The white plastic clock, cloned in a million classrooms elsewhere, set off, marking the start of the written paper in the sports hall. There was a synchronised rustle as a hundred students turned over the first page. The more conscientious flicked through the rest to plan their time advisedly, and the panic-stricken dived straight in, having just one hour forty-five to answer all six questions.
Florence settled methodically to the task, blanking out the nervous heels tapping on all sides and the tortured twisting of hair, the only permitted expressions of internal angst. She pulled out the interpretations booklet and studied the sources there. She’d thought she was well prepared, but even with the lucky nail varnish painted on beneath her socks, she wished she had more background to tackle question one.
Unthinkingly, she reached into her blazer pocket for her phone, forgetting she had handed it in. Her fingers grazed against the precious keepsake. She pulled it out and laid it, belly up, upon the desk, the delicate filigree exposed to the air, then turned it once, back to the same place, to feel the satisfaction of its weight against her skin. A serenity shot through her, cool like mercury, making her rising anxiety still. She could see a way in now, an angle of approach. She let go of the trinket and again picked up her pen.
*
Sofia pushed the back door open with her shoulder and swung herself over to the fridge with the heavy shopping bags. The afternoon had gone well, and she was smiling to herself – unlike the librarian, who had tutted silently throughout the first session, as she and Maalik, warming rapidly to each other through their shared endeavour, had pored over unfamiliar acronyms, role-played examination scenarios and laughed out loud as they exchanged stick figure explanations of obscure vocabulary.
She put the soya milk on the top shelf. She seemed to remember that was what Florence preferred. God, she’d better text her actually. Her first exam would have finished, fifteen minutes ago. She aimed for a concerned yet not too interfering tone.
Hi Florence. Hope it went OK. Mum. XXX. :)
As she went to press send, another text arrived. Sofia tapped on the speech bubble flagged with its new number one.
Jim Benson.
Nothing for two decades, then three encounters in eight days. What could he want to say now, after everything that had passed?
She waited, breathed in and out, then tapped upon his name. But whatever she’d half-expected did not materialise. The text was factual, informative, politely distancing.
Good to see you again. ROX reunion (25th) is at Almscliffe, 1 and 2 April. Can’t attend, but thought might be of interest.
Jim
ROX. The university climbing club. They’d been so pleased with themselves then. Neat name. Trim bodies. Heading off in minibuses every other weekend, ten of them at least, thirty in the summer, piling in with nothing more than ropes and rucksacks, a driver – sometimes with insurance – and the odd spare pair of hiking socks. The fittest ones, the brightest ones, destined for firsts and upper seconds, no matter whether they spent their weekends studying or not. And she’d been good – confident, a leader – the one who held her nerve, or bounced and broke off laughing when she fell and made a cam wire snap while trying something new.
Could she go there and be that someone once again? They wouldn’t know – all except Jim – what had happened between now and then. The question was hypothetical. She wouldn’t go of course. She hadn’t been on any of their reunions. Florence had been a suckling baby when the tenth one came along; Isaac had been crawling when they had the twentieth. And Hugo would be away for this one, the twenty-fifth. Even if she’d had the time and could squeeze back into her boots, she’d barely have the energy to walk the trails between the crags.
She texted back, friendly, but careful to mirror his detachment.
Hi Jim
Can’t believe we crossed paths after all this time!
Would have loved to meet up with the ROX crowd again. Regret not possible due to childcare commitments but thanks for letting me know.
Sofia
*
Five o’clock came, and she was playing houses again, like a proper mummy. Isaac had been allowed to invite a friend round for tea, and she was cooking, sustaining them with a vat of Bolognese. She’d had to ask Florence where she kept the bay leaves now, and the appearance of Carl and Isobel, best friends of Tim and Flo, had taken her somewhat by surprise, but she remained at the centre, at the kitchen table, nurturing, directing, feeding her offspring and associates. She even steeled herself to wipe away the slug of winter snot dangling from Ben’s five-year-old nose, before it became entangled in his falling locks of hair.
Looking around the table, she began to wonder whether her children based their friendships purely on coiffure. The whole lot of them were heavily endowed with tresses, flicking it out of their eyes as they tried to reach their dinners, or letting it fall so it held their heads sideways as they looked out of one eye. The outsiders’ locks lacked the Gardners’ wiry spring, but Ben’s were thick and curvy; Carl had layers of mouse-brown reaching almost his chin; and Isobel had a ponytail, pushed back into itself, which fell in a generous, looping, barley-coloured fan.
