Nattie was pleased to have secured an interview with a writer whose first novel was causing such a stir. She arrived early and the restaurant, which was a red-check-tablecloth bistro, probably more of an evening place really, was a sea of empty tables. An elderly man in tweeds was eating alone at a corner table with his broadsheet newspaper folded into three, and two women in suits, who looked like senior executives, were coming in. Marks & Spencer’s head office was just up the road. Otherwise the place was deserted.
It suited Nattie. She’d have her audio recorder running and didn’t want Sadia Umar’s voice drowned out by the rowdy din of some on-trend place that was humming. She chose a table at the rear, checked the machine was working, ordered water, looked at her watch and sat back.
She had to calm down about Hugo. He never normally went on the attack like that, letting out such bitter resentment over Ahmed, and it had left her feeling emotionally bloodied. She could so easily have said it wouldn’t matter if Ahmed miraculously reappeared, that it wouldn’t affect their happiness and never could. Why hadn’t she lied?
She could have found it in her. She kept questioning herself over and over while the answer, which she knew in her heart, kept advancing and receding like a distant African drumbeat. Hugo would probably have only half believed her, but to hear her say it would have made him feel comforted and more secure. Lying didn’t come easily to her, but it wouldn’t have taken much. Telling a white lie would have kept the peace and laid the thing to rest. Yet it would have felt like a death knell on hope, that was the truth of it, cutting the last threads. Disappearance left untied ends, the door a whisper ajar . . .
She couldn’t stop thinking about it, even while talking to Jasmine that morning, catching up after the holiday. Jasmine was her wonderful daytime help, a big, bosomy, loving girl with a frizz of bleached hair; she had the patience of ten mothers and the children adored her. She took over on the days when Nattie was at the office, two or three a week, depending on meetings and her workload, which Jasmine, who was always easy-going, seemed not to mind. They’d agreed a minimum amount so a third day or lateness was extra.
Nattie glanced at her watch. Sadia would be here any minute. Nattie resolved there and then – as a way of making private amends to Hugo – to close down the old email account she shared with Ahmed. No more sneaking forlorn looks in Drafts; it was seven years, for God’s sake, and the moment had come to call time.
Looking over to the door she saw a girl coming in who had to be Sadia. She was small, delicately built, and wearing Western clothes, a flowered shirt and blue skirt. She stayed near the door, looking hesitant, peering round cautiously. Nattie rose, but a waiter had stepped in to help and was pointing over to her. Sadia negotiated a way through the empty tables, glancing warily from side to side, almost as if expecting a pair of heavies to emerge from the shadows and strong-arm her off the premises. Her nervousness was disconcerting; Nattie wasn’t in too great shape herself.
‘It’s good to meet you,’ she said with a warm smile as Sadia sat down opposite. ‘Lovely you could make it. I hope you’re okay with Italian? I chose this place as it looked quiet and your publishers suggested somewhere near Baker Street.’
‘Thanks, yes, it’s good for the Jubilee Line. I’m in North London.’ Sadia gave a frightened return smile while constantly twisting a jade ring on her little finger to and fro with quick, flicking movements. She wore her dark hair parted in the centre, loosely looped back and fastened at the nape of her neck. Her face was elliptic, a perfect oval.
‘Shall we order before we start to chat?’ Nattie said, as a waiter came up with menus. Sadia lowered her head to read hers and the way her long curling eyelashes shadowed her cheeks caused a disconcerting flurry of memories. Nattie let out a breath slowly.
‘Perhaps some pasta,’ Sadia said uncertainly, looking up.
‘The spinach and ricotta cannelloni sounds good – I’m going for that, I think.’
‘Yes, I’d like that too,’ Sadia agreed, with obvious relief at a decision made, and Nattie caught the waiter’s eye.
‘I’ve got masses to ask about the book,’ she said. ‘It’s strongly drawn, and the title too – Help Me to Flee is very emotive.’ It was the sort of novel that brought visceral engagement, beautifully crafted. Simple opening pages about a little girl wanting to sprout wings and fly over foreign lands where seas and lakes gleamed like jewels, where streets smelled of dew-bathed fruits and new dawns, where people lifted up faces lit from within. The storyline had stayed with Nattie, the child growing up, yearning to flee from her cruel brother and, later, from an arranged marriage to a tyrant who took Sharia law to extremes. It was a predictable theme for a Pakistani novelist, but no less heart-wrenching.
