1. What Happened Last Night?

The church bells are going non-stop, which means somebody is getting married. Sally groans and covers her head with the pillow, but if anything that just makes her feel worse. She doesn't know how long the bells have been ringing for, or even how long she's been awake. No, not awake. Conscious. Those selfish bastards and their wedding bells, she thinks as quietly as she can, don't they know that Sunday is the day of rest? Wait a minute... what day is it?

She attempts to sit up in bed, but soon gives up. The pain has spread from her brain and now she feels sick, but not sick enough to run to the bathroom. 'Hangover' seems like such a ridiculous word now, so inadequate, nowhere near enough to describe the state she's in. The bell-ringing fades away, or maybe her drink-addled mind has just forgotten to hear it for a while... the air in the room is still humming though. It's a low vibration that echoes in her ears and her stomach.

Her first thought is to call Candy, and she reaches for her phone without removing the covers. She keys in her best friend's number but all she gets is some tinny woman's voice telling her that the number she has dialed is unreachable. Knowing Candice, she probably dropped her phone in some poor lad's pint just to get his attention. Sally huddles deeper under her duvet and tries to clear the thick, poisonous fog that surrounds her head. Did she see Candice last night? Where did she end up? Where did she start up? Thank God for small favours, at least - she ended up in her own bed, not naked on some creep's futon.

Sally rolls onto her other side, and that's when she finally notices the pain. The hot, tender rawness at the top of her right thigh, reaching up to her lower belly. She's had all sorts of scrapes from nights out, but usually on her elbows and knees – accidental cigarette burns, or bruises and grazes where she walked into a table or fell onto the pavement. Never pain in this private part of her body. She reaches down under the duvet and prods herself delicately with one hand. She brings the hand back up and sees a trace of blood and something black on her index finger. Her curiosity descending into panic, she pulls the covers back and blanches when she sees it. She lurches off the bed and hobbles over to the full length mirror on her bedroom wall. She stares at her reflection for what seems like forever, unwilling to believe what she sees. A pale, dark-haired young woman in her bra and knickers, nothing out of the ordinary there; but a young woman sporting a brand new tattoo that follows the inner line of her pelvis... a black and grey flower, a lily, harsh and angry-looking, outlined in the red of sensitive, abused skin.

“No,” she finally whispers, her breath uneven and her hands trembling. “This can't be real...” But real it is. She touches it again, tentatively, and instantly wishes she hadn't; the pain flares up again, like sunburn that's just been slapped. “Fuck...” She picks up her phone and tries to call Candice again, with no luck. In a flash of temper she throws the phone across the room. It bounces off the wall and lands with a soft thud on the bed. Probably buggered, she thinks, but hardly the biggest of her problems. Little does she know, at the moment, just how much worse things can get.

She walks slowly, gingerly, into the bathroom and turns on the shower. She runs the water as lightly and mildly as she can, and peels off her underwear before stepping in. The spray of water on her face and hair wakes her up a little, but if anything it makes the tattoo feel worse. She carefully washes away some of the dried blood and traces of ink on the surface of her skin. God, I hope it's not infected... It would be too much to hope that she was smart enough to go to a good tattooist. She doesn't even know of any tattoo artists in the area; how the hell did she find one when she was three sheets to the wind? She turns off the shower and dries herself off quickly with a damp towel, patting gently at the tattoo before pulling the bra and knickers back on. She walks back into the bedroom, her head slightly clearer, but her body still aching and the tattoo still stinging.

The phone rings. So it's not broken. Sally picks it up and answers with a 'yes', rendered half incomprehensible by a massive yawn.

“Sal?”

“Yeah, who's this?”

“This is your mother, Sally.” Guilt rises like a leviathan from the depths; did she forget a birthday? Did news of some silly drunk antic reach home? For a second, Sal is filled with the irrational worry that somehow her mother knows about the tattoo and is very disappointed.

“Hi, mum... How's things?” She tries to make her voice as normal as possible. A strange sound disturbs the line, and it takes her a moment to realise that her mother is crying.

“Mum? Mum?”

“Sally?” A man's voice. Her father.

“Hi, Dad, what's wrong?”

“You mean you haven't heard?”

“Well obviously, no.”

“We were just calling to check on things, we didn't realise nobody called you...”

“Daddy,” She says, kicking herself even as she does so, such a childish word, “what are you talking about?”

“We heard from the Greys. We thought they would get in touch with you.”

“Dad!”

“Sally, Sal... The thing is... It's Candice, she...”

The phone falls from Sally's hand approximately half a minute later, when she has heard the news and now all she can hear is her father's voice in her ear, asking are you alright, are you alright, are you alright until the words lose all their meaning. She feels ridiculous, stood half naked in her bedroom, an ugly lily blossoming from her body like a flower from a pile of dirt.