Exposure by Helen Dunmore

Author:Helen Dunmore
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780802190413
Publisher: Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
Published: 2016-04-07T19:00:00+00:00

When the frost begins to bite …’

‘It’s all right for Bridget the Pidget,’ mutters Paul. ‘She doesn’t understand anything. I bet she thinks Dad’s gone on holiday. She thought custody was custard.’

Sally blurts with laughter.

‘Is it going to snow, Sally?’ asks Bridget.

‘I don’t know. I wish it would.’ Not a measly inch that quickly turned to slush under the wheels of the buses, but proper snow. Snow that falls all through the night and fills up the roads so nothing can move. They might close the school. She and Paul would make a snowman for Bridget in the back garden, and when they were so freezing they couldn’t stay out any longer Mum would light a fire in the dining room and Bridget would play under the table. No one can see into their dining room, because it faces the garden.

Every time they go out, people are looking at them. That’s why they walk to school together now. Mum thinks they don’t know what was in the newspapers about Dad, but Paul bought the Daily Express with money out of Sally’s Christmas tin. They lay on the floor in Paul’s bedroom, and read the article. When they’d finished, they didn’t say anything. Paul cut out the article with the photo of Dad and the photo of their house, and hid it under his mattress. Sally quickly read ‘The Gambols’, then wrapped up the rest of the newspaper inside some sheets from The Times and stuffed it down to the bottom of the dustbin, with the ash from yesterday’s fires on top of it.

People don’t keep newspapers. They use them to light their fires, or they throw them away. Probably, by now, hardly anybody has still got a copy of that Daily Express with the story about Dad in it.

‘Come up in my room when we get back,’ Paul murmurs to Sally.

Bridget is playing out in the cold, dusky garden. Her voice floats up to the bedroom window:

‘Forty years on an iceberg

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