Loss of Separation by Conrad Williams Read Free Book Online Page B

repositioned the packing tape. I could not foresee an occasion when I might unpack all of this again. It was frighteningly easy to imagine taking each box to the beach and setting fire to them under the pier.
    I sat and fondled Vulcan's ears for a while, thinking of Tamara, thinking of Ruth. Ruth's own little storage corner seemed pitiful in comparison, but the fruits of her life were surrounding her all the time. She had space to stretch out. She was living. A box contained a first aid kit and a vintage leather bag, the kind you might have seen a country doctor pootling around with in the 1950s. There was a chipped dinner plate with a picture of a duck in the centre - her own, from childhood? - and a clutch of old Ladybird books bound together with elastic bands. There were a few other things. Pencil cases and egg-cups and dried flowers in polythene envelopes. Junk or treasure, depending on who was looking at it.
    I closed the door and walked back to my room. Vulcan followed me, weaving around my ankles. I gave him some food and patted his head, stared at my stranger's hand for a while. The scars there didn't shock me as they had at first. Sometimes I would reach out for something and flinch, as if someone else were inhabiting my clothes, a thin imposter controlled by my mind. I was getting used to the fact that my appearance had changed. I was coping. Now it looked as though I would have to come to terms with Tamara's removal from my life. There would be no plastic surgery to treat those scars. No bandages and ointment. My black, scabbed over heart would just have to chug on with the burden.
    Yet I went to bed feeling an uneasy mix of hope and dread. I had made the first steps to finding Tamara. At the very least, I would have it from her mouth what it was she wanted to do. I would not allow her the comfort of a clean break. Craw , I thought. It made me think of famished black birds. It made me think of choking to death on splinters of bone.
    In the night I was disturbed by the sound of Ruth moving through the house. It was late, past two, when I heard the front door open and close. Some time later, maybe half an hour or so, I heard it open and close again. I dreamed of Tamara's mouth opening and closing too, as she struggled to put into words the nightmare that she had designed for me.

Chapter Four
     
    Black Landings
     
    I wear the same clothes nearly every day. Soft, elasticated jogging bottoms. A hooded top with a zipper (I can't pull clothes over my head). Slip-on sandals. I consider it a uniform, just the same as the one I wore at Lufthansa. Maybe a little less glamorous. It's one less thing to worry about. I can move more freely. Sometimes I wish I could climb out of this tight, inflexible skin too. I feel hemmed in, trapped. The pills don't cancel the pain, they just move it out of reach for a while. It's still there, in view, like a dangerous thing put on a high shelf away from the children. And you can't stop glancing at it. You know it will be returned to its normal place before long. Decide what you reasonably feel that you would like to achieve in your life and think about how using opioids can help you. Set yourself some realistic goals.
    A plastic doll's head with a lazy eye. A Hähnel battery charger. A tube of discoloured Berocca vitamin tablets. A pencil case with a hole in it. An abandoned letter, one sentence long: I don't know how to say this to you, so I'm writing it instead.
    I take the box to the beach. The sky is porridge. It's unlikely to clear all day, according to the forecast. Dampness in the air, finer than mist. You can't see it, but by the time I reach my little nest of cinders, my skin and clothes are jewelled with moisture. The box too. At first I doubt this will burn, but it's as always: first match. The flame skates slowly along the lip of cardboard, darkening and warping in its wake. It moves fast, dipping into the contents like something hungry chasing down its next meal. The orange