Unsheltered Clare Moleta (book club books .txt) 📖

the door behind her to trap whatever warmth was in there. The sudden drop in temperature was brutal. She was outside for less than a minute but by the time she got back in she was shivering uncontrollably and there were pins and needles in her fingers and toes. Stupid, stupid, not to have put more layers on. She started the engine again and blasted the heater, then fumbled urgently in her pack for her thermal gear – the top smelling of sweat and woodsmoke as she pulled it over her head. Gloves, balaclava, hunting cap. It was so important that she lived. She couldn’t work her fingers on the straps and buckles of her knee crutch, and she started crying out of rage but she got the thing off and got into her sleeping bag.

In a little while her body started to regulate. The shaking eased until she was able to get out of her boots and pants and pull on the thick socks and leggings. The smell of other bodies was warm and human. She unrolled her groundmat and got it under her. The rain came sleeting on the glass, filling the car with noise. She ate a packet of curried instant noodles, swallowed a mouthful of water. Killed the engine.

Later, she woke again in absolute certainty that Frank was there, just outside. Had she been dreaming about him? Her head was clear. The rain had stopped and it was quiet, the car windows iced over. She was very cold but not dangerously cold. She sat up and listened. Heard breathing distinct from her own.

Li cleared a patch on the window, flinching from the burn of the glass. In the moonlight she saw a dingo sitting still at the side of the car. White. Black-lipped. It sat upright with its front paws together, calm and enormously alert, brow furrowed in a long angular face. Clouds moved across the moon but when they cleared again, the dingo was still there. Under the shaggy coat it was almost skeletal. It must be able to smell her but it couldn’t get in unless she let it in. She touched her waist, where she’d kept the knife. Closed her eyes. She felt so close to Frank now. Not the stab wounds of memory, or the surrender of Transit, but something illuminating. She could almost reach him, almost make him understand. I didn’t know what else to do. There was no safe place. I made a choice and I lost her.

The dingo was still. She couldn’t believe how still. Only the tiniest movement of one ear, the ferocity of its attention. Every time I remember it I try and turn around, make myself turn, see what she wanted to show me. I can’t change anything.

In the dark behind the still, silent dingo there was howling. It rose and fell and rose again in waves of longing or warning. The dingo got up unhurriedly and padded away. Li pressed her ear against the frozen glass. Why would I get another chance? she asked Frank. I wouldn’t know how to do it any different.

The next time she woke it was early morning and raining again. The engine was slow to warm up and she got out to scrape ice off the windshield, bone-cold and stiff. Thought about the dry firewood in the boot, how she would build a fire tonight if the rain held off long enough. There was muesli in one of the army readies, she ate that and drank a little water. Took off her walking boot and put it on the floor on the passenger side. Before she pulled out she turned on the phone but there was no signal.

For the first hour the road climbed and twisted relentlessly. It was easier managing the clutch with the boot off, although it felt strange, after so long, to apply pressure directly with her left foot. She craved paracetemol but she couldn’t risk taking her hands off the wheel, her eyes off the road. Anyway, the pills wouldn’t last. The headaches were just one more thing she’d done to herself that she had to live with. Except Rich didn’t think she’d been exposed long enough to do permanent damage.

So I won’t always be like this? she’d asked.

And he’d grinned that complicated grin. I wouldn’t’ve thought.

There was black ice and she had to slow, nervous about locking the wheels again. She was tensed all the time for the sound of trucks. Three of them passed her, two westbound and one roaring up behind her. She pulled over as far as she could and they bore down without making any concessions. It was a physical relief to come out onto an open stretch of highway, ribboning ahead through tussock and outcrops of rock, with an occasional tree or patch of trees. There was still a quarter of a tank. She’d seen no one on foot since she left Rich, but she felt confident that when she had to walk she would be able to.

A bird of prey spooled up up up on a current and then coasted, splitting the sky between the white of its belly and the grey above it. One new update. Matti should be dead, but Li could feel her again, thought she could, on the other side of all this rock and dirt.

The road climbed above the tree line. She’d never been this close to snow. Pulled her visor down against the glare and turned the heater on in short blasts to keep the temperature manageable and the windows from fogging up.

The highway hugged the cut face of the mountain now. When snowflurries blew across the pass she slowed to a crawl, barely able to see a metre ahead even with the wipers on. To her left was the gravel siding and then a metal and concrete barrier. Sections of the metal had been salvaged, exposing a broken fenceline behind it and then a high emptiness, a suspension, before