Nattie was back in minutes, Jake’s house was no distance from her mother’s. She humped her bike up the front steps and in through the door; she’d had a wheel nicked leaving it padlocked out front.
‘You still here, Jasmine?’ she called. ‘Thanks. I’d popped in to see my mother, but don’t feel you need to stay if Dan’s here. He is halfway capable, you know.’
Jasmine came into the hall. ‘I thought he’d like help with their tea. Lily can be such a cheeky little miss, laying down the law about what she wants to eat.’
Nattie opened the back door to lock up her bike outside and Jasmine had something to say about it. ‘Brrr, blimey, it’s colder than a witch’s tit out there. Any babysitting needed tomorrow?’ she added hopefully. She didn’t work Fridays and she and Pete were getting married – a year next April, and already trying to save.
‘Sorry, no plans,’ Nattie said, but as it was one of Hugo’s weekends with the children, Jasmine would have extra hours then.
She saw Jasmine out and closed the front door with a sense of relief. She needed to be alone with Ahmed and to have the house to themselves.
He was in the kitchen, giving Thomas his supper, spooning in yoghurt. He put down the pot and plastic spoon to come to give her a kiss. ‘Mmm, you smell good – but you’ve taken off all the gear. Done me out of seeing you shake out your hair in that sexy way.’
‘Sexy’s a naughty word,’ Lily said with authority, turning from the dishwasher, which she loved to fill.
‘It’s not very naughty.’ Ahmed gave her hair a tweak as she came bouncing up. ‘I’ve heard a certain little girl say much naughtier things.’
‘What? What has she said?’ Nattie asked, instantly worried about the words Lily could pick up at school.
‘That’s just between Lily and me, and she’s not going to say it again, are you, Lily? Remember your promise?’ She narrowed her eyes at him, cross at being reminded.
Tubsy was trying to aim spoonfuls of yoghurt into his mouth with limited success. He quickly tired of the task, maximum effort for minimum reward, and started hammering at his high-chair table, sending spatters of yoghurt flying.
‘Oh, Tubsy, darling, we hadn’t forgotten you.’ Nattie wiped his hands and face and lifted him out of his high chair. She hugged him, feeling emotionally fragile and beginning to worry already about Hugo’s ability to cope at the weekend.
She played games with the children, allowed a little DVD viewing, lost herself in the agony of what lay ahead. There was no going back. She’d done it, plunged into the gully, told her mother she knew the way forward, and now she had to face up to telling Hugo and Ahmed what it was.
‘Bedtime, you two, up we go!’ The three of them trooped upstairs. ‘Into the bath with you and then I’ll call Dan to read a story.’
Wrapping up Tubsy in his towel, rubbing him dry, she could tell her breath was juddery; she held her cuddly boy close, trying to calm her thumping heart, if not her nerves. She had to do it, had to tell Ahmed before anything else. From that all else flowed – or became silted up, or sucked her down into the abyss. She had to do it now – well, soon, over the weekend. When – Friday night? No, not when she was seeing Hugo next morning; even with the children as cover she’d be feeling dangerously overwrought. It would have to be after taking them, as soon as she returned here.
She got Tubsy’s bottle and called Ahmed to read to Lily. It was the right time to tell him; they’d be alone in the house, no distractions. And it was just far enough away to give her the space she badly needed, time to formulate arguments, to plan, to prepare herself mentally – as if that were possible. They would have the rest of the day, Saturday night, Sunday, precious time together. How would they cope?
Thursday night, Friday, the hours of daylight and darkness moved on inexorably; they blurred into each other, fading and fast disappearing. Nattie laughed and smiled, fed the children, fed Ahmed, she shopped, functioned thanks to the weird phenomenon of autopilot, which carried her through the school run, her daily routine. The hardest part was the car ride home alone.
Ahmed must have some sort of idea; he had X-ray eyes and could see into her as clearly as if she were transparent, like an old-fashioned ticking clock with its workings exposed. He must be seeing her pumping blood, the lift and fall of her lungs, the manic whirring of her brain; perhaps even the infinitesimal growth of his embryo child. He’d have an idea all right, with his sensitivity, but was he aware of the indescribable pain?
