Lily wakes from her nap with a start. It’s dark and the duvet is twisted around her legs. She looks at the clock by the bed: 8:09. For a moment she has no idea if it is morning or night. Then she remembers that it’s still Saturday night. She’d been dreaming of her family. She’d been dreaming of home. She picks up the phone and calls her mother.
‘Mama,’ she says, her voice full of sleep. ‘He is still gone.’
‘Come home,’ says her mother.
‘I cannot come home. In case he comes back.’
‘If he comes back he will know where you are. He knows how to get here.’
‘He cannot get here. The policewoman still has his passport.’
‘He can phone you and you can come back.’
‘But what if he is hurt?’
‘Lily. He is in his own country. If he is hurt there are people there who will look after him.’
‘I am not so sure, Mama. They came yesterday and took his computer. They said that the kind of fake passport he had comes from the criminal underworld. So he may know dangerous people. He may have crossed them.’
Her mother makes a strange strangled noise. ‘My God. Lily. You must leave! You’re in the flat by yourself. What if they come for you? What if he comes for you and they follow him? You are a sitting target!’
‘I have nowhere to go, Mama! I know no one!’
‘Oh, I knew. I knew this was all wrong. I should have stopped it. I should have made you wait.’
‘I would still have married him and he would still have been lying to me.’
‘No. With more time you would have realised. It is like onions. People reveal themselves to you a layer at a time. That is why you should wait. Wait until you get to the layers near the bottom. Usually where the worst stuff is. And then, if the worst stuff is not so bad, then you marry.’
‘Carl is not a bad man, Mama! We don’t know his story! I think it is possible he was married before. I found some rings. Maybe this other woman hurt him. Maybe something bad happened to him. Maybe he has a false identity to hide from this woman! We don’t know anything.’
She hears her mother sigh. ‘I want you to come home. I can pay for tickets.’
Lily pauses. She can’t deny that she wants to be at home now. She wants her mother and her brothers and her dog and her college friends and the bars and the lost Saturday nights. She wants to brush her hair in the mirror in the bedroom she left behind, still adorned with photos of her and her friends. She wants to link arms with those friends and walk down familiar streets, speak a familiar language, see familiar faces. She wants to be somewhere where she can talk to a stranger without being misread and treated with suspicion.
But – Carl was her ticket to the UK. Without Carl, or whoever he really is, she may not be allowed back. And for some reason, as lonely as she is, and as scared as she is, she wants to be allowed back. She wants to keep the key to the door of this life she has had such a small taste of.
‘I am not coming back,’ she says, ‘not yet. Not until I know for sure what has happened to Carl.’
Her mother sighs and she hears her tongue make a clicking sound against her teeth. ‘You,’ she says, warmly. ‘I don’t where you came from. This strong woman. This woman alone in a foreign country. You are brave and foolish. But I cannot stop you.’
‘No,’ she says, ‘you cannot.’
‘I miss you. I love you.’
‘I love you, too.’
‘And soon, when I have finished this big contract, I will come. OK?’
‘Yes. Please.’
‘A week. Maybe ten days.’
‘Good. Thank you.’
‘And by then, maybe, you will know where your husband is.’
‘Please. Yes.’
‘For what it is worth, I think he is a good man.’
‘He is. Yes. I know.’ Her syllables become more and more clipped as she feels tears surging.
‘I love you.’
‘I love you, too.’
And then the phone line is silent and the room is silent and the only light comes from the crack in the bathroom door. Lily drops the phone into her lap and cries.