At the top he turns around and looks out over the village. The street lights form a squashed circle, twinkling in the dark. It seems so far away. He finds it odd that he should live there, so very strange it looks, a ring of lights on another planet. He wants to go home. He’s freezing cold. The bitter air bites at his skin, his face is stiff, his fingers and thighs. He needs to go home now. He wishes he could blink and be there. Suppose he can’t find his way and gets lost? In the floodlights on top of the hill he suddenly feels exposed, he could be seen by anyone, a dark fleck moving about against the white. He mustn’t turn around. Beyond the hill the path winds off into the forest and continues up onto the fell. If he turns around now they’ll grab him and snatch him away. He’d never get back to the road ever again.
He goes back down again, cautiously, so as not to slip and fall where the ice has formed. He doesn’t turn around, but proceeds calmly. You musn’t show them you’re scared. That’s when they come for you, when they know you’re scared. Luckily they can’t see him blinking in the dark. He makes the train sound in his mind, steady and strong, and feels his pee seep against his thigh. He presses on regardless so no one can tell.
Reaching the foot of the bank on the other side he starts to run, to the safety of the flat road. His legs won’t go fast enough, he stumbles in the hollow of a footprint and falls headlong, reaching his hands out in front of him to break the impact. It feels like someone’s clutching at his legs, he squirms away, his fingers clawing at the snow. He scrabbles to his feet and staggers out into the road, stumbling once more, only now it doesn’t matter, now he’s safe.
He brushes himself down and walks straight home.
As soon as he comes around the corner it jumps out at him: the car’s not there. He stops. What’s he going to do? She must have had an accident like he thought. Now she’s lying dead in the road. And he’ll be put in a home. He tries to imagine what it’ll be like.
It must be after midnight now, he thinks. Today’s his birthday. Now he’s nine years old.
An accident on her way home from the village and it’s all his fault.
If it hadn’t been his birthday everything would have stayed the same. He promises himself that if everything can just be all right he’ll never think of birthdays ever again. He doesn’t need presents. He needs to stop blinking, to keep practicing holding his breath.
He walks on, up the driveway to the front door.
The metal of the door handle is covered in frost, he feels an urge to put his tongue to it. He thinks of what would happen, the skin, the blood. He heard someone talk about it at school. He decides not to. He holds his breath and listens for Vibeke’s car. She can still be coming, maybe some problem held her up.
He can’t hear anything, not even from the highway. He was freezing cold a minute ago. His toes and feet, his calves and thighs, his bottom, his cheeks, mouth, and hands, every part of him was ice. Now he can’t feel it anymore. He kicks at a pile of snow he cleared from the driveway, but nothing happens apart from a few little lumps that dislodge and roll to the ground. He picks one up. It feels warm in his hand. He bites into it and crunches it between his teeth.
He sits down. He feels tired, as if he’s been playing basketball all day, his arms and legs are heavy as logs. Perhaps it won’t be long before she’s back. He puts his ear to the ground and listens for the sound. Even from a distance he knows the sound of her car.
He closes his eyes. He sees the car in his mind’s eye, intact and immaculate. He sees the wheels as they roll through the snow.
The wheels rolling on tracks in the snow. Because it’s a train, he says to himself. The trains go where the road is, through the village, with shiny red engines. Didn’t she say she’d be coming on the train and would take him with her? That they’d go away together?
And isn’t that the whistle he hears, a short, crisp blast? It is, it’s the whistle. Now it won’t be long and the train will be here.
He stretches out on his tummy, settling into sleep. Inside his head everything is dark and big and still.
He’ll wait for her here.
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Love Page 10
