Simone nods.
Together, they walk around to the boot and begin gathering everything. They have about half of what they planned to get. All the gear: the tent, rolled-up foam mattresses they strap on to their backs. A little lantern. Matches. They have non-perishable food Simone instructed Lucy to buy: cans of tomatoes, tinned sausages, bread, and what she bought in Mexico, but none of the luxuries they intended to add.
‘What’s this?’ Lucy asks, indicating the bag from the Mexican superstore, which Simone can’t stand to look at.
She waves a hand. ‘Mexican food,’ she says, ‘we can pack it.’ She scans over what they have. It’s a week’s worth of food, and a few days of bottled water, if they’re careful. It’s crappy sustenance – and no salt, something Simone is deeplyashamed to admit bothers her, but it does – but it will be OK for a short while in the desert while they … while they what?
The bags weigh heavy on their shoulders, digging in painfully. But Simone is glad of their heft; it means they have food and water.
They close the boot, leaving the keys on the top of the car.
Simone is struck by the strange notion that she will probably never see this hire car again. It doesn’t matter. It isn’t hers. But there is a finality to it, like when you leave a hotel you loved but know you will never return to.
Because something is insistent in her brain.What is the plan?it asks. Her entire life, she’s had a plan, even if it wasn’t working.
But now Simone has nothing. In the strangely sterile garage, she looks at her daughter readjusting her rucksack, taking out five bottles of Evian and putting them back in differently in an attempt to make it more comfortable.
She closes the shutter door to hide the car – thank God, thank God, it closes fully – and then they’re on foot.
They cross the highway, and Lucy indicates the vast expanse of desert in front of them. It occurs to Simone that, soon, they won’t know the time. Her Apple Watch is dead. They have the new flip phone, but it won’t last long with no charger, though it’s currently off and inactive. ‘There are campsites and things,’ Lucy says, ‘dotted around in the desert. Some might be empty? If we go this way, I think it’ll take us into Big Bend National Park, then through that to Terlingua on the other side of it,’ she says, and something about her tone makes Simone look at her as they cross the deserted highway, desert bugs biting at their legs, air finally cold, swirling around them, making them shiver. Simone looks up at the sky. It has become alotcolder while they have been driving and panicking and rushing. It concerns her, this environment. Going onthe run in the desert is not the same as going camping; you can leave one of those situations, and not the other.
They’re conspicuous, the two of them, their faces on the news.
‘I’m sorry about losing my temper. I’m such a loser,’ Lucy says. ‘This is just –’
‘You’re not a loser.’
‘Did you ever use to hit stuff?’ Lucy says, though she knows the answer.
‘Sometimes. Printers. The odd car dashboard, too.’ Simone no longer feels shame about this. These facets of being human that most people experience. The only thing is, most people don’t tell each other about them. That’s all. But they’re still happening.
‘But you have addict parents!’
‘Well.’
‘Did you feel like a loser?’
‘All the time,’ Simone says, reaching to touch her daughter’s head. ‘All the time.’ She pauses. ‘It’s very bad luck, inheriting my nature,’ she tells her, her voice thick, there, in the middle of nowhere.
‘I know. I could’ve been more like Dad, not even caring when people insult him.’
Simone laughs softly. ‘I think you are a little like Dad.’
‘Yeah?’
‘Very lovely. Very kind.’
They lapse into silence for a few seconds.
‘It’s good you know that Terlingua is nearby,’ Simone tells her.
‘Yeah,’ Lucy says. ‘I know a bit. Been here all summer, plus Easter.’ She shrugs then and a glimmer of old Lucy appears. ‘It’s a shame Texas will always remind me of this, because it’s beautiful,’ she says, throwing her mother a look, and Simone could cry.
CHAPTER 36
They walk for two hours before exhaustion sets in, the wind picks up, and Simone is actually, genuinely frozen. Twice she hears imagined footsteps behind them, whips around, expecting to find someone but doesn’t. There’s nothing and no one, and, in a way, that’s worse. Simone and Lucy have many enemies, and Mother Nature has now become one of them.
She is putting off thinking, instead simply walking, one foot in front of the other, which reminds her perversely of the way it’s easy to do this, thinking you will truly begin your life when the next thing is done, when the house renovation is finished, when the restaurant earns its Michelin star. The next, the next …