‘Anyone for a spot more?’ Sofia asked, once all unwanted vegetables had been pushed well under knives and forks.
‘I’m fine thanks, Mrs Gardner,’ said Carl, unsure how he was going to eat his real tea when he got home. The invitation to sit down to dinner had been rather unexpected. He and Tim communicated silently.
‘Are we OK to go to the Astro?’ Tim almost looked at Florence rather than checking with his mum.
‘Sure,’ she said serenely, studiedly relaxed. ‘Just don’t be too late back now. Nine at the latest.’ She corrected herself. ‘No, actually, eight I think. Let’s say half-past seven.’ It was floodlit, but it would be wet and freezing cold of course, and she ought to get them home and into bed. What time did they go to bed now anyway? She tucked in Isaac carefully every night at seven, but the older ones had seemed to sort themselves the last few months. Tim and Carl got up with a scuffle of chairs to get their stuff.
‘Do you want to come up and get those notes?’ Florence asked Isobel. She cleared both their plates, and they started to walk upstairs, slowly and in step.
Sofia surveyed the table, pondering on the most efficient means of clearing it. Ben and Isaac would be some time, having opted for rice pudding from a tin and only just begun constructing patterns with their central blobs of jam. They whispered and giggled as they stirred it into swirls.
‘Mum,’ Isaac piped up after five minutes, ‘Ben says I can go to his house for a sleepover on his birthday. Can I go?’
‘My mum says she’s going to ask you,’ said Ben importantly, sniffing up the contents of his nose again and wiping a clotted smear of pink across his cheek, ‘when you pick Isaac up from school.’
‘OK,’ said Sofia, not yet committing. ‘Remind me, when’s your birthday, Ben?’
‘It’s seventy-five days. Seventy-four if you don’t count today.’
‘I think that’ll be fine, Ben,’ she said absent-mindedly, figuring they’d have forgotten all about it by then.
‘Can you write me a cheque, Mum?’ It was Florence, back downstairs.
Sofia looked at her blankly.
‘I thought I had it. I’ll have it when my eBay stuff comes in. But I need it for tomorrow now. They want the deposit before the end of this week.’ Florence was irritated with herself. She hated being unprepared.
‘What’s it for, darling?’
‘I told you, the expedition. Silver. D of E. Dad’s signed the form, but they won’t register me without the cheque.’
Sofia picked up the form and tried to take it in. Too many tickboxes and delete-as-appropriates. She put it on the table and felt inside her bag.
‘Yes, I can do that,’ she said, bravely. ‘Just give me a minute.’
Florence watched her mother concentrate on writing out the sum, in a surprisingly sophisticated cursive hand, and strike two tram lines to cross the cheque, before tearing it carefully from the book. Sofia looked at the lettering, pleased to find another competency she’d forgotten. Then Florence took it, and paper clipped it to the corner of the form. She’d accidentally left a table blank. The spring excursion, Silver level. That was what she needed. She ticked it, 31 March through to 2 April.
Sofia was focused on clearing the debris. Cutlery first, besmirched with mince and tiny cubes of carrot. Then plates, and glasses, smeared with orange and white. Finally, she stacked the bowls and rinsed them in the sink until the running water steamed.
For once, Florence escaped the kitchen chores.
*
By 8.30pm they were on their way back from dropping everyone off. Carl had been scooped up at the recreation ground with Tim and posted through the door of a cosy semi on the estate. Isobel had been more complex, requiring depositing at a farmhouse ten miles out of town. She’d been vague on where to turn along the dark, sticky mud tracks, but they’d eventually sighted the yellow windows of the kitchen across a distant field and tacked their way across along the edges of the winter crops, bumping along the dirt roads until they reached the old courtyard, where they’d watched until she’d passed through the thick door, to greet a figure waving thanks at them from the Belfast sink.
Now they had covered a few miles back towards home. Isaac was lolling back into the corner of the car, mouth dropped open, airway free. Past his bedtime – and she couldn’t remember the last time he’d had a bath. She hadn’t given that a thought when she had offered the return lifts, forgetting Hugo was working away and wouldn’t be back until late.
Isaac woke up as the car bucked and choked to a smoking halt.
‘Mum, what are you doing?’ said Tim, jolted from the game he was winning on Florence’s mobile phone.
Sofia didn’t speak. She was already out of the car, wet to the ankles from a black puddle she hadn’t seen, looking under the bonnet to check the engine wasn’t on fire.
