Obviously I did not expect her to be happy that her mum was scattered all over the carpet like a carton of Shake-n-Vac but I did expect her to listen to me while I tried to explain what had happened. I told her I’d had no choice but to fend off my attacker with the only object to hand, which just happened to be the urn, but she treated me as if I had somehow contrived this whole scene deliberately. She regarded Finney and Sarah as if they were a couple of teenage accomplices who had wrecked her parents’ house during an illicit party while they were away on holiday. ‘I realise you weren’t there Laura,’ I said in what I thought was my most reasonable tone, considering my head hurt like a bastard and my throat had almost been crushed, ‘but it’s not as if I had a choice of weapons.’ ‘That’s it,’ she half screamed, half sobbed at me, ‘make a bloody joke out of it!’ ‘I wasn’t,’ I said, ‘he almost fucking killed me.’ And even completing that small sentence was a supreme effort.
