Twenty-one

Suddenly, everything was transformed. Now it was going to happen I could hardly believe it; I had to catch up with myself. For months I had imagined my kids coming home, climbing the apple trees and damming the stream. But I had imagined it in a vague, pastel-­tinted way. It was like waking in the morning and trying to remember what your dream has been about. I couldn’t connect them to solid kids, really being here. Perhaps it was because they had never seen this house. I couldn’t dare to believe that they would really sit down on the kitchen chairs, eating my food; that the ceiling would creak as they moved around their bedrooms.

After all these years, two long years, they were coming! I felt shy and excited, like a bride before her wedding day. I rushed around, rigging up a tyre on a rope in the garden and bulk-buying crisps. Would they like their rooms? Would they get bored in the country? Sometimes I snapped at Tom and sometimes I flung my arms around him and practically throttled him. I was just as impossible as before, but in a different way.

I spent a long time standing in their bedrooms—those two silent rooms, museums to my kids’ childhoods. I thought: I’m going to put my children to bed, I’m actually going to tuck them in at night. I could tell them the next instalment of Horace the Hedgehog, if I could remember how the blooming thing went. Maybe they were too old for that now. Yasmin’s dolls sat on the shelf like an audience waiting for a long-delayed show to begin.

I told Sonia, of course, and my mum and dad. I went back to my old estate and knocked on Emily’s door. She opened it.

‘Wow, you’ve grown!’ I said. ‘I like the hair. Yasmin’s coming back! Can you come to tea?’

She had a friend with her, another girl. I felt stupidly hurt; it was like asking an old flame out for a date, and finding he’s got married.

Jill came out. ‘You’d like to see Yasmin, wouldn’t you?’ she said to her daughter. Emily looked at the other girl, and went on eating cashew nuts. I fixed a date.

On the way back I walked past my old house in Harebell Close. A family called Pewsley had moved in. There were new curtains at the windows and a kid’s trike in the front garden. New children were growing up there now, but today I didn’t mind.

I cleared up the cottage and stuck up posters in their bedrooms. I restocked the freezer. Sonia came round and helped me to calm down. I was already dreading them leaving, before they had even arrived. At night I lay awake, my heart racing.

What if they didn’t come? Perhaps Salim had only done this to trick me? Once again, the bastard was trying to pay me back. Or perhaps he’d had second thoughts. He had acted on impulse, during some rare good mood, and now he regretted it. My husband was a lawyer and my mother-in-law was a magistrate, but he still didn’t trust me. He didn’t trust me to send them back.

But he did. A week before they were due to arrive he phoned Tom’s office with their flight number.

He did trust me.

I met them at Heathrow after their long flight. They wore ‘Unaccompanied Minors’ labels around their necks; it made them look thin and defenceless, like evacuees. They had grown taller, and wore shalwar-kamize. They stood stiffly as I hugged them. Each time we met, I had to start from the beginning again. Oh, it took so long!

I drove them back to the cottage. It was a cool, grey day for June. I cursed the English weather. I wanted it all to look great for them.

‘Are you cold? Are you hungry?’

Wittering like a madwoman, I gave them a conducted tour.

‘Isn’t it lovely?’ I jabbered as we walked across the garden. ‘I’ve taken the whole week off! Darren’s coming round tomorrow, and Emily …’

‘Ugh,’ said Yasmin, daintily lifting her foot.

‘It’s only mud,’ I said. ‘Good old English mud. Kirsty and Zara are coming for tea—they’re huge now—and look at our stream! I thought we could dam it together.’

But the kids weren’t listening. They had rushed over to the guinea-pig’s hutch.

‘Where’s Toulouse?’ demanded Yasmin.

I paused. ‘Er, he died.’

‘Why didn’t you tell us?’

‘I’ve got you another one.’ I pointed at Toulouse’s replacement, a tufted, beige female cowering in the corner. ‘Isn’t she sweet? We can think up a name for her together!’

They looked at the hutch, doubtfully.

The days passed. The children were happy, I was sure of it. I bought them English clothes; they looked more like my own kids then. Their old friends came to visit, awkwardly at first but they warmed up. Tom was ever so nice; he played with the kids in the garden and fell over each time Bobby shot him, again and again. He seemed genuinely fond of them. They said they liked him.

I gave them smoky bacon crisps. ‘Bet you don’t get these in Pakistan,’ I said.

Bobby replied: ‘We only get boring ones there.’

‘Do you like the cottage?’ I asked.

They nodded, obediently.

‘If you lived here,’ I said, ‘we could buy a pony and put it in the orchard.’

I tucked them up in bed each night and hugged their firm little bodies. I tried to tell them a story but I felt as stagey as an actress who had forgotten her lines. Sometimes I couldn’t believe they were actually there; it seemed so unlikely, after the years of longing for it to happen. The days were going by so quickly; some wicked clock was speeding up. I thought of Salim, counting the hours till they came home. Not home—to his home. What right had he to take them back?

They were settling in, I was sure of it. After five days they even stopped talking about their bloody dog. By this time, though, I could hardly concentrate. My mind was racing; my plan was thickening up. Sometimes I caught them looking at me oddly, but that was probably because they were trying to get used to having a mother again. They were connecting me up to Tom and the new cottage. They were trying to get their bearings.

Or perhaps they guessed. I don’t know, now. To tell the truth, I can’t remember much about that first week. My mind was busy, but something inside me had locked. I didn’t let myself feel anything.

Sonia came round. We sat in the kitchen drinking white wine.

‘Blokes and spots,’ she said. ‘That’s all they talk about. I had to take Zara to buy her first bra last week.’ She put on a mock voice. “Oh, mum, you can’t come, you’re so embarrassing!” God, they’re driving me round the bend. Why can’t we send mine back to Pakistan and keep yours?’

