Silver and Salt by Elanor Dymott

Author:Elanor Dymott
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Apart from a pair of scales, positioned at its midpoint, Max had cleared his desk. There was a small piece of paper on the right-hand scale and on the base was a line of brass weights in varying sizes, each of them embossed with a number.

‘Ready?’ he said.

‘Yes,’ she answered, not knowing for what.

‘Find me the five-gram weight.’

She picked it up but it slipped from her fingers. Crouching to the floor, she stood a minute later with it clutched in her fist.

‘On the scales, please.’

She wavered between the two, then she placed it on the scale with the piece of paper.

‘Not that one.’

When she’d moved it across, he adjusted the slide in the middle. ‘Say stop when it’s enough,’ he said, taking a tiny plastic bag from his pocket and beginning to empty its contents on the other scale, directly onto the piece of paper.

‘Stop,’ she said, almost immediately

‘Look at it, Roo. Tell me what you see.’

‘Powder.’

‘Really?’

‘Crystals, I mean. Crystals.’

‘Colour?’

‘Black. No, purple. Dark purple.’

‘So, tell me again. What do you see?’

‘Dark purple crystals.’

‘How many grams?’

She looked across at the weight she’d chosen, double-checking the number on the top. ‘Five.’

‘So. Tell me again, what do you see?’

‘Five grams of dark purple crystals.’

‘Thank you. The details are important, Roo. Now. Shall I tell you what I see?’

‘Yes, Papa.’

He took the paper from the tray and slipped the crystals back in the bag. Then he wrote a short string of letters and numbers on another piece of paper.

‘I see enough of this –’ he pointed at the letters and numbers – ‘to kill a child. Your five grams of dark purple crystals are an everyday ingredient for a photographer. What you did yesterday was very, very silly. We’ll see how you get on, but for now, I want you standing back and watching. Understood? You touch nothing, and unless I tell you to, you do nothing.’

‘Yes, Papa,’ saying the words he wanted to hear instead of the ones she wanted to say, so they were stuck in her mind the afternoon through: ‘You hurt me,’ and, ‘Why?’ and, ‘I love you.’

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