I was watching Unnatural Habits again the other day and being told her dad used to lock her in the cupboard struck with me and put a little seed of an idea in my head for a story about one such occasion.
So here you have it, my second fic. To be honest I am not entirely happy with it but I thought if I don't post it now I probably never would and it would just languish somewhere on my hard drive. So for better or worse here it is.
I would also like to thank all of the people who left reviews on my very first fic a few weeks ago. I can't tell you just how terrified I was of sharing it (and this one for that matter) and how much I appreciated your feedback. Thank you so much for your kind encouragement.
"My Father used to lock me in the cupboard to break my spirit"
She tried to make herself as comfortable as possible in the cramped space. She sat with her back against the hard wall, feeling the unyielding press of it on every one of her vertebra, and her feet pressed against the opposite wall. She was getting taller she noticed. There was a time when her feet didn't even reach the adjoining wall, now she had to fold herself up just to fit in. It was funny, she thought, most children had their childhood growth measured in inches along a wooden doorframe, marked lovingly in monthly intervals by adoring parents. She marked her own by the growing bend of her knees while locked in the cupboard. If she had the right tools she could have measured the angle of the triangular space between the ground and her knees. Pythagoras' Theorem; Miss Charlesworth had taught her that just the other day. She was a clever girl she knew that, not clever enough not to get caught though, she'd work on that.
She didn't know why she had been so unceremoniously thrown in here. She thought her actions earlier today to be perfectly reasonable and justified. If Benjamin Bryant was going to tug at Janey's pig tails then he was bloody well going to pay for it. The sooner he realised that you didn't mess with the Fisher sisters the better. She had done him a favour really. And she had been the one to get properly hurt anyway, Benjamin didn't have a mark on him, well, she hadn't drawn blood and that was almost the same thing. She was the one with the grazed knees after all. Granted that had been partially her fault too for not letting go of the boy as he tried to run from her assault before she'd even got a good slap in. She had grabbed onto the nearest thing she could grasp, which turned out to be the boys belt , and had been dragged along the ground on her knees a good twenty yards before his belt buckle snapped and Benjamin Bryant had involuntarily shown the world and its dog his tackle. Really, that had not been Phryne's intention, but she had to admit she had been pleased by the outcome. Benjamin had run from the estates shared yard with a trembling chin and his lily white behind blowing in the wind. Yes, Phryne thought, lesson learned.
'Here we are again' she thought as her eyes acclimatized to the cramped dark space around her. The sparse light from the adjoining room slipped under the door frame, the little light it provided would soon allow her to make out her surroundings well enough. Not that there was much to see in the tiny space anyway. Between the vulgar carvings she had crafted into the crudely plastered damp wall and the occasional visit from the odd cockroach, there was very little of interest to see. If her father ever found the carvings she had so painstakingly made and added to on her numerous confinements, she had a feeling she would be in for a much longer stint in the bloody, stinking, place but she couldn't bring herself to care. She'd gladly do the time if it meant pissing the old man off. She'd learnt all of the words from him anyway so who was he to be mad about it. He really was a bore when he was drunk.
Today though, her father had apparently felt sober enough to be standing unaided by the window. No sooner had she tasted sweet victory when her Fathers voice came booming across the yard at her to get her backside indoors. With a quick, reassuring wink and a cocky smile to a worried looking Janey, she nonchalantly made her way over to her father. When in striking distance she braced herself for the inevitable belting, thankfully although he was sober enough to be standing he had imbibed enough for him to strike out at the other Phryne Fisher in his line of vision and just managed to clip her across the head. He tugged her by the neck of her pinafore into the cupboard she was currently residing.
Phryne touched delicately at her injured knees as she sat on her already numbed backside to the cold concrete floor of the cupboard. She thought with satisfaction that there would be some pretty impressive scabs on her legs for the next couple of weeks at least. That would make the other kids think twice before starting anything. With war wounds like that, they would know that she would not be afraid of finishing whatever was started.
However, the discomfort and the cold brought to mind the injustice of it all, she kicked out at the bolted door in frustration, she didn't have to wait long for her Fathers answering call to 'pipe down' or she would be 'in there for a week'. 'That would be a record' she thought at the empty threat. The old bugger would be in a drunken sleep by nightfall and that is when Janey would slip past him and quietly let her out. Her mother, turning a blind eye, would allow it.
Until then though, she would have to entertain herself as she always did. She would imagine herself out of this stinking hole. This wasn't the life for her and she knew it, she didn't know how yet but one day she would escape all of this. Miss Charlesworth always said the world was her oyster and Phryne believed her. She would make sure that Janey and herself would be their own women one day, she could picture Janey as a genteel lady, she was always such a well behaved little girl and naturally more suited to being courteous and 'well bread' as her mother would say, in a way that Phryne just couldn't seem to master. She was a quiet caring soul and in anyone else she might have found this tediously dull but in Janey she found it endearing and it only made her love her more. 'Yes', she thought, 'we will see the world together she and I'. Phryne imagined climbing mountains in Africa, riding steam trains through Europe and sashaying around Paris in the finest silks. They would visit all the places she had been learning about in school, they would sail there in a real ship and leave the tin bathtub in the yard behind.
Phryne's stomach let out a loud growl and as was usually the case she could always rely on her stomach to bring her back from a reverie to her current reality. It served as a reminder though of the most important plan for the future. They would never be hungry. A determination gripped her, boiled cabbage be damned, she would only ever eat food she enjoyed in the future. It would not be a means to stave off hunger in the way that it was now, but a source of pleasure instead. She would have jam on her kitchen table for every breakfast and if she chose, lunch and dinner too. They would have biscuits and scones and picnic baskets overflowing with all of their favourite things yet to be discovered and it would start tomorrow.
Yes, she thought, their adventures would start tomorrow; the circus was coming to town after all and what better way to begin a life filled with adventure than at the circus.