Free The Other Side of the World by Stephanie Bishop Page A

speaks that she still calls England home and doesn’t know what to call this new place that is now also home.
    Months pass. The March mornings are beautiful—golden and full of birdcalls. Charlotte lies in bed for as long as she can, sometimes bringing May in with her while Lucie sleeps. She lies there, listening, wanting to know what the birds are called and which song belongs to which bird. She has spotted a little bird with a stripe of fluorescent blue on its chest—a wren, perhaps—and a pink bird with a white crest. She will go to the library, she thinks, borrow a book on such things. She still has to carry a map so as to find the library. But she won’t go today—their shipment offurniture and boxes has finally arrived and she must unpack. Already the bedroom is warm from the sun. “It will be hot today, a scorcher ,” Henry says as he comes into the bedroom.
    He’s all freshly showered and shaven—a towel wrapped around his waist. There is a spattering of dark freckles over his shoulders, a fine mesh of hair across his chest. He rubs his jaw, checking for smoothness, and takes a clean shirt from the wardrobe. He’s been up since dawn, revising an essay, and skips breakfast these days, preferring to get to work early. Because of the heat Henry wears shorts to work. They are navy blue, with a crease ironed down the front and back. Charlotte had never seen him wear shorts to work before, and she teases him; his legs are long, his knees knobbly. Henry is pulling up his socks now, smoothing back his hair. It is time for him to go. He opens the window so she can better hear the birds and then kisses her good-bye.
    Charlotte pulls the covers to her chin and rolls over. She hears the front door close, then the car starting. She can’t understand why he sits there, warming the engine, when it’s already so hot outside. Around her the house is quiet, her children still asleep. It is not ­often that they sleep this long, through the brightness of the early ­morning. Charlotte wills them to stay this way: only when they are sleeping does she feel their consciousness detach from her own, her mind a free and drifting thing. In these moments the air about her seems full, radiant—time becomes untethered. There is no waiting, no urgency, no boredom. The wild swings between these states of being wear her down: this is what it is, she understands now, to care for a child. She thinks about the day ahead and feels tired, more tired, heavy in the limbs. The vigilance is exhausting: the things May will put in her mouth—a dead cockroach, a snail shell—and Lucie’s stories that always demand a response. All this watching and talking.
    There is a certain English dormouse, Charlotte remembers, which, upon ending its hibernation, comes out of its burrow and checks the air; if it deems the weather not good enough it retreats and sleeps for another year. How time passes differently for different creatures. Her days are long—the light makes them more so, the hours stretching on in either direction, the dawn too early, the dusk too late. Lucie turned two the other week. Charlotte baked a chocolate cake and they lit candles and sang. But Lucie didn’t know what to do when it came to blowing the little flames out and sat there, hypnotized. After a long pause Henry huffed and puffed, making a show of it, and the flames were gone.
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    Henry releases the hand brake and reverses out of the drive. It’s only seven fifteen; he should be settled at his desk by half past. He likes to be in before the other staff. Otherwise there are so many hello s and good morning s that by the time he puts pen to paper he’s lost his train of thought. It makes him nervous, too, walking down the green corridor, with all the office doors half-open. Did it mean they wanted him to say good morning, or not? Would it bother them if he did? Would it be rude if he walked past? No one, yet,