Winter Damage by Natasha Carthew Read Free Book Online

its way from the north-eastern slopes of the moor.
    The rest was welcome, but idle sitting felt awkward to Ennor, her mind raced everyplace wrong.
    Bad thoughts rattled her and fear stalked the tor where she sat. Leaden fear with doubt whistling senseless through its teeth.
    She sipped her coffee and thought about home. If she went at it fast, she’d get back in time for the goodnight and have everyone forgetting she’d ever been gone. Turn the radio on and off and make a proper cup of tea, climb into her bed, bundle up and dream.
    Ennor knew in two, maybe three hours the snow would return and she finished off her coffee, cleaned the mug with snow and packed the flask and plastic box of potato cakes back into the rucksack.
    She stood up and brushed herself down and swung the pack on to her shoulders, careful of her footing as she climbed down.
    With the snow tagging and threatening behind her, she moved on and picked up speed as best she could. The straggling brightness had been eclipsed by thicker cloud and Ennor took to humming to keep her mind from wandering further than each new step she stamped in the snow. She stamped over fear and its nibbling questions and was happy to be moving to keep the chatter at bay.
    The afternoon came and went and with its passing came the crossover of time and light that was twilight. Ennor stopped to make a cigarette and she scratched her head and reached inside her coat for the map Butch had given her.
    She crouched behind a disgorged stack of granite blocks and opened the map crossways from the wind and stroked it flat with the palms of her gloved hands, retracing her footsteps from the morning’s walk with her fingers. The realisation that she was a little lost dawned on her slowly; her mind had been settling on too many other things to pay attention to the basic detail of this way and that.
    Maybe she was enjoying herself more than she should have been. Perhaps Butch was right, she had not thought things through.
    Flints of wet snow were dashed by the increasing wind and Ennor resigned herself to the fact that she would have to take shelter until it passed. She replaced the map and dipped her head as she continued on her way, occasionally sharpening her eyes to the horizon in the hope that she might spy a familiar run of farm outbuildings in which to stop.
    Darkness came knocking and menacing shadows crept about the moor. The heavy snow built towers out of specks and arched in frozen waterfalls from skeletal trees.
    She twisted the cuffs of her coat round her fists and cursed the woollen gloves that scratched between her fingers and she narrowed her eyes to trace a faint outline of trail that led to the gash of a small quarry.
    The carefree attitude from earlier had now deserted her and she could feel the choke of tears tightening in her chest like a slow snapping rubber band. The quarry was an ink blot compared to the higher ground and she stumbled as she stepped down, fingering the rock for anything that might resemble a roof for shelter.
    Inside the belly of the quarry the void split open to reveal a mountain of thick granite slabs heaped together like fallen cards. Ennor took off her rucksack and stuffed the ridiculous frame into the largest hole.
    She lifted her collar to the wind and pulled at her hat until it rested against her eyebrows and wedged herself as far down into the dank crevice as she could without getting stuck.
    Ennor thought about the future and she punched out at the darkness in frustration, her fist hitting rock with a thud, and she let the pain warm her like something reassuring brought from home.
    The quarry and the moor were silent with the black of night and white of snow and she thought she might go crazy with her heavy breathing bundled into damp clothes and her heart beating out loud and threatening in her ears.
    She thought to look at her watch but didn’t want to know that it was maybe early teatime and she convinced herself that it was later to shorten