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16

Elin

Parque Nacional, Portugal, October 2021

‘It’s out. You can stop,’ Ned chokes out, tossing the fire extinguisher down. The metal canister bounces against the floor before coming to rest alongside the others on the grass. Discarding hers, Leah stumbles towards them, coughing.

Elin tries to take a breath, but the smoke has made her chest tight, one breath not following the other like it should. She feels the first familiar fingers of panic clutching at her throat.

Fumbling for her inhaler, she takes a long pull, then another. It takes a few moments, but her chest starts to loosen, the brief flicker of fear ebbing away.

‘You did good,’ Ned says as Leah stops beside him, the sentence ending in a spluttering cough of his own. He bends double, hands on knees, sucking in long, slow breaths.

Leah reaches up, pulling tangled strands of blonde hair away from her face. ‘Shit,’ she mutters. ‘If her van hadn’t been set back, all of them might have gone up … ’

Elin surveys the van through the cloud of ash lingering in the air, her pulse still racing.

A smoking, half-molten mess.

The back end is almost completely blown out, metal and plastic curling up like petals.

Objects litter the floor of the communal area. Indistinguishable chunks of metal. Half-burnt clothing, books, some toys. Her gaze locks on the melted remains of a doll, hair reduced to ashes, and she feels a twist in her stomach.

‘The van was Bridie’s?’ she asks softly.

‘Yeah.’ Maggie stops beside them, holding some bottles of water. Her patterned smock is smudged with black, her sandaled feet too, dirty with soot. She looks her age suddenly, Elin thinks, as if the exertion of putting out the fire has taken it out of her.

‘Bridie’s going to be devastated.’ Passing the bottles around, Maggie’s shoulders sag as she inspects the damage. ‘Goes for a walk with the kid and comes back to this. Her whole world’s in there. The kid’s too. The vans might not look much, but they’re home. Especially with a little one.’

‘Only stuff, at the end of the day, but still, when you don’t have a lot, it makes what you do have really fucking precious.’ Ned shakes his head. ‘I don’t know, sometimes it seems like bad shit seems to happen to people who’ve already had the worst shit.’

A beat passes.

‘What do you think happened?’ Elin slips her inhaler back in her pocket.

‘Not sure …’ Ned wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, ‘but that kind of explosion doesn’t happen by accident. My guess is someone’s set it off deliberately. Plenty of ways in and out of camp.’

‘Who?’

A shrug. ‘Lots of people don’t like us being here as long as we have. They start talking, getting ideas in their heads. I—’ He stops.

Bridie’s appeared, at the back of the clearing, Etta strapped to her back. Catching sight of the van, she loudly cries out, a low, guttural moan .

The group move in unison towards her, Leah unfastening Etta, scooping the child into her arms.

Elin instinctively takes a step forwards, but Bridie turns away, putting a hand up to shield her face. ‘I’d better go,’ Elin says awkwardly, aware she’s probably intruding. ‘Leave you to it. Hope it all works out okay.’

Ned doesn’t reply; he’s staring at the dog. It’s circling the blackened shell of the van, sniffing in the ashes, tail going ten to the dozen.

Two laps in, he stops, nose down, following a scent out to the communal area.

Elin watches, a chill moving across her as he abruptly stiffens, starts barking uncontrollably.

Ned’s face darkens. Quickly walking over, he nudges him away with his knee. ‘Hey, none of that.’

The dog ignores him, lurching back to the same spot.

‘Hey, I said none of that.’

Elin walks away, Ned’s words following her out of camp along with other sounds: Louder barks. Raised voices.

Halfway up the path she sees Isaac coming towards her.

‘You okay?’ he says quickly. ‘I saw smoke.’

‘I’m fine.’ Nodding at the camp, she nudges his arm, steering him back the way he came. ‘I’ll explain in a bit.’

Elin snatches a glance back at the clearing. The dog has wrenched himself free from Ned’s grasp, made his way back to the same patch of debris. Burrowing his paws into the ground, he scrabbles at the dirt, lets out a low, mournful howl.