As it turns out, the darkness isn’t quite complete. The power light of the camera casts just enough
illumination to bathe the scene in a weird green, albeit, blinking glow. Once my eyes adjust, I can see
enough to manage.
Manage in this case means, seeing well enough to piss over the side into the water without falling in.
Still, several hours later… I think… I’ve concluded that I truly am a prisoner. With no sense of day or
night, my sense of time is already drifting.
Perhaps it’s been longer than that…
I’m not sure…
My immediate physical reaction is to sleep: the body’s age-old defence against reality. And I don’t even
realise I’m drifting off until, with a start, I wake up, jerking up against a crick in the neck where I’d
nodded off with my chin on my chest.
What woke me?
Movement in the dark…
On the limit of my circle of light, a pair of rats are polishing off the remains of Juliana’s
Sola’s?
…empanadas. One sits on its haunches, nibbling into a circle of pastry.
Some version of the snack can be found in every country I’ve ever visited. In India, it would be a
samosa. In England, a sausage roll or cornish pasty. The Chinese would offer you a vegetable roll.
No matter. It’s street food. Finger food. Right now, rat food.
Rats don’t worry me overmuch. With luck, they’ll finish their treat and go. Warily, I watch them. Within a
few minutes, they’ve cleared the scatter of crumbs and, nose-to-tail, vanish into the dark together.
Sleep has helped. My panic has dispersed and the nausea has gone.
In fact, I’m hungry.
The potato Juliana gave me lies beside me on the filth-encrusted floor. I don’t want to consider what I’m
sitting on. Even less what might have brushed onto the skin of the tattie.
I’m not quite that hungry.
Yet.
Time to think…
*****
Michael
I tip the last barrow-load. After a dozen return trips to ‘The Heap’, I’m glowing with heat, dripping with
sweat and smelling more of manure than manhood. The ground steams where the output from the
stables lies scattered over Charlotte’s planned new herb bed…
That should get them green and growing…
If only to get away from the smell…
Turning the barrow over, I rub away a fragment of straw that has somehow taken root in my stubble… I
itch…
“I brought you a coffee.”
It’s Charlotte, a mug in either hand, the steam rather more appealingly fragrant than what I’ve just been
handling.
“Thanks, Babe. I was just coming in.”
She wrinkles her nose. “I hope you were planning on a shower?”
“It’s Number One on my list of To-Dos.” Extending an arm to a tree stump, “May I offer my wife a
comfortable seat? So we can enjoy our coffee together?”
She dimples and sits, then sips at her coffee. I park my butt on the upturned barrow. She stares into
space, her smile fading.
“Charlotte? Something wrong, Babe?” But I know the answer before she replies.
Her throat ripples. “Where do you think my father is?”
“I don't know, Charlotte. I just don't know. I wish I did.”
She sips and swallows again. Sips and swallows. “D’you think he's still alive? Surely he'd have been in
touch by now…”
I don’t know how to reply. I stare down into my mug.
Her voice is tight. “Mom keeps asking me…” Her words stumble. She starts again… “She asks, and I
don't know what to say to her.”
“I think you can only say that, whatever's happened, your father did what he did to protect her. And you.
And he sent her the ring. He planned a future with her. He'll come back when he can.”
“If he can.”
*****
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