Lucy herself reminded Simone of this just recently, last year, on holiday in Italy. Their luggage got lost. They had nothing. They laughed about it in the car from the airport, and Simone had relaxed into the driver’s seat, Lucy in the front – claiming car sickness but Simone suspected simply wanting conversation – Damien in the back, on his phone, choosing music Lucy called insipid. Simone had thought that she was looking forward to their holiday starting. She’d said this to Lucy, who’d poked fun at her: ‘I hate to break it to you, but it’s started!C’est la vie!’
‘That’s French.’
‘I know. It was metaphorical.’
‘Metaphorical French,’ Damien said from the back.
It was late when they got to Venice, but they were grimy from travel and showered anyway. ‘Oh no,’ Lucy said, as she emerged wearing a towel. ‘Noooo.’
‘What?’
‘No hairbrush.’
‘No!’ Simone had said back. Their hair was washed, wet now, with nothing to brush it with, lost luggage more of a pain than they’d thought.
They’d used a fork, in the end, laughing together in the kitchen as they groomed each other like chimps and Damien watched on. Laughter was better with a willing audience, and he was always that, easy to make laugh. As they’d held each other’s hair to stop the strands breaking too much, giggling, Simone had thought that she was looking forward to the holiday truly beginning the next day.
The following morning, hair like straw, they headed out to an Italian supermarket, bought a hairbrush each, which Simone still owns. It’s a crappy one, loses its bristles too easily, but it has nice memories.
But, looking back, the best bits of the holiday were those parts before it truly began. The car ride, the fork, the supermarket.
That was how it always was; maybe it’s that way for everyone. Without the luxury of impending disaster, when time was spun out in front of them, endless.
And now, something completely different. They are forced, through fear, into a kind of burning mindfulness. There is only now. Tomorrow isn’t promised. Simone wouldn’t even give the odds as fifty-fifty.
The police probably won’t have found the car yet. They won’t know in which direction they have walked. She hopes the waterwill last. They have five large bottles each. It would’ve been enough if they were filling up at a campsite, but how can they?
They have a torch with them, but it would be stupid to use it, so instead they trudge into the desert. Underfoot is pale dust, illuminated to white in the moonlight, which crackles like shingle, then reduces to powder that makes Simone think of the cocaine. Plants she doesn’t recognize, dead-looking shrubs that cut her legs, their twigs bare and spindly like winter trees. They aren’t cacti – more rough, spiked shrubs, things that grow out of shingle, of sand. Things that grow where nothing will survive, things that creak in the wind.
And, up above, stars. An abundance of them, like the entire universe has gathered up above here, and only here, a smokescreen of a sky. There must be two million out there, a messy scatter, a rip revealing diamonds like a seam she could mine, if only she could get to it.
Simone finds a dizzying perspective in it. They’re just humans on a rock. There might be other life out there. Their suffering seems to matter less as she looks.
‘God,’ Lucy says, out of breath.
They must have walked maybe six miles. Simone’s bones ache with exhaustion.
‘How far exactly is Terlingua?’
Lucy makes a face, screwing her nose up, and Simone hates that she is having to rely on her daughter in this way. They could use the new flip phone to look, but she’s afraid to right now. It’s simple, probably not tracking their every move across internet apps, but it might have GPS.
‘Maybe thirty miles …?’ Lucy answers. ‘Three days’ walking maybe? My eyelids feel like they’re trying to close. I’m so tired.’
‘Right. I think we need to pitch the tent,’ Simone says. ‘Start again tomorrow morning.’
‘Itistomorrow morning,’ Lucy says, indicating the sky behind them, very slightly beginning to lighten, but she nods, Simone thinks gratefully. They’ve walked right through the small hours and into the morning. The ground hasn’t become any softer, they haven’t found anywhere to shelter from the wind, or hide from the police, but they need to close their eyes, just for a little while. The last sleep she had was in the gazebo with the drugs. The time before that was her six hours that she thinks she might have to pay for forever.
They need to talk to each other. They need to work things out. They need to decide what risks to take, and why, and when. But, first, they need to sleep.
As they unfold the tent from Simone’s backpack, she is struck suddenly by the certainty that it is easier to hide in a city than the wilderness. They’re so obvious here with their pitched blue tent in this vast, open space. If anyone sees them, they are done. There’s nowhere to conceal themselves. Like trying to play hide-and-seek on a beach.
Simone purses her lips to stop herself from saying this, the way she has hundreds of times in parenthood. It isn’t appropriate.
Next to her, Lucy jumps. ‘That was something!’ she says, dancing from foot to foot. In the near darkness, her features are fuzzy, pale limbs, blonde hair, everything else vague. Simone can’t wait for more daylight, whatever it might bring. ‘Maybe a snake?’ Lucy says, kicking a foot out.
‘No, it won’t be a snake,’ Simone says, but it’s a platitude; it could easily be a snake. Spiders, lizards, bears, anything. She shivers.
‘Jesus,’ Lucy says. ‘I guess it doesn’t matter where we pitch it; it’s all the same open space.’ She gestures into the gloom. ‘There’s a canyon somewhere, but …’ Another hopeless handthrown out. It could be miles away. It could be in a different direction entirely.
