‘Where is it?’ Lucy says, turning around.
‘We don’t exactly have a pantry. It’s in the tent, obviously.’
Simone empties half the tin into a plastic bowl. She dabs a finger in, tastes the oil: perfection. Hot, salty, a kick at the back of the tongue.
Lucy is still on the rock. ‘Possibility three. We explain what happened. Exonerate ourselves. Find evidence. Pros: no prison. Cons: impossible.’
‘Seems it.’ Lucy still hasn’t moved. ‘ShallIget the bread?’
‘No, no, sorry,’ Lucy says, and heads into the tent. ‘I’m sorry, I am trying to solve wider problems than bread, but I know I’m not helping.’
Simone hands her the bowl once she has emerged. Lucy tries it, tips her head back, and lets out a small sigh of pleasure. ‘Perfect. Perfect sardines.’
‘It’s mackerel!’
‘Oh.’
They have no more options to discuss. Therefore, Lucy has spoken the truth, predicted the future. She has said what is going to happen, only they don’t know which.
They lapse into silence, eating and watching the desert gilded with light. The flat horizon, miles away. The white dust, grey wrinkled trees and their sharp shadows. The clarity of the sun and the ombre blue sky.
Simone knows that in an hour or two she will be too hot, but, for now, after a cold desert night, she is looking forward to the molten, fierce sun heating up in that way that you do on the first day of spring.
‘I’d love a tea,’ Lucy says.
‘Builder’s,’ Simone answers. ‘Strong. No sugar.’
‘Teardrop of milk,’ Lucy finishes. ‘That feeling of the tannin on your tongue.’
‘Are you sure you’re not a foodie?’ Simone says lightly.
‘Very.’ She looks directly at Simone, then, the morning haze blushing her skin.
The sun warms Simone’s shoulders, and she is a stack of pancakes with a knob of yellow butter running down her. She closes her eyes and tilts her face to it. It feels delicious, and she momentarily forgets everything, but as she begins to sweat, she realizes it: the bottles of water they have are not going to be enough in the heat, which is already beginning.The campsites have water fountains, but they’re far from one of those, alone out here.
She wilfully forgets this and pretends, instead, that she is on holiday. Somewhere all-inclusive, somewhere hot. Somewhere with unlimited food and drink, even the cheap kind, with scalding, steaming showers. With a paperback by her side, with Damien …
She thinks of him and how they work. Of his neat booking notebook, of her kitchen chaos. The way the three of them often eat leftovers together and Damien never finishes his because he’s tired and wants to go to bed. She misses him now, misses sliding into bed next to already-sleeping him. Misses the way he disarms both Lucy and Simone, tells whichever of them is angry he is happy to talk but in quiet voices.
She opens her eyes and Lucy is looking at her. Lucy tilts her chin up. ‘Heneedsto be brought to justice.’
And maybe it’s just the weird morning, the cold night wasteland, waking up to a pink-lemonade dawn with no future. Maybe it’s shock, trauma, sleep deprivation. Maybe it’s just that there’s no distractions, but Simone begins to feel a prescient sort of stirring in her body. That something will change and soon. That they have just set in motion something larger than only themselves, mother and daughter against the desert sky.
They set off after finishing the mackerel, the tent packed up. They might do ten miles today, maybe more, close in on Terlingua, on safety.
‘In the room was this low noise, like a fan next door,’ Lucy says. Her voice, trained by acting classes, carries easily even on the winds of the desert. ‘I spent so long listening to it with these thoughts going around my head like,I’ve been kidnapped.For the rest of my life, I will be able to say that I have been kidnapped.’
‘How did you pass the time?’
‘I didn’t. It went so slowly. Contextless. No time. Just the air-con noise and me. I recited Samuel Beckett plays in my head. It was scary, but mostly it was actually lonely. The world felt too bright after … after you got me, no blindfold.’
‘I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.’
‘I could only tell if it was night or day by meals. You just can’t keep track of time with no marker at all. And he was so quiet. No speaking, but also light on his feet, like a dancer. He brought me things and I didn’t hear the door open.’
‘You did all the right things,’ Simone says. ‘You got out.’
‘Yeah. Guess so.’
