Free The Girl in the Wall by Alison Preston

the husband’s temple, smoothed his forehead, lifted the covers to look at his feet.
    â€œBye, feet,” she said.
    Mrs. Mortimer put the lens cap on her camera and fit it into its leather case.
    â€œWill he forgive me for running away?” asked the wife.
    â€œOf course he will.”
    She reached out and touched the woman’s hand.
    â€œI’m sure he didn’t know and even if he did, he has already forgiven you. He is goodness itself now.”
    She didn’t know where those words had come from but they sounded apt to her. She felt right inside, not wrong as she so often did. It was time to leave this woman alone with her man so she could kiss his face and speak to his feet without an audience.
    The sun was up when Mrs. Mortimer walked through the soaked streets. The winter squall had moved off and she faced a warm wind as she walked down Taché toward home.
    She felt like a brand new train car firmly fastened to a shiny set of rails, heading out on a clear fresh morning. Heading out to find…
    What she was searching for she didn’t know. She hadn’t even known that she was searching for something, but she was aware that today was the nearest she had come to finding it. Would she ever get any closer? She had no way of knowing, and at the moment she didn’t care.
    A memory came to her as she turned into the crooked lane that led to Monck Avenue. It was of something that had happened on the first day of her second year in grade one. A boy called Philip was sitting at the desk next to hers; she’d heard the teacher say his name. She stared at him. Philip was shivering. For a few more moments she continued to stare. Then she leaned over close to him so that no one else would hear her words.
    â€œDon’t be scared,” she said. “I was here last year. It’s easy.”
    The boy had managed a small smile for her and it was that smile she remembered now. It fit in with this new experience somehow.
    She wondered what Philip was doing today. She didn’t even remember if he had survived grade one. Most people did, she supposed.

15
    By the time she opened the heavy wooden door leading to the front hall the warm feeling inside her had faded but was not forgotten. Maybe it lives there now, she thought, and smiled, imagining it safe inside the many layers that made up her small body. Then she felt confused. There was her idea of getting smaller to ease her movements around the families of the dead — what she recognized as her desire to be invisible — but now that the warm feeling had come, she had an enormous longing to protect it with extra layers of her self. She didn’t want it seeping out, going anywhere.
    Maybe she would mention it to George. He had thought she was totally out to lunch with her getting-smaller idea.
    â€œYou’re little enough as you are,” he had said one afternoon when she broached it with him. “You don’t want to get any smaller; you’d be invisible.”
    â€œThat’s the idea, Georgie.”
    â€œYou’re nuts,” he said and flushed a splotchy red.
    She went on as if he hadn’t said it.
    â€œIt would make my work much simpler.”
    â€œYou’ve got your health to think about, Mrs. Mortimer.”
    She had insisted by now that George call her by her chosen name.
    â€œMy health is just fine, thank you very much.”
    â€œBut it won’t be if you steadfastly try to grow smaller. There is even a name for behaviour like that. It’s an illness, Mrs. Mortimer. You don’t want to make yourself ill.”
    How the heck do you know what I want to make myself? she thought. But she didn’t want George to be mad at her or to worry about her, so she let it go.
    No, George probably wouldn’t think getting bigger made any more sense than getting smaller. But she liked to talk her ideas over with him anyway. She wondered if he would understand about the warm feeling and