Status Updates From Jakob's Colours

It was the crowds themselves, though, that separated Yavy from Lor, the swelling mayhem that carried her and their children one way, and he another, as if they were floating above high blue black waves, slowly being torn apart on different currents. He fought, grabbed and clawed with his hands to move against the tide of people coming towards him and briefly he caught glimpses of them up ahead,

As he runs, his tears cut against the cold wind. Jakob – a half-blood gypsy boy of Roma and Yenish. Barely eight years old. He moves fast, pushed by fear that keeps him running, night after night. Pushed by loss that slips into the raw meat of him, into the pulsing of blue veins, the slab of his liver, the sponge of his right lung, stabbing there with a pain that is the only thing that he recognises.

Often she would take Lor to the antique market in town that, now that the Great War had ended, was overflowing with lost and unclaimed objects, with widow’s wares. They never came home empty-handed. The house was filled with silver spoons, Worcester China, George III silver-shelled ladles, a baluster coffee pot, boxes of war memorabilia, a dead soldier’s medals.