Copyright

Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

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London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2019

Copyright © Sara MacDonald 2019

Cover design by Holly MacDonald © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2019

Jacket photographs © Nikaa / Trevillion images (woman), RooM the Agency / Alamy Stock Photo (houseboats), Shutterstock.com (all other images)

Sara MacDonald asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008245191

Ebook Edition © June 2019 ISBN: 9780008245214

Version: 2019-05-16

Dedication

For Michael and for Lizzie who both passed away before I finished this book. You left me so many happy memories of love and support.

For my Pakistani friends and for my friends here at home. Thank you, you all enrich my life.

Epigraph

All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well

Julian of Norwich

Contents

Cover

Title page

Copyright

Dedication

Epigraph

Prologue

Part One

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Part Two

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Six

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Chapter Forty

Chapter Forty-One

Chapter Forty-Two

Chapter Forty-Three

Chapter Forty-Four

Chapter Forty-Five

Chapter Forty-Six

Chapter Forty-Seven

Chapter Forty-Eight

Chapter Forty-Nine

Chapter Fifty

Chapter Fifty-One

Chapter Fifty-Two

Chapter Fifty-Three

Chapter Fifty-Four

Chapter Fifty-Five

Chapter Fifty-Six

Chapter Fifty-Seven

Chapter Fifty-Eight

Chapter Fifty-Nine

Part Three

Chapter Sixty

Chapter Sixty-One

Chapter Sixty-Two

Chapter Sixty-Three

Chapter Sixty-Four

Chapter Sixty-Five

Chapter Sixty-Six

Chapter Sixty-Seven

Chapter Sixty-Eight

Chapter Sixty-Nine

Chapter Seventy

Chapter Seventy-One

Chapter Seventy-Two

Chapter Seventy-Three

Chapter Seventy-Four

Chapter Seventy-Five

Chapter Seventy-Six

Acknowledgments

Reading Group Questions

About the Author

Also by Sara MacDonald

About the Publisher

PROLOGUE

Cornwall, 1971

Maman is not waiting for me by the front door as I walk up the hill from school. The door is open and slices of apricot sun slant across the coloured tiles in the hall. Inside, the house is unnaturally quiet. I hesitate on the front step, turn to look at the curve of sea glittering below me. I do not want to step inside.

There has been a tight band round my chest all day. It started last night on my sleepover with Morwenna. I had woken suddenly in the night with my heart skittering inside me, making me want to leap out of bed and run home.

In front of me the narrow passageway to the back of the house yawns beyond the reach of the sun. The kitchen door is shut. It is never shut.

‘Maman?’ I call, but no one answers.

I step inside and the air plucks and pulls at me in cold little gusts.

‘Papa?’ I call. ‘Dominique?’ But I know my father will be working and my sister won’t be back from school yet.

I run down the dark hall and push the kitchen door hard. It opens with a bang and I jump when I see Maman leaning, silent, against the battered cream Aga. She does not look like Maman. Her face is an angry, grey mask.

‘It is no good calling Dominique,’ Maman says. ‘She’s gone …’

I stare at her. ‘What do you mean … gone?’

Maman is clinging to the rail of the Aga. She looks ill and old. She is scaring me.

‘I’ve sent her away to Aunt Laura in Paris …’

‘Why?’ I shout. ‘What did Dominique do?’

My mind darts to the arguments Maman and Dominique have been having about my sister’s clothes. Mostly short skirts. Every morning Dominique rolls her school skirt up to her knickers just to annoy Maman. She rolls her skirt back down to her knees before the school bus arrives, but, of course, Maman does not see that.

‘Your sister is out of control. I’ve sent her away before she gets herself into trouble. That’s all you need to know, Gabriella.’ Maman’s face is closed to me, her voice strange and hard.

Fear begins to shiver inside me like a feather. I have never seen Maman like this. Her anger is like a fire inside her.

‘But … what did she do that was so bad? Why are you so angry, Maman? You can’t send her away. You don’t mean it. What about school? What about her friends? What about me?’

Maman’s mouth is set in an ugly little line that changes her face.

‘I mean it. Dominique is a wicked little liar. Now she must live with her lies. I won’t have her in the house. Aunt Laura will find her a school in Paris. Next year she will be sixteen and an adult. She can do what she likes with her life. I wash my hands of her.’

I cry and plead but Maman’s face remains cold and shut.

‘Gabriella, nothing is going to change my mind. Dominique is gone. I took her to Newquay Airport first thing this morning. Aunt Laura met her in London and they went straight back to Paris. Now, go upstairs and change out of your school uniform.’

