I didn’t sleep well. The pie had left me with indigestion and the person in the room next to mine wouldn’t keep still. Then a hoon had taken to doing donuts at the crossroads. After he’d got bored, or run out of rubber on his tyres, every now and then a truck thundered through the town as though the speed-limit sign never existed. The vibration rattled the windows. I even heard a coach pull up at about four. To add to my woes, the bed base had a squeak. I imagined whoever was next door would have been able to hear me as well, so I lay still as a board, not wanting to give any indication of my presence.
I’m not sure I slept at all. In the darkness of the night, I pictured my cindered home, recalling the acrid stench of smouldering timbers, the birds dropping from the sky, the blood curdlin