‘I’d love to know what inspired you, your involvement with the characters, that sort of thing,’ Nattie said, ‘but first can I ask a little about you? You left Pakistan in your teens, didn’t you, and came to live here with your parents?’
‘Yes, I was sixteen – there’s nothing much more to tell.’ Sadia seemed desperate not to talk about anything personal. She hadn’t begun to relax and Nattie wondered if something more than the interview was troubling her.
‘Don’t be anxious. I really don’t want to pry, just set the scene for our readers so they can have more of an image and place you. Please feel you can talk freely and share any concerns. I can let you see the copy, if you like. I won’t print anything you don’t want, I do understand . . .’ She wasn’t at all sure she did, though, but was trying to be as encouraging as possible.
‘I’d love to know, for instance, if it was a wrench to leave your home in Pakistan,’ she went on. ‘You describe the garden and birds exquisitely. Did you mind coming to England and settling here?’
‘Not at all. My father had the offer of a good job – he’s a doctor, well qualified – and we’d spoken English at home. I loved our house in Lahore, which is a cultural, sophisticated city, unlike how Pakistan is often depicted, but I wanted to get away, to be educated in England and hopefully go to university here.’
‘Which you did. Your parents must be very proud.’ Sadia looked down, those long lashes again . . . ‘Is your mother working? And is she in medicine, too? By now she will have settled in well and made friends, I expect.’
‘No, she went back,’ Sadia said flatly, making clear a need not to elaborate. Her lower lip was trembling; whatever the problem, it was unsettling her badly.
The waiter chose that moment to bring their food, fussing around as he served them. ‘That’s fine,’ Nattie snapped, impatient and frustrated. ‘We can pour the water ourselves.’ He was an ingratiating type, still hovering, and Sadia seemed distressed.
The restaurant had become slightly busier, but there was still no one at the nearby tables. Was it some emotional difficulty with her mother? Nattie asked herself. Her questions had been very mild. She wondered if Sadia would, in fact, find it a comfort to talk to someone unconnected – an impartial, sympathetic ear – and she ploughed on, hoping to break through the girl’s reserve.
‘Your mother didn’t feel at home here then? But your father had to stay, of course. He had his job. Does she come over regularly to visit?’
‘No. She left him and went back to Pakistan. She married again out there.’
Nattie felt she was getting nowhere. ‘Have you any brothers and sisters?’ she tried, hoping that was safer territory.
‘Yes, a sister.’ Sadia bent her head low over her plate, hands in her lap, and her shoulders began to shake very slightly, lifting up and down.
‘Would it help to talk? I’m turning off the recorder . . . I, um, was in love once with someone whose parents were from Pakistan.’ Sadia looked up with her wet eyes, caught by surprise. Nattie was deeply embarrassed. It had just slipped out; Ahmed was so much in her thoughts. ‘I know that’s quite irrelevant,’ she said, feeling a blood-rush. ‘It’s just that it is sometimes easier to share something emotionally difficult with a comparative stranger.’
Sadia raised her head further and sat up straighter, looking startled, yet more reassured, less like a fluttering bird at a windowpane. ‘My sister’s six years younger,’ she began, dabbing at the corners of her eyes. ‘She was only ten and had to return to Pakistan with my mother. There were terrible rows over whether I should go too, but I’d started my first year of A levels and my father wasn’t having it. He sent me to a friend’s house, telling me to lie low. We’re very close,’ Sadia said, which her smile confirmed.
‘But why, if your father came to a good job with excellent prospects and your mother came too, would she want to go back? I mean, even if the marriage broke up she could have stayed. Was it our way of life? This is nothing to do with the interview, I promise. As I said, I’ve turned off the recorder.’
‘She’d become much more observant and my father much less so. The man my mother is now married to is extremely religious; he could accept her previous relationship, because he was “bringing her back into the fold”. She got a Khul divorce via the religious law of Pakistan, which wouldn’t be law here. The word Khul means termination, you see. The wife has to pay back a dowry – though my father didn’t demand that – wait through one menstrual cycle and then she’s free.’
‘Tell me about your sister. Can you talk about it, why you feel so upset?’