I run from the kitchen up to the attic where my sister sleeps. I want to throw myself on her bed and capture the smell of her but Maman has already stripped away the sheets. Dominique is gone. I grasp her pillow and bury my face in it and breathe in the last little bit of her.

In my room, as I tear my school clothes off, I see a twist of tissue paper on my bed. Inside is Dominique’s little silver bracelet, the one I loved and wished was mine. She has left it for me. I cannot do the clasp, so I fold it deep and safe into the pocket of my jeans. Then I run away.

Down to the bay where the sun is still warm and the tide is leaving dappled pools on the sand and the sky is reflected in the water like rippled marble.

Our secret hiding place is in the rocks at the far end of the beach at Nearly Cave. I curl with Dominique’s pillow between the sea-smoothed granite and turn on my side and sob. I am ten and not brave enough to run away properly …

Dom, if I close my eyes you won’t be gone. If I close my eyes I won’t see Maman’s face any more. If I close my eyes I can pretend we are surfing in through small fast waves. Or sitting at the beach café eating ice cream together after school. If I keep my eyes closed you will still be here. You will still be here.

I am soothed by waves that slide in and out with a swoosh, rising and falling, rising and falling against the rocks in time to my breathing …

I am asleep when Papa finds me in the dark. He gives a little cry as he lifts me up. I cling to him. There are little dots of light all over the beach and the night air is full of my name. As Papa carries me home, up the hill, I can feel his tears falling into my hair.

PART ONE

CHAPTER ONE

London, 2009

It all begins with an unexpected phone call. It is early evening at the beginning of June and London is as warm as midsummer. It is Mike’s birthday and we are just about to have a party. The French windows are open onto the garden. Mike is outside placing night-lights on the small tables we have dotted about the lawn. He is humming to himself, out of tune, as I check the salads, artisan bread and the wine.

I smile as I watch him through the kitchen window. He has only been back from Dubai for a couple of weeks and I am revelling in him being home again.

‘What do you think?’ he calls, switching on the white fairy lights that he has threaded through the magnolia tree.

‘Fantastic!’ I call back. The lights make the overgrown and neglected garden spring alive in the soft, pink haze of early evening.

Mike is wearing an expensive shirt and shorts. His arms and legs are tanned and muscular. A sprinkling of dark hairs covers his forearms and wrists. Wrists that still give me a little frisson of desire, after all this time.

My husband has that sleek, well-groomed look of a man who works abroad, uses the gym regularly and looks after himself. There is, as yet, no hint of middle-aged spread. Paunch is a forbidden word. He has taken a rare, long leave to decide what to do next and I wonder, as I watch him, how long it will be before he gets bored.

Will and Matteo had scoffed when I mooted the question of a family holiday this summer. ‘Yeah, yeah, Mum, nice thought, but Dad will be off before you’ve booked the tickets …’

I push two trays of garlic bread into the oven. When the boys were younger Mike would organize wonderful, adventurous holidays in far-flung places. Now, he spends his life flying off somewhere at a moment’s notice and my sons are almost grown up and busy with their own lives. It is much harder to get together as a family and I miss those times.

Mike’s mobile phone rings suddenly into the silence, making us both jump. He fishes it out of his back pocket and turns in small circles on the grass as he listens. Excitement begins to radiate from him in waves.

I go and lean against the French windows. ‘Yes, I am interested,’ Mike says. ‘It is short notice, but I can make myself available to fly out … No, my contract in Dubai finished last month. I’m on leave … in London …’

He looks up suddenly and makes an astonished face at me.

‘Yes, that figure sounds … reasonable … Okay, thank you. I’ll wait to hear from you …’

Mike gives a whoop, throws his phone on the table and whirls me round. ‘How extraordinary. That was a headhunter. A job has just come up. They’re looking for someone with experience of working for airlines in the Middle East. She wanted to know if I was free for an interview. The salary they are offering is huge, Gabby.’

‘Where?’ I ask, my heart sinking.

‘It may not come to anything, but if it does, honestly, darling … this could be an amazing opportunity …’

‘Stop stalling, Mike, and tell me where it is?’

Mike reluctantly meets my eyes. ‘It’s a small airline called Pakistan Atlantic Airlines. They are recruiting from their head office in Canada, but I would be working out of … Karachi.’

I stare at him. ‘You are joking? With all that’s going on in Afghanistan at the moment? For God’s sake, Mike.’

