‘There,’ she said, face and voice attempting to be like teacher’s, ‘there you see. That’s where we go on our days off.’
He looked again at the blocks of colour, bright, about to melt, the still trees behind. ‘I see,’ he said. The girl, in dungarees, had yellow skin. Was it the heat, jaundice? Sweat in the creases of his eyelids. Where were the adults? He looked around, half expecting a mother to slide up from the drain slots or twist out of a car. His eyes tight against the noon glare. The offices behind him flashed brilliant as he turned his head.
The child replied to herself, ‘Yes we live there. We feed baby ac-tew-a-lee and then we feed the birds.’
He was sodden, wilting, in his interview clothes. Everywhere around there was evidence of humans, sounds issuing from the works behind, a radio left on in a car, but apart from the two of them, the stooping, grimy one and the small bright one, there was no one visible. The windows simply blinded. The noise was like silence. The cars melted. His hair stuck like plastic to his temples. She alone seemed cool and calm. Where were the adults?
‘Sometimes we lie there all day. No-one comes.’
No one came.
She lost interest in him, examined her foot. He walked away without a goodbye. After a few hot steps he looked back but she was gone and there were cars pulling out, heads leaning through wound down windows, people coming out of the great glass doors, a tannoy voice, and a breeze lifted the shimmer from the day.
Alan Beard has published two story collections: Taking Doreen Out of the Sky (Picador, 1999) and You Don’t Have to Say (Tindal Street Press, 2010). He has had numerous stories and flashes in magazines and anthologies, in the UK, USA and Canada .
'No One Visible' was first published in In Posse Review in 2004.
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