‘Have we run out of petrol?’ yawned Isaac. It wouldn’t have been the first time.
‘Oil, maybe?’ said Flo.
The petrol gauge was low, as it often was, but still two bars from red, and the oil can icon had not yet made its familiar entrance onto the dashboard. Sofia got back in and revved the engine gingerly. It sounded normal, apart from that slight squealing sound again. She made as if to drive away, but her left foot slipped immediately off the pedal. Blaming the slimy mud, she tried again, but it was immobile. She tried a third time, using her weight to try and shift it down, but it was intransigent, stubborn as a tow bar knob, stuck up in the air.
She remembered other less reliable vehicles she had wrestled with before. ‘Broken clutch, I think,’ she muttered. ‘Won’t move at all.’
‘Let me try,’ Tim volunteered, starting to squeeze himself between the front two seats.
‘Leave it, Tim,’ Sofia said sharply. ‘I don’t want it to break.’
‘You said it was broken already,’ said Isaac.
‘Well, we don’t want it damaged more than it already is.’
‘How far are we from Isobel’s?’ said Florence, watching her revision schedule disintegrating into the night.
‘I don’t know,’ said Sofia. Judging by the time, they were four or five miles away at least.
‘How are we going to get home?’ said Isaac, full of faith that a solution would be found.
‘Well, we’ll walk if we have to,’ said Sofia.
‘I’m too tired,’ he said matter-of-factly, putting his thumb into his mouth.
Tim was more belligerent. ‘I’m not walking, Mum. There’s no way I’m walking. I’ve been playing football for an hour and a half, and my legs are killing me.’
Florence was adamant too. ‘Mum, I need to get back. It’s Paper 2 tomorrow. I’m not sure—’
‘We’ll phone someone,’ said Sofia, ‘to come and pick us up.’
They hadn’t passed another village for the last ten minutes or so – only signposts pointing to unlit hamlets ending in -ford or -holme or -sham, looming for a second under the white glare of the full beam, then shrinking back like blackened scythes, into the hedgerows.
But who?
She didn’t have what she would call a circle of good friends. No sparkling social networks since school friends and the university set. And she couldn’t draw attention to her own ineptitude by phoning Carl or Isobel’s parents again. They’d be getting their own younger offspring to bed anyway, not driving them round the countryside on a school night at 9pm, pyjama-less and teeth unbrushed, with temperatures falling towards zero once more.
‘Look in your contacts, Mum. There must be someone you can call.’
Sofia looked down and took a very deep breath. ‘Could I use your phone actually, Florence? I seem to have left mine back at home.’
Tim, usually quick to criticise, handed it over straightaway. ‘You’ll need to be quick, Mum,’ he mumbled. ‘Battery’s a bit low.’
‘It’s on less than 5%!’ Florence was angry. ‘I told you not to play games on it all night.’ She scrolled carefully down the contact list. There were twenty companionable acquaintances on it: good solid friendships – girls and boys she’d take notes for in the event of absence or share a seat with if there were odd numbers on a trip. None of them of course yet had a licence or a car.
‘Why can’t Dad come and get us?’ Isaac enquired.
‘He’s working away,’ said Sofia. ‘It’ll be hours before he’s back.’
The phone whirred a final warning regarding its ever-decreasing charge. Sofia started to panic. She had to think of someone, quick. She reached into her bag for her diary. It was still there, thank goodness, and what she was looking for was copied neatly into the back. His name, and the number, in his childish pencilled hand. She couldn’t ask him directly. That was cheeky beyond belief. A text would do, then he could pretend he hadn’t seen it, delete as appropriate. She typed the bizarre request in, balancing brevity with courtesy, and pressed the send button. Twenty seconds later, the screen went completely dead.
They sat there, in the middle of the narrow track, their eyes gradually distinguishing shades of dark from shades of black. All except Isaac, who – safely buttressed by the warm shoulder of his older sister, now transferred to the back – had dropped off again. Tim scuffed at the passenger seat and played thumb wars with himself. Florence tried to visualise her history revision notes.
‘What if he doesn’t come?’ said Tim. ‘Who is he anyway?’
‘A friend of mine,’ Sofia said, ‘I think we’ll be OK.’
‘Probably didn’t even get the text.’ Tim kicked the seat with vehemence.
