“I wish we’d never come here,” Alison said. “Best we can hope for is we’ll be allocated a caravan where they’ll put people up. At least I’ll be able to shower. Even if I need to queue.”
“Let’s see what we can salvage,” Alec said.
“You mean our lives? Salvage those? Our lives aren’t like flat packs you know. You can’t lie them down and start assembling.”
“We can do it. We moved here and settled in after all. It’s just that we’re going to have to do it again.”
“What was it you said? No more desks. No more long days at the office. No more traffic. You sure got rid of all that. And everything else.”
“You agreed to it.”
“I did. Thought there might be something better than watching you come home miserable every day. Saying over and over you only worked to pay debts. That it was tedious, joyless, the job meant nothing. That’s when I made my mistake. I thought we had lives worth saving.”
He went to her this time. She’d turned back to salvaging a vase and as he approached, spun around as if intending to slap him. He even winced, the way he did when watching a medical procedure on television. For a second she glared, before returning to the vase, gouging it out with fingers, then shaking mud off before taking it inside.
He watched her go, half expecting her to return and ask to take back what she’d said. Lean into him so hard he’d feel the Morse code of her heart, hands gripping him. Sun baked the back of his neck. Near to his feet three small holes pocked the ground. They could be ant’s nests. Belong to spiders. Or, in a tiny miracle, the bees survived.
He could only hope.