‘It’s the whole problem. It’s terrible. I’m so sorry for my poor sister, Alesha. She’s trapped in that closed society and has no freedom at all. My mother wears the burka now, she’s gone very religious, all to do with her husband’s extremist views. But Alesha’s seventeen now, with all that that means.’ Sadia bent her small tidy head and fumbled for another tissue.
Nattie stared. ‘What does it mean exactly?’
Sadia looked up, sniffing a bit, and blew her nose. ‘She’s about to be married off, you see, to a first cousin on our mother’s side. Cousins can marry in Pakistan, there’s none of the outrage about it like here. His family and elders came to the house to formally propose – to the parents, not the bride; the girl doesn’t have anything to do with it. He’s not a cousin my sister knows, but she’s seen him and says he looks revolting, pot-bellied and at least twenty years older.
‘My father and I are British citizens now and I’m not sure what Alesha’s situation is, only having lived here that short time, years ago. It would help if she had her passport, of course, and could try to get a visa, but there’s no chance of that. They’ll keep it under lock and key, you can be sure, and hand it over to the husband when she marries. Alesha is desperate to escape before the wedding and come back to England. She’s in touch online whenever possible, begging me for any help I can give.’
Nattie sympathised. ‘It’s difficult to see what you can do from here,’ she said, wishing she could offer comfort. ‘And I’m not sure what kind of visa she’d be eligible for, even if she had her passport and could get to the British High Commission.’
‘I’m flying out tomorrow. I’ve written to my mother, saying it’s been too long, that sort of thing, but she hasn’t replied. I thought I’d go to the British High Commission in Islamabad and ask for help – do anything I can on the spot.’
The situation seemed very fraught, given that the sister wasn’t a UK citizen.
Nattie looked down at her laden plate. ‘We’d better eat, you’ll need to keep your strength up. And I should really turn my recorder back on now and ask more about the book. Is it being published in Pakistan as well?’ She knew its UK publication day was that week.
‘I don’t believe that’s decided yet, but it wouldn’t make things easy for Alesha.’
They picked at their food and ordered nothing more. Nattie asked a few innocuous questions – about Sadia’s childhood in Pakistan, so vividly described in the novel, her writing routine, favourite authors, her part-time job teaching English as a foreign language. Then, with just about enough material for the piece she had to write, she switched off the tape again.
‘Has your father any advice?’ she queried, as Sadia prepared to leave. ‘Has he been out to see your sister?’
‘He visited a couple of years ago. He was allowed to see her, but he’d have had to go to court to see her away from the home. It would have been hard for him to fight for right of access out there, though; it’s not like in the British courts. And if the judge were religiously conservative he’d certainly have found against my dad. He was powerless really. He’s against me going – he doesn’t trust my mother and stepfather one little bit.’
‘You’ll stay at a hotel? I’d leave your passport with reception at all times.’
Sadia seemed grateful for that tiny bit of advice. She looked anxious, as if unsure whether to ask something, and Nattie waited expectantly. ‘What happened to the man you were in love with?’ Sadia came out with eventually, twisting her ring round.
‘He had to go abroad – it was a bit of a life-threatening situation. We kept in touch, but then after a year he disappeared, vanished, and I heard nothing more. It broke my heart, but it’s all in the past. I’m married now, with two small children.’
‘Don’t you wonder what happened to him just the same?’
Nattie smiled with her eyes, pressing her lips tight together in a can’t-answer-that sort of way. It was a disturbing note to part on. She got out a card and handed it over. ‘Call just whenever you need to, please do, and definitely when you come back. I’d love to hear how you got on. And good luck!’
‘Thanks,’ Sadia said. ‘I feel better for talking about it. Braver now too, about flying out with all the tensions to come.’
Nattie stayed to pay the bill. Ahmed was more in her thoughts than ever and she was feeling proud. No one had been braver. He’d saved her life, the lives of her mother, stepfather and brother, and countless other people in that public place when he’d faced down the ringleader of a nuclear bomb plot. He’d averted an unspeakable atrocity.
She recalled the horror of a bomb going off in Leicester Square, the many lives lost. That had been just before she and Ahmed had met, but she knew he’d feared that there could be more terrorist attacks and had asked her stepfather William, his editor on the Post, if he could go undercover in his hometown to see what he could find out. He’d gone with his editor’s blessing, yet MI5, the Home Office and the Counter Terrorism Unit hadn’t known whether to trust him. Nattie fumed to think of it. And her own mother too, who’d been Home Secretary at the time, had authorised the bugging of Ahmed’s phone – that had been hard to take. She loved her mother, but their relationship had come under a lot of strain. It still had its shaky moments where Ahmed was concerned.
