Winter Damage by Natasha Carthew Read Free Book Online Page B

too and she strode out to kick at slushy heaps of snow with soldier pride as if battling a war she’d already won.
    She thought about Dad and Trip without the usual melancholic pull, and imagined them all together at Christmas, not quite a big happy family, but some kind of family of four, equal.
    Ennor hoped Trip was coping best he could and she told herself he was fine because anything else would have fear back snapping at her heels.
    She made herself think about the potato cakes to take her mind off home. For now her shadow walked in front and this other self gave comfort in the lonely landscape, a silent friend looking out for her, testing the unmarked ground one step at a time.
    She knew the sun wouldn’t be out for long. The horizon concealed the clouds but she knew they were circling, planning their line of attack. She was in the eye of it.
    If she kept to the present, settled on the one foot two foot, things would rattle into place. She sang songs learnt at Sunday school and songs half-eared off the radio and she mashed them together into a continuous stream of lust and condemnation.
    Her impromptu entertaining and carrying on turned the moorland foreign the further she walked. Places she would have recognised in summer or on Sunday visiting in better days were nothing to her now. The shadow picked up speed and Ennor followed in obedience. She would walk for two hours and at midday she would stop to eat the remaining potato cakes and light a small fire to heat water for tea.
    She walked on through thawing marshland and fell into a labyrinth of trenches that had her stepping in every direction but forward. The smell of rotten vegetation caught at the back of her throat and she coughed and spat into the wind. Following her shadow towards a firm footing, she sat damp to the ground and told her shadow to go on without her. The potato was salty and fat on her lips and she stuffed the potato cakes gone, then licked the paper clean and chewed it like a wad of bubble gum to get the last of it.
    Ennor sat back and took out her baccy tin to roll herself a cigarette and as she smoked she blew smoke rings at the splashes of mud that weighted her jeans and stiffened her boots and attempted to pick at the sleeves of her coat that were stitched with nature’s barb. She leant back on to her rucksack and clipped her fists beneath her chin. She was lost. Fear crawled up her spine and blew cruel damp words into her ear. She was lost and cold and hungry.
    She unfolded the map and scanned the horizon and sighed. There was nothing left to do but take a short cut across to a granite ridge that bumped the yonder skyline, hoping the vantage point would settle her mind on some kind of course.
    At the foot of the granite outcrop she shunned the weight from her back. She dug her toes into the rock as she climbed and called out at the wind to catch her when she scrambled to the precarious summit. The moorland stretched out for ever below her, immersed in low licking fog. Ennor turned to look to the south to see the last column of sunlight get snipped by scissoring clouds and she watched the sun’s reflections bounce across the cradle of sea, everything sucked of colour and spat out in a smudge.
    Ennor knew rain would replace snow and she counted out the time it took. Ten quick-step seconds before huge droplets began to fall from the sky. She hurried to check the diminishing landscape beneath her against the contours of the map that softened in her hands. If there was ever a time for hope, this was it. Faith, hope and courage stood beside her and together they looked out into the wind and together they saw it. A square of stone nestled dark and deep in the valley below; a house, her great-aunt’s cottage.
    She climbed from the rocks with her heart playing ping-pong in her chest. As she ran, the wet rocks tripped and tricked her and Ennor jumped to keep from stopping, battling forward until the toe of her right boot shunted and wedged itself