The Vanishing Hours by Barney Norris

Author:Barney Norris
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781473557680
Publisher: Transworld

I was lying in a ditch by the side of a road, and next to me was the woman I had seen in the caravan. We were both wearing waterproofs, head to toe, resting our heads on Karrimor rucksacks, and I was freezing, and I could see in the way the woman wrapped her arms around her body that she was too. I stared at her. She didn’t lash out; she didn’t speak either. This woman was different from the other people I had encountered till now. There was kindness in her, gentleness. I wondered whether there might be a different way of talking to her; some way of finding out where I was and who I was that wouldn’t have been possible in the other worlds I had passed through on my journey.

‘I’ve forgotten where we are,’ I said, watching her carefully, trying not to say anything that would alarm her too much. The expression on her face, pinched and pale with the cold, barely changed.

‘We’re inland from Dover,’ she told me.

I nodded.

‘I’ve forgotten why we came here.’

‘We’re going to the cliffs, you remember? The view of the ocean.’

I took a deep breath, took a risk.

‘I’ve forgotten who we are.’

She frowned now, alarmed, a little afraid of what was happening.

‘What?’

‘Who are we? I don’t remember.’

The woman peered at me, afraid, uncertain.

‘It’s us.’

‘You’re my wife?’ I asked her, hoping this might be the answer. She laughed, a high laugh, like something taking flight, hardly human.

‘I’m your sister.’

I nodded, confounded, trying to cover it.

‘I’m sorry. I think that it’s the cold. I know that. You’re my sister. I think that it’s the cold.’

She started to lever herself to her feet.

‘Come on then,’ she said to me, ‘let’s get moving.’

I stood up and looked around me as we shouldered our backpacks. We were by the side of a quiet country road. The fields were wet with the morning. Stillness lay over them, as if no one had passed through in a very long time.

‘Where have we come from?’ I asked my sister. She looked at me quizzically, half amused and half worried. Perhaps she wasn’t sure whether I was playing a game.

‘We’ve come from Barmouth,’ she said.

‘The caravan.’

‘That’s right.’ That made her smile. ‘That’s right, the caravan.’

So these dreams I was having were repeating themselves. Each new scene was a homecoming also. Were all these reflections of some part of my head, some part of myself? Were all these stories expressions of something in me? And what did this world hold for me, what did it have to say?

‘We should keep going,’ my sister said, ‘now that it’s light.’

‘All right,’ I said, noting the way she held her raincoat round her. I could see that she was freezing; we had lain out in the open with nothing to shelter us, and now, in the harsh and unforgiving cold of early morning, all the heat had fled our bodies. We felt a creaking in our limbs; we felt our bloodstreams slowing. I could feel it in myself as well.

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