The iron was still warm in my hand when the feet hit the bottom step.
I could hear Doreen's slippers, and behind them somebody heavier.
Doreen: Marnie? What the bloody hell is going on down there?
Piper was still on the tiles behind me, both hands over her face, blood running through her fingers.
Piper: She hit me. She hit me with the fucking iron, Doreen. Look at my face.
Doreen looked at Piper, then at me, and her mouth went thin.
Doreen: You stupid little bitch. Do you know what you've done?
Her hand closed on my wrist, right on the old nail marks, and squeezed until my fingers went numb.
I could smell her breath, tea and fags, and I did not move.
Doreen: You've done it now. The Wards will have you for this. I'll hand you over myself.
She dragged me up the stairs by the wrist, and I let her, because that was what I always did.
Then halfway up, something in me just stopped.
I pulled my arm back. Hard.
Doreen: You little cow. You put a hand on me?
For one second she looked at me like she did not know me.
Good. I did not know me either.
My heart was going like a bird in a box, and under it, that same sick singing from the laundry.
I liked it again. God help me, I liked it.
The cash box was on the kitchen table with the lid half open, like she had been counting it before she came for me.
I took it. All of it. Her money, my wages, everything she said I owed her.
Doreen: Put that down. Put it down or I swear to God I'll call Ellis's uncle myself.
Marnie: Call them, then.
My voice came out strange and flat, like it belonged to someone else.
She reached for me, and I shoved her. Properly. Both hands.
Doreen: You're dead, you mad bitch. You hear me? You're dead.
I believed her. I always believed her.
I went out the back door with the cash box under my hoodie.
I did not run on the open road, because running looks like guilt.
But my legs wanted to, and the sea air went in my mouth like ice.
The night bus to Dunmore was sat at the stop with its lights on and the driver eating a sandwich.
I paid with Doreen's coins and they felt like they were burning my palm.
The seats smelled of wet dog, and I sat at the back like a criminal.
Pellon got smaller out of the glass. The sea wall, the chippy, the Gannet sign, all going down to nothing.
I put my hands under my legs so nobody would see them shaking.
They shook so hard my knees shook with them.
There was blood under my thumbnail, and a thin scratch of it dried down my sleeve.
Not mine.
I did that. I put an iron in a girl's face, and I took my aunt's money, and I ran.
I am not helpless. That was the thing I wanted more than anything.
So why does it feel like this?
The bus hummed and the dark went past and nobody looked at me.
But I kept checking that mirror, waiting for headlights to swing round and come after me.
How far do you have to run before you stop being the thing you just became?