Free The Wolf Border by Sarah Hall

up the wrong way.
    We could Skype, Binny says. Dora has it on her computer.
    I don’t have a camera on mine, Rachel says.
    Can’t you click it or whatever you do? You’re not working today, are you?
    No. Day off.
    Though she has been rereading her chapter. Binny coughs, coughs again, the phlegm thick-sounding. Finally she clears her throat.
    Have you rung Lawrence?
    I was just about to.
    Ring your brother.
    I was just about to.
    Ring him.
    At the New Year’s party they put tin lanterns up in the office and push the tables against the wall. Rock music hammers from the stereo. She dances with Kyle. She dances with Oran. The volunteers are a couple. There is nothing else for them to do, especially at night. A few friends from town and from the Reservation join the festivities. Kyle’s brother, who came to the last two New Year’s parties, has been sentenced to nine years. White brandy has been brought in from someone’s still, a lethal demi-john. It is eye-wateringly strong, tastes of Vaseline and sour apples, and burns all the way down. Oran is smoking hydroponic weed, heating knives on the hot plate of the boiler. They party hard, one of dozens of groups lost in the woods, getting industrially fuckedup. She dances with Kyle again. He does not usually dance. They dance slowly, their closeness unfamiliar, disarming; she thinks, Shouldn’t I know ? The brandy is cut with something else maybe, will crystallise her brain or send her blind; she doesn’t care. It strips sense and inhibition. The back of his shirt is damp. She can feel the slow ride of his back. Midwinter’s Law of Misrule. He says something into her hair. The question is unfathomable, or wasn’t a question. Her hands, when she stares at them, are like dead birds on his shoulders. So what, she thinks. Soon everything will end, even the stars. OK , she says, OK. OK .
    Midway through the act she loses concentration or realises the mistake. They begin to move out of unison. They change position – her on top. It does not work. It becomes ridiculous. Slap, slap. Nothing feels right. They stop. Sorry . The failure is humiliating. She kneels and goes down on him, but the sensation of her mouth is too light, or he is impartial, or alcohol has killed their nerves. He pulls her up and kisses her, but she leans away. He turns her round and on her side, takes hold of her hip, locks her neck inside his elbow, which is better. His movements are enormous, too strong, going on until she might break, the chaos of bedding, the bed trying to shift across the floor. Then it is over. Wetness like blood slopping inside. Fumes of liquor and sweat linger in the room.
    When he is unconscious she leaves to go back to her own cabin, through the stiff iced branches. No sound, no wind, the year is too stunned to begin properly. The stars are nailed tight, holding up the enormous black sky. The air is immaculate, too difficult to breathe. She stops and kneels and vomits, acid washing up her throat, her nose and eyes stinging. She feels raw. Under her hands, the ground radiates cold. She lets it creep up through her bones,like an infection. Impossible to think of seasons now, of summer’s spontaneous brush fires, grass so aspirated the reflection from a parked car’s mirror could ignite it. Her hands begin to ache. After a while she stands and walks on through the white branches.
    The following morning there is a phone call from England – the manager of Willowbrook. The line is faint; Rachel is not properly awake. Her head blooms with pain, terrible and frontal. Her mouth tastes evil. The conversation begins murkily – a message from Binny, or something about Binny. In the end the hangover acts as prophylactic for the shock, when everything finally becomes clear. Binny has taken an overdose of aspirin and Amlodipine. She was taken to hospital in Kendal as soon as she was found. She was listed as a DNR. They worked on her until the