Max held Barb gently. After a couple of weeks, he knew her body intimately, and more importantly, he knew where each wound was scattered and how deeply it hurt. In fact, he probably knew them better than Barb did, for whom the pain merged and moved in ways she didn’t understand.
Max knew where to put his hands to lift or roll her and where to stroke to soothe and distract her. He knew all her new wounds and most of her old ones too.
He traced a finger along one of the faded silver scars that criss-crossed her back like delicate netting. He found it hard to imagine anyone doing this to a child. She shivered and wriggled.
‘You’ll have to go back to sleeping in the chair if you’re going to tickle me,’ she complained. But they both knew that wasn’t going to happen. One night, when Max could hardly stand from the exhaustion of farming and caring, he had collapsed into bed beside Barb and finally slept, and they had shared a bed since then.
He had held her as she’d sobbed for Scratch, and when she’d shaken with pain when the alcohol had run out. He had woken her when she screamed out during dreams of burying endless piles of children in a pit, and he had whispered his secrets in her ear, unsure whether she heard him or not.
Through the darkest nights, they had done whatever they could, whatever it took, to comfort and console each other.
The past two weeks had healed the outward scars and changed some of the inward ones. Max was certain that he would never know another person so thoroughly, both body and mind, and that thought made him light-headed and scared.
But then he was tired of being scared, and he was tired of being alone.
He gently pulled her over to him and looked at her sore, scarred face. It embarrassed her more than all the personal acts he’d performed for her over the past weeks, and she turned away. He drew her nearer so she couldn’t escape his gaze, and leaned in, touching his lips gently to her skin between the angry cuts scattered across her nose, her cheek and her neck. She relaxed and returned his kiss as he reached her mouth.
He ran his hands down the curve of her back, feeling her thin body against him.
‘Omelette.’ The door burst open with Mary carrying a tray.
‘Oh.’ Barb staggered off the bed, gagging, and ran for the bathroom to be sick.
‘She’s moving faster,’ Mary commented. ‘Max, you’ve got no clothes on. You’ll get cold.’
Max pulled the sheet around him, gripping it angrily. ‘Mary, you should knock on the door before coming in.’
‘Yes, Frank keeps telling me that too, but it’s hard to carry a tray and knock on a door. Anyway, I don’t really understand why.’
‘Because sometimes people need private time alone.’
‘You weren’t alone,’ she pointed out, putting down the tray. ‘Shall I see if Barb’s all right? She seems to be sick a lot at the moment.’
It struck Max that Mary was right in her observation, and it irritated him that she had spotted it. ‘No. I’ll go.’ He picked up a robe and, joining her in the bathroom, wrapped it around her. She smiled weakly and went to the sink to rinse her mouth.
‘Are you okay?’
‘Yeah.’ She turned to face him. ‘It’s the egg. If I never eat another egg again, it’ll be too soon. Please can you take it out and open the window?’
She joined him back in the room, and he went to pull her back down onto the bed.
‘No.’ She put her hand up and sat on the edge of the mattress. Then, looking at his confused expression, she patted next to her and took his hand as he sat down too.
She ran her fingers over the new calluses on his fingers.
‘Are you okay?’ He put his hand over hers, holding it still. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘I’m worried about the children back at the Bank. Now I’m getting better, I need to go and look after them.’
Max felt all his happiness sliding away. ‘You’re not well enough yet.’
‘I am, Max. They might need me there.’
‘I need you.’ He closed his eyes, frightened to see her reaction to this open admission that he wanted her so much.
She kissed the tear that escaped down his cheek, and he opened his eyes.
‘They need me in a different way. They might be starving or in danger.’
Max started to talk, but she interrupted him.
‘I have to go and see. They might be fine, but I have to know if they are or not.’
He held her gaze. ‘I’ll come too.’
Barb sat quietly for a moment. ‘Your place is here. The children need me, and the farm needs you.’
The salty tears stung her wounds, but they still hurt less than the pain in her chest. ‘We’ll find a way to sort this out, but I have to know what has happened to the children.’
Max got up and wedged the back of the chair under the door handle, and this time, she let him pull her back onto the bed. For once, they both ignored the cuts, thinking only that their time together in this room, shielded from the wider world, was coming to an end.