There are only the four of us at Sheila’s that afternoon – Pat, Sunita, Sheila and me. We sit inside, but with the window open over her immaculate garden. Pots and hanging baskets spill fuchsia, geraniums and Busy Lizzie. Sweet peas are weaving themselves up a lattice on the side wall of the house.
Herbert, the old Labrador, who has had his neck protector off for some time, comes and rests his jowls on my leg.
‘Hello,’ I say, stroking him.
‘Oh – you’re the Chosen One,’ Sheila says. As usual she’s moving stiffly back and forth to the kitchen, refusing offers of help.
‘I know.’ And I do feel ridiculously honoured. Herbert’s warm presence is like a comfort blanket. I keep my hand on his head. Maggie the superior-looking cat is nowhere to be seen.
‘No Hayley?’ I ask.
‘I haven’t heard,’ Sheila says. Hayley usually turns up pretty regularly.
‘There’s something about her that worries me,’ Pat says. She’s voiced this to me before. ‘D’you think she’s got a boyfriend? She never mentions anyone. But the way her face was the other day. I didn’t say anything but that didn’t look like something you’d get from falling.’
‘You mean someone is hitting her?’ Sunita says.
Pat shrugs. ‘I don’t know. She just seems . . . sort of secretive. Evasive – about some things. I don’t like to push it with her.’
‘Oh, hang on – I know what she said.’ Sheila comes back, bringing a plate of home-made shortbread. She’s missed the rest of the conversation and so we end up changing the subject. ‘Something about college. An open day, I think?’
‘Good for her,’ Sunita says. ‘Everyone should go to college, that’s what I think. Ooh, shortbread – delicious.’ She bites into it with enthusiasm, our new, streamlined Sunita, who looks the picture of health. ‘Running is good – I am eating everything I want and still losing weight!’
‘You look great,’ I say.
‘So do you.’ Pat nudges me. ‘It’s put roses in your cheeks.’
‘How’s it going?’ Sheila asks. I can hear the slight reluctance in her voice and realize she feels left out.
‘It’s going fine,’ I say.
‘You’re all absolutely mad.’
‘You’ll come and watch us, won’t you?’ Pat says to her. ‘On the day, I mean? We’ll need someone to cheer us on.’
‘What – in London?’ Sheila seems taken aback.
‘Why not?’ Sunita says. ‘It only takes two hours to drive – less. Early on a Sunday morning the roads will be quiet. You don’t need to be there right at the beginning.’
Sheila looks pleased suddenly. ‘Well, I suppose I could ask Roy. We could make a day of it.’
‘There’s a picnic afterwards,’ I tell her. ‘Or you could go off and see the sights.’
‘Are all your husbands going?’ Sheila asks.
‘Mine is coming,’ Sunita says. ‘My brother lives in Wembley – we can stay with them.’
Pat and I look at each other.
‘We’re not sure yet,’ Pat says.
I’m trying really hard at home. I know a lot of things are my fault, the way I have been so shut in with my own feelings, the way I resented Ian for not grieving the way I understood we should grieve, for not sharing it with me, for seeming to have energy only for work.
All the same, sometimes I feel like just screaming at him, ‘You’re not the only one who’s lost your son, you know! What about me? Why can’t you talk to me?’ But so far I’ve managed not to – not because I’m especially self-controlled but because in the end I know it wouldn’t be fair, and even more to the point, that it wouldn’t actually make any difference to anything. Ian can’t help the way he is – really can’t, any more than I can – and that’s how it is.
I’m there a lot of the time, making the house nice, cooking, looking after his mom – not that that’s a hardship – trying to be open to him. And I’m trying to find a way of getting back on my own feet, of having a life and not staying in the tomb as someone once said to me. We moved house partly to try and drag ourselves out of that tomb.
But this new life is what seems to worry Ian. I’m making friends, going running. He doesn’t want to know – not about the friends. And as for the running:
‘You’re not still doing that, are you?’ he says, a few days later when I mention that we have been out for our morning jog. I don’t say too much about it but he asked – although not as if he really wanted to know – what I’ve been doing all day. I try not to take that as a criticism of my not working at the moment. He wants me to be there for Dorrie, after all. And I know he’s grateful that I can be there for her.
‘Well, we’re training,’ I tell him, as I dish up food at the table – chicken stew, potatoes. He’s already showered and changed. It’s not as if I’m throwing information at him the second he’s stepped through the door. And he asked, didn’t he?
