Ahmed looked at his watch. Nattie would text any minute; it was almost time to collect her. He’d been running her to and from work for the last couple of weeks. Girl Talk’s offices were close, but inconveniently placed for public transport. She was going to start cycling in next morning. ‘It’s crazy, dragging you away from your desk like this,’ she said. ‘I expect I’ll give in if it’s pouring, but only then.’
He hadn’t argued. She was probably better off biking than being with him in the car, unlikely to be recognised, head down, helmet on.
Nattie was safe enough, out and about, taking the children to the park, especially with her beautiful hair tucked up into that awful woolly beanie, but Ahmed wanted to have a weekend away with her when Hugo took the children to his parents’. The idea of some quality time together had taken hold. She’d be less on edge with her parents-in-law there to keep an eye and Ahmed felt she needed a proper break. He did too, fed up with being cooped up indoors all day, and he’d thought about it a lot.
Could they chance it? If he took every precaution, chose some sleepy seaside town . . . It was irresponsible, sure, but the odds on being seen by the wrong pair of eyes while mooching about on the south coast in early November seemed on the whole pretty thin.
Nattie texted and he picked up his coat. Jasmine was back from the school run, sorting the children out with a snack, and he looked in on the kitchen. ‘Hi, guys, I’m off for Mum now. How was school, Lily? Good day?’
‘We’re learning French! Je m’appelle Lily.’
‘Wow, great stuff,’ he said, a bit absently. ‘Tell us all when we’re back.’
He drove off, enjoying his own domesticated image. He’d felt it was as much a trial run of family life for him as a trial separation for Nattie, and he was managing fine. He’d become used to sharing the house with Jasmine and Thomas on Nattie’s workdays; he’d play with Thomas for a bit then potter off with a Thermos of coffee to do a morning’s work. He had lunch with Thomas, and Jasmine insisted on cooking him proper meals. It filled her morning, he could see, and he certainly had no complaints, after living on junk food for weeks.
He turned onto the narrow street of warehouses, his waiting place for Nattie, and switched off, grinning to himself, alone in the car. Jake’s help, Mrs Cruikshank, who’d looked after them both at the Brixton flat, came on Tuesdays and he’d overheard Jasmine chattering to her the day before.
‘He’s sweet with the little ones,’ Jasmine said, ‘he makes them laugh. I must admit I had me doubts, but they’re happy and that’s what matters. I mind me own business about other people’s affairs, but who’d have thought she’d walk out on that hubby of hers? He’s a dish, Mary, her hubby. Looks like, you know, that actor, Tim Huddleston. But he’s a right mess without her, I can tell you, drinking hisself into the ground.’
‘Tom Hiddleston,’ Mary Cruikshank had corrected, which Ahmed suspected had passed Jasmine by. ‘She and Dan were together before, you know,’ Mrs Cruikshank said, ‘before she was ever married. She was at the flat, times when I did for Dan. Very in love they were then.’
Mrs Cruikshank was one in a million. She was keeping his cover; however she was old, and it might be easy for her to get muddled. Ahmed hoped she wouldn’t slip up.
He waited with the car steaming up in the deserted side street, beginning to worry. Nattie was late. He jumped when the passenger door opened suddenly, his nerves on edge, and his heart started up too, when she leaned over, a bit out of breath, to kiss him.
‘Sorry! A late long email came in that I wanted to answer straight off. It was from Sadia Umar and she was waiting on any word from me.’ Nattie had told him about the girl – he’d read her novel and been impressed – being out in Pakistan, trying to find a way to save her sister from a forced marriage. ‘It’s sure to be a doomed mission,’ Nattie went on, ‘and it upsets me no end.’
‘What was she emailing about?’
‘Her sister was going to try to steal her own passport from under her stepfather’s nose tonight and Sadia was sick with worry, wanting me to be reassuring and tell her that she shouldn’t be trying to stop her. I hope I’m right, but I’ve said all along that it’s worth any risk, the chance of having her freedom.’
Ahmed knew the scene only too well, and he tried to prepare the ground. ‘It’s hard for you and me to understand,’ he said, feeling a bit disingenuous, ‘but the pressure being put on the sister will be more out of deeply held beliefs than deliberate cruelty. I know family honour is taken to selfish and often horrendous extremes, but to the strictly observant, the whole system depends on conformity, marrying off girls appropriately and keeping them in the fold.’
‘To think of the stepfather waking up, it makes me feel faint with horror . . . What about your sisters? Did they get to choose their husbands?’
‘They didn’t test the system, but my parents adjusted anyway, moved with the times, more or less. Arranged marriages still carry on here, of course. I knew people in the community, lawyers, accountants, doctors, whose parents did the choosing and the marriages have worked, in the main.’ Ahmed slipped her a grin. ‘But it’s not for me.’ He drew up outside the house. ‘We’re here now – and Lily’s learning French!’
It was Saturday already, one of Nattie’s weekends with the children. ‘It’s such a joy,’ she said, nuzzling up, ‘seeing you with the children.’
‘They’re great. Full of surprises, keep me on my toes.’
They really were great. He loved watching their characters forming and developing by the day, loved them as his own already, with their unnerving ability to pitch camp in his heart. If only Nattie could relax. He sensed her endless fretting about whether Hugo would survive his weekends without the children – like this one; whether he was drowning in drink or spaced out of his mind.
Nattie’s distress was hard to take. When the love was there – and theirs had stood the test over seven years – surely everything else fell into place? They could have a stimulating, fulfilling life together, Ahmed knew, children of their own. Was she going to feel this torn and responsible, worried and beholden to Hugo for ever?
She would be denying him a life’s happiness too. Could he push that? He knew her too well; trying to influence her would have the opposite effect. There must be no heavy pressure, no pleading. No whingeing about what it would mean to him to lose her now that they’d found each other again.
Nattie’s decision, unlike Sadia’s sister’s, had to be hers alone. She was strong, serious, responsible, but once she’d decided, whichever way she fell, he knew there’d be no changing her mind.
Suppose she went back to Hugo. There could never be another Nattie. Life without her would be unthinkable, unendurable, and not to have Lily and Thomas around to love and tease and entertain . . . Ahmed was confident he could open their young minds to so much. They were receptive, he could bring them on, stretch and encourage them. He was getting morbid. It wouldn’t do. But he loved the children, they mattered to him; he wanted them always in his life now.
He could pay for Hugo to come out to California to see them. Should he tell Nattie that? But it would be additional pressure and only draw attention to Hugo’s plight.
It was no good, and not in his nature, this defeatist thinking. He loved Nattie and he was right for her. However long it took, however many bumps and twists and disappointments, he had set his heart on marrying her and one day he was going to do so, come what may.