Winter Damage by Natasha Carthew Read Free Book Online Page A

the entombed sentence, lighting a cigarette to make good with doll’s house light and heat.
    She sucked the backwash dregs of tepid coffee through her teeth to make it last and she swished it and sniffed it and was reminded of Butch and his sweetness.
    When there was nothing left to smoke but the glowing ember of butt and the flask was tapped dry Ennor settled bony and crushed against the rucksack and sighed. She closed her eyes to the dark and painted her eyelids with a bright blue sky and a sun as warm as embers and she put people she loved into the mix with laughter and dance and everyone summer drunk.
    Her mother waltzed into her dream with her sanity intact and happiness for everyone was a given. A sure thing before the decline of little things unnoticed.
    Ennor danced with her mother while in her imagination Loretta was singing a whole lot of lovey-dovey; a little girl standing barefoot on her mother’s, singing and giggling with the stretch and awkwardness of things.
    The merry flight of fantasy soon turned shocking and unbearable and Ennor sat balled and cold and insignificant to the world, the past hanging like an old damp coat hooked to the back of a door, lifeless and rotten. She pressed her hands over her eyes and dug her fingers in close to popping, pinning what couldn’t be explained to the back of her mind to stop herself from crying.
     
    A reluctant dawn loped across the moor and tapped at the young girl’s shoulder until she woke and opened her eyes to the funnel of grey half-light that split the rock in two.
    She lifted her face to the gentle breeze and the salt smell of sea air indicated the wind was now coming from the south and she heard the double drip of melting snow outside.
    She stretched her legs as best she could and startled herself with a yawn that ripped her mouth wide with a wild howling echo, then she slid from the shelter and pulled at her rucksack until it dislodged from a snag in the rock and she stood to slap the dirt from her clothes.
    Sunlight was sudden and bright through a hundred layers of cloud and the quarry rocks moved with shifting snow. The landscape changed around her and Ennor sat on a corner of rock and pulled the rucksack between her legs and she untied the tin mug from the tubular frame and went and held it beneath a run of melting snow.
    When the mug was inch-full she swallowed it down and refilled it and splashed the iced water over her face. She took off her hat and wetted her hair into some kind of tidy, itching at the rib-lines on her forehead with relief.
    Her empty stomach turned somersaults and she tried not to think about the last of the potato cakes. Saving them would stave off a ‘no food’ panic so she could think about other things.
    Even so, the flat fried potato nested in her mind and she thought she could smell them as she tied the mug to the frame of the rucksack. She told herself no and, when her stomach wouldn’t listen, she shouted it and waited for the quarry to echo its agreement, realising that in that snow hole she would be waiting a long time.
    She did star jumps to warm up and jiggled the stiff from her legs until her knees no longer snapped with the cold, then crouched to wiggle the rucksack on to her back.
    Outside the quarry Ennor sensed the creeping, coming daylight and she loosened her scarf and folded her hat back into a wide turn on the crown of her head in anticipation.
    Today was the first proper day of her adventure and she was determined to forget last night and make good progress. She would get to her great-aunt’s in a matter of hours and tomorrow she might even end the day standing at Mum’s door.
    Ennor pulled the map from her pocket and she held it out of the wind to study and tapped her finger on the creased paper at the shading that represented a quarry. She looked out across the moor with newfound authority, deciding the quarry on the map was the quarry where she’d spent the night.
    Map reading was easy, it was useful