I didn’t laugh. ‘They love it here now,’ I said. ‘I know they do. Bobby hasn’t talked about his computer for three days.’

‘Marianne …’

‘Mmm?’

‘What’re you going to do?’

There was a pause. I was watching Bobby in the garden, scuffing the grass and eating Twiglets.

‘I used to know, once,’ she said. ‘We were such mates.’ She lit a cigarette. ‘Christ, I’m not blaming you. It’s just … you’ve changed.’ She gestured around the kitchen. ‘All this. Everything that’s happened.’

I turned to her. ‘You know exactly what I’m going to do.’

That night, for the first time, Bobby, let me dry him. We stood in the steamy bathroom. I wrapped the towel around him and squeezed him so tightly he squealed.

‘Got you!’ I breathed.

Just then the phone rang. I went downstairs. Tom had answered it.

‘I’m afraid they’ve gone to sleep now,’ he was saying. He put the receiver back.

‘Him again?’ I asked.

He nodded. It had been Salim.

‘That’s five times since they’ve been here!’

‘He’s very jittery,’ he said.

‘So am I.’

He looked at me sharply. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Nothing.’

For the first time in my life I lay awake for the whole night. I heard the house sighing and creaking as it settled down. I heard the sound of some bird outside, making a cry like steel being sharpened. Tom’s clocks downstairs chimed the hours, and the half hours, and the quarters. Down in the kitchen my Karachi-time clock, a digital one, must have flipped luminously from minute to minute. Beside me, Tom turned over and exhaled breath, with a quiet, rubbery sound—even in sleep he was well-behaved. He murmured my name, once, and cupped his hand around my buttock. I heard the bed creaking in the next room as Bobby turned over. The old beams arched over us like a church and held us safe; just for now. I lay, flat on my back; I thought of the wicked being punished, and my children growing up amongst men who bowed on carpets at airports. Sometimes my head span and I thought I was going mad. I got up and fetched a drink of water, just to prove I was still in working order.

‘Ghastly day today,’ said Tom at breakfast. ‘Court all morning, then the dreaded Mrs Molyneux. Lucy’s off sick. Then I’ve got a case conference on baby battering. Sometimes it seems that the whole world has either lost their kids or else is beating them up.’ He sighed. ‘Why didn’t I get into conveyancing?’ He looked at me. ‘You OK?’

I looked at my watch. ‘You’ll miss your train.’

When Tom had gone, I left the kids with my parents and went up to London. When I came back, my dad was playing hide-and-seek with them in the garden. I watched him walk down his row of sheds, opening one after another.

‘Coming!’ he called. ‘Coming to get you!’

I turned to my mum. We were standing in the kitchen, looking out. ‘If I sat very still, I thought nobody could find me.’

‘What’s that?’ she asked, fiddling with her hearing-aid.

I looked at the sheds. ‘I could hide there for ever. If I sat very still.’

‘Oh, I’ll miss them,’ she said. ‘When’re they going back? Thursday?’

I looked at dad’s chrysanths, stout bushy plants at this time of the year, yoked to their stakes. ‘No,’ I said.

‘What?’ she asked.

‘No, they’re not.’

‘Or is it Friday?’ she asked.

I shook my head, but she didn’t notice.

That night I went into the bedroom. Tom was undressing. I watched his shadow behind him, moving against the beams.

‘Did you turn off the lights?’ he asked.

I nodded.

‘I’m taking Wednesday off,’ he said, loosening his tie and pulling it over his head. ‘I thought we’d all go to Brighton.’

‘They’re not going back,’ I said.

‘What?’

‘The kids. They’re not going back to Pakistan.’

He stood still, his shadow huge behind him. The bedside light was on but I couldn’t see his face, he was standing in front of it.

‘I’m keeping them,’ I said.

There was a pause. That bird started up again, outside.

‘Marianne,’ he said, ‘I told you—’

‘They’re staying here with me.’

‘You can’t!’

‘I’m keeping them!’

‘Ssh.’ He walked across the room and closed the door. ‘Look, we’ve been through all this—’

‘He stole them; well, I’m going to steal them back. Why the hell can’t I?’

‘Because it’s madness—’

‘Tomorrow I’m going up to London. I’m going to make them wards of court. I’ve got it all worked out—’

‘Marianne, he trusted you—’

‘I trusted him!’

‘You mustn’t do this,’ he whispered.

‘Don’t be so feeble.’

‘I’m being realistic.’

‘He’s not getting them back. If you won’t act for me. I’ll get another lawyer.’

He patted the bed. ‘Sit down,’ he said. ‘Listen.’ He sat down. I looked at him in his shirt, with his two long, bare legs. ‘I told you,’ he said. ‘If you do this, we’ll have to go to court to try and prove that you should have care and control—’

‘I know, I know!’

‘It’s a huge, huge risk. Salim’ll fly over, he’ll give evidence against you. The children have been living in Pakistan for two years, they’re settled there now—’

‘They’re not settled!’

‘Ssh!’ He glanced at the door. ‘Every month, every day they’ve been there has weakened our case, don’t you see?’

‘This is their home.’

He pushed his hand through his hair. We both gazed down at his big, bare feet.

‘Oh, Tom,’ I said. ‘Help me, please.’

He raised his head; his face was still in shadow. ‘In the end, it’ll be up to the children themselves, and the judge.’

I sat down on the bed. We sat side by side, with a gap in between us. For a moment, he didn’t speak.

Then he said; ‘If you lose, you’ll lose them for good.’

‘I won’t lose!’

‘If you lose, Salim will take them away. And do you think he’ll ever let you see them again?’

‘I won’t lose! I’m their mother!’

He didn’t reply. We both sat there, staring at his toes.