Page 82 of The Flowers of Bay C
She’s right. We have been sitting on this verge for over twenty minutes now, and nobody has come to our rescue. Kane hasn’t had a change of heart and returned, probably because he doesn’t have much of a heart. And if no one comes, we will wilt away and die.
‘I don’t know what to do,’ I say, and everyone seems to wither before me, as if they were blossoming for a moment but then the summer died. I turn to Kat. She’s the sensible one. She’ll have something up her sleeve. ‘Do you?’
She just shakes her head, and then she lowers herself onto her knees on a patch of grass and closes her eyes.
‘What are you doing?’ Jodie says.
Kat is silent.
Amina puts her finger on her lips, and whispers, ‘What do you think she is doing?’
Violet wrinkles her nose. ‘Whatever floats her boat, I guess. Lot of use it’s done so far this afternoon.’
‘Shut up, Violet,’ I say, and she looks up in surprise, and I am surprised too.
The darkness draws in further, bringing the cold with it and the damp we can feel under our bottoms and through our bones. Jodie wheezes too loudly and I worry.
Barbara puts out her red-gloved hand, palm upwards, a look of wonder in her eyes. ‘Snow!’ she says, and she sounds like a small child gazing out of her window on Christmas Eve, voice high with excitement and the promise of what is to come.
‘You said it would be dry all day today,’ Violet says to Jodie with baleful eyes, shivering and zipping her silver coat up to the top, burying her mouth and nose.
Jodie sticks out her chin. ‘It said that! Well, I mean, it said it might snow tonight, through the night like, but it said there would be sun through the day, then might get chilly towards late afternoon. Not that it would snow this early or nothing.’
‘But there it is,’ I say.
It only comes in slow floaty flakes, at first, but it is as if time slows down as I gaze at them. I can almost make out the complex intricacy of each one, as if an artist has taken time to craft them from nothing into an explosion of great and mysterious beauty.
‘I don’t like snow,’ Violet says.
Why doesn’t that surprise me? She doesn’t like sand, either, or the sea, or very much at all. Yet it seems she might like us a little more than she did. She liked us enough to come on this doomed outing.
‘It’s too cold,’ she says, ‘snow, I mean. And wet.’
‘Look,’ Jodie croaks. ‘There.’
Something is coming over the horizon to the west of us. It takes shape as a battered rust-coloured people-carrier trundling slowly down the road pulling a huge old caravan. The car is a Zafira, I think. When Marcus and I got married I used to plan out our life, how we would have three or four children and buy a Zafira with seven seats and travel the country with our happy brood. Marcus would be a good father, I thought. He’d bring them up to be the best that they could be, to be useful and wholesome people.
The car draws closer. Through the murky dusk I can just about make out seventies-style floral curtains waving slightly in the windows of the battered, ancient caravan, which looks like something Jeremy Clarkson would like to play racing games involving fiery finales with.
Kat scrambles to her feet and is out on the road in seconds, ready to flag the driver down. The rest of us remain sitting, steeped in lethargy and apathy. Why should this one be any different?
Chapter 25
Kat is not taking no for an answer.
‘It’s too dark,’ I say. ‘He might not see you.’
She shakes her head. ‘He’s going that slowly.’
Something is making a very unhealthy sound and I’m not sure whether it’s the car or the caravan, a kind of clanking, shrieking sound, amplified with each second as the getup limps closer. It seems to take an age to get here, and Kat shifts from foot to foot in impatience, waiting until the driver is in sight to start waving her arms around. She doesn’t just wave, though. She shouts, too, and her shout is a high-pitched screech: ‘STOP! STOP!’
The car squeals to a halt and the driver opens the window.
‘What the hell is this?’
Nobody knows what to say to that, so we stay silent. None of us can form many words anymore, anyway. Even Kat is quiet, spent in her heroic efforts to bring this thing to a stop and get us out of this intolerable situation. I heave myself off the wall and join Kat next to his open window.
‘What do you all think you look like? Granny’s night out gone wrong, is it? Little too much of the sherry and now you’ve got lost? What do you want?’ His shadowed face cuts in a frown so spiky his skin is sliced in ribbons. ‘I don't have time for this. I have to go.’
