Her heart sank when she saw how busy the chip shop was.There must have been at least twenty people packed into the relatively narrowcustomer area. There was no external entry to her flat – she had to go throughto the back of the shop to a door marked “Private”, the very door that herenraged assailant had kicked in before removing Kay’s teeth.
Thankfully there was no sign of the owner, her hideous,obese and sluglike landlord, Mr McVie. His fish and chip empire stretched totwo shops in the town and three others between here and Oxford. Mercifully hemust be at one of the others tonight.
She had no desire to run into him. On top of her other woes,she was suffering serious financial problems, made worse by the extortionateamount of rent he charged her. She knew for a fact that there hadn’t been enoughmoney in her account this month to pay it and it had been due three days ago.
She entered the brightly lit shop, relieved to be out of thecold, and started to make her way through the groups of revellers who wereeagerly clamouring for fat-laden protein and carbohydrates to soak up thealcohol they had drunk.
From the front door she had to go all the way to the far endof the customer area, which took up the whole of the right-hand side of theshop. There were two doors at the end – the right-hand one of which led up toher flat.
The counter ran the whole length of the left-hand side ofthe shop. Kay herself felt hungry after her nightly skinful of booze, but thefood in the glass displays didn’t look particularly appetising. There were acouple of dried-up fish cakes that had probably been there for hours, a coupleof battered sausages, and a single crusty, old pie.
Behind the counter, two or three young men busied themselvesserving the drunken customers with their orders. Most were ordering kebabswhich were always popular at this time of night. One of the men was busyslicing meat off what Kay always thought looked like a slowly rotatinggiraffe’s neck. Another was taking a Hawaiian out of the pizza oven. It wasn’tjust a fish and chips shop. You could get almost every sort of fast food youcould ever want in McVie’s.
She had almost made it across to the back of the shop whenshe stumbled slightly, right in front of a group of rough-looking lads. Fearfulof falling, she grabbed one of them for support but, far from being helpful,the lads cheered at her clumsiness. There were five or six of them, all intheir mid-twenties. As she looked up at the face of the one she had grabbedhold of, she recognised the face. She had spoken to him earlier at the bar in TheRed Lion.
One of his mates, a tall lad with spiky, blond hair and anearring, laughed and said, “Hey, Dave, isn’t this that old slapper you weretrying to chat up in the pub earlier?”
Dave, a fit, muscular guy who looked as if he seriouslyworked out, looked embarrassed. “Er, no, I don’t think so…” he said.
His denial didn’t do a lot for Kay’s self-esteem.
“Don’t fancy yours much, Dave!” shouted another one of thegroup.
The others all chortled, as Kay fumbled in her bag for thekey to the newly installed Yale lock on the door. There was no way she wantedto get any food now; she just needed to get out of here. But the lads wereblocking her way.
“Do you mind?” protested Kay. “I’m trying to get to myflat.”
“So that’s what the fishy smell was in the pub earlier,”said the blond man. “Dave here said he thought it was your fanny.”
“Go on, Dave, give her one,” shouted another of the horriblemen. “Maybe you’ll get crabs – this is a fish and chips shop after all.”
“Why don’t you get her to give you a blowie, Dave?” shoutedout yet another. “She’ll probably be really good at it with no teeth to get inthe way. I can’t stand a woman that bites, can you?”
Laughter rang out all around, and not just from the men. Theother customers were joining in, too. Her humiliation was well and trulycomplete. Finally locating her key, she forced her way through them and withrelief managed to get the key to turn in the lock.
“The dentist isn’t that way, love,” said the blond man.“They’re two doors down.”
Everyone was laughing now, even the workers behind thecounter. Not a single person in the shop had stood up for her. They had beenlike a baying pack of wolves, picking on the weakest.
She opened the door and rapidly closed it behind her. Thenshe staggered up the stairs, desperate to put distance between her and thesound of the men’s laughter, still ringing in her ears. Entering the one-roombedsit, Kay sank down on her bed and wept. How could the men have been socruel? How could her life have gone so wrong? She had never felt so alone.
She reached for the half-empty vodka bottle by her bed andtook a swig. It was the only way she knew to blot out the misery.
Later, drugged by the massive amount of alcohol she hadconsumed, she slept. It was poor-quality sleep that would only leave herfeeling worse in the morning.
She may have felt alone, but she was not unobserved. As sheslept, there was a presence in the room, unseen and undetected by her. Aspirit, one that another of the town’s residents had once called an angel, hadbeen watching over her.
Kay needed help, and the following day her angel would bewaiting to start her on the road to recovery.
Chapter Two
December 2018
When she awoke she was cold from having kicked off thequilt. Her dreams had been vivid,
