Free Road Ends by Mary Lawson Page B

her suitcase.”
    “I wondered if anyone brought it in,” Megan said. “I left it on the doorstep.” She couldn’t remember ever feeling so close to despair.
    All eyes were fixed on the television. They were watching a cartoon of a dog with a ribbon on its head. The music thudded on.
    “Or does anyone know where Cora Manning is?” Megan said, with no hope whatsoever.
    “France,” somebody said. “She had a fight with Seb, didn’t she, Seb? So she left. To be an au pair or something.”
    The girl in glasses gave Megan a little shrug and a smile of sympathy. “Sorry,” she said.
    Megan didn’t know if the thumping inside her chest came from the music or her heart. She said to the girl, “Do you know a cheap hotel? Nearby? One I could walk to?”
    “You can stay here if you like,” the girl said cheerfully. “There are lots of mattresses.”
    “That would be … that would be … wonderful,” Megan said. “Thank you. That would be … Just for tonight—I’ll find somewhere else in the morning.”
    “No hurry,” the girl said leading the way along the hall. “Stay as long as you like.”
    The mattress was one of four lying on the floor in a large cold room with a light bulb dangling from the ceiling and newspapers taped over the windows. There was a stained pillow with no pillowcase and a hard hairy blanket. No sheets. Megan took off her coat and boots and skirt, lay down and covered herself with the blanket and her coat. She was cold and her hot water bottle was in the suitcase. She was also exhausted beyond the hope of sleep, but such discomforts were nothing compared with the ache inside her. She thought it would help if she were able to cry, but she hadn’t cried since she was a child and couldn’t remember how to start.
    The music continued to thump and wail. From time to time there was a shriek of laughter or a sharp argument from some other part of the house. After a long while, during which Megan lay unmoving, flat on her back, staring up at the dark, the door opened and two people came in, laughing. They turned on the light and one of them said, “Oops,” and turned it off again and Megan heard them lie down on another of the mattresses and begin unmistakably to make love.
    For some reason that released the tears. She cried soundlessly, the tears running down into her ears and out of them again and down onto the pillow. She cried as she hadn’t cried since she was a small child and possibly not even then. She cried for the photographs. The other contents of her suitcase were nothing, but she didn’t see how she could manage without the photographs. She needed them: they were all she had of home; they told her who she was.
    She knew she was being ridiculous, that photographs were only bits of paper, but the tears rolled on. The more they rolled the more there seemed to be to cry for. She cried for her incomprehensible father behind his closed door and for her mother, who once had been the whole and sufficient centre of her life. She cried for Patrick, who loved her more than she loved him, and for Adam, whose small round weight she could still feel in her arms. She cried because everything had gone wrong and it was her own fault and she was alone in this sodden, wretched country where she didn’t know one single soul. She cried because she had no clean underwear to put on in the morning and because the people here were so peculiar and wore such ridiculous clothes and because everyone thought she was American and blamed her for the war in Vietnam. She cried because six feet away two people were making love and she simply could not imagine anyone doing such a thing, knowingly, in front of someone else. And finally she cried because shewanted to go home to Canada, where she belonged, and knew that she would not.
    She cried herself to sleep, like a child, and in the morning, when she judged by the silence that the others had either left or were intending to sleep all day, she got up and