MORNING SERIAL
HE’LL be here she thinks, calling again. The ewes bellow back, hollow barking calls repeated in treble by their lambs. They watch her as she searches, clambers on bales, moves pallets to find a den or hidey-hole where he might be crouched, nibbling biscuits, making them last.
On her way back she racks her brains for where else he might be. Dusk is leeching sunlight from the sky, a band of cloud flat on the horizon like a tidal wave. She stops and scans the terrain. To one side the slope of the empty field towards rocks and roiling sea, to the other a scarred landscape. Empty and half-demolished houses, any one a potential hideout. Dangerous and crumbling. The wind whips her hair into her mouth, over her eyes.
Could he have tried to make his way home, to the barn? She looks at the most direct route; more barbed wire and brambles, gorse bushes, the solid block of the reactors behind ten-foot-high security fencing. CCTV. Men with machine guns patrolling the perimeter. He’d never make it through.
Ioan is eating cold cuts from the fridge when she gets back, his purple Magnox fleece still on, his eyes tired from a twelve-hour shift. He stops chewing as she tells him. ‘Have you called the police?’ ‘No, I wanted to look first, to see if he was down in the barn. We should check Mam and Dad’s too.’
‘Could he have gotten that far?’
‘I don’t know.’
She fumbles her pockets, goes to the washing basket still sitting, damp and tangled by the back door. Turns out the pockets of her wet jeans. ‘He’s got the key.’
‘What key?’
‘That thing he had around his neck, on the cord. For emergencies, he kept saying.
‘Must’ve taken it this morning while I…’ She groans. ‘He’s planned this.’
‘What are you talking about, Jen, planned what?’
‘This morning, he didn’t want to go into school, said he felt sick. He’s been planning this.’
> The Half Life of Snails by Philippa Holloway is published by Parthian at £15
CONTINUES TOMORROW