Retreat

Outside my well-lit kitchen, the hills are black, the city far away.

Peter is driving now, dividing the country into distances between junctions and services, travelling the umbilicus that connects us to money.

Upstairs, under nurturing dark wood beams, one of my children mumbles.

Empty noise fills them always, nervously talking themselves into being, unable to be silent. Neither is happy.

‘Best for them’ we’d nodded, decision made; dreaming apple cheeks and cherished smiles.

Cathy’s fleshy, swaddling of puppy fat replaced by uncomfortable carnality, awkwardly wanton. Eyes jagged scree; Archie is a conduit for fear and paranoia, attached by computer to many lives but touching none. Even here, safe among misty roads and hedgerows, worry cripples them.

Later, when Peter arrives, responsibility will make us breathless and selfish.

Waiting, I want to stride into the ploughed fields and copses, to build us a bower of hawthorne and bramble. Hidden away, our world will become a valley, a stream; we will eat or we will not eat. The children will grow hard and sharp. Language will recede, and with it anxiety.

They will die or will not die.

Contented, we will sleep, knowing we have done all we can for them.