The email account had to go. She remembered being at his Brixton flat just before he left, and choosing a name for the account together: Vera Lysawe, an anagram of ever always. They’d been laughing and crying as they thought it up, clinging together for one last time. Ahmed had flown to America the next day.
Nattie heaved a sigh. It was insane, keeping that account going after all these years. She was heading into the office and would close it down there – better there than at home – and try to finally draw a line.
She had a busy afternoon ahead, making a start on the Sadia piece, preparing for a general ideas meeting next morning, which involved scouring newspapers and magazines for cuttings, anything that sparked new ideas. News stories, celebrity gossip, real-life weepies; all the features staff would come well armed. Nattie had work to put in. She would take the lead with her book pages, but was expected to contribute more widely as well.
As she left the restaurant, the sun was out and she crossed the street to feel it on her bare arms. She wanted to hang on to her holiday tan. It was a hot spell, in the high 20s that day. London smelled of melting tarmac, petrol fumes and dust, rotting food too, as she passed a split bag of rubbish. On the way to the tube station she checked her mobile and found a text from her mother – she and William wanted to see the children at the weekend – and a voicemail from Hugo too.
He sounded ebullient. ‘Just had lunch with Bev on the Post, who was singing your praises like mad – but then you are her boss’s stepdaughter! Anyway, she really liked “Punk Chic”, so thanks for that idea. It’s solved my problems over the Japanese designer – a fashion spread in the Post is the Holy Grail to Christine. She does my head in, that woman. Who’d have Palmers as a client with a Head of Communications like bloody Christine? Oh, nearly forgot: tomorrow night, we’ve got Maudie’s dinner party, remember, for her heavy-duty art buyers. She can’t open a tin, let alone cook, but we said we’d go. Just checking you’ve fixed a babysitter, darling. Want me to try if not? Love you. Kiss, kiss.’
It was a timely reminder, but Hugo knew her weak spots. He seemed to do Nattie’s thinking for her these days. He’d never gone much on her old schoolfriend, Maudie, who worked in a chic West End art gallery. She was a toughie, no question, but she and Maudie went back a long way. Nattie phoned Jasmine first, who was free to babysit, which was a relief. She’d forgotten all about the dinner. It had been arranged before their holiday and she’d been preoccupied and distracted since being home, hadn’t even looked at the diary.
Texting back Hugo she had a smile on her face. She quite depended on him now, a real reversal of roles.
Jasmine’s okay for tomorrow – thanks for the prod. Why should Maudie’s clients be heavy-duty, you old stick-in-the-mud? They’re all sorts. Could even put work way of Tyler Consultancy. And Maudie’s sure to get in ready cooked, so you’ll live! xxxxx
The reversal of roles only went so far, though. Hugo was still insecure and vulnerable, he never believed in his own abilities. He leaned on her, she was his steadying hand and prop.
Nattie was thinking fondly of Hugo as she pushed on the revolving doors of Buckley Building. Girl Talk’s offices were on the sixth floor, open-plan and bright, flooded with daylight in summer, less kindly lit in winter with unforgiving neon strips. It was one of the Buckley Group’s more successful magazines, glossy, aimed at working girls and young marrieds. Going in, Nattie enjoyed the familiar sense of clutter, the piled-up past issues, overflowing in-trays, cosmetic samples, knitwear samples, the perennial packed rail of clothes for fashion shoots, wilting pot plants, polystyrene food containers, lipsticked mugs.
On the way to her desk space – she sat opposite Ian, a keen young fashion-features writer, a Scot with a well-developed bitchy streak – friends hugged her and asked after the holiday. It felt good to be back.
She was soon stuck in, dealing with the most urgent of her emails. She sifted through new books for review, which took time, and wrote the bones of the interview with Sadia while it was fresh in her mind. It flowed easily. Nattie wanted to do the girl proud.
She knew the moment had come. It was hard, she was clenching and unclenching her fists. Bringing up the address for the very last time, she had a strange telepathic anticipation of finding something unexpected, some weird personal connection or contact in the predictable trickle of spam.
