Free Annan Water by Kate Thompson Page A

it. Instead, they both sat in silence, immune to the surrounding contentment of the munching horses.

27
    T HEY HAD TO CRAWL home through the dense mist. Jean and Frank took turns to sleep in the transom. Michael and Annie sat side by side in the double passenger seat. He ached to put his arm around her, take her head and all its sorrows on to his shoulder. In the end it was he who nodded off and slumped towards her, and woke when the lorry bumped over a railway crossing and knocked their skulls together.
    It broke them out of their gloom. Frank started singing the only song he knew. ‘ One man went to mow …’
    Annie joined in. They giggled and sang the rest of the way home.
    When they got back, Annie helped Michael to carry haynets and water buckets around the yard. While she was kissing Bandit good night, an idea occurred to him.
    ‘Why don’t you stay here?’
    ‘Your mum said she’d drop me home.’
    ‘No, I don’t mean tonight. I mean next week. When your mum’s away.’
    She looked up at him. He could tell she wanted to. ‘What about your folks?’
    ‘Oh, they’re cool. They like you. It won’t be a problem.’
    ‘I might,’ she said. ‘I’ll ring you.’
    He squatted on the damp cobbles and carved his phone number with a hoof pick on a broken piece of slate. Frank passed by, a bale of straw on his back.
    ‘Be sure and come back now, you hear?’ he said to Annie. ‘As soon as you like.’
    ‘See?’ said Michael. ‘I told you.’
    He dreamed that the jackdaws were back, pouring concrete down the chimney. He was trying to swim through it before it set when he woke. The song, and that old, dead stump, were lurking in his mind.
    Woe betide the willow wan,
    And woe betide the bush and briar,
    For they broke beneath her true love’s hand,
    When strength did fail and limb did tire.
    He was amazed that those lines had taken so long to return to him. They were the ones that he had waited for every time his grandmother sang it; that had made the blood rush up his spine, even as a small child. They were doing it again now. There was another one as well. What was it?
    It wasn’t just the river that was condemned, then. That was why the banks were bare. It must have been that stretch of water the young man tried to cross. He nearly made it, but the growing things failed him. They broke away as he tried to struggle out, and they had been cursed for it. Every one of them had died, and never grown again.
    He tried to find his reason. It couldn’t possibly be true. It was just a song, just a coincidence. But the hour was against him. He was still half in the dream-time, and the song ran on through him. It was no longer his grandmother’s voice that carried it. Somehow, he didn’t know how, it was the river’s.

28
    A S SOON AS HE got up, it was in his mind that Annie might ring. It was in his mind even at school. He was lifting the phone, trying cool, then surprised, then delighted, when he was ambushed by the maths teacher.
    ‘You’re looking very cheerful there, Michael,’ she said. ‘Finished those problems?’
    He put his face back into neutral. ‘No, miss.’
    She began to walk towards his desk. He checked his neighbour’s book for the page number and opened his copy.
    ‘A pen might help,’ said the teacher.
    Michael felt the colour in his cheeks. He poked around in his bag.
    The teacher sighed. ‘It’s up to you,’ she said. All of you. I can’t programme you. If you don’t do the work you won’t pass the exam. It’s as simple as that.’
    Michael leaned on his elbows and scratched his head. Something grey and scrofulous dropped onto the white page. He picked it up on the tip of his pen and scribbled it into a clean corner. It must have come out of the body brush when Annie caught up with him on Saturday.
    He locked his jaw so that his face couldn’t betray him again, and surrendered to the memory.
    She phoned on Wednesday evening.
    ‘Is it still all right to stay with