MORNING SERIAL
THEY climb back into the car. Maksim can’t keep his eyes off Helen’s face and head.
She runs a hand over her scalp and feels the sharpness of the stubble, the rough cut.
Sticks out her chin and looks Maksim right in the eyes. “I liked your hair so much I wanted the same look.”
Maksim runs a palm over his own buzz cut, then his hand moves around and settles on his throat. “You look like one of us now.” The smile has slipped again, and she sees the same look in his eyes that Anton has. The performance is over.
The kitchen is busy; two uniforms sipping tea, pacing. Radios crackling. Jennifer keeps mixing up their names, apologising. Ioan has joined the search, grabbing the big torch and pulling a woollen hat low over his ears. He’s called on distant neighbours too, mates from work. The security guards at the plant have been notified, are patrolling the perimeter, checking CCTV footage for a shape that might be a small boy with a big rucksack moving through the long grasses and rocks.
“Where did you say his mam was again?” one of the uniforms asks. They’ve taken off their yellow coats and hung them over the kitchen chairs, are leaning on the worktops, conferring.
“Ukraine.” She puts the kettle on again. No-one has finished their tea yet.
“And you found these, where?” The box with the syringes is in a sealed plastic bag, labelled and dated. An incident number scrawled in permanent marker on the side.
“In her car, at her house. She isn’t… she doesn’t…”
They glance at one another. “How long have you been worried about him, your nephew?”
An impossible question. If she’d said something earlier, to the doctor, would Jack be in bed now? Or in a Social Services assessment centre, safe but locked in?
“Can I get some air, please?” “Of course.” One of the officers follows her into the garden, as if she too might abscond into the emptied landscape.
The Half Life of Snails by Philippa Holloway is Published by Parthian at £15