Among the Missing by Morag Joss Read Free Book Online Page B

little ticks of my heart. I was forty-two years old, and I knew it was finite, this bright, regular tapping in my chest, but I also knew that, for every few seconds I aged, the baby grew a little; it became a larger, livelier thing to kill.
    I wanted to blurt out my feelings; I feared my impatience for the next day would somehow break out of me and declare itself. I returned to the sofa.
    “By the way, I’m going kayaking again tomorrow,” Col said. “You’ll be all right, will you?”
    “Yes, I’ll be fine,” I lied.
    I couldn’t think of anything else to say. The air of the lounge grew dense with our hoarded silence; the clock ticked and ticked with a sound like seconds snapping off in small splinters, only to re-form maliciously behind us, ready to come round again. The hours yet to come thronged around us with all their awful availability for no other purpose than to keep a vigil against marital disintegration. Eventually a drift of laughter came from the bar. My husband raised his head.
    “I’m tired,” I told him. “You go on and enjoy yourself. I think I’ll have an early night.”

The rain fell all night, clattering on the roof and cascading off into the ground around the trailer as if it was being poured from a jug. The place would be a mud bath in the morning. I would have to fish out Anna’s boots from the storage space under the mattress. Would they still fit her? As I lay thinking in the dark, working out that if she needed new boots I wouldn’t be able to get them before Friday, the day Vi usually paid me, I heard a different dripping noise. It was inside. It was coming from over near the door. I slipped out of bed, and immediately I knew that we were unsheltered. I felt a chill on my skin as if nothing protected us properly anymore. Either the door was open or the roof was leaking. Rain or night air had entered the trailer. Anything could enter. In a couple of steps I had reached the door. It was shut and locked, but my feet were wet. I touched the wall. It was running with water, seeping in through the join between the trailer’s side and the roof. Reaching up, I discovered that it was dripping from farther along, where the seam turned at a right angle. From there it was plocking down on the shelf where I had left bread for our breakfast in a paper bag, now soaking wet.
    You were asleep. I fumbled my way back to Anna’s bed. She was asleep, too, but her covers were pushed up against the wall and they were already damp. I lifted her up gently out of her nest, hoping the sudden cold breath of air wouldn’t wake her, and clasped her against me, willing my arms and the palms of my hands to project all my body’s warmth into her through her back. Without waking, she curled her legs and arms around me and pushed her head in under my jaw, snuffling against my neck. I settled her in against you and got back into bed. I wouldn’t be able to sleep perched on the narrow edge of the bed thatwas left now, but I could lie calmly enough, knowing she was warm. I dreaded the morning, so I spent the rest of the night waiting for it, trying to figure out what to do.
    First thing, you would climb onto the top of the trailer, which would be slippery, and wonder how to repair it this time. You’d sealed it before, which only worked for a while; if you could get hold of some plastic sheeting or tarpaulin you could cover the roof and weight it with rocks from the shore. That might work for a bit longer. Then we’d have to dry the trailer out, but if it kept on raining, that would take days. The ground would be soaked, and the mud and damp would cling to us; we’d bring it into the trailer and make matters worse. Anna couldn’t be left outside, so she would have to be kept in the trailer, and she hated that, and the floor would be filthy. You would have to get a fire lit somehow to dry out our clothes and bedding, never mind washing off the mud, and I didn’t know how you were going to manage that if the rain