Hideous kinky - By Esther Freud Page 0,26

long pause.

‘Yes,’ he said finally and he squeezed my hand very tight.

Bilal showed Bea and me how to keep water cool by tying the bottle to a stone and letting it lie floating in the lake. We took down the wall of stones around the fire and scattered the ashes away with branches, sprinkling handfuls of sand over the ground to settle the dust and make it clean and smooth again. Mum bed lengths of string between the trees and hung our bedding out to air.

‘If Linda was here,’ she said, ‘she could have her own private washing line.’

The ground was littered with wood to be collected for that night’s fire. Bilal broke the branches with his foot, stamping them into little pieces, while we dashed about bringing him new supplies.

‘Right,’ he said. ‘Enough.’

Bea and I ran down to the lake, pulled off our clothes and slid into the water. It was cold only for a moment. We lay on our backs with everything but our faces covered and cooled, the sun forcing our eyes shut against the glare.

When I tried to speak the muddy water trickled into my mouth. ‘Did you know they got married?’ I said to Bea. It was half interrogation, half news.

Bea lay still beside me. ‘Mum and Bilal?’

‘Yes.’

‘Who says?’

‘Bilal told Charlie at the well.’

She rolled towards me. ‘Liar!’ she spat. ‘You’re a liar.’ Her eyes had turned to stone.

‘We met a man called Charlie at the well and he’s going to give me a car that winds up.’

Bea kept her ears under the water and pretended not to hear.

‘I promise, I promise. Cross my heart and hope to die.’ I couldn’t think what else to say.

We lay there for a long time. Side by side. The sun beating down through my eyelids made my head throb.

‘I’m going to get a drink,’ I said. But Bea wouldn’t even open her eyes.

There was no one around when I got back to the camp. I rummaged through the box of food and took out two tomatoes and a piece of bread. I slid between the folds of a bedspread draped over the line. The bedspread made a cool and narrow tent. The juice from the tomato softened the bread as I chewed them together in my mouth.

I could hear voices calling my name. Voices I knew and others I didn’t recognize. It was dark and the thin material flapped against me. I rolled into the open. The voices cursed and called, but I couldn’t see anyone.

‘I’m here,’ I said. ‘I’m over here.’ Then I stood up and yelled. ‘I’m here, I’m here, I’m HERE!’

Mum ran out through the trees. She grabbed my arm and slapped me. ‘Where have you been?’

‘I was asleep.’ I started to cry.

She gave a long sigh and hugged me too tightly. ‘We thought you’d been kidnapped or something. We even asked the shepherds to help search.’

Bilal appeared with two men. Their dogs leapt about but didn’t bark. One of the shepherds whistled and the dogs slunk to the ground. Bea raised an eyebrow as she passed me. ‘Hideous kinky,’ she whispered and she went off to talk to the dogs.

The shepherds stayed and ate with us around the fire. Under cover of darkness we fed their dogs little pieces of bread. They were big and shaggy with soft eyes that knew how to beg. Their hair was thick and matted and filthy.

‘Maybe we could get them into the lake and wash them,’ Bea said.

The dogs were covered in lumps like blisters that I could feel through their fur when I stroked them.

‘If we give them lots of food they’ll come back.’

The dogs were not fussy. They ate rice, carrots, beans, the inside of a pomegranate.

The next afternoon they were back. All three. They lay down, wagging their tails in the sand.

‘Come and look.’ Bea had uncovered a blister along the spine of the largest dog’s back. It was dark red and swollen, fat and round as a bilberry. I touched it with my finger. The dog didn’t flinch.

‘Ticks,’ Bilal said. He bent down. ‘They suck the blood.’

‘Do you mean they’re alive?’ I moved back involuntarily. Like body lice, but bigger, I thought.

Bilal flicked his hand through the dog’s coat, uncovering whole colonies of blood-swollen ticks.

Bea was staring into the dog’s mournful eyes. ‘Couldn’t we pull them oft?’

Bilal shook his head. ‘Then it is worse for the dog. If you pull them off, they leave their legs behind, and they grow again, a new body.’

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