Girl 38 by Ewa Jozefkowicz

Author:Ewa Jozefkowicz [Jozefkowicz, Eva]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781786698964
Publisher: Head of Zeus

ELEVEN

I walked home through the park. I thought it might give me time to think about what to do, but my mind was blank. I picked at another hangnail until a trickle of blood made its way down my finger, all the way to my knuckle. I sucked it. It tasted cold and metallic.

I passed our old nursery, on the edge of the park, next to the huge playground. It was almost empty, but there were two girls who looked around four years old still hanging out on the climbing frame. One was blonde and the other dark-haired. They looked like Gem and me when we were little. Behind the window, to the left of the nursery entrance, I could see the class where we’d met and she’d asked me whether I wanted to be friends.

Things had seemed so much easier then. When did it all get so difficult? I trailed in the direction of home.

‘Katherine?’ Ania was sitting on the front porch of her house wearing a beautiful printed headscarf. The parrot-headed walking stick lay by her feet. I felt myself instantly relax.

‘Hello. What are you doing out here?’ I asked her.

‘I’m thinking,’ she said simply. ‘I sometimes like to come out here, think, and watch people walk by. I feel like I can tell a lot about a person from their walk. Sometimes I make up little stories in my head about them. I might see a businessman in a fancy suit and sunglasses and think to myself, He is an international bank robber in disguise. And you? What have you been doing?’

‘I was thinking too… maybe we could think together?’

‘Absolutely. I love thinking with somebody else.’

We sat in silence for a few minutes, but what I really wanted was to hear more of Ania’s story. I asked whether she could tell me the next instalment. As she started to speak, I drifted away from the horrible present, transported into her world.

‘You got up to the part when you jumped,’ I reminded her.

‘So I did. I told you that everything turned black because I lost consciousness, but only for a few seconds. When I came round, I saw two faces leaning over me. I couldn’t recognise them at first, and there were voices that came in and out of focus, like a faulty radio transmitter.

‘It took a few minutes before the awful pain in my left ankle hit me and I realised that I couldn’t move it. Then my mind put together everything that had happened. I remembered the soldiers, the train, the boys, the leap – and I knew that something had gone wrong.

‘“We’re so far from where we were supposed to be,” Henryk kept repeating over and over, and Adam cursed under his breath. It turned out that we’d jumped much earlier than we should have done and that we were nowhere near any form of civilisation.

‘“We need to get to the main road,” Adam said. “Then we can flag someone down.”’

‘But you couldn’t find anyone?’ I guessed.

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