Read Online Smoke in the Room by Emily Maguire - Free Book Online Page A

helping others, marked him out as lacking
warmth
.
    Jaswinda was standing at the sink, stirring sugar into a mug of black coffee.
    â€˜I’m so sorry about your mother,’ Graeme said.
    She kept stirring. ‘Thank you.’
    â€˜I’m sorry for not saying anything sooner. I only just heard.’
    She nodded at her coffee.
    â€˜It might be a good idea for you to take some time off.’
    Jaswinda laughed, short and loud. ‘And who will take over my cases?’
    â€˜I’ll find someone.’
    Her eyes were swollen and her nostrils chapped. ‘If there was anyone else I wouldn’t already be doing the work of two.’
    Graeme shrugged. ‘We’ll cope.’
    â€˜I doubt it.’ Jaswinda rinsed her spoon and placed it on the draining tray. Threw the paper sugar packet in the bin under the sink.
    â€˜Everybody is concerned about you, Jaswinda.’
    â€˜I know.’ She held her coffee mug in front of her with both hands. ‘But it is good for me to come to work. Routine is comforting, I find. Or maybe just distracting. Whatever, I’d rather be here than at home.’
    â€˜Are you sure?’
    â€˜Yes,’ she said, walking past him and out of the room.
    Late that night, he thought of Jaswinda as he sat in front of the news nursing a mug of weak tea. He admired her strength and thought her approach to grief wise, but mostly he envied her. He longed for a specific grief and for something to do to distract from it.
    â€˜War should always be a last resort,’ the pubescent talking head on the TV said, as if he knew anything about it, as if war was a stand-off between a recalcitrant child and a kind father at the end of his tether, rather than something that happened because the child has no food and the father has no hope and there is no kindness or tether or attention being paid.
    Footage showed French soldiers leaning against a wire fence on what the voiceover said was the Chad–Sudan border but which, with its bitumen ground cover andhulking gunmetal sheds, could have been any airbase in the world. The scene changed and Graeme had the familiar sensation of seeing his memories played back in front of him: the endless procession of Somalis using the dry river bed as a track, their faces wrapped in grimy rags to protect against the dusty air.
    Graeme’s nostrils twitched at the remembered stench of diarrhoea and decaying animals. The roar of a Land-Cruiser, the screaming of women and grunts of militia men drowned out the reporter’s voice and he was again watching from the passenger seat of the supply truck as the
wadi
turned from dry land to a stream and then the stream to an overflowing river. He heard the rushing water and the roaring engines louder and closer and the screaming women and his driver saying
three months
; felt the ache of not moving while radio messages told of infections taking hold and bodies piling up.
    He closed his eyes and let the sounds and smells work their way over and through him. He counted his breaths until the only smell was stale cigarette smoke, the only sound a British girl talking about topless photos of a minor royal. He finished his tea and watched the end of the news and went to bed.
    He was woken around 3 am by the sound of his flatmates. He lay in the dark listening as it went on and on. What did they think they were doing? To what possible end all that screwing and shouting?

6.
    Adam woke feeling like he’d aged thirty years overnight. He remembered climbing a fence, falling on his butt, hitting his head. He remembered swimming in a lake or possibly a pool, getting chased by a dog, screwing clumsily on wet grass. He knew none of these things happened in a dream, because Eugenie had not been there.
    He used to wake up like this often. A room full of stale air, a stranger’s limbs stuck to his skin, pain behind his eyes, stomach swirling with bile. Occasionally he’d stick with a stranger long