Free Across the Bridge by Morag Joss Page A

with the palms of both hands,
about to cry. Stefan and I looked at each other; we both wanted to
say something else, and we both started to speak at once. He tried
to laugh.
    “OK. What?”
    “You will remember to get her a car seat, won’t you? Today?”
    He smiled and reached out and gave my shoulder a little shake.
“Sure, sure, lady. Today. I will.”
    “What were you going to say?”
    “Nothing,” he said. He pulled out his envelope again, just as
Anna began to sob, pressing her face up to the glass. “Only, here.
Three thousand. Here, take,” he said, pushing more bills into my
hands. Then he turned quickly to the car and I started walking
away, towards the service station. I heard him open the car door
and speak gently, but I kept walking. I could not bear to see her
hands outstretched for him as he lifted her into his arms.
    I didn’t want to wait for the bus. It was too cold to stand in
the shelter, and I wanted to get away and keep moving, putting
distance between myself and what I had just done. I kept walking.
Soon I had reached the bridge, and I could see that the pathway for
pedestrians was a separate narrow carriageway, built lower than the
steel deck that carried cars; once on it I would be almost
invisible except to anyone I might meet walking across from the
other side. I strode along fast with my collar up against the roar
of traffic and the estuary wind. I liked the thought of being
hidden. After a few minutes, the bus rumbled on past me.
    Looking inland, I could see all the way to the point where the
river emerged from the neck of the loch, and turning eastwards, I
saw as far as it ran, past the docks and the city, and widened into
the sea. As I walked, in each direction the views hit my eyes like
old, stuttering film as the black spars of the bridge flickered
past between me and the landscape.
    At the first junction on the far side, where nearly all the
traffic bore right to go north and up the coast, I turned left and
followed a much narrower road that rose and curved inland. The
signs pointed towards Netherloch Falls and Netherloch. The paved
walkway from the bridge came to an end, and I continued along the
side of the road, suspended in wintery afternoon darkness; the way
was canopied by overhanging trees, through which blinding slashes
of daylight cut until they stood too densely planted for light to
penetrate. After a while I could only sense but not see the river,
a long way beyond the trees and below me. One or two cars passed,
leaving hollow echoes of engine noise. As the road rose ahead of me
I could tell I was going higher; soon I heard a faraway rushing in
the treetops and the air was cold with pine resin and raw mountain
winds that carried none of the green, reedy damp of the river. I
came upon the remains of a clearing where trees had been felled in
an apparently disordered kind of order: straight rows of sawn
stumps poked up between tractor ruts and receded back into the line
of the forest. Everywhere the ground was scattered with shards and
chips of torn wood and the scabs of stripped bark. Dozens of tree
trunks lay stacked horizontally, and around them were stiff,
feathery heaps of smaller pine cuttings alongside dried out
branches and twigs, grey and tangled like wires.
    I had been walking for nearly an hour and had a stitch in my
side, and I stopped to rest against a mound of logs, digging my
foot into a mulchy carpet of pine needles and moss. I was scared
and cold, and sick with disgust at myself; I stared into the
darkness of the trees and wanted to escape into it. Just then I
heard another bus. Without thinking, I ran back to the road and
waved it down. I climbed on breathless and shivering and wondered
if I was getting flu. By the time we reached Netherloch I ached
with tiredness and the afternoon had turned cloudy and raw. It was
only a quarter past two. I knew I could not bear nearly four hours
loitering in the streets, going from one café to another. I had to
get into a