Flashback
I sat on the bottom step looking up at my parents, my face sore and aching. My right eye had a large bruise covering it, her bottom lip was split and the rest of my face was scratched. The rest of my body had suffered the same treatment. My crime had been to insult Anne Malkin to her face upon last visiting Malkin tower. Anne had immediately taken out her knife- always razor-sharp, always pristine- and given me a bad cut on my arm that would surely scar and my mother had dragged me home by my hair before beating me savagely. Now she and my father were going away for two nights, leaving six-year-old Alice home alone.
"We'll be locking the door behind us." My father warned just as he and my mother were about to leave. "And if you think the beating you had two days ago was bad, just wait and see what you get if you try to leave this house."
"There's soup on the stove, heat it up if you get hungry." My mother added. "Go to bed at eight and do all your other chores. Right, got all that? Good. We'll be back in three days."
I didn't reply, just glowered down at the floor. I didn't like being left alone overnight; in a place like Pendle, there was no telling what might happen.
With that, my parents left, locking the door behind them and I was all alone. It was mid-December and the entire cottage was cold and draughty. My mother hadn't left much soup- only about enough for three meals so I would have to be sparing with it although she would have loved to tip its entire warm contents down my to get some heat into my body.
At eight o'clock I took my blanket and pillow downstairs and set them next to the fireplace. I tried to build myself a decent fire to try to keep warm but I had only three handfuls of very small lumps of coal and a few fistfuls of kindling. Coal and firewood weren't needed in this house- my parents only rarely built the fire up- but on the nights when I was alone; I liked to indulge myself. Besides, I could always creep out of the house in the early hours of the morning to get more firewood.
I built the fire up as high as I could and then snuggled up close to the embers to try and drop off to sleep. The floor was cold and hard and outside I could hear a faint cackle somewhere in the distance.
"One day" I whispered to myself. "I'm going to run away from here. I'm going to live in a big house with posh furniture and blankets made from cotton and a nice, big fire." I told myself that I would be comfortable and safe and warm. That I'd have nice things and wear pretty dresses. That I'd be happy.