Sian
She couldn’t sleep. She’d dropped off for maybe an hour or two after the usual shouting and screaming and door slamming had blown itself out.
But in truth she hadn’t really slept properly, deeply, in months—it was hard when she was always listening for Colin’s heavy tread as he crossed the landing, the squeak of her door swinging open, his rough hands reaching for her in the darkness.
It was the reason she’d started to go to bed fully clothed, to make it just that little bit more difficult for him at one or two or three o’clock in the morning when he crept out of the main bedroom and came looking for her instead, the air around him thick with the cloying stink of rum and sweat and expectation.
Today, there was another reason for sleeping in her clothes.
Today was going to be different: the first good day in a long time.
It was too early for the buses to run, and besides, the little spare money she had in the pocket of her jeans was better spent on a bacon cob at the station in town.
She would buy it from the kiosk and eat it when the coach left, when she was on her way.
There wasn’t much traffic around, but she crossed to the other side and stuck her thumb out anyway at the first sound of an approaching car.
It passed her without slowing, headlights blazing on full beam.
A second car droned by a minute later, then a speeding lorry that passed so close she was buffeted by a backwash of diesel-tainted pre-dawn air.
She pulled the scarf a little closer around her neck and picked up her pace.
Sooner or later, someone would stop; some city-bound driver would pull over and give her a lift.
She stuck out her thumb again as more headlights approached.
Sure enough, this car began to slow as it passed her, engine tone shifting down through the gears, its indicator blazing bright amber in the darkness. The car—something dark and nondescript with a smiley face sticker in the back window—pulled to a stop ten meters in front of her.
Sian smiled as she walked quickly toward it.
Today was going to be a good day after all.