Mike holds his hands up. ‘I know. I know. There would be safety issues but I wouldn’t think of taking the job unless I was satisfied about my security out there.’ He hesitates. ‘Gabby, I know I promised to spend most of the summer with you and the boys, but opportunities like this don’t come up often, I’d be mad not to explore it …’

I start to move away but Mike catches hold of me. ‘Come on, darling, at the moment it’s just a phone call. Let’s see what happens …’

‘It’s not just the summer, Mike. You told me that you were going to look for jobs nearer to London. You said you wanted to see more of the boys before they left home for good …’

‘I do, but I work for airlines and most of the interesting jobs are abroad. You know that, Gabby, you’re used to me working away from home. It’s not perfect, but it’s worked for both of us over the years. It’s enabled us to travel, take the boys to great places and both do jobs we love …’

The doorbell rings. People are arriving.

‘I’ve had enough of living apart, Mike. Neither of us is young any more. I really believed you were going to start to wind down.’

Mike shoots me a look. He hates being reminded of his age.

‘That’s why, if I was offered this job, I would jump at it, Gabby. This will, undoubtedly, be my last big, prestigious job with an airline. My swansong, if you like. I’d really like my career to end on a high note. Is that so selfish?’

Of course not, this is Mike’s career, his life.

‘Sorry. I’m the one being selfish. Pakistan is a shock, but of course you have to consider it.’

Mike hugs me. ‘Thank you.’

The doorbell rings again and someone shouts irritably through the letterbox, ‘Is there supposed to be a bloody party in there or not?’

I laugh. ‘Go on, Birthday Boy, let people in …’

Mike grins and makes for the door. ‘I’m not going to mention this to anyone, until I know more …’

Mike has asked too many people and they all seem to arrive at once, filling the hall and spilling through the sitting room and out through the French windows into the garden. They are mostly Mike’s friends and colleagues but I have asked two friends from my publishing world, to balance the airline banter.

Emily and Kate arrive together. Emily started as my intern. She now runs foreign rights in the small translation company I set up fifteen years ago. Kate has a literary agency with her husband, Hugh. We all go back a long way and work closely together.

I am hoping Dominique will come. My sister is on a flying visit from Paris and she promised she would try to pop in.

Mike is in his element, catching up with people he hasn’t seen for a while, revelling in airline gossip. It makes me realize how restless he has been the last few days. What was I thinking? Age is never going to dull his ambition, Mike can only relax when he knows what his next job is going to be. Will and Matteo are right; their father is not equipped for downtime at home.

I miss my sons with an abrupt little pang. I wish they could have been here for Mike’s birthday but they are both at uni in Scotland and in the middle of exams. They are secretly proud of their father but they are protective of me and not uncritical of Mike’s long absences. For most of their growing up it has been just the three of us, here in London. Mike working away from home is part of our normal, everyday life.

Mike does the big adventures, plans wonderful holidays. I do the humdrum and the routine, but, inevitably, I am the one at the heart of their lives. The one who was there at the end of the school day and through all the small joys and boring minutiae. I listened to their secrets. I got the gossip and the hugs.

I also get to trip over young, comatose bodies all over this three-storey house when Mike is away. I am the nag who yells at them to turn the music down but I am also the one they both come to when life gets tough, when they are flying with happiness or in hopeless love.

Mike winks at me from the other side of the room and I smile back. He is an effortless host, circulating and making sure everyone’s glass is filled. He can light a room with his energy but he is mercurial and his moods can swing.

Emily, Kate and I are bumping round each other in my crowded kitchen washing plates for Mike’s birthday cake, when Dominique finally arrives.

Mike answers the door and I see them both air kiss in the hall. Mike and Dominique have never got on, but they both try, for me.

I hug my sister. ‘Hi darling.’

‘Hi you,’ she says, smiling. She is wearing a dreary, dark dress that does not suit her. I wonder why. We both have Maman’s sallow colouring and dark colours make us look like Russian peasants. Dominique makes clothes for other people and has always had an instinctive dress sense, usually wearing warm, bright colours.

I carry the birthday cake out to the garden and everyone sings ‘Happy Birthday’. As Mike cuts the cake I can tell from the look on his face that he is bursting to talk about his job offer. I will him not to. If the job does not materialize he will regret mentioning it later.

I look at his tanned, mostly unlined face. It is hard to believe that he is fifty-four today. He doesn’t look it. I sometimes wonder if our marriage works so well because we lead independent lives. We always have a lot to talk about and there is rarely time to bicker. We also like each other, trust each other, because we have to.