The hours slipped by as fast as the countryside out of a train window. At some stage, Nattie couldn’t remember when, Ahmed had voiced the unwanted truth, speaking it softly into her mouth, a question in a kiss. ‘It’s time for us to talk? But not now, not tonight?’ She’d pulled back, looked at him and he’d known it would be soon.
Friday night came, the train speeding up. The children were in bed, asleep, she and Ahmed had a quiet evening together. They turned in early and Nattie was silent as they went upstairs. In bed Ahmed was passionate, loving her with a particular intensity; she had no need to talk. They lay holding hands as they usually did after lovemaking, a time when they often shared ideas, jokes, media putdowns, racy chat about personalities, private little bitches. It didn’t seem the night for talking, though; they lay with their fingers entwined and hardly spoke at all.
Ahmed lifted their linked hands to his lips, sucking gently on one of her fingers. ‘Do you want to talk now? California comes into it, doesn’t it?’
‘Yes. But I’d rather tomorrow, when I’m back from taking the children and we have the house to ourselves. You don’t mind waiting till then?’
He put his mouth to her finger again, which seemed as good an answer as any.
‘I had a plan for this weekend,’ he said, after a bit, ‘going to see your grandparents. I long to see them again, but that’s out of the window now. No more pottering round the countryside – I can’t bear to think of what you went through in Lyme, Nattie darling. They’d have got me without you, those two guys. You were a rock, helping and spurring me on.’ He pulled her close. ‘I don’t want any space between us tonight, I want to sleep with you in my arms.’
Hugo looked limp and haggard, standing in the doorway, kind of unshielded; he had a frailty about him, as though even opening the door had taken all the energy in his possession. Was he starving himself? He looked, Nattie realised with a sudden shock and sinking feeling, as if he was in the throes of a harrowing come-down from some substance, some dreaded chemical prop. Would the children be safe? Was it irresponsible of her to leave them with him? What could she say? ‘I can’t leave you in charge; you look too washed out’?
She’d hate to row in front of Lily and Tubsy; even if it were out of earshot they’d sense the tension, which would be so bad for them, and Hugo had looked almost as close to the edge on other weekends. He’d probably manage somehow. The children were all he had.
He came down the path to greet them, blinking several times in the crisp bright daylight and covering his eyes with the spread of his hand before squatting down when Lily ran towards him. He gathered her up in his arms. ‘Hello, my lovely, my wonderful girl.’ He stroked her hair while looking up at Nattie over Lily’s silky blonde head. It was more than a look, it was a piercing, gaunt-eyed stare. He was a dying man, his look said, sinking beneath the ice.
He blinked and dropped his eyes, turned his attention to Tubsy. ‘How’s my Thomas Tubs then? Come and give Daddy a hug!’ Tubsy held back; he needed adjustment time, which Hugo understood. He didn’t push it and struggled up onto his feet. Lily took his hand in a daughterly way and they went on ahead indoors. Nattie followed slowly; she was walking at Tubsy’s pace which, on his short chubby legs, was unhurried.
She refused Hugo’s offer of coffee with as much kindly softness as she could manage.
‘You’ll be okay with them?’ she said, trying to keep her voice light. ‘Any problems, just give a buzz. I may be out of London,’ she said untruthfully, worrying what sort of wretched state she could be in herself, ‘but Mum’s around this weekend and I know she’d love to help.’
‘Daddy’s got me to help,’ Lily said, looked up at him proudly for confirmation, ‘and I do, don’t I, Daddy? I’m your good little helper – and Tubsy’s mummy just for now.’ She was her bouncy self, skipping round the kitchen, jumping up and down.
‘You’ve seen the canvas bag with the usual guff?’ Nattie said, desperate to go.
Hugo was staring again. ‘I can bring them over to your mother’s on Sunday if you like,’ he said, ‘save you coming all this way.’ It was more an attempt to slow her up than genuine keenness to be accommodating, she felt. His hurt at her need to get away was palpable. Or was he worried about Amber dropping in? Perhaps she was a regular Sunday fixture.
It would be a help, though, to meet at her mother’s, particularly this Sunday, and Nattie thanked him. ‘Be brill of you,’ she said. ‘Six o’clock?’
Hugo walked with her to the door. ‘When will you let me know? It is three months.’ Those staring eyes again, and when he rested a hand on her lower arm she could feel how badly it was shaking.
‘I’ll tell you soon,’ she said. ‘Very soon.’
