The Wall by William Sutcliffe Page B

mouth it tastes stringy and dry. I chew and chew, wishing there was some way to spit it out, but those four eyes are on me more attentively than ever, so I keep going and make myself swallow.
    I can feel my hungry stomach crying out for sustenance, but the idea of actual food entering my body feels nauseating and strange.
    Silence fills the room as I force down five or six mouthfuls, before cutting and mixing the rest into a careful array designed to conceal how much food I’m leaving.
    ‘Are you sure you’re OK?’ Mum asks.
    I nod.
    ‘You want some dessert?’
    I shake my head.
    ‘Ice cream? We’ve got some lemon sorbet.’
    ‘No thanks.’
    She reaches out to put a hand on my forehead. I let her slender fingers rest, warm and gentle, against my brow.
    ‘You don’t feel hot,’ she says.
    ‘I’m just tired. I said already.’
    ‘Of course you are.’
    ‘Can I go to bed?’
    Mum and Liev exchange anxious looks. She tries to help me up from my chair, but I shrug her off and walk away, muttering that I’ll be fine in the morning.
     
    I stand in the middle of my room for a while, not getting undressed, not even really thinking anything, just standing there. I only notice I’m doing it when Mum walks in, closing the door in her special, quiet way, not lifting the handle until the door is fully shut.
    She sits me down on the bed and squeezes herself next to me, up close so our thighs are pressed together.
    ‘Has something happened?’ she says. ‘Something else.’
    Her face is so close, I have to blink to focus. It’s the face I know best in the world. Every wrinkle and freckle, every blemish, every expression is familiar to me. Even when she seems far away, lost in her mysterious, private struggle to make sense of what has happened to her, she also feels like part of me, like the only person in the world I actually know.
    I want to tell her about the tunnel. For a moment it seems as if I have to tell her about the tunnel, as if what I’ve done and where I’ve been is a toxin, bottled up inside me, that will leak into my bloodstream and poison me if I don’t find a way to get it out.
    With her sitting next to me on the bed, concerned and attentive, waiting for me to speak, I sense I might never get a better opportunity to explain what I did, where I went, how I escaped, and who saved me. I know I have to find a way to share the burden of the feeling which is throttling me, a sense that I owe my life to someone I have wronged.
    I take a deep breath and look up, ahead of me, at the wardrobe. Behind which is hidden the scarf. Belonging to the girl. Who lives in that small, dark, cramped room. Impossibly distant, yet not far away at all. All she asked for was something to eat, but I gave her nothing and walked away, stealing her scarf and her brother’s footwear.
    Why was she hungry? No one goes hungry on this side of The Wall. My portion of roast chicken, still warm, would now be in our kitchen bin, slowly cooling, slithering downwards amongst a mass of uneaten, discarded food.
    I feel a hand on my back, rubbing from one shoulder blade to the other, across my spine. My mother’s soft, low voice rises up. ‘You can tell me. Whatever it is, you can tell me.’ Her top lip is red, her bottom lip pale.
    Something yields in my chest, and I sense a reservoir of tears begin to fill, somewhere behind the bridge of my nose.
    ‘We can help you,’ she says.
    We. Anything I say to her, she will pass on to Liev. If I tell her the truth, a chain of events will begin that will move immediately out of my control. Liev will tell the police, the police will tell the army, the army will go over The Wall and get to work. There will be an investigation, cross-examinations, imprisonments. An angry, vengeful machine is primed to leap into action, just as soon as I open my mouth. If I don’t want to start up that machine, I can’t say anything to anyone.
    I sit up straight and breathe in sharply. ‘It’s nothing,’ I