The thing that prevents smug middle-age and makes me wistful is the fact that we have never been a close little family unit of four. We have not had that intimate and unique bond that Dominique and I had when we were small, growing up with Maman and Papa in Cornwall. I wanted us to be like that, a family that makes everyone else into an outsider.

I wanted Mike to be as protective of his boys as Papa was with Dominique, and me. I would love him to listen to them a little more and lecture them a little less. I would like him to accept Matteo’s non-academic choices and to spend more time with both of them, but it is not going to happen. Family life has changed; the world is faster. I am not Maman, either. Dominique and I never had an instant meal or un-ironed school uniform. Or, most terrible of all, Maman would never have forgotten a sports day because she was having a personnel crisis at work.

I watch Mike as he leans towards Jacob and Nick. The three of them have all climbed the corporate ladder together. He cannot resist telling them about his phone call from the headhunter.

Jacob whistles. ‘Pakistan Atlantic Airlines, Karachi?’

‘You do know that Karachi is one of the most dangerous cities in the world?’ Nick says. ‘I know someone who refuses to work anywhere in Pakistan. You should check how safe it is to be out there before you even consider it.’

‘PAA is based in Toronto, so if they want a European director for crisis management, why not pick a Canadian?’ Jacob asks.

‘The Karachi to Heathrow flight in particular is haemorrhaging money …’ Mike says. ‘So I suspect they are interested in anyone who might have some influence in obtaining slots at Heathrow.’

They all laugh. Slots at Heathrow are like gold dust.

‘Apart from the obvious dangers, Pakistan will be a minefield!’ Jacob warns. ‘I bet one of your remits is to discover how much corruption is going on.’

‘Of course it will be.’

‘Rather you than me,’ Nick says. ‘I can see it might be a good career move, but personally, I wouldn’t be up for all the stress and cultural pitfalls …’

‘I bet they are tempting you with an enticing salary,’ Jacob says.

‘They are, but I never go anywhere just for the money. It’s the challenge of turning round a failing airline.’

Nick raises his glass to Mike. ‘I know. Go for the interview. You can’t make a judgement before that. Good luck, mate. Happy birthday!’

Jacob raises his eyebrows at me. ‘Bit hard on Gabby if you disappear again so soon, isn’t it?’

‘My clever wife has her own successful career,’ Mike says smoothly. ‘She is used to me disappearing. She knows I’m not ready to turn a challenge down yet. Anyway, I’ll have to check a lot of things before I agree to anything. Now, who needs a refill?’

Kate and Emily follow me back into the kitchen. Dominique has stayed there, sitting on a kitchen chair, knocking back the red wine.

‘How do you really feel about Mike going for a job in Pakistan?’ Emily asks. ‘Karachi isn’t exactly a safe city for women. Will you be able to even visit him?’

Dominique has ears like a bat. ‘Karachi!’

I stall her. ‘Mike’s been approached for a possible job out there. It’s not worth discussing … It probably won’t happen.’

I carry plates to the sink, closing the subject.

‘How typically Mike. He’s only just got home,’ Dominique mutters under her breath.

I turn and move the bottle of red wine out of her reach. When my sister goes to the loo, Emily says, ‘Sorry, Gabby, I forgot Dominique and Mike fight over you.’

‘Don’t worry. It’s just that Dominique seems to be drinking rather a lot and I don’t want a stand-off on Mike’s birthday.’

Emily gathers up her bag. ‘I’d put the whole Pakistan thing out of your mind and just enjoy having Mike back, Gabby. Headhunters often get the job spec wrong anyway. I’ll have to go or I will turn into a pumpkin.’

Kate and I laugh. Newly single Emily is back at home while she looks for another flat. Her mother is driving her mad with her ‘little rule’ of being home by eleven.

‘I’ll have to go too,’ Kate says. ‘I promised I’d meet Hugh at his book launch thing at the V&A …’ She hugs me. ‘I’ve come to the conclusion that relationships are better for a bit of absence. I could certainly do with a bit of an absence from Hugh. He expects me to put in an appearance at his book launches yet he wouldn’t think of travelling across London for one of my writer’s thingies …’

‘That,’ said Emily, ‘is because men are Very Important, Kate, with very Important Authors and we are just women trying to promote commercial fiction …’

They link arms and disappear off to the underground together.

‘Are you okay?’ I ask Dominique when she comes back from the bathroom. She seems pale and subdued tonight.

