This short extract is from the first draft of my novella, This Life More Sweet © Saffron Vickers Walkling
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Prologue
They had turned up one winter, the boy and the girl. That much Pam Le Duc could recall. They were adults really, but she could never think of them as that. Technically, they had not turned up together. The girl, she reckoned, had left the boy to die, but Kwasi had gone out and found him, hypothermic in the snow.
Pam had been in her art studio when she heard the motorbike pass by. It was lonely on the old forest road so she noticed these things. She listened for a moment before continuing to sort through her brushes and inks for the morning. Once this was done, she took the paper she was soaking out of its shallow tub of water. It was as white as the snow outside and chill to the touch. She held it by the corner as the water dripped away, stretched it on a board and taped it down, running her fingers around the edges to smooth away any trapped pockets of air. That was when there was a tap at the window. Startled, Pam looked up from her work. She thought for a moment that what she saw was a ghost or a spirit emerged from the woods, but it was just a girl. A white girl, although not from around here. It must have been the light that drew her. The girl pressed her face close to the pane. Then she was gone, stepping back into the darkness.
There was no option other than to let her in, whatever or whoever she was, not on a night like that, so Pam walked through the house to the front door, calling out to Kwasi on the way. Her son was not long out of the army and Pam was suddenly thankful for this as he came down the stairs to join her. The girl was already standing on the doorstep. Pam pulled her in, slamming the door shut behind her. It wasn’t possible that she had got there on her own, after all, wearing only a pair of slippers, split open at the toes, a flimsy dress, and a man’s denim jacket that stank of weed.
Once the girl was wrapped in a blanket, Kwasi had taken the jacket with him to see who else was there. He had taken the dog, too, and the gun, just in case, despite his mother’s protests.
“Who knows,” he said with a wink, “it could be some kind of ambush.” Pam could see that the thought excited him. It was the sort of thing that happened in those late-night Thursday movies that he had always insisted on watching when he was a teenager.
“I’m joking, Mum, but even if it is, I trained for this.” Kwasi squeezed Pam’s shoulder gently. He towered over her. Outside, the snow was deepening, and the night fell silent as he set off through the trees.
The girl, for her part, was half starved and shrunk with cold, Pam thought, looking her up and down as she stood in the hallway. Her cheekbones reminded Pam of faces she had sketched when she was travelling years ago. Where was it, now? The Carpathian Mountains? Although the girl couldn’t be more than twenty, the flesh on her face seemed simultaneously stretched and loose, like that of the old women sitting in their doorways as Pam’s younger self passed by. It was difficult to see, especially in that light, but there were dark shadows under the girl’s eyes and what could be bruises peppered around her collarbone and wrists. Pam was not one to ask questions. This was a place of new beginnings, fresh starts, or that’s what she liked to tell herself. 
She coaxed the girl into the kitchen, sitting her down with some hot, sweet tea to ward away the cold.
“I’m Pam,” she said slowly, not for the first time, unsure if the girl understood her. The girl hadn’t said a word since she arrived. “That was Kwasi,” Pam continued. “He’s my son. You don’t need to be afraid.”
The girl still said nothing, just stared into the mug cradled in her hands. She looked like an oracle of yore, searching for her future there, but maybe it was no more than a distraction, an excuse not to look at Pam.
By the time Kwasi got back with the boy, the boy was shaking uncontrollably and talking nonsense. He had found him some way off, said Kwasi, trapped under the motorbike near the edge of the road. Pam looked from the newest arrival to the girl. The girl didn’t move, unless, Pam thought, there was a slight tightening of her shoulders.
“I’ll only be a moment,” Pam said to her. As she walked into the hallway, she took the key from the locked front door and slipped it into her pocket.
It took both mother and son to get the boy up the stairs to a bed to settle him. He was a year or two older than the girl, no more, and although slight, he was strong. Pain made him stronger. Still, it wasn’t until the next day that Kwasi discovered the wound. Not the old scars – the fight scars – nor the spreading, cheap tattoos. Not the small, shiny discs of cigarettes stubbed out on pale, soft skin, some still rosy and new. But the perfectly shaped burn over the heart. It looked for all the world as if somebody had taken an iron to him, a domestic iron, the sort that is usually reserved for the pressing of shirts. Pam wondered if it was the girl who had done this to him.
Story and images © Saffron Walkling
For my fan fiction see He’s Loved In Seven Languages (Deutschland 83 and Deutschland 86), Can you Tell Me Why? (Deutschland 83 and Deutschland 86) and Dierdre (God’s Own Country)
Saffron Muses 