Extract from Blood Kin by Ceridwen Dovey
Morning has broken. I throw aside the curtains and look out at the valley below, my wrists still faintly ringed from ropeburn, and slice the tomatoes, cheese and bread that have been left just inside the doorway, using the sill as a table. The tomatoes are the kind that smell of sugar, valley tomatoes; in the city they arrive bruised and insolent. I wonder if the supermarkets have anything left on the shelves - on my blindfolded drive to the mountains I could hear the sounds of rioting in the streets around me, and somebody punched a fist through the rear window of the car; the driver swerved onto the pavement to escape, and hit somebody, or something, but didn't stop. Once we were out of the city, I could smell that the guards in the car were eating large chunks of matured cheese that should have been consumed in small and savoured doses.