There was nothing out of the ordinary in her in-box – offers from estate agents, airlines – Viagra sellers and money fraudsters in Trash. She scanned further down the list of mailboxes, past VIPs, Flagged, as far as Drafts.
Nattie stared at the number beside Drafts in a disbelieving fog. It couldn’t be, she was seeing things . . . The number of messages had been stuck on 267 for six years. Today it read 268.
It couldn’t be. She felt dazed, almost too scared to look; in a state of suspended panic, like being alone in the house, hearing footfall on the stairs and heavy breathing. Only it was her own loud heart she was hearing, her own raggedy breath.
She clicked on Drafts and brought up the new message, tingling to the tips of her fingers.
Hello, Nattie, I’m in London! Very much hoping we can meet.
Her eyes were blurring as she read through Ahmed’s message. She worked out their old easy-to-decipher code and read the short sentence the letters made.
I need to see you badly.
There it was, the message she’d hoped and dreamed of seeing one day. Ahmed was alive; he’d made contact. Her heart was loud, pumping at a great pace, and she had to swallow hard.
The message was two days old. Nattie was poised to respond right away; she had a thousand questions to ask and couldn’t rest now, without answers. But to see him again . . . and with the message making his feelings clear – or did it? I need to see you badly, that could be for a variety of reasons. Who was she kidding? The passion was there in the message, loud and clear.
Where would it lead? She was in another life now, but just to meet, to hear what had happened, to explain her situation . . . He could be married too. Her stomach contracted at the thought. ‘Don’t be married,’ she mouthed silently. ‘I couldn’t bear it.’
She had to make contact, but did she tell Hugo? It upset her to think of seeing Ahmed behind his back, lying and keeping secrets. It was of such fundamental enormity to their relationship. Suppose Hugo found out? Yet if she did tell him, he’d beg her not to see Ahmed again, certainly not alone. He’d do everything in his power, he would plead and cajole, say it would jeopardise five happy years of marriage; everything they had. No, she couldn’t tell Hugo.
She had no idea how long she’d sat gazing at her screen, but began to absorb the shouts of goodbye, people packing it in. It was time to go home. She imagined the evening ahead with Hugo, trying with every fibre to act normally, however hard, and to resist constant looks at her laptop. It was going to be a test.
Nothing compared to the test it would be to see Ahmed again, knowing what she’d have to say. She’d never stopped loving him and never would, but she was committed now, tied, married to Hugo and with two children.
‘Nattie? Are you okay?’ Ian was staring, pausing as he prepared to go. ‘Is there something on your mind?’ He looked quite hopeful; other people’s predicaments were his meat and drink. ‘All set for tomorrow’s meeting? You can’t have had much prep time, I’m sure, with being away. Anything I can help with?’
The forward planning meeting had gone clean out of her head. Shit, she should have been online for the past hour, hunting out ideas, poring over newspapers and magazines, foreign ones too. ‘Not really, thanks, Ian. I’ll gen up at home later. I’ve been a bit distracted, thinking about this girl I interviewed at lunch; her novel is so powerful. It really stays with you.’ Nattie smiled, as unsure as ever of how far to trust her colleague. He had chin-length gingery-brown hair and was all bones – they stuck out in every direction; his cheeks were hollow and his thin nose twitched as it scented advantage.
Ian lost interest and shuffled off.
Nattie looked at the clock and phoned Jasmine. ‘I’ll be a bit late back, sorry.’
‘No rush, don’t you worry, just whenever.’ Jasmine was pure gold. Nattie felt so emotionally overloaded she had to wipe her eyes.
She wrote a return email to save in Drafts, feeling tremors in her spine. It wasn’t easy to hit the right holding-back note.
After a lot of backspacing and with shivering anticipation, she wrote, I can’t believe this is really you and I’m seeing this message after six years of no contact! I’ve been staring at my screen, stunned. There’s so much to ask and tell. Meet Tues or Wed next week – just for a catch-up? Coffee? Drink? Or I know a quiet Italian bistro near Baker St.
She added a last sentence in code with her heart battering at her ribcage.
Infants never exactly easy, do tumble often, such effortful exhausting young obstinate upstarts, toppling over obstacles!
That was showing her feelings too much. Her finger hovered over the delete button, but she couldn’t bring herself to press it. He was here and she had to see him, she’d be in pieces otherwise, unable to function. But either way, seeing him or not, it could only end in tears.