It was a peak Saturday before Christmas. The crowds were ten deep and the traffic stationary half the time. It took Nattie over an hour to get back to Lambeth and it was almost noon when she finally drew up and parked. After the supreme tension she’d felt in the car she went up the front steps feeling unnaturally calm.
Ahmed heard her key and sprinted down from his study.
He kissed her and it was a proper kiss, they took their time over it.
He led her by the hand into the sitting room. ‘I’ve been marking time,’ he said. ‘I wasn’t exactly concentrating on Shorelands.’
He’d put a jug of water ready on the coffee table, two glasses, and took her to sit with him on the sofa. She had a flashback – no, wrong word, it wasn’t a hauled-back memory, that day they’d met by the Millennium Bridge was too recent and vividly etched. The day when Ahmed had hailed a cab and brought her to Jake’s house, when he’d asked her not to sit in the straight-backed chair, but to be beside him while he talked. He’d drawn her down with him on this same sofa just as now, except that this time she was the one with painfully difficult things to say.
She would never regret coming to Jake’s house that afternoon; to have resisted and walked away would have meant being half a person for the rest of her life. Some things transcended the wrongness, they had a purity and rightness that couldn’t be denied. Love was about many things, discovery, constancy, mirrored senses, making sacrifices, but more than anything, a universe of understanding – and that was what she had to draw on now, test Ahmed’s understanding to its limits.
‘Who goes first?’ he said, pouring her water. ‘I’d rather you did. My side is simple: I want to be with you, love and protect you, marry you, but I come with baggage as we both know.’
Ahmed had a lump in his throat, he felt it there as he swallowed. He longed for any glimmer of hope; he couldn’t look at Nattie without having to muzzle a howl of agony. It had to be contained. He thought of the beauty of what they had, unchanged feelings since the days when they were both so young and shyly discovering they were in love. They’d lived through enormous dramas then, more dramas now and Nattie had stood by him, loving, strong and constant. She’d never wavered.
She was pregnant with his child; didn’t that change everything fundamentally? Didn’t it override the great weight of Hugo? Did she have to be a martyr and slave to Hugo’s helplessness for the rest of her life?
Ahmed knew where his own duty lay. Now that his cover was blown and he was known to be in the country, every day he lingered, even behind closed doors in Jake’s barred and bolted house, spelled greater risk.
Nattie’s eyes, amber gold, glistening, were studying him, looking liquidly close to tears. He wanted to fight the will she was finding, beg her to come with him to California. The children were young enough; she could bring them to England to see their father. But he knew the pent-up frustration he was feeling was about to be released, about to explode like a glorious firework all over his brain – all his exultant feelings of hope and expectation over the past three months lit up in splendour for a last second before being lost to the night. Could he be reading the signs wrong? Was there any hope?
‘Tell me what you’re thinking, Nattie. Tell me where we’re at.’
Nattie played with her hands, feeling her wedding ring under her fingers. She didn’t want to start, wanted to run from her decision, but to where?
She drew a breath. ‘We’re on borrowed time. We both know we’ve been living in a bubble – so intensely happy, in my case, that I’ve hardly dared breathe for fear of blowing us off course, but our time’s run out. We have to be responsible and talk now, while we’re alone in the house, just the two of us and little no-name who’s a few months off taking part.’
She was grateful when Ahmed refilled her water glass; her throat was dry. She felt drained, shrivelled and withered, dreading with every fibre saying what had to be said. Ahmed was holding her eyes and she stared back.
‘You can’t stay in England beyond this weekend, darling,’ she began, finally finding the will to speak. ‘Another person recognises you, another of your enemies with a brother or cousin in Leeds, whose best mate lives in Harehills, whose best mate you put inside. You put Shelby inside indirectly too, and he’s not one of life’s natural forgivers.’
Ahmed picked up her hand. ‘Shelby’s been my greatest worry all along.’
‘You have to go back to California, but I can’t come too.’ Nattie brought up their hands to her cheek. ‘These last months have been perfect happiness, so much so that I’ve felt frightened; I’ve lived in terror of losing you, terror of you turning to another woman. I love you with all my heart, which is now about to shatter into a thousand pieces, but there’s no other way. You have to go without me and we have to live apart. I can’t take Hugo’s children to California, it would be the end of him. They’re all he has, he’d lose his will to survive.’
