Silent Voices

a tilley lamp, listening to the rain and imagining herself in her father’s shed at home.
    The next day it had been raining and Alice had been fractious and bad-tempered. There was no television to distract her. Connie would have phoned Veronica, but the battery on her phone was flat. She’d brought the charger with her, but of course there was no electricity in the boathouse. There was a box of games on the table and they played Snakes and Ladders and Snap. The rain battered on the roof and Alice put her hands over her ears.
    ‘I want to go home! I hate it here!’
    ‘Tomorrow,’ Connie had said. ‘Tomorrow Auntie Veronica will come and we can go home. Then perhaps you could visit Daddy for a couple of days.’
    There was no fridge in the hut and the fresh food had all been eaten. She cooked pasta and mixed it with a tin of tuna. Afterwards she let Alice have a whole bar of chocolate for pudding. As soon as the girl was asleep, Connie climbed into the bunk and lay flat on her back, awake for most of the night. She thought this must be what it would feel like to be in prison. Though she supposed there would be odd and frightening noises in prison. Here there was complete silence. Eventually she slept.
    She woke the next morning at dawn, gritty-eyed and still tired. The curtains at the windows were very thin and it seemed, even lying in her bunk, that there was something strange about the light. It was the same light as waking up to snow, brighter than it should have been. She got up quietly, pulling the blanket from her bed around her shoulders, and looked outside. The water level of the lake had risen in the night and the house was surrounded. Little waves lapped against the decking. Everything was still, and the trees on the opposite bank were perfectly replicated in the water.
    She saw at once that they were in no immediate danger of drowning, but still she felt panic rise in her stomach and almost turn into a scream. She could see how beautiful everything was – the reflected light that had made her think of snow, the composition of trees and hills in the water – but that didn’t stop her being frightened. The notion of imprisonment had become a reality. She understood how people caught in a burning building could become so desperate that they would jump to almost certain death. It wasn’t a fear of the flames, she thought, but of being trapped. She could hardly swim, but the temptation to let herself out of the door to slide into the water was almost irresistible.
    She heard a noise behind her and then she did give a little whimper of fear. Perhaps it was a rat. She’d heard that rats were pushed out of their natural homes during floods. Could rats swim? But of course it was Alice, who’d climbed out of her bunk and was standing shivering beside her. And then Connie had to turn their plight into an adventure.
    ‘Isn’t this fun! It’s just like being on a boat. Where shall we imagine we’ll sail away to this morning?’
    Even to her own ears her voice sounded desperate. Alice climbed into her arms and began to cry.
    Connie heard the car driving down the track after they’d had breakfast. They were so far from anywhere, hidden by the trees, that the sound carried and seemed very loud. Once she might have worried that it could be the police. That fat female inspector, with her huge hands and her filthy feet and her questions. Now she’d have been glad even to see Vera Stanhope. But perhaps it would be Veronica. This was her territory after all. The boathouse must have flooded before. She’d know the best thing to do. Connie leaned out of the window and caught a glimpse of the car through the branches. Not her car. It was the wrong colour for that, and her little Nissan wouldn’t make it through all the water. But it might be Veronica all the same.
    It was still early in the year and the sun, which had come out now, was very low in the sky. The emerging sun made the figure on the shore nothing more than a silhouette, appearing suddenly from the high wall surrounding the old garden. Perhaps the car had got stuck, or perhaps they’d decided to walk the last part. Connie had to squint even to see the figure as a person. It was a shadow with waterproofs and boots. She could tell no more than that.
    A small dinghy that had once rested on the bank now floated on the pool, tethered by a rope. The man tugged on the rope and pulled the boat towards him. Because it was a man, Connie thought. The action