‘I’m fine.’ She picks up her vast handbag. ‘I was hoping we might go off somewhere together while I was in London but you are obviously taken up …’

‘Oh, Dom, sorry, really bad timing. Mike’s just got home and you know how it is …’

‘Not really.’ Dominique smiles at me. ‘I’ve ordered a taxi. Give me a ring, darling, if you have time to see me before I fly home on Monday.’

‘Of course!’ I say guiltily. ‘Let’s have lunch together. You haven’t told me why you’re in London. You said you were staying with a friend?’

‘Well, she’s not exactly a friend. I used to make her clothes when she lived in Paris. She’s asked me to design her daughter’s wedding dress.’

‘How wonderful. So, you’re staying at her house?’

‘No. She’s put me up in a posh hotel round the corner from her house.’

‘Why didn’t you come here?’

‘It was a spur-of-the-moment thing and you are always so busy with work and I didn’t know if the boys were home …’

‘I’m never too busy to have you to stay, you know that.’ But I also know that Dominique will never stay if Mike is here.

Dominique fiddles with her bag as if she wants to say something.

‘Dom? Is something wrong?’

She shrugs. ‘No. You told me you had a few days off and I thought, maybe, while I was over here, we might get the train and spend a couple of days in Cornwall together. Stupid … a whim. I had forgotten that Mike would be back in London.’

I stare at her. Dominique has never expressed any wish to go back to Cornwall. At Papa’s funeral she vowed that when the house was sold she would never return.

‘What brought this on, darling?’

The taxi arrives at the bottom of the steps. Dominique does not answer. She hugs me. ‘I must go. Gabby, don’t you dare even think of going out to Pakistan …’

She runs down the steps and I call, ‘Another time, Dom. Let’s do it another time … Cornwall, I mean.’

Later that night, when Mike and I have cleared up the debris of the party and are lying exhausted wrapped around each other in bed, Mike whispers, ‘Thanks for such a great birthday … Pity the boys couldn’t be here …’ He buries his mouth in my hair. ‘Love you, Gabs.’

These are words Mike so rarely says that I am unnerved by the sound and shape of them; I shiver as if a ghost has tiptoed over my grave.

Mike falls instantly asleep but I lie awake in the dark feeling an odd ennui, probably brought on by the white wine. Or perhaps it is guilt that I never make time for Dominique when she always makes time for me.

I think of her sitting alone at the kitchen table, steadily working her way through a bottle of red wine, and I feel sad. There have been so many dramas in Dominique’s life that I dread hearing another, but it is no excuse. How did I get so busy that I neglect my sister?

I lie listening to Mike’s breathing. He will be offered the job in Pakistan. He will accept. We will live apart again. It is how our marriage has always been, but this time unease surfaces. It hums and hovers in the air like a tangible presence, a shapeless dark thing, crouched, waiting, just beyond reach.

Somehow, with one thing and another, I did not manage to meet Dominique before she flew home to her tiny flat in the Parisian suburbs. Mike’s job offer had unsettled me. I hid my disappointment. I did not want to play the martyr. Mike was off to new horizons, but I was still in my familiar role at home and oh, how dull that made me feel.

I wish I had not neglected my sister. I wish I had not been so preoccupied with Mike that I failed to pick up Dominique’s misery or her desperate need to talk to me. Her drinking, her dark clothes, her sudden wish to go back to Cornwall had all been clues. And I ignored them.

CHAPTER TWO

Cornwall, 1966

Whenever I am sad or unhappy I run to Cornwall in my head. I no longer have a home there but I take myself through the rooms of the house where I grew up as if they will still be exactly the same; as if my parents still inhabit the rooms, still roam the garden and orchard full of ancient apple trees.

I can still hear the sound of the chickens in the long grass and Maman’s cry when the fox got any of them or she spotted a rat near the feed.

I can see Papa stripped to the waist as he dug out a vegetable patch on a piece of the field next to the house. I can see Maman watching him from under her sunhat and remember the little flush inside me as I sensed, but did not understand, the innuendo of their banter.

My first memory of our house is standing on the balcony with my father gazing downhill across a field of wild flowers to the sea. There was a mist hanging over the water like a magical curtain and the sea was eerily still, like glass.

‘Fairyland!’ I whispered. To a five year old living in a terraced house in Redruth, it was.

‘Can you imagine living in this house?’ Papa asked me, sounding excited.

‘I wouldn’t like to live with Aunt Loveday. She’s old, Papa, and she smells.’