Ahmed took back his hand. He clenched both hands into tight fists; white-knuckled. When he looked up with a direct unflinching gaze, her tears spilled.
‘That’s only one side of the story,’ he said, keeping up his unwavering look and not reacting to her tears. ‘I have a say in this too. We love each other and you’re having my baby. Aren’t you leaving that out of account? Where am I in all this? What about the birth and seeing our child grow up? It is our child, Nattie, and in case you’ve forgotten, I’m going to marry you, that’s a given. It’s just a question of when.’ He turned away and looked down the room. She had an embryo life inside her and had never felt emptier. Without Ahmed she was a shell.
‘You’re everywhere in this, and our child is too, but I can’t come with you and bring the children. You’d always be more conspicuous with me tagging along, more at risk – even in California. There was that interview Shelby gave to the press when he tried to link you to terrorists. There wasn’t a lot of publicity about us at the time, but enough to stir memories and trigger people’s minds. And Shelby’s out there, biding his time; he needs to get even again, six times over. He’ll find a way to expose you. He’ll talk, paint you as a wife-snatcher, say nasty things – and you wouldn’t only be risking your reputation. You must see all this.’
Ahmed rose abruptly from the sofa and walked to the far window. He stood looking out. Nattie had said what she had to; stayed calm, kept control. Now the tears rolled freely down her cheeks. She let them. He came back looking drawn and unyielding; didn’t sit down again, didn’t soften and wipe away her tears, and she felt the cold draught of the distance he’d set up with a sense of desperation. Without his quick, light teasing, his loving, everything was blackness. It was an eternal eclipse on a sunny day.
He stared at her from where he stood. ‘You’d go back to Hugo? You miss him at heart, you care about him – perhaps more than me.’
‘Is that a statement? Because, question or statement, it’s wrong. I love you completely, which leaves no room for Hugo. I have feelings for him, they’re sincere, a kind of loving, but incomparable – a pleasant drink, not the nectar that’s you. I have to make this impossible decision. Hugo’s addictive weakness is an illness, he’s fighting it for the sake of his children and I can’t let him give up the fight. I married him, I lost trust eventually, when you cut off contact, and took that fateful step. It was in the depths of my bitter hurt and despair and now I have to bear the consequences.’ She was barely holding on, close to hysteria, on the verge of losing her resolve.
‘You want to go back to him – right now? Go back and live with him again, just as before? You could do that?’ Nattie sensed Ahmed was transmitting a plea for reassurance – she knew him so well. He was questioning her coldly, stiff and unrelenting, but bleeding freely inside. The thought of her slipping straight back into Hugo’s bed was too much for him to bear.
‘I’ve no intention of going straight back to Hugo,’ she said, keeping her calm. ‘There’s no chance of that, even if I wanted to. When I tell him I’m having your baby – which is inevitably going to be an incredible shock and hit him unbearably hard, what he’ll say or do, how he’ll handle it, is impossible to guess. No, I’d stay here for a while, as long as I can come to some arrangement with Jake. It would be a temporary stopgap; he’d need to get a decent rent, far more than I could afford. Then after that I could always live in Mum and William’s basement till I work something out. There’s room for the children there.’
To be talking in bland, businesslike, practical terms when her heart was rent in pieces was making her feel as if she was in a play, rehearsing a role. But it was a real-time tragedy – another one, seven years on from the last.
The room was scented, a vase of freesias on a side table, lilies on the mantelpiece. Ahmed bought fresh flowers regularly online. She wanted him beside her, wanted his special smell, to hear the rhythm of his breathing. She’d faced saying what she had to, been braced for the bitter hurt – she believed he’d known her decision the moment she’d made it, almost before she’d felt sure of it – but to have him standing there, questioning, still distant, not in the same place, was a greater agony than she’d ever known.
‘I may in time go back to live with Hugo, assuming he wanted it, but only with a whole set of conditions in place, arrangements about the baby and you. This is our baby, conceived in love, ours to share and bring up in harmony. There’s no way I’d ever let you be a stranger to your own child.’
‘So what are the conditions? Do I get any say in those?’ Ahmed sounded so plaintive and pushed out that she could bear it no longer. She sprang to her feet and went up close, forcing him to look at her, desperate to be held.
