Clock-Radio

She dreams she’s hugging him. Through his thin shirt feels the heat of his body, against her neck feels the soft push of his breath. “I’ll miss you,” he says. At which point she comes gaspingly awake.

Usually when the dream fades, she switches on the clock-radio and listens to the news on the hour. On the first anniversary of the disappearance an hour-long documentary was aired on TV. She declined to appear and, watching the programme, was glad.

Following the documentary, a support group was formed for families and friends of the missing. Some wanted wreckage to be found. Others clung to a narrative in which ragged survivors were discovered on an obscure atoll.

This morning though her eyes are open she sees not the shuddering darkness of 5AM. Rather as fish drift by on soft currents sees the aircraft on the seabed, the fuselage intact though wings and tail have been sheared off. Never able to believe the survivor narrative she’d always wished the aircraft would be found until this moment.

Now, she draws fleeting comfort from the thought that what’s left a thousand miles from land beneath a hundred feet of water, will never be found.