Free First Aid by Janet Davey

said, of course she felt sick, and told her to go away. Jo had gone to bed, leaving her there. She hadn’t managed to get to sleep though, even after the cistern stopped heaving and Ella’s bedroom door had clicked shut. Felpo knew Jo was awake and had stayed awake too. He had put his arms round her. There had been no need to say anything.
    She turned on her side – the side which wasn’t sore – trying to find a position she might rest in. It felt strange to be sober. She was used to sharing a bottle of wine with Felpo every evening. They had got into the habit of it. She saw the ludicrous pile of luggage in the middle of the floor and closed her eyes. She could still feel the tightness in her skin, though the sensation was lessening and the sharp pain had gone. She resisted touching the wound – not because she’d been told only to touch her face with her elbow but because she didn’t want it to be true. She finally slept. Her dreams were old stock. He was present in the last of them. The same as he always was. Bare feet, old jeans, strong hands, old T-shirt, the dark clumps of hair which would never lie down on his head. He touched her – fleetingly – then the dream moved on. They had nowhere to go and were looking for a place to be alone. Searching room after room in a strange house where all the rooms interconnected. A sick feeling came over her as she surfaced from the dream. Then she slipped out of consciousness again, as into an un-named lake.

Saturday
1
    WITHOUT A BED to disentangle herself from, Ella came clean out of sleep before the alarm went off, cold and conscious of the floorboards. She checked the time. Five thirty. The moments that usually piled themselves up like bedclothes fell away. She switched off the clock. Her shoes, bag and keys were arranged beside her at eye level. She got up, put the shoes on and kicked the cushion to one side. Then, having picked up the bag and the keys, she opened the door of the shop, locked it behind her and was immediately out in the still air and grey light. The parked cars had a film of dew on them and the sky was hazy, though it wouldn’t stay pale. Within an hour it would be blue and the sun would blaze down. She walked down the street to the sea front, moving quickly because she felt cold on the inner side of her skin from waking too early. When she got to the promenade everything was shut. The stalls and the shops were dead. The kiosks, which sold ice cream and cold drinks, looked like crates that were about to be hoisted up on to a container boat and taken across the Channel. The flowers in the middle of the mini roundabout were closed up, showing the dull side of their petals.
    Then the pace changed. She had too much time. She waited for the first café to open so that she could get a cup of tea and a packet of crisps, waited for the woman to arrive by car and unlock the municipal toilets, waited for the bus to take her to Dover. She sensed, for the first time, that the beginning of the day was precarious. The woman with the key might roll over and fall asleep again.
    She got off the bus and walked up the steep road that climbed out of Dover towards the castle. The houses rose in irregular steps to accommodate the hill, and the cars were forced into low gear. Peter and Tara lived near the top.
    Amber, the previous owner of the house, had been a bed and breakfast landlady with exuberant taste. She had dressed up the porch with climbing greenery and tucked coloured lanterns and wind chimes into the leaves. Peter and Tara had borrowed a ladder and taken the decorations down, but the vegetable life remained lush and spiralled round the spaces where they had once fitted, a reminder of more festive times. Amber’s personality had gradually been wiped out. The silver paint on the front door, the stripes on the barley-sugar banisters, the bubbling jet in the back garden – they had all had to go. Ella had told her mother