‘That’s not very kind, Gabby,’ my father said. ‘It’s sad. Loveday is too old to live here any more. She can’t cope with all the stairs so she is going to a private nursing home. This house has to be sold to help pay for her care …’

My father sighed as he looked down at the neglected garden.

‘Poor old Loveday. She’s lived here all her life. It is a big thing for her to admit she can’t manage on her own. Now she wants her home to stay in the family.’

‘So, are we going to buy her house?’ I asked my father, following his eyes across the jungle garden.

‘Maybe, if we can afford to. The house has to be valued first. If we moved here you would have to leave your friends and change schools.’

I stared out at the sea, blindingly blue below me. ‘I don’t mind. I’d love to live here. We’d have the beach and a garden to play in but Dominique won’t want to move. She’s got so many friends, she won’t want to leave any of them.’

‘Leaving some of them behind would be no bad thing,’ my father said. ‘She might make more sensible ones and concentrate on her schoolwork …’

Loveday’s house was an old and shabby granite house. Once a farmhouse it lay foursquare and solid, facing the coastline. Loveday, a distant cousin of Papa’s, had slowly sold off most of their land but had protected the house by keeping all the surrounding fields.

Papa pointed to the village sloping off to the right of us. Fishermen’s cottages lay in tiers raised above the water. We could not see the small harbour full of fishing boats from here, or the lifeboat station; they lay out of sight beyond the point, like another little hamlet. On this side of the village there was only the perfect horseshoe cove and the coastal path through fields.

‘With a little imagination, this coastline could attract so many more people …’ my father murmured to himself.

Maman came bustling onto the balcony with Dominique behind her. They were carrying a French loaf, cheese and tomatoes. Maman looked happy. My sister looked bored and sulky.

Maman kissed the top of my head and said to Papa, ‘I rang the education department at County Hall this morning. There are no staff vacancies in the village school at the moment but I would almost certainly be able to teach in Penzance.’

She dropped the bread on the table and turned and looked out at the sea, and the garden below. ‘We would be mad not to try to buy this house, Tom, however hard it will be. I could do supply teaching. There will always be work in the shops and hotels in the summer season. I could probably earn more money having two part-time jobs than I do teaching.’

Dominique rolled her eyes, dismissively. ‘Maman! Are you going to stop teaching in Redruth to be a cleaner like Kirsty’s mum? Just so you can live in this house?’

‘Dominique,’ Maman said. ‘I have loved Loveday’s house from the first moment I saw it. I would do any job that brings in money to live here. I do not want to spend my life in a rented house in Redruth with no garden. This might be the only chance Papa and I have of owning a house …’

‘But this village is miles away from anywhere,’ Dominique wailed. ‘It’s like a dead place. I won’t have any friends. I like Redruth …’

‘In a couple of years you’ll have to change schools anyway,’ Papa said. ‘You’re good at making friends. You’d soon make new friends in the village …’

‘It’s a boring, boring village. It doesn’t even have a proper shop …’ Dominique was in a rare bad mood and spoiling the morning.

‘Loads of tourists will come to the beach every summer,’ I told her.

‘Big deal.’ She flounced off down the steps to the overgrown garden.

Maman said, slightly deflated, ‘It is a bit off the beaten track, Tom. If we did B&B, would anyone come, apart from walkers?’

‘There are plenty of walkers but the village does need a café, a decent pub and nice places to stay to draw more people here. Look, down there to the beach, Marianne … See those little huts by the lifebuoy? The council are thinking of doing those huts up and renting them out. Wouldn’t one of them be the perfect place for a little café? As you say, there’s nowhere to get anything to eat or drink at the moment.’

Papa laughed at Maman’s face. She was staring out visualizing the café up and running.

‘I reckon this little village is going to change dramatically in the next few years. More and more tourists are coming further west. St Ives is getting crowded and too expensive, but up-country people still want to buy second homes, which means plenty of work for a builder like me …’

My father was waving his hands about and striding up and down as if we already lived here.

‘The village would be ruined,’ Maman said, ‘if it was built up and overpriced like St Ives. I love all the fields covered in gorse. Who wants to live near empty houses all winter?’

‘No one can sell agricultural land. No one can change the coastline or coastal footpaths. People will always come to walk and how many walkers pass a café if it’s there? I’m not talking about building new houses but renovating old cottages when they are sold off. I’ve heard that the council plan to open craft shops in the old cowsheds in the square as a showcase for local artists, potters and silversmiths and the like. This is the right time for us to buy, my bird. If we don’t take this chance, we’ll regret it for the rest of our lives …’

My parents went inside arm in arm to make lunch. I stayed outside on the balcony staring out at the sea. The mist was blowing away and little fishing boats were heading out of the harbour, the thud of their engines echoing over the still air.

