We are not angry enough – chapter 8

This is a story set in Malta and Europe in the near future. In the form of a letter from a mother to her daughter Maddy, it shows a family trying to navigate the crisis in the region caused by a rapidly warming climate.

See previous chapters in the story and read a note by the story's author.

We got to Nettuno three days later. 

This was further north than the usual migrant destination ports at the time, and we anchored at the Marina without any issues.

Anselmo came for us and it was good to see a friendly face. 

My father had met him at some olive oil conference a few years previously, and they had stayed in touch, playing online chess and sending each other lame dad jokes that he had sometimes passed on to the rest of us. 

He was a quiet, lonely man who had lost his wife some years back. He invited us back to his house, the understanding being that we would stay for a couple of weeks and then move on. 

By the end of the first week, I managed to sell the boat for a laughably low price. We would have loved to keep it, but we couldn’t afford the berthing fees at the marina, weren’t sure how to keep it safe there, or anywhere else, and needed the cash.

We all pitched in and helped...