Free The Book of Daniel by Mat Ridley Page B

too focussed on the cry that now emerged from the body lying on top of me, and on the sickening realisation that that cry was my mother’s. I remembered the last time I’d heard her cry like that, just weeks earlier, on the day that my father had left us. But this was far worse, and was accompanied by a desperate thrashing as she tried to regain her feet, oblivious in her panic that she had landed on her own son.
    She managed to stagger upright again just as her opponent strode into the kitchen. I learnt later that the fight had begun when Geraldine had burst into our house unannounced and started unleashing all the ‘advice’ she’d been building up over the last few weeks at my mother—a litany of accusations that encompassed everything from her failure as a good Christian wife to prevent her husband from corrupting a member of the clergy, to the evils of not attending church anymore. My mother, understandably, did not warm to her visitor, especially when her increasingly desperate requests for Geraldine to leave were repeatedly ignored. The last straw came when Geraldine grabbed my mother’s arm and tried to drag her down onto her knees to pray for forgiveness. At that point, my mother could no longer contain her revulsion and snapped, pushing Geraldine away hard enough to knock her to the ground and tear her dress. Instead of turning the other cheek, Geraldine decided that she wanted to claim an eye for an eye, and from then on, things escalated the same way they do in all holy wars. By the time my mother was flung into the kitchen that day, they had been trading blows for the better part of fifteen minutes.
    My mother was clearly exhausted, and the stream of blood running down her arm and dripping from the ends of her fingers cleared up the question of whose blood it was on the doorframe. For her part, with her wild hair and matching eyes, Geraldine’s appearance was exactly as I had always imagined Samson’s to be as he had battled against the Philistines; and I expect that wasn’t too far off from how she pictured herself right then, either. “Come on, you heathen,” she bellowed as she stormed into the kitchen, her fists up like a street brawler. “I’m not finished with you yet! I’ll beat the Devil out of you! I’ll…”
    She trailed off as the two of them suddenly noticed me lying on the floor amongst the broken glass. I could see my mother trying to make sense of my sudden appearance there; Geraldine was far quicker to respond, and started to inch her way slowly towards the back door. All her bluster had disappeared in an instant. She knew what was going to happen next, and was already hoping to get the fuck out of Dodge before it did. But then two things happened that ruined her chances of escape.
    The first was that my mother noticed the cut on the palm of my hand. For a moment, the look of confusion cleared from her eyes, replaced by the maternal concern I had seen there a hundred times before in response to other boyhood scrapes and scuffs.
    “Oh, Danny,” she said. She always called me that when I was ill or hurt. “Look at you! You’ve cut your hand. Here, let me—”
    Then the second thing happened that sealed Geraldine’s fate (and, for that matter, everyone else’s). As my mother’s agitation increased, so too did the pace of Geraldine’s retreat towards the back door, and, unfortunately for her, she accidentally kicked several shards of glass across the tiled floor as she moved.
    The sound reminded my dead consciousness, watching these events unfurling again, of the trick I had used to try to help Jo and me escape from Sam; but before the thought could take hold, my focus was shifted back to this earlier disaster, in another kitchen. The instant the glass had sounded, my mother’s head snapped up, focussing a hot, furious glare on Geraldine. With a roar, she suddenly transformed into a lioness seeking revenge for the injury that had been inflicted on her cub.
    “What have you