A tractor was ploughing up on the hill with a great carpet of seagulls circling behind it. The church bell chimed. I heard Maman laugh inside the house and the deep boom of Papa’s voice. I caught the flash of Dominique’s dress in the orchard. She had climbed into one of the old apple trees and her singing floated out over the garden. I waved and she waved back. I could see she was smiling. I could see she was changing her mind and tasting freedom.

This was my first memory of the village. A sensation we all had of coming home; an instant connectedness to Loveday’s house that was powerful. The old lady’s life here was ending, but ours was about to begin.

CHAPTER THREE

London, 2009

A few days after our party, Mike flew off to Karachi for his interview with Pakistani Atlantic Airlines. When the phone rang I already knew what he would say. He had been offered the job and accepted on the spot.

Aware of my silence he said, ‘Gabby, I’m going to have to wait for my visa application to be processed. Even fast-tracked, it will take at least ten days, so we will have time together before I go …’

I take time off work and Will and Matteo head down from Edinburgh and Glasgow to spend a long weekend with Mike before he leaves.

‘FFS, Dad, we’re fighting the Taliban, it’s not exactly the perfect time to head for Pakistan, is it?’

‘You’ll get kidnapped … like that journalist, what’s his name … Pearl Someone …’

‘Daniel. Daniel Pearl, he got …’

‘Shut up, both of you, you’ll worry your mother. Of course I won’t get kidnapped. I’m not a journalist after a story. There are other Europeans working in Pakistan, you know. Oil companies, commercial firms, NGOs. Everyone working out there is given security.’

The parks are stunning, full of trees with translucent green leaves and picnickers enjoying a hot June. Mike loves to roam London when he is home, so we criss-cross the city like tourists, drink coffee by the Serpentine, dip in and out of galleries, go to the theatre. In the evenings we take turns choosing where to eat and sip cold white wine and beer on shady terraces.

I cannot remember the last time we all spent time together in London. I let my happiness settle inside me like a precious thing, hardly daring to own it, in case some mean god snatches it away.

One afternoon Will and Matteo persuade us to take a riverboat down to Greenwich like we used to when they were small. As we chug downriver Mike cross-questions his sons on their career plans.

Both boys somehow ended up studying in Scotland. I’ve never been sure whether this was chance or design. There are only twelve months between them and they are close, often mistaken for twins. Will, who is studying medicine at Edinburgh, says warily, ‘I don’t have any plans, Dad. I’m just concentrating on exams at the moment.’

‘But you must have an idea about how you want to specialize,’ Mike says.

‘I have to get a medical degree first. Anyway, I might want to be a GP and not specialize in anything. Have you thought of that?’

‘Dreary job, totally thankless!’

Oh, Mike, I think. Why can’t you tell your sons you are proud of them, rather than question their choices?

Will looks at him. ‘I disagree. There is a national shortage of GPs.’

Mike shrugs. ‘Well, it’s your life, but I think you’re too bright just to be a GP … You’ve always needed challenges.’

I watch them both. Will is winding Mike up. He does not want to be a GP. He wants to be an orthopaedic surgeon. How can Mike forget that as a little boy Will was fascinated by the names of bones and how they knitted together?

Before he is asked, Matteo, who is at the Glasgow School of Art, says, ‘I’m planning on being the next Banksy, Dad.’

Both boys are laughing at him and Mike makes a face. ‘Okay, I’ll shut up. I was just doing catch up …’

‘If you were around longer you wouldn’t need to,’ Will retorts. He yawns and stretches. ‘Matt and I will bore you with our ambitions later, Dad, this boat is too noisy to talk …’

I watch the water slide past, aware of the fast current and how quickly a day can turn. Perhaps, Mike is conscious of it too, for he says, ‘Okay, let’s make serious plans while we are all together. It’s going to take me all summer to get to grips with this job … but how about we plan for Christmas together? Do you want me to come back home or shall we try for Oman? Revisiting the Barr Al Jissah Resort might be fun. If you aren’t caught up with wild parties and Scottish women, of course …’

Will and Matteo goggle at him. ‘Are you serious?’ Will asks. ‘Do you really think either of us are going to miss a chance of Christmas in Muscat?’

