Free Salt by Jeremy Page Page A

satellite, in a tiny capsule with no food or water or any way of returning. She knows Laika’s dead but somehow, right there on the Norfolk saltmarsh, that dog is alive again, looking down on her in her patch of darkness, a cosmonaut’s hat on its head and heartbeat monitors on its side.
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    The summer passes and the three of them spend their time fishing off the Hansa . Kipper and Shrimp, competing as always - but clearly they’ve both become interested in trying to land her, the girl between them. All three of them with bare legs dangling off the bow, staring down their lines, the only sound coming from Kipper’s habit of sucking air through stems of samphire. The Langore brothers have identical rods and floats, they know about lines and hooks and bait, but it’s Lil’, with a look of pure satisfaction, who pulls in the first fish. It’s an angry thing, flapping and twisting on the end of her crabline. But when she reaches out to grab it Shrimp is there first, cutting her line and making the fish fall into the water. What did you do that for! she shouts, thinking he’s just as mean as his shapeshifting brother after all, and Shrimp just says it was a weever, a stingfish, it was going to sting you. He carries on looking at his float while Kipper looks at the two of them and he sees her hand reach up and gently touch Shrimp on his shoulder. Thanks, she whispers, and Kipper knows in this simplest of gestures that he’s lost.
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    Walking back to Lane End with a bag of shopping, Goose approaches a hedgehog coming the other way. Middle of the day, on a path hardly wide enough for the two of them. The hedgehog shuffles towards her with the gait of an old tramp. She thinks of bad omens and stories of illness arriving in the form of wandering peasants dressed in rags, knocking on your door at night. While she’s thinking this the hedgehog keeps coming, determined and ill. When it’s almost under her feet she sees it’s blinded with lice crawling on every last spike of its body and over its face and into its eyes. She steps into the verge and the horror escalates, because she steps on a dead rabbit, releasing a cloud of flies rising as one horrid ball of wings. And she runs for it and then she realizes; she stops running and looks over the saltmarsh and thinks Lil’, oh no, it’s Lil’.
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    But Lil’ is not at home, nor on the Hansa . She’s up at the Langores’ farm, sitting on top of the haybales in the barn. It’s dark and dusty and quiet in there, even though it’s the middle of the day and old man Langore’s down in the yard shouting orders. She can see the lower half of his legs and his boots through the open door. A vet’s there too, being as authoritative as he can; he should be used to farmers by now but old Langore’s got him riled. The vet keeps raising his voice and using scientific words. The two Langore brothers are in the yard also, trying to separate a cow from the herd; Lil’ can hear the cow’s hooves slipping on the concrete. The rest of the cows are stamping, the way horses do when they’re bothered. Ha! Kipper shouts Ha! Ha! And she hears the thwack of a stick against cowhide. Langore tries to bribe the vet and the vet says that’s it, that’s the last straw. Shoot that and with luck you won’t lose the herd. A heavy iron gate is clanked shut and the bolt slid, and then something moves near her and she thinks it’s a rat and she turns, scared, but instead of a rat she sees it’s Shrimp, wriggling through the gaps in the haybales, a wide grin on his face. Lil’ kicks loose hay at him and laughs and tries to shush him up when he spits out the hay from his mouth. He crawls right up to her and slaps her on the thigh likes she’s the cow in the yard and she makes a big fuss that that hurt then slaps him back and then they fight, her in her flannel shirt, him in his denim