Ella turns her face to the side. She hasn’t yet met these children but somehow they’ve heard her name and what they’re saying is no surprise. Up here on the African shield she has grown soft in front. Some days she’s so puffy she can’t see her feet over her belly. A little bit plump, the grown-ups say, but she knows better. Her belly has grown like a monster vegetable exhibit at the Midlands Royal Show. Back when they lived in Durban, she had elbows and knees. She knows she did because she scraped them then. On kindergarten sports day she took off her built-up shoe and did the hurdles, outrunning some of the boys. But here, further up the African shield, closer to the sun, it’s different. Things grow faster. They jut, thrust, push out strange shapes. ‘Just puppy fat,’ says Dr Fry, Braemar’s favourite family doctor, ‘Just a little bit squishy.’ He sits beside her on the velvet upholstered couch, a chunk of her waist clamped in his hand, the mother opposite in the armchair, ‘A good word for it, isn’t it, Ella, puppy fat?’ He uses her name but Ella can tell the words are meant for her mother.
What do You think about The Shouting In The Dark (2015)?