‘Oh, darling, hold me, don’t stop loving me. We’re not going to lose contact, even living apart most of the time. We’ll never lose contact, please not that, never again. I just know I have to do this thing.’
He kissed her then, with a fierce, ardent passion, and she knew the bonds still held firm. When they separated and she was visibly shaking, her lip bleeding, he kept hold of her so tightly that she couldn’t breathe. She eased out of his grasp, leaned forward and dropped her head onto his chest, regaining her breath and feeling flooded with warmth. She’d felt close to fainting minutes before.
There were questions, untied ends, and it was her turn to lead him to the sofa where they sat in silence, needing nothing more than to be close. Nattie felt cocooned, immune from harm with his arm round her, keeping her tight-held, but she needed him to speak his thoughts. She touched his lips. ‘I’m done talking, it’s your turn now.’
He smoothed her hair. ‘It pains me to say this and I’m not functioning properly, but Lyme was the writing on the wall. I should have left the very next day. I feel wretchedly irresponsible, still being here. I keep my eye in – I’m a reporter before scriptwriter – and remember those two sidekicks, Iqbal and Haroon? I saw they were up for release a while back, they’re probably out by now. And Shelby’s in the columns daily with some society bird or other on his arm; he’s certainly around and in a position to do me. He’s talked about as the heart-throb jailbird son of an entrepreneur, he has a huge Twitter following and I’d bet quite a lot that he’s pushing dope again. If he’s back in touch with Hugo, he’ll know I’m in the country and be plotting for sure.’
Nattie shivered.
Ahmed looked at her. ‘What really cuts so deep is that it’s not the risks: this is all about Hugo, isn’t it? Admit it. I want to hear you say it. This is all about Hugo – but what about my state of mind? My misery and loneliness? My feelings don’t stand a chance.’ Nattie could see how rigid he’d gone. He’d separated again and his eyes locked on hers were glittering with pain.
‘Nor do my feelings,’ she said. ‘You don’t have a monopoly on “misery and loneliness”. But you must see that the risks and Hugo are intertwined. If you hadn’t been at risk you wouldn’t have gone to America and I wouldn’t have married him. Who knows, you and I might have had three yawling kiddos by now, and you’d still be working at the Post. But as it is, what we have and feel for each other is unique. For my part certainly, it’s the entirety of my life. I’ll never let go of this perfect happiness – but nor can I tarnish it by taking Hugo’s children and escaping. I couldn’t live with the guilt, the constant fear that he couldn’t survive and his life was draining away.’
Ahmed didn’t comment. ‘I’m still waiting to hear what these “conditions” are that are supposed to keep us in contact,’ he said instead.
‘Hugo’s going to have to accept that you must be able to see your child whenever you want and can manage to do so. I’d bring him or her out to see you too, as often as possible – and to fit in with what’s going on in your life, of course.’ Nattie felt tears pricking again. Suppose he was living with someone, even married? ‘I want us to be in regular touch – very regular,’ she said, feeling privately determined and holding in the fear.
There was a long silence. She sat looking down, chewing on her still bleeding lip, until Ahmed finally parcelled up her hand.
‘Well, that shut me up for a bit, didn’t it?’ He gave a grudging but wonderfully heartening grin. ‘There’s one glaring unanswered question in all this,’ he said. ‘What happens if Hugo won’t have you back, pregnant with my baby, and wants nothing to do with you?’
‘You would still be at risk and I’d still feel I couldn’t take his children out of the country. And if he ever found somebody to love him more and circumstances changed,’ she hesitated a moment, ‘you’d probably have moved on by then and be married.’ She sighed, wishing she hadn’t voiced those fears.
‘I won’t marry anyone else. I’d send anyone worth having over here for Hugo.’ Ahmed grinned again, yet Nattie knew his lightness was a defence, his way of masking the depth of his hurt and wretchedness. Then his expression softened and he wiped at her teary eyes. ‘Why’s that making you look so sad?’
He reached for his glass of water, handed Nattie hers. ‘I’m going to drink to Amber, just in case.’
‘I’d rather drink to us,’ she said, clinking glasses, ‘to our future, whenever it comes, and to this precious last weekend. Better make the most of me.’
‘Oh, I will, don’t you worry. You’ll be on your knees by the time you push me, kicking and screaming, onto that plane.’