‘We’ve got to be able to run ten kilometres. It’s a quarter of a marathon – just over six miles.’
He picks up his knife and fork, shaking his head as if I’m saying something absolutely ridiculous. I feel myself getting more and more annoyed, but I swallow it down and manage to say:
‘D’you have a problem with me doing it for some reason?’
He shrugs off the question. ‘No.’
‘So what about a bit of encouragement? It’s in a good cause.’
‘India?’ He says that too, as if it’s something absurd, distasteful almost.
‘Well, your mother’s sponsored me, anyway.’ Generously too, I think. Five pounds a mile. And she’s listened to me telling her what it’s all about, tutted when I say what’s still happening with the children in that area of Bhopal.
‘Wicked,’ she said. ‘Absolutely wicked. It’s always been the same with rich bosses.’
As she wrote her name shakily on the sponsorship form, she said, ‘There’s suffering everywhere, bab. None of us can do much really – but if this helps do summat about a single thing, then good for you.’
‘I just think . . .’ Ian puts his knife and fork down. But he can’t seem to think what it is he just thinks and picks them up again.
‘Why don’t you come down and watch?’ I say, still trying to hold on to being positive when I feel hurt and undermined. ‘Some of the others’ve got their families coming. They’re making a day of it.’
‘When is it?’
‘I’ve told you – the twelfth of July. It’s a Sunday.’
Without looking up, he says, ‘I dunno – I’ll have to think.’
‘Right,’ I say. ‘You do that.’
Later, when I come out of the bathroom to get into bed, he seems to be asleep. The light’s still burning on my side of the bed and as I climb in, he rolls over and looks at me. His face appears more textured than I remember it ever being: bags under his eyes, the cleft between his nose and top lip deeper, lines round his mouth. We are all more textured – by the years, by Paul. He looks anxious, almost afraid.
‘Sorry,’ he says. ‘About earlier.’
‘How d’you mean?’ I hold back, still hurt. I’m not just going to say, It’s all right, and let it go straight away.
‘I’m just not . . . I don’t get why you’re doing it. I mean, you don’t know any of those people . . .’
‘OK,’ I say, still curbing my impatience. I’ve told him several times what it’s about. ‘Imagine it was you, there – like now, just getting into bed, asleep maybe. And you find you’re waking up and the house is full of poisonous gas and you get up and try and get away and find that maybe all your family die on the way. Or some of you survive and you can never work again because you can hardly breathe and you’re in constant pain. And on top of that you find that the water you’re drinking is poisoning you and your family day after day because no one will take the trouble to clear the place up . . .’
I’m crying, great heaving sobs. Ian shifts closer and takes me in his arms. Tightly, rocking me, making comforting noises. When I’m a bit calmer, he says:
‘You’re hardly cried. Before, I mean.’
‘Nor you.’
We lie close for a moment and I can feel his heart beating against my shoulder.
‘I just don’t know why you’re getting so upset about people over there – so far away. It’s their government should be sorting it out, not us.’
‘The Indian government have been rubbish as well,’ I say. My nose is blocked and I sit up for a moment and reach for a tissue. ‘Pretty much everyone has been. But in the end, the Americans designed it and had the biggest share in it. They wanted all the court cases to be held in India – and then every time there’s any kind of hearing they just don’t turn up because they won’t recognize the jurisdiction of the Indian courts. What really gets to me is companies using poorer countries to make profits and do just what they like without giving a toss about the people.’
‘That’s business, I suppose.’
‘But it doesn’t have to be, does it?’ I’m almost shouting. ‘Who says it has to be that cruel, ridiculous way and why do we all go along with it?’
Suddenly I remember all that Dorrie has told me. Ian’s dad – his own father’s life devastated by an industry taking short cuts, gambling with people’s lives. Should I tell him – now?
‘But why them?’ he’s saying. ‘Of all the things to get upset about?’ He has pushed up on his elbow.
I almost tell him about the boy, the boy from Bhopal who looks like Paul. But then I realize I have hardly thought of him in these past weeks – that it’s not about him any more – it’s about them, the people there who I have read about, what they’re going through . . . More tears find their way out, surprising even me.
‘I suppose I just feel for them,’ I end up saying.
Ian hugs me again and even if he doesn’t really understand, he strokes my hair.
‘Will you come?’ I say eventually.
After a hesitation, he says, ‘Yeah – OK then.’
And at the time I think he means it.