Read Among the Missing for Free Online Page B

to get something to fetch it in. Maybe you could make something. You could get some old wheels from somewhere, make a little cart. You could give her rides in it, she’d love it. She’d look so cute! You could pretend—
    I saw your face and stopped speaking. You glared into the fire, then you got up and kicked a sticking-out branch farther into the flames.
    Little rides for Anna? Little rides in a little cart? Yeah, let’s pretend.Let’s make Stefan play fucking games all day. But we won’t let him do any proper work, will we? Not for money.
    Stefan, don’t. You can’t—
    You turned and stood away, out of the circle of warmth.
    You treat me like a kid! he said. I should be making proper money so we can get out of here. But you don’t want that, do you? You want things as they are, you want me wasting my time making little fucking carts!
    Of course I don’t. You know I hate us being like this.
    No, you
like
it. You like us right here, living like this. Well, I don’t, I’ve had enough. I’m going to change things.
    Don’t be stupid! Somebody’s got to look after Anna. Okay, I’m the one with the job, is that my fault? Tell me what I’m supposed to do. Give up a job to let you borrow money we’ll never pay back? So you can drive people around all day in a cab that’ll never belong to you?
    I’ll get a cab some other way.
    What other way is there? Everybody needs a loan to get started, and we are not borrowing money from those bastards. We’d never get away from them. I’m not stopping you from making things better, I’m stopping you from being stupid, I’m stopping you from walking into trouble.
    I have to get a car! Can’t you see? As soon as I’m getting fares, we can pay rent, get a proper place, and we’re out of here!
    Stefan, if you borrow from the kind of people who’d lend to you, the car will never, ever be yours. You can’t own your own car in this country. You don’t even
exist
in this country.
    Loads of people do it! Tell me how else we get out of here?
    You haven’t been talking to them, have you? Is that where you were today, in the city? You haven’t talked to them, have you? Stefan!
    Listen, in two years, maybe three, we’d have good money. We’d owe nobody.
    But suppose it goes wrong? Suppose you’re on somebody else’s patch or the car’s stolen? Suppose there isn’t enough business? Those bastards, you think they’re going to say, Oh, Stefan, you’re a nice guy, that’s okay? They’ll burn the car, that’s the least they’ll do. They could burn it with you in it.
    Oh, come on, those are fucking scare stories!
    No, Stefan, they’re not. And you know what else? They take thewoman and sell her to get back at him, they sell her to other men. Children, too, even children.
    Okay, what do you want me to do? You want my balls on a fucking plate?
    Stefan, stop it. You’ll wake up Anna.
    No, go on, tell me what to do! We can’t go back home, we don’t exist here, we can’t go anywhere else. So what’s the big plan, Silva? We go to your magic fucking cabin across the water, live in a fairy story, is that it? Is that the big plan?
    You strode down to the river edge and started chucking stones into the water. We’d had this fight so many times, I knew enough to leave you for a while. I shivered inside the blanket and stared up at the stars. There were many sounds: the hiss of damp wood burning and the scrape of your feet on the shore, the
plock
of stones going into the river and the burr of traffic under the sky. I said your name, but you didn’t come back. I called out again, into the dark.
    Stefan? Maybe I can get an extra job. Get more hours. We’d save that way. I might find something where I could take Anna, and then you could work, too. And anyway when the season starts you can work in the bar again, like last year, at the White Hart.
    The noise of stones hitting the water stopped. You trudged back to me and sat down by the fire.
    You can’t do any more hours. If