Free The Apple by Michel Faber

But at that instant, the door of the sordid house in front of which they stood flew open, and there, in its dark, dismal, worm-eaten doorway, tainted by unwholesome shadows, stood Violet, aghast. Aghast for a moment only! – before she imposed upon her countenance a look of delighted surprise .
    ‘Beloved!’ she cried. ‘You never told me you were in the habit of performing charitable works! And what an extraordinary coincidence that our ministering purposes should cross in this most pitiful of places! I have just finished delivering to the wretched folk here a parcel of clean clothing, some soap and a pamphlet of Bible verses .
    What the mortified Fred said in response to this unlikely declaration, Sugar doesn’t wait to find out. In a blind fury, she rips Purefoy’s Home & Family Companion into shreds, flinging it piecemeal all over her bedroom.
    Once again, she’s out of breath, panting like a dog. Once again, her heart is beating far too loud against her rib-cage. Once again, damn it, she has allowed herself to lose her grip. She’ll never get out of Silver Street if she carries on like this. Only the steeliest resolve and the chilliest heart will rescue her from a life of subjection. A moment will come, on a day unheralded by any forewarning, when she will be presented with an opportunity to escape her fate, and she must be ready for that moment. A powerful man will stray into her life, with the intention of using her once and then disappearing back to his exalted sphere. But in the heat of the moment, he will let slip a confession, or mention a name he’d intended to keep secret, or perhaps he will simply get a look in his eye that she can match with her own, and there he’ll be: caught. It could happen in any of a hundred ways, ways she can’t even imagine on this humdrum morning in her hatefully familiar room with its faded wallpaper and rotten skirting-boards and rumpled old bedclothes. The only certain thing is that this golden opportunity will come once only, and her mind will need to be unclouded, her emotions strapped down.
    She notices a pain in her right fist. Uncurling her fingers, she winces as a hair-thin slit opens up in the tender flesh between her palm and her middle finger. A paper cut. She has injured herself on Purefoy’s Home & Family Companion . Another lesson in restraint.
    Sugar removes her feet from the tub and dries them on the hem of her petticoats. The skin on her soles has gone pale and wrinkled; tiny pellets of flesh rub off. The scratch on her heel is bloodless now. It has stopped hurting, although the paper cut on her hand is exquisitely bothersome.
    It’s high time she got properly dressed and groomed. She walks over to the window, combing her hair. She looks down into the mews, at the cobbles. There’s nobody there now. But, balanced on her windowsill, ready, is the apple, shiny and firm. Sugar snatched it up from the ground as she stumbled back
    to the house, loath to let it be scavenged by dogs, and now here it sits, scarcely bruised. Maybe the evangelist will return this afternoon, or tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow; the apple will keep for a while. And, if the evangelist should return, Sugar will take the apple in hand, aim with the utmost care, and throw – straight and true.

Medicine
     
    W illiam Rackham sits at his desk and examines the label of the medicine he is about to take. He hopes there’s no morphine or cocaine in these little yellow pills, because the swig of Rennick’s Restorative Syrup he swallowed just an hour ago was generously laced with narcotics, and he still feels rather peculiar. Each passing year makes him less tolerant of intoxicants; he would gladly do without them altogether, were he not so prone to all sorts of complaints.
    ‘ Persons of A FULL HABIT, who are subject to Headache, Depression of Spirits, Dullness of Sight, Nervous Affections, Singing in the Ears, Spasms, and all Disorders of the Stomach and Bowels, should never be without