A little more personal care and she could have been attractive. A perm for that shoulder-length blonde hair; she didn't have the money, but a good combing and brushing would have helped to separate those tangled strands. Cosmetics would have masked the lines in her face, knocked five years off her, maybe even made her feel thirty again. The flowered cotton dress, the one she had picked up for 50p at a jumble sale down at the hall, clung wetly to a figure that was still sensuous. An observer could see that she wasn't wearing a bra, that she didn't really care any longer. The hardness was there in her expression, the compressed lips, the lines beneath the eyes, the resentment towards life.
Once, almost six years ago, it seemed an eternity, she had been happy. Her boyfriend was going to rescue her from a life of downtown squalor and hardship, a man of some means was going to spirit her away from all this, take her someplace else where she could forget the past like a bad dream. Which was why she had let him have his way most nights and had not been too bothered about being careful.
The same week that she discovered that she was pregnant Ken wasn't around. No goodbyes, no sudden heart-breaking parting; she was just on her own again, like it always used to be except that this time she was going to have a baby to look after. Ken didn't leave, he just didn't come any more, faded back into the mists of a background which she had not bothered too much to explore. Not a new story, just another one of many thousands. And the kid was a burden on her, a perpetual memory of what might have been if it had not all been a lie.
Oh God, where was that bloody exit? The crowd had slowed, bunched again, not even jostling one another, staring at the glass cages on either side, transfixed, immobile. So hot you could scarcely breathe, drawing the humidity down into your lungs, holding on to strangers, afraid you might faint.
Faces staring back at you, reptilian features seemingly distorted by the heavy glass so that heads and bodies were out of proportion. Evil masks; things that might have been dead, except that you knew they weren't. They fixed you with those awful penetrating evil stares. Wanted to get to you, to coil themselves around you, let you feel the coldness of their supple bodies as they slid over your flesh. Savoured their sadistic delight before they sank their venomous fangs into you. Slid to the floor with you; writhed with you until you died.
Somebody screamed; another child, not Ian this time. Her son clutched her cold sweaty hand and she felt his sobs, his fear. He was shaking violently.
'We'll soon be outside,' she said and her words echoed, hung in the sultry stillness as though to mock her.
Her anger welled up, temporarily overcame that claustrophobic terror that had engulfed her. She wanted to push these stupid people who stood about obstructing her, bang on those glass cages with her puny fists and scream obscenities at their occupants. I hope you die in there!
Instead she spoke loudly and surprisingly calmly. 'The zoo's closing in a couple of days. All the animals will have to go. These snakes will probably be put down, destroyed. Killed. They haven't long to live.'
Silence. People turned, she was aware of them looking at her in the half-darkness, wondering who she was and how she knew. Sensing relief, jubilation; not a trace of pity. Kill the snakes, kill 'em all.
And then her terror came back. A fleeting sensation but she knew she was not mistaken. She heard the rustling of reptilian bodies behind the prison screens, serpent shapes becoming erect, rearing up and seeking out the puny mortal who had voiced her contempt, dared to issue a threat to the deadly killers from the swamps and jungles of the world.
Veronica cowered, wanted to throw up her hands to shield her eyes from them, but Ian was clinging on to her in a panic-stricken determination. Again she had to look, meet their gazes, found herself muttering incoherent apologies for her blasphemy in this temple of serpents.
We shall not die, Human. Our hour is nigh and soon we shall be free and there will be nowhere for Man to hide. Our vengeance will be terrible.
Suddenly everybody was pushing and shoving, a once-dormant crowd that had awoken from a nightmare and was stampeding towards the dim neon exit sign. You went with them because you had no choice, swept along by a tide of panic, away from the evil green fluorescence towards a shaft of sunlight. Euphoria that it had all been a trick of the mind, your imagination succumbing to the mock swamps and forests and their awful reptilian killers. Staggering, gulping in the hot sunlit atmosphere, looking for a bench so that you could rest and allow your trembling legs to recover. A real live scare show but it hadn't hurt you, just made you appreciate living in a safe world.
'Mam, I want to go home.'
'We're going home.' Veronica glanced about her, spotted a blue-painted arrow with the words 'Way Out' painted on it. 'We're going home right now.'
'Mam, what're they doin' over there?'
She stopped, looked where he pointed. A large covered lorry was backed up to the elephant enclosure, its tailboard down. Several men were trying to coax a lumbering elephant up the ramp. The animal trumpeted once, then shambled up into the trailer. The men hurried to close the doors, bolting them.
'Where are they takin' the elephant, Mam?'
'Away somewhere. The zoo's closing, all the animals have got to go.'
'They goin' to kill the elephant?'
'I ... I shouldn't think so. They're probably taking it to another zoo. A bigger and better place than this scruffy dump where it'll have more room and be better looked after.'
Then why don't they take the snakes there instead of killing them? Like you said they were goin' to.'
'I ... I could've been wrong.' An instinctive mental apology to those serpents that saw into your mind. 'Maybe they'll take the snakes too.'
'But maybe they'll kill 'em after all. I'd like that. Snakes are horrible.'
'Come on.' Veronica grabbed her son's hand and pulled him along with her, almost running until they reached the open gate that led out into the street by the bus-stop.
Veronica Jones felt foolish now. It had been the excessive heat, the eerie lighting in the reptile house which had been responsible. She was just glad that nobody there had recognised her, witnessed her terror. Everything was going to be all right now.
All the same, that night mother and son had a dual nightmare in the cramped bed which they shared in the council flat.
In the darkness the snakes came, condemned creatures that had escaped from their death cells, slithering their way up the steep flights of stairs and across the dingy ill-lit landings until they smelled out flat number 117. Their, serpent bodies shrank and flattened, enabling them to pass beneath the warped door, guided by that sour human body odour emanating from the woman who had scorned and defied them.
Growing again to their full size once they were within, wriggling and sliding up on to the bed, wrapping themselves around the warm-blooded forms of the adult and the boy, delighting in the screams of their victims, entwining them until their death throes ceased.
And then moving on in search of others . . .
'It was only a bad dream.' Veronica comforted the sobbing Ian until the first light of a summer dawn crept through the dirt-stained bedroom window.
'It was real.' he muttered. 'But they've gone now.'
'It's always worse at night.' She held him close and kissed him. 'Tell you what, tonight we'll sleep with the light on.' She wondered how much the meter would take and regretted her rash statement. 'It's always all right in the light.'
But she still had that uneasy feeling and wondered how long it would take to get yesterday out of her system. Even in full daylight she could still see those snakes, the way they glared their hate out of their prisons, desperate hopeless inmates willing to risk death rather than succumb to a life of incarceration.