Just Like You

Chapter 23: Happiness

The water in the lake was warmer and calmer than the water in the sea, and did not make you feel ill if you accidentally swallowed it. You loved swimming here so much that you did it every day, and soon became a great deal better at it than you had been before. You could swim very quickly for a short time or slowly for a very long time. All the adults said they were amazed by this, and were sure you would be able to swim at least as well as they could before you grew much older.

The island, so small that there would be room to build no more than two closely spaced huts in the unlikely event that anyone decided to live here, was your favourite place in the Great Land. You sat here, leaning against a tree and watching birds flying overhead, and tried not to think about Mummy. Doing so made the world seem a darker, more frightening place. Qama and Perens had told you gently that you would never see her again, but it was as difficult to believe this as it was to believe there had once been someone called Daddy, who you could not remember meeting in the past and knew you never would meet in the future.

No matter how often you were assured that he was a real man who had loved you when you were a baby until the moment he died in the accident no one yet felt ready to explain, his absence had always been as real as Mummy’s presence. Imagining that either of these things was untrue was something you would not be capable of for a long time. It was much easier to tell yourself that Mummy would come back and you would return to live with her. Perhaps an adult in your situation would be able to accept the sadder story you had heard, but you could not see how this was possible.