The Hiding Place by Trezza Azzopardi

are down there. Nothing looks like Clifford’s van; nothing sounds like it.
Ages now, she’s waited. Mary puts a hand under her jaw and feels her pulse. She stands so still she might be carved in stone; but she’s counting to a beat beneath her fingertips. One
hundred, then another hundred, then another, on and on until the sun is directly above her head and she knows he’s not going to come. Mary gets down off the mountain and starts to walk.
    ~
    Her father reads the note she’s left him. He throws the rip of paper into the fire.
    Good riddance, he says, to his empty house.
    ~
    It’s supposed to be Spring, but the wind is as stiff as November. Mary hunches into the collar of her coat. Her legs are bare and purple with cold; the side of her face is
numb, her hands are raw. But inside she is boiling. Mary sucks in her breath, flinging her words down the valley in a white of air,
    You Wastrel, Clifford Taylor! You Bloody Fucking Bastard!
    An explosion of birds into the sky, a thick silence. Mary feels her blood pump in her head.
    Don’t cry, girl, she says quietly, Don’t cry now. She bends down at the side of the road and searches in her bag for her gloves; finds one wrapped around her purse, pictures where
the other one is: on the ledge above the fire in the living room. She’d taken them off to write her Da the note. Mary checks in her purse and counts the money she’s saved. Every
morning, that walk through the weather to Penderyn and The Miners’ Welfare, to that stinking yard behind the hut – chiselling at the ice on the water-butt, plunging her hands in and out
of the frozen water until the skin on them gave up and cracked like chickens’ claws: all winter, standing in the yard, peeling those potatoes. And the nights! The men with their yeasty breath
and glazed stares, watching her as she slopped the beer into their mugs, watching her and saying nothing. The heat of their coal-crusted eyes on her.
    All for you, she says, rubbing her hands together, You Idle Bastard.
    Mary swings the shopping bag over her shoulder, decides to go anyway to Cardiff. But she won’t waste her wages on bus fare: when she reaches the main road, footsore,
welling up inside with rage, she puts out her thumb.
    ~
    Down and down. The sleep my mother thought she’d never have is visiting her now. The bus jerks along The Parade, stop and start, stop and start, and the tinging of the
conductor’s bell, the hot muddle of drunken chat, seeps into her dreams.
    ~
    Oy! You! Over here!
    The man is waving his napkin like a starter’s flag, sweeping it high and low across the edge of the booth.
    I said two Lambs – when you’re ready! Mary would like to snatch the napkin from him and stuff it down his throat. But she smiles apologetically, reloads the unwanted drinks on
to her tray, and darts back to the bar. This is only her second night at Luciano’s. She doesn’t know rum from cow’s milk. And they ask for all sorts of things; Gin and Ginger,
Pineapple Fizz, Scotch and Threat. She’d like to see how that went down at the Miners’ Welfare, where all they ever drank was Mild or Bitter, depending on how they felt.
    Mary leans on the counter while the waitress in front of her loads her tray. They’re not allowed to pour the drinks here – they have a man especially to do it. Mary studies him; he
wears a black suit with the sleeves pulled a bit up the arm, the stiff white cuffs of his shirt turned over so that she takes in his cufflinks, with the pattern of a sunrise etched in gold. The
waitress in front is biding her time, flirting with him. He stares over her head, keeping an eye on the evening: he pays her no attention. When it’s Mary’s turn, he looks at her and
speaks.
    He give you trouble? he says, motioning with his head towards the man with the napkin. Mary is blank for a second, thinking, he sounds just like Mario Lanza, he even looks like Mario
Lanza. The blood rushes to her face. To hide it, she inspects the