Page 84 of No Safe Place

Sunday | Afternoon

Andy

It didn’t come as a surprise.

Andy was always listening, and no amount of therapy or CBT could stop him. And as quiet as they thought they had been, they weren’t quiet enough. The soft tread of boots on the stairs, the squeak of the banister taking someone’s weight.

It was a relief.

His whole arm was on fire, radiating out from the wound on his forearm, up to his shoulder blades. The paracetamol and antiseptic weren’t cutting it.

Andy slipped his noise-cancelling headphones on and lowered himself to the ground. The pain of putting his injured arm above his head made him feel sick, but it was the only way he could think to protect himself.

Even with the headphones on, the sound still reached him. The door smashing in and the shouting, all faint and muffled and far away, until someone ripped the headphones off, and he could hear the roar of it all.

Metal bit into his wrist and Andy was dragged upwards. He couldn’t see who was behind him and the pressure of the noise in the room – shouting stamping doors banging – meant he probably couldn’t have processed it anyway.

He twisted, trying to ask someone to pick up his neatly packed rucksack, but he was shoved forward again, and this time there was a hand on his bad arm. Andy screamed in pain, and it was a strange noise, one he’d never made before.

The yelling intensified, and whether Andy planned to resist arrest or not, within seconds he was being slammed into the wall next to the door, his face pressed hard into the embossed, flowery wallpaper.

Andy didn’t know how many hands were on him.

His shoulders, his head – pushed into the wall with a force he thought he probably deserved, although he couldn’t say why.

He couldn’t understand the words, the sounds the voices were making – but their tone was angry and urgent, buzzing in his ears after they’d finished speaking.

Hot tears stung his eyes, and he closed them.

And it was David’s voice he heard, in his head, telling him not to panic.