‘Oman! That would be so cool!’ Matteo says, grinning. ‘Any chance of slipping in a girlfriend?’

Mike laughs. ‘No chance.’

‘Only joking. I know that hotel is serious money. Are you sure you don’t want to just take Mum? Will and I are always broke and …’

Mike throws an arm around me. ‘Well, you can buy your mother and me a drink, can’t you?’

I watch my sons do a little jig of excitement. I feel like doing one myself. Muscat is paradise. I bend in the cool river breeze and kiss Mike’s cheek.

‘Thank you. Christmas in Oman will be wonderful.’

‘Make up for leaving you so soon?’

‘Not quite.’

We get off the boat at Greenwich and find a table in a crowded pub garden for lunch. When we have ordered drinks, Will asks, ‘What are you actually going to be doing in Karachi, Dad?’

‘I’ll be there to try to save a failing airline and I’m under no illusions that it’s going to be easy …’

‘I was reading stuff about Karachi online,’ Matteo says. ‘The Sunnis and Shias are permanently trying to blow each other up. It’s a violent city. Bad stuff happens.’

‘Bad stuff happens everywhere, Matt. We’re not immune from bombs and terrorist attacks in London. It doesn’t stop us leading a normal life, does it? When I’m away I worry just as much about your mother in London and both of you in Edinburgh and Glasgow …’

‘Ah, sweet of you, Dad,’ Matt says.

‘And there was me thinking you forgot all about us …’ Will says.

‘London is not in quite the same category as Karachi, Mike.’

Mike smiles at me. ‘Gabby, I am going to be well looked after. Do you really think the airline would want the embarrassment of having their European director disappear?’

‘Any Taliban kidnapping you would let you go pretty quickly after you had grilled them, interminably, on their career path …’ Will announces drily.

We all laugh. ‘As you are obviously going to earn gross amounts of money, can Will and I order anything off this menu?’ Matteo asks.

Mike raises his eyebrows. ‘Gross amounts of money you two have no difficulty parting me from …’ He glances at the menu. ‘This is hardly the Ritz. There is nothing here that will break the bank. Go ahead!’

Matt turns to Will. ‘Oh, to be so old you have forgotten what poor students actually live on …’

‘Well, Mum and Dad are baby boomers, they had the luxury of student grants …’

‘Bollocks!’ Mike says. ‘You two have the luxury of the bank of Mum and Dad and you’ve never gone hungry in your lives …’

I smile as I listen to the three of them happily bantering. Familiar old stag, young stag, rubbish. Mike is right; nowhere is absolutely safe and I will not spend the time we have together worrying.

Mike holds his beer glass up. ‘To us and happy times ahead!’

We clink our glasses together, aware of the mercurial nature of happiness and family life.

In the days before he leaves Mike seems uncharacteristically nervous. There are endless delays with his visa and when it finally comes and his flight is booked he asks me to see him off at Heathrow. It is the first time he has ever wanted me to go to the airport with him.

When we arrive at departures there is a small deputation of courteous but formal PAA staff lined up to meet him. They are deferent and anxious, carefully checking that he has all the correct paperwork for entry into Pakistan.

It is only then I realize Mike is being treated like a VIP, that this job holds high expectations and huge responsibility. He is already someone important before he has even set foot in Pakistan.

Before we have time to say goodbye properly, Mike is whisked away and fast-tracked through security and into the business lounge. I stand for a minute in the frenetic hub of the airport, buffeted by people, watching the place where he disappeared.

When I get home the empty house is very quiet. The washing basket is full of the boys’ dirty clothes. Mike’s loose change lies in the little pottery bowl near the vase of freesias he bought me yesterday. Their scent fills the room.

I push the French windows open. Traffic growls like the sound of distant bees. The buds on the magnolia tree are unfolding like tissue paper, their scent subtle and musty.

At the airport, Mike had pulled me to him and whispered, ‘Thank you darling girl, for everything …’

He sounded so unlike himself, the words strange on his tongue, his voice husky, not quite his own.

Sun slants across the table in the empty house that four people have filled for days. The air hums like a threnody to the rhythm of the men I love. I don’t know why I feel so sad. I have done this a hundred times.

I pick up the phone and ring Dominique. It rings and rings in the tiny flat in Paris but no one answers.

CHAPTER FOUR

Cornwall, 1971

If I close my eyes you won’t be gone. If I close my eyes I won’t see Maman’s face any more. If I close my eyes I can pretend we are surfing through small fast waves. If I close