As the temperature dropped, the moon ascended through the cloud, casting them in a pewter light, turning the bushes ashen and picking out the silver trim on the inside of the doors. They sat there for twenty, maybe thirty, minutes, in mutual annoyance. Sofia’s neck started to hurt again. Florence’s pragmatic heart began to beat with undertones of concern. Tim’s aching legs were restless, as Isaac slept on.
It was the whirring clank that alerted her to his arrival, three seconds before he slapped the Citroen on the flank, as if greeting a beloved horse, or urging on a cow that had become stuck in a ditch.
Florence and Tim jumped as if a werewolf had materialised. Sofia wound down the window immediately and leaped out back into the puddle to greet him.
‘Oh my God, I can’t believe you cycled. I didn’t mean to drag you out in all the cold and wet. Have you come all the way from town?’
‘It’s no problem. No problem at all for me. Today is evening off, the moon is bright now. I am very happy to help.’
‘You haven’t even got any lights.’ Sofia was horrified at the risk that he had taken.
He tutted. ‘It’s no problem. You see how clear everything is.’
Sofia saw. The landscape was now darkly illuminated, for miles all around, like a black-and-white negative or an X-ray film. He peered in through the back window. Florence politely rolled it down.
‘So, you must be Florence, and this sleeping one is Isaac, and you, I think, you must be Tim.’ He beamed and waved with his big open hand.
Florence nodded and half smiled. Tim stared and, reserving inner judgement, gave an automated grin. Isaac stirred slightly and chewed something in his sleep.
‘This is Maalik – Mr Ajnabi,’ Sofia explained. ‘I’m helping him with his English, and he’s helping us with the car.’
‘You didn’t come on Saturday,’ said Maalik to Sofia, reproachfully. ‘Maybe if you come on Saturday, I have chance to check it over and this would not have happen.’
‘I’m sorry. We were busy,’ Sofia apologised. ‘I should have texted you to let you know we couldn’t come.’
‘It’s no problem. You come, I check. You don’t come; I don’t worry. Now what is the problem, do you think? Is it OK for me to try?’
He swung himself into the passenger seat and laughed with triumph immediately. ‘OK. This one I can help you with. The clutch is stuck like, like sore thumb. You let me drive her back to car wash and I can sort something out there.’
‘Drive it?’
‘Yes, yes.’ He seemed a little impatient. ‘I can’t do anything with it here.’
‘But you’re not insured…’
He looked at her with raised eyebrows. ‘I think you need to get back home tonight.’
‘We do, but—’
‘Don’t worry. It’s no problem. I get you all home back safe. I just need to attach bike, and then we will be off.’
He launched his bike sideways onto the roof rack with a clatter and secured it with a bike chain and two bungees from his leather jacket. Then he got back in and put his seatbelt on with his left hand. Sofia walked round and got into the passenger side with her wet feet.
‘This might be a little bit bumpy,’ Maalik said.
She looked round to check the children had their seatbelts on. He started the engine, and they jumped forward violently. Then they were dragging along, the clutch protesting with a grinding wail. Maalik was concentrating intently now, trying to find the sweet spot to crush it into second and then third. Eventually, they reached a wheezing thirty miles an hour.
‘This is not very good for car,’ he shouted at Sofia above the noise, ‘but it is only way to move her. I will repair the damage. I will make it good for you.’
Sofia sat very still, amazed he had started it at all.
Then it struck her, a heart-grasping thought as they chugged deafeningly on. Could this have been the cause of it? A latent fault? Was that what had lain behind the crazy, groundless, new year swerve? Perhaps she hadn’t turned the wheel. Perhaps it hadn’t been her but a simple technical problem that could explain away her guilt.
‘So, Florence and Tim,’ Maalik continued at high volume, as they ground past the hedgerows, ‘your mother has told me all about you. Florence, I think you are very clever girl, doing some exams early. Tim, you are dinosaur expert, by all account. Tell me, what are you doing with your mother all the way out here? Are you hunting for animal tracks, out here in the woods? Or maybe you are – how do you call it – doing some dirt-track racing or off-roading by night?’
Tim smiled in spite of himself, imagining his mother drifting round a bend. ‘We had to drop off our friends,’ he said. ‘They came round earlier. Do you live near us?’ he added, trying to make him out.
‘Not far, Mister Tim – can I call you Tim? – in town centre. Twenty minutes, I am here. Ten minutes I can get to library. Everything is very handy.’
‘Will you be able to drop us home?’ said Florence.
‘Yes yes, no problem. I will drop you off, then take car to garage, see how to solve the problem and give you call in morning. I think you want to get back home to do your studying now?’
‘I’ve got an exam tomorrow,’ said Florence.
‘French?’
‘History, Paper 2.’
‘Oh, very interesting. So, what is in this Paper 2? Double U double U 1. Double U double U 2?’
Florence thought he was joking. ‘Oh, World War One was today. And tomorrow is partly on World War Two.’
‘So, let me see. You are learning about Stalingrad?’ Florence nodded. ‘And the Great Patriotic War?’
‘Um…’ Here she screwed her face up, not sure whether she had at all.
‘This is Russian people’s name for it.’
‘Are you from Russia?’ Tim asked incredulously.
‘Me, no, no no. I was born in Somalia, in Africa, a long, long time ago. Maybe you have studied about Somaliland, and the Italians and the British?’
‘I-I think we did a bit on the East Africa campaign,’ said Florence.
‘Have you seen the pyramids?’ said Isaac, disturbed by all the noise.
‘Hello, little Isaac,’ Maalik seemed delighted he had woken up. ‘You are not sleeping anymore?’
‘Why are you driving us? It’s very noisy in here.’
‘This is Mr Ajnabi, Isaac,’ Sofia introduced him again. ‘He’s very kindly helping us drive our broken car to get it fixed.’
Her mind grasped at the idea again – that the fault might have been lying there, two weeks earlier. Maalik would know, wouldn’t he, whether the whole thing had been involuntary, or whether she was capable of…
She almost asked him, this time, but he was in full flow. And after that, fear stopped her. What if the answer was negative? What if, after all, there was no mechanical explanation for her dreadful act?
‘I’m hungry,’ said Isaac.
Maalik felt in his jacket pocket and pulled out a handful of stripy sweets.
‘You like these?’ he asked. ‘Is it OK I can give him some?’
‘It’s a bit close to bed…’ Sofia stopped herself. ‘Thank you. Yes, he can have one. You’re very kind.’
Maalik threw one back to Isaac, one to Tim and one to Florence. They unwrapped them, wondering what was going to happen next. There passed a minute of unpeeling the sticky paper off and another while they were rendered speechless, manoeuvring the giant candy oblongs in their mouths.
‘Is it-is it Somali you speak?’ asked Florence, recovering first and trying to break the silence, hoping she wasn’t being ignorant or rude.
‘Somali and Arabic,’ Sofia corrected, showing off her new knowledge. She’d learned that much from their encounter last Thursday.
‘I speak many languages,’ said Maalik, with no hint of arrogance. ‘Somali, Arabic, Italian, a little bit of French.’
‘Say something,’ demanded Isaac. ‘Say something in Som-Sommil—’
‘Say something in Somali? How about…’ Maalik addressed him gravely with a traditional greeting.
Isaac giggled. ‘You sound like a sheep!’
‘You don’t like that one? How about…’ Maalik tried an Arabic alternative – for hello and then goodbye.
‘Salaami? What does Salaami mean?’ Isaac rocked delightedly back and forwards in his seat. ‘Now say “sausages”! What’s “sausages” in French?’
‘Just a minute, little Isaac.’ Maalik had noticed they were approaching a T-junction up ahead. He screwed his eyes up at the windscreen and started revving up, pressing hard on the gear lever, listening or feeling for some portentous change. They drove slower and slower as the revs went higher, then just as they reached the dotted lines, there was a juddering clunk, and they swung out into the main road.
The arrival outside their house was even more abrasive, and the whole car seemed to fight the braking going on within. Maalik left the engine running, as they all got out.
‘Thank you,’ said Sofia. ‘That was really kind of you.’
‘Thank you,’ said Florence. She carefully shut the door.
‘Cheers, Maalik,’ shouted Tim.
‘Salaami!’ said Isaac, jumping up and down.
‘Do you want to come in for a cup of tea?’ Sofia knew what his response would be.
‘You are very kind, but I must be going. It’s getting late, and I need to be back at the hostel. Also, it is better I keep her running, not stop and start again.’
‘Will you be OK, cycling all the way back from the car wash in the dark?’
‘Mrs Gardener, the moon is still almost full as you can see. In six days, it will be complete circle. I can see everything, don’t you worry. Tomorrow, I will text you to tell you what is all the damage, and then I will fix it before we next have lesson.’
He rode the Citroen calmly as it bucked and kicked out of the drive.
Just as he rounded the gatepost, Hugo drove in.