute. I’m washing my face.” She turns the tap in the basin, makes a splashing noise.

The foul trainers are still there. Abandoning the ridiculous high heels, she slips her feet inside, looping the laces around her feet to compensate for the shoes being several sizes too large. Then, climbing up onto the toilet seat, she opens the window wide, twists and turns and, clinging to the frame, backs out, reaching down with her toes for that inch of brick jutting out.

Left leg extended, she finds it, digging in with the toe of her purloined trainer. Her body askew, the right leg at an angle she increases her grip on the window frame, her fingertips digging into rotten timber that crumbles under the pressure.

There’s a hammering in her chest and at her temples, but again she reaches, and the right foot finds a home on the brick.

There’s more banging on the door. Louder this time. Harder. And the door rattles under it. “You done in there?” Adam’s voice again. “Come on. Time’s up.”

Leaning back through the window, she shouts. “Just coming.” And she pulls back out again, her body swaying back.

Suspended by finger-tips and toe-tips, she eyes the window a few feet along and a thousand miles away. The gutter is just above her, but to reach it, she must let go with at least one hand.

The door bangs again. “You! Out! Now! Or I’m coming in.”

The bang echoes under her ribs and pulses through her veins, pounding inside her skull and battering against her fingertips. Weeping and trembling she releases her right hand, revolves on the left, screaming as she swings over empty space. But only for a moment as with a desperate throw of her free arm, she snatches at the guttering….

…. and holds….

The ancient plastic gives under her weight, spilling chill and stinking water over her. She doesn’t care. Her hold is firm. Gripping tight, she lets go of the window frame with her left hand, this time stable as her weight balances between hand and toe tips. Stretching again she has a firm grasp on the gutter with both hands and carefully, can inch her way along to the sanctuary of that next open pane.

As she reaches it, nudging it wide with a toe as she clings with both hands, she hears a crash from the bathroom.

“Fuck!” Adam’s voice again.

She doesn’t care. She slips in, dropping down to a shabby carpet in an ill-lit hallway and hearing chaos break out behind the nearby doorway, she sheds the absurd shoes and she runs….

*****

She walks into the bus station, limping slightly in trainers made for someone built to a different scale altogether.

Fingering the few coins in the pocket of her creased and spoiled jacket, she looks up at the destinations.

She stops by one, her face screwing up.

Home….

Warm. Safe. Comfortable

She takes a step or two towards the bus.

Home?

?

?

Butterflies....

Lifting her chin, she walks on.

City Service….

Head held high, she steps aboard.

*****