Her foot lands on broken glass, and she yelps with pain. She staggers sideways and twists her ankle, lands heavily against the wall, cracks her head on black bricks. No, she thinks, no, no, no! She hears him turn into the alleyway, pushes herself upright and tries to hop-limp away from him. Oh, God, oh God. Why didn’t I check? I’ve got careless. I should have checked.
The glass is embedded in her sole. She tries to balance on the ball of the foot, but the ankle is weak and lets her down. She manages another four, five limping steps before he’s on her, catches her with a punch to the back of her skull. She goes face down among the weeds and the fag butts.
He’s on top of her before she hits the ground. Knees clamped either side of her hips, stale sweat rising from his leather coat. ‘Fucking little —’ he pants. ‘You fucking little…’
He punches her again and snatches his wallet back. Clamps her wrists together with his spare hand as he tucks it into his back pocket. Then he flips her over beneath him and sits on her pubic bone, grinds her buttocks into the grit. He’s huge. She’d thought it would be an advantage, that he’d be slow on his feet, but he’s clearly fit beneath his bulk, like a rugby player. Oh, God, I’m in trouble now. I’m in so much trouble.
He slaps her, open hand and open arm, once, twice across her face. Rips the wig from her head, hairclips tearing through the hair beneath, and slings it into a drain three feet away. Then he clamps her jaw between meaty fingers, squeezes her lips together like a tweety-bird and spits, full on, into her face. ‘Don’t you move. Don’t you fucking move, you little shit. Don’t fucking move or I’ll fucking do you.’
She lies still, pupils huge in the dark, and looks him in the face. A bald-man’s crop, rolls of fat on the back of his neck like a Charolais bull, thick two-inch sideburns. Flecks of spittle at the corners of the mouth. Three-day stubble that smells of fried onions and stale beer. Eyes made of pure contempt. He can do whatever he wants, she thinks. I’d better let him before he gets angry enough to kill me.
When he’s done, he gives her a couple of kicks in the stomach for good measure, throws her sideways against the wall like a piece of litter and swaggers off towards the light, buttoning his trousers. Cher curls up, pulls her knees to her chest and gingerly closes her bruised thighs. Her knees and ankle and foot throb; pulse with the beating of her heart. Her head is splitting where he punched her, her lip swelling and one eye closing. She can feel the bruises coming through on her neck; ten spreading marks of squeezing fingertips.
Cher drops her head on to her hand, and falls into the rising dark…
When she wakes, the streets are silent. No sounds from the station, no swish of distant traffic on the Embankment. But the sky is lighter, and somewhere, on a rooftop, a nightingale is greeting the dawn.
There’s been a dew as she slept, and her clothes and hair are damp. Slowly, gingerly, she unfurls herself and sits upright. It hurts. There’s not a place that doesn’t hurt – sharp pains and scarlet throbbing, and a screech of white light in her head. Dully, she pulls her foot up on to her lap, her swollen privates strangely soothed by the morning air, and examines the underside. The glass is buried deep in her heel, the thick brown glass they use for beer bottles, a shred of a Watneys label still attached. She takes a grip with trembling fingers, and pulls. Lets out a gasp of pain as it comes loose and slides out. Jesus, she thinks, examining it, it’s huge. It must have gone right through to the bone.
She wants to sleep again, but knows she mustn’t. She needs to get home, hide away, clean up, get over it. Trauma is a luxury for other people. To all intents and purposes, Cher does not exist. She knows this. It’s her choice. It’s not for ever. A time will come when she can come full out into the world, but that time’s not now. She groans as she pushes herself up the wall, limps over to her flip-flops and slips them on. The pain of standing on her bad ankle, on the ball of her foot to avoid dirtying her gaping wound any further than it’s already dirty, makes her hiss through her teeth, but she manages it, and at least now she won’t fall prey to whatever else is left of the beer bottle. She leans one hand on the wall and looks down at her wig. It lies, half-in, half-out of the drain, matted and ratty, the ends black with dirty water. Not worth the effort of bending to fetch it. She’s going to need all the strength she has just to get home.
It takes her twenty minutes to hobble back to her bag, holding on to walls and lamp-posts, stopping every now and then to doze on her feet, like a horse. When she gets there, she is tempted to curl up again behind the gate, where no one will find her, and sleep until the day is full. She lowers herself on to the ground and pinches herself, hard, on the inside of her elbow. You can’t sleep here, she tells herself. If he’s really hurt you, if you really need help, no one will find you. Not till you start to stink. She peels off her grimy, bloodied whore clothes and drops them on to the ground. She won’t be using them again. She doubts she’d want to, but anyway, they’re all spoiled.