After the Storm Read Online Free PDF Page A

always want what we haven’t got,’ Anna said.
    They smiled at each other and it was a moment of connection, the first moment of connection all day.
    ‘Tea bags,’ Anna said.
    ‘What?’
    ’Can we get some tea bags? I can’t survive without my tea.’
    ‘Sure.’
    Anna fetched a big box of tea bags. Kim spotted a stand of magazines and newspapers against the wall. She pushed the loaded trolley over and reached for a copy of US Vogue . She started to thumb through the pages.
    ‘Oh these clothes… look at these clothes. I used to dress up once. You wouldn’t think so now, would you?’
    Anna looked over her shoulder as Kim flicked through the photos of New York Fashion Week, the tall angular models striding along the catwalk and the celebrity audience watching from the front row.
    ‘Rob’s sister Savannah is a model. She does some of the big shows. She’s quite a big deal really.’
    ‘That’s so cool. Are you close?’
    ‘She’s a lovely girl, but quite a lot younger than Rob, and we don’t see her that often.’
    ‘I love clothes. But you have to give up out here.’
    Kim was wearing black shorts and a fitted turquoise tank top with a thick yellow-and-green woven money belt clinched around her trim waist. To Anna’s eyes she looked perfectly fashionable. She was a jeans and T-shirt woman herself and had never got the whole fashion thing. Kim turned the pages, closed the magazine and looked at the cover price. She wrinkled her nose:
    ‘Stupid price for a magazine…’
    She put it back on the rack but still she looked at the magazines laid out in front of her. She turned to Anna:
    ‘I forgot to get any tomato puree. Can you go get two tubes Anna?’
    ‘Sure.’
    Anna moved away. At the end of the aisle she glanced back and saw Kimberly slipping two of the magazines into her bag.
    Kim paid for the groceries with Rob’s dollars and they walked out of the supermarket.
    ‘Elbert should be over with his trolley soon. There’s no way we can shift this lot on our own.’
    They watched as the Mennonite woman and her two daughters came out of the store and stacked their groceries into a horse-drawn cart. A young boy was holding the horse’s bridle. He was dressed in denim overalls and a straw hat and looked about twelve years old. The family got up into the buggy and the mother drove them down the road. Anna saw how the woman was expert at controlling the horse and the buggy. And she also seemed driven by her own firm sense of purpose that had nothing to do with the norms of the present day. How strange an accident of birth and fate it was that this group of German descendants should be living and farming in Belize in Central America.
    They waited outside the store with their many bags grouped around them and there was no sign of Elbert. A sudden violent rainstorm broke overhead and they had to move everything back under the canopy of the store. The rain hurled down with such force that it made the windows of the store rattle.
    ‘We’ll have to wait till it stops,’ Kim shouted.
    The summer storm continued for ten minutes. There was an awkwardness between them now. Anna stood looking out at the sheet of rain.
    ‘These rainstorms come from nowhere. Nothing we can do,’ Kim said finally. She was finding Anna hard work. Her first impression the night before was right, Anna was reserved and not an easy person to talk to.
    And then as fast as it had come it stopped. The streets were covered in puddles and water gushed along the gutters. A few minutes later Elbert showed up with a flat wooden trolley on four wheels. The three of them loaded all the bags onto his trolley and he steered it back to the quay. It was low water and the boat was no longer swinging, its keel had dug into the mud. They unloaded the shopping and carried it below. Then Elbert went off with his trolley to meet Owen at the warehouse as instructed.
    ‘Where exactly did Rob and Owen go?’ Anna asked.
    It had now been hours since they had