Making Marion by Beth Moran

days she had not left the bedroom except to go to the toilet. She hadn’t eaten the sandwich I made for her, or the crisps, or the biscuits. She hadn’t drunk anything. The bedroom smelled. Different to when my daddy was in it. She lay on the bed and stared at the ceiling. I had been eating cereal and bread with ham and salad cream, but Ma hadn’t been shopping properly for weeks and now there was nearly nothing left. The phone rang four times but I daren’t answer it. I wanted to tell somebody, so badly, that my mother wouldn’t get up and we had no food left and we needed a new card for the electricity box. But she was lying in bed and wouldn’t move and there couldn’t be many ticks left. I thought she was nearly dead. I stuffed my pillow into my mouth to keep the sobs from getting out, but hot tears squeezed from my eyes, and my throat ached and ached with the pressure.
    I didn’t know what to do. It was four weeks until school started again. Maybe I would be dead by then too.
    I wanted my daddy.

    I was still trembling when I ducked back under the cover of the forest. It was late afternoon, still warm, only the heat felt oppressive now, its caress no longer comforting, but claustrophobic. The quietness was foreboding, the shadows ominous. I battled the urge to keep looking behind me, convinced I would see some creeping enemy in pursuit. Every rustle sent a jolt through my tight nerves, causing the bike to veer off to the side until I controlled myself enough to pull it back onto the track. I muttered as I rode, berating myself for picking up the breadcrumbs of my neuroses as easily as I had scattered them aside that morning.
    It didn’t help that I felt tired, and my backside was sorer than I could have believed. It wasn’t as if I didn’t have ample padding. How do professional cyclists manage days in the saddle? Do cycling shorts have special sewn-in cushions? I picked up speed, grimly aware that by the end of this journey I might indeed be suffering from women’s issues , when a streak of brown shot out of the trees to my right and rocketed in front of me. I panicked, weaving from side to side while the brown something flashed in and out of my peripheral vision. Then a fallen log blocked the path ahead; I careened off the track and into the brush, crashing through ferns and bouncing over the uneven surface. The wood sloped sharply downwards, and I began to speed up. My feet left the pedals, and I totally lost control. Even worse, the brown blur was still running alongside me, dashing toward Pettigrew’s wheels before veering away again.
    I yanked on the brakes. Nothing happened. I really was in trouble now. Up ahead I could see a brook, racing toward me at a frightening rate. I was going to end up very wet if I couldn’t pull this together. What would a rider on a runaway horse do in this situation?
    I screwed my eyes shut, and screamed. Just at that moment, Pettigrew hit a tree stump. I flew over the handlebars and soared through the air, crashing into the stream, sending shockwavesjuddering up my outstretched arms. Well, my head and torso were in the stream. My legs landed in a pool of stagnant swamp mud.
    I lay there, my body submerged, head tilted up so I could breathe. Every movement caused my legs to squelch a bit further into the sludge, and it was too much of an effort to even think about pulling myself up. Perhaps I could sleep here. It was cooler than the caravan, and nice and quiet. I closed my eyes and tried to pretend I was somewhere else for a minute.
    But while I was still nowhere near finished my imaginary walk up Mount Fuji, a pair of rough hands yanked me out of the mud and plonked me on my feet.
    A man, a few years older than me, stood there shaking his head in disbelief. He was carrying a small brown dog, a labrador puppy. Was it really that tiny? It had seemed a lot bigger when it was leaping up at me at a hundred miles per hour. The dog lay