The Missing Link by Kate Thompson Page B

information; a language based on the mimicry of what had been heard in the environment.
    After a few minutes, Darling rejoined us.
    ‘Bad weather ahead, they’re all making for the South , there’s snow in the mountains and more on the way.’
    ‘How do they know?’ said Tina, still yawning. ‘Been watching the weather reports, have they?’
    ‘They’re birds,’ said Darling. ‘They know how to read the winds.’
    ‘Just wondering,’ said Tina.
    The starlings lifted off with a ripping, raining sound like a sudden squall. For a moment the sky was dark with them as they banked and wheeled and made extraordinary patterns of themselves against the light. Then they were gone, and I could sense Darling’s loneliness as she gazed after them into the empty sky.
    ‘Some of them spotted a dog on his own,’ she said at last. ‘It might have been Oggy.’
    ‘Where?’ I said.
    ‘Just somewhere,’ said Darling, vaguely. ‘Not here.’
    ‘That’s useful,’ said Tina. ‘Did your pals ever think of applying for a job with Interpol?’
    Darling got into a huff and hopped off to pester the sad rook. The rest of us decided to do a stock-take and tipped everything out of our bags on to the ground.
    There were some crazy things in Tina’s bag; a big chunky candle, some incense, a tiny brass bell. There were drabber things, too, battered and unrecognisable but clearly of value to her because she stowed them all away, quickly and possessively. She had a bent coat hanger in there as well, and that mysterious pink packet that she had bought in Wales.
    ‘What do you need all that junk for?’ I asked.
    But Tina just glared at me, and suddenly I knew, and felt bad. Those pathetic bits and pieces were all she owned in the world.
    The plastic bags were in flitters and we wrapped what was left in the blankets. There was disappointingly little. Two packets of home-wheat biscuits and one of cream crackers, two tins of Spam, one of peaches, and a big bag of peanuts. The only other food was Oggy’s; the last two tins of Buddy.
    ‘We can ditch that,’ said Tina.
    But I couldn’t. Like her bits, they were things I had to carry. If I let go of them, I let go of Oggy. And I wasn’t ready to do that, yet.
    Despite the food situation we decided to bypass Stirling and steer due North. But as soon as we were out on the road again, Tina discovered that her shoes were falling apart. Danny and I both had good boots, but Tina’s trainers were cheap rubbish and the soles had started to come away from the uppers. It must have happened during the previous night’s monk-walk, when she was too detached to notice, but now it was clearly a serious problem.
    We got out the map again and reconsidered.
    ‘If it’s shoes we want,’ I said, ‘we’ll have to go to town.’

4
    THE SUPERMARKETS IN Stirling were mobbed, and we didn’t go near them. But the shoe shops were practically empty, and Tina chose a pair of leopard-spotted Doc’s. She walked nine miles high in them, and stopped every ten metres or so to look down and check that they were still there. I was sure she had never had anything like them before, maybe nothing new at all, and I felt proud to have been able to provide them for her, even though the money hadn’t exactly been mine.
    Afterwards we bribed our way into a fancy hotel, and for an hour or so we inhabited a different world, eating with the finest silver spread endlessly on starched, white linen. But when the wafer-thin mints were gone, and we were back on the road, the stark reality of who we were returned. Just three young tramps, with a long, long road stretching out ahead of us.

5
    WITHIN A MILE, Tina’s new boots had raised big, watery blisters on her heels. It looked as though our run of good luck had ended, but it hadn’t. We were sitting beside the road, examining Tina’s feet and wondering what to do next when a flashy four-by-four pulled in beside us. A woman was driving, and she opened the window and stared