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MARCHING POWDER

‘Good. That’s nice.’

There was a long pause. I thought of asking her if something was wrong, but I didn’t want to push her. When she looked up, she noticed the dark circles under my eyes.

‘You look tired,’ she said.

‘Yeah. A bit.’ I still felt sleepy from the pills. She looked down once more.

When she looked up again, our eyes met for a moment and she smiled, properly this time. I could feel her coming back to me. I had to say something before she looked away.

‘I thought you weren’t going to come.’ I started to stutter. ‘I thought . . . when you didn’t send any emails . . . I thought maybe you left without . . . I thought that –’ She interrupted me.

‘No. I would never . . . I mean, there was a landslide on the road back to Coroico. We had to wait three days for them to repair it. And I had no way of calling you. At first we were going to get the plane, but all the tickets were sold out so we had to get the bus.’

‘Oh. So nothing bad happened, then?’ I asked, finally coming out with it.

‘No. Of course, nothing bad happened. Don’t be silly, Tommy! Why would you think that? I’m here, aren’t I?’ When she said that, all the stupid doubts and fears went away and in their place I felt a rush of happiness and relief. I gripped the metal poles with both hands and leaned forward to kiss her.

‘Hey. You look beautiful! I really missed you, you know?’

It was the wrong thing to say. Yasheeda stood back and folded her arms and immediately a deep panic went through my insides. All of my fears came back, only twice as strong. Something had definitely happened. I was absolutely sure of it now. I stared at her, waiting for her to speak, but she said nothing.

‘Yasheeda. What’s the matter? Is something wrong?’

‘No, nothing. Why?’ she answered quietly.

‘Are you sure? You know you can tell me,’ I whispered back.

‘No, nothing. I promise.’

Yasheeda kept insisting that nothing was wrong, but I could sense that there was. We stared at each other a while longer, then she looked down and I knew that I was losing her again. I waited and she finally looked like she was about to say something, but then a guard