The Loyal Servant by Eva Hudson

– the proposed location for the Frederick Larson Business Academy for Entrepreneurial Excellence . A dirt spattered truck filled with hardcore was parked on the road outside, its hazards flashing, the driver chatting amiably with a policeman dressed in a waterproof cape that billowed in the breeze. Both men were sipping tea from steaming polystyrene cups.
    Angela sighed. The policeman was too relaxed, the protestors too polite. She dragged a strand of hair from her face and tried in vain to secure it behind an ear, but the wind whipped it from its dock and plastered it across her mouth. Her heart sank as she watched the policeman throw his head back at some joke the driver had just told him. She’d seen these kinds of well meaning protests before – meek and unthreatening, and ultimately doomed to fail.
    She negotiated her way around a random lump of reinforced concrete dumped on the pavement and scanned the crowd. She recognised a few faces from earlier demonstrations. The group comprised a couple of governors, a few parents with nothing better to do on a dismal Monday lunchtime and a handful of teachers who must have nipped out of school during the midday break. By far the largest contingent was a noisy rabble of OAPs clustered in a separate huddle. One woman was standing slightly apart from the rest. It took Angela a few moments to realise the woman had chained herself to the metal railings next to the main gate. Her spirits lifted instantly. She could see the headlines already. She glanced over her shoulder to see Frank Carter at least forty yards behind her, slowly pulling his camera from its bag and looping the strap over his neck. She gestured to him to hurry up and pointed towards the woman in chains, who just at that moment started hollering. Something about freedom of speech. Angela spotted the reason for her sudden outburst. A thickset man wearing a fluorescent vest was striding towards her wielding an enormous pair of bolt cutters.
    Angela picked up speed, but very quickly ran out of pavement. She reared up at the edge of a wide strip of muddy earth separating her from the protestors. She took a tentative step onto the churned-up ground and immediately felt cold mud seeping into her shoe. Another step and both heels sank completely into the yielding clay. She kept her gaze fixed on the chained woman, who had started waving a walking stick, brandishing it like a sword, swiping and jabbing the heavy handle towards the approaching yellow-vested man.
    ‘Don’t come any closer,’ the woman shouted. ‘You fascist pig!’ She lunged towards him. The walking stick narrowly missed the side of his head. He staggered back, losing his balance. The stick jabbed towards him again. He ducked and dodged, jerking his head sideways and back like a boxer. ‘Where’s your boss? I want to speak to Fred Larson. Get him down here.’
    From this distance Angela could see the woman was younger than the rest of the group, early sixties at most. She seemed to have more energy than all the other protestors added together.
    ‘Oi! Stop that!’ The policeman who had been chatting to the truck driver threw his cup to the ground and sprinted towards the duelling pair, his waterproof ballooning behind him in the wind.
    Angela tried desperately to lift her foot, wrenching a shoe from the ground. The heel stayed embedded in the earth, snapping clean off the sole. She pulled up the other shoe, it thwocked out of the ground intact. She limped as fast as she could towards the woman with the stick, glancing over a shoulder to check on her photographer’s progress. He was lumbering up the pavement, his chest heaving, his legs moving in slow motion.
    ‘For God’s sake, hurry up, Frank! You’re going to miss the money shot.’
    The policeman in the waterproof slowed right down and stopped beyond walking stick swiping distance, holding his palms aloft.
    ‘Come on now, love. Let’s be sensible about this, shall we?’
    The huddle of senior