二十一万

二十一万

Two Hundred and Ten Thousand

安娜把刷子放回水桶里。红色的水溅到了她的运动鞋上。在她身后，她能听到丹尼尔静静地站着，莫琳站在自家门洞前，假装没有在听。运河很安静。不知在什么地方，一只鸭子正叫着抱怨什么。

Ana put the brush down in the bucket. Red water splashed onto her trainers. Behind her she could hear Daniel standing very still, and Maureen in her doorway, pretending not to listen. The canal was quiet. Somewhere a duck complained about something.

她在开口之前，仔细考虑了每一个字。她曾向自己保证，再也不对杰丝撒谎。她也答应过多给沃尔特一周时间。有那么一瞬间，这两个承诺似乎在把她拉向相反的方向，拉扯得她几乎无法呼吸。

She thought very carefully about every word before she said it. She had promised herself never to lie to Jess again. She had also promised Walter a week. For a second those two promises seemed to pull her in opposite directions, so hard that she could not breathe.

“我不会对你撒谎的，杰丝，”她终于说道。“再也不会了。所以我要告诉你我被允许说的唯一实话。这不是我的故事，它属于你的家人。但事情并不像报纸上写的那么简单，也不像镇上人想的那样。你需要去问你爷爷。不是下个月，是尽快，如果可以的话，就今天。”

“I’m not going to lie to you, Jess,” she said finally. “Not ever again. So I’m going to tell you the only true thing I’m allowed to say. It isn’t my story. It belongs to your family. But there is more to it than what the newspaper says, and more than what the town thinks. You need to ask your grandfather. Not next month. Soon. Today, if you can.”

杰丝盯着她。有那么一会儿，安娜以为她要哭了。然而她却笑了，笑声短促而冷硬，听起来和沃尔特一模一样。“当然了，”她说。“又一个秘密。又一个比我更了解我生活的人。去问普丽亚，去问爷爷，去问船上的那个男人。”她摇了摇头。“这个镇上的每个人都在把我推给别人。我问够了。”

Jess stared at her. For a moment Ana thought she was going to cry. Instead she laughed, a short, hard laugh that sounded exactly like Walter’s. “Of course,” she said. “Another secret. Another person who knows more about my life than I do. Ask Priya, ask Grandad, ask the man on the boat.” She shook her head. “Everyone in this town keeps sending me to someone else. I’m tired of asking.”

“杰丝，求你了……”

“Jess, please…”

但杰丝已经不再看她了。她越过安娜，看向小路的另一头。安娜转过身。迈克尔正穿着工作服，双手插在口袋里，从仓库的方向朝他们走来。他低头看着地面，直到快走到船边才看到他们。

But Jess was not looking at her any more. She was looking past her, along the path. Ana turned. Michael was walking towards them from the direction of the warehouse, in his work clothes, with his hands in his pockets. He was looking at the ground and did not see them until he was almost at the boat.

接着他一下子看到了眼前的一切：装着红水的水桶，拿着抹布的丹尼尔，穿着睡袍的莫琳，以及他家船身侧面那些擦掉了一半的字母。还有他的女儿正站在小路上看着他。他停下了脚步。他的脸色没有改变，但双手慢慢从口袋里抽了出来。

Then he saw everything at once: the bucket of red water, Daniel with his rag, Maureen in her dressing gown, the half-scrubbed letters on the side of his home. And his daughter, standing on the path, looking at him. He stopped. His face did not change, but his hands came slowly out of his pockets.

在感觉很长的一段时间里，谁也没有说话。随后杰丝把肩膀上的包向上拉了拉。“我上学要迟到了，”她像是自言自语般地说道，然后转身顺着运河快步走开，没有回头看他们任何人一眼。

Nobody said anything for what felt like a very long time. Then Jess pulled her bag higher on her shoulder. “I’m going to be late for school,” she said to nobody in particular, and she turned and walked away along the canal, fast, without looking back at any of them.

迈克尔一直注视着她，直到她拐过了老桥下的弯道。然后他看着自己的船侧。他读着那个词剩下的部分，读得很慢，就好像那是用一种他正在学习的语言写成的。随后，他一言不发地从安娜的水桶里拿过刷子，开始用力擦洗。

Michael watched her until she had gone round the bend under the old bridge. Then he looked at the side of his boat. He read what was left of the word, quite slowly, as if it was written in a language he was learning. Then he took the brush out of Ana’s bucket, without a word, and began to scrub.

他们三个人一起干完了活。这又花了一个小时。等他们擦完时，那些字母不见了，但底下的绿漆也掉了，在“第二次机会号”原本写着那个词的地方留下一道长长的浅色印记。莫琳端来四只花色各异的马克杯装的茶，他们站在小路上喝了。

The three of them finished it together. It took another hour. When they had finished, the letters were gone, but the green paint underneath had gone too, and there was a long pale scar along the side of the Second Chance where the word had been. Maureen brought out tea in four mismatched mugs, and they drank it standing on the path.

“周末我会再刷一遍漆，”迈克尔用大拇指蹭着那块发浅的木头说。“用深绿色。绝不会有人知道的。”

“I’ll paint it again at the weekend,” Michael said, rubbing the pale wood with his thumb. “Dark green. Nobody will ever know.”

“大家都会知道的，”莫琳说。“小镇就是这样，亲爱的。但他们也会知道，早上六点就有三个人赶来把它擦掉了。这很有意义。”她收起杯子走回屋里，谈话就此结束。

“Everyone will know,” Maureen said. “That’s how small towns work, love. But they’ll also know that three people turned up at six in the morning to clean it off. That counts for something.” She collected the mugs and went back inside, and the conversation was over.

那周接下来的日子过得奇怪而安静。安娜每天晚上和坐在身边椅子上的沃尔特一起做面包，每天下午都在自助洗衣店楼上丹尼尔的沙发床上睡觉，因为沃尔特没有再让她住楼上的小房间，她也没有主动问起。到了周四凌晨四点，她放下生面团，转向他。“还有八天，”她说。“离去利兹还有八天。”

The rest of that week was strange and quiet. Ana baked every night with Walter in his chair beside her, and every afternoon she slept on Daniel’s sofa bed above the launderette, because Walter had not offered her the little room upstairs again and she had not asked. On Thursday, at four in the morning, she put down the dough and turned to him. “Eight days,” she said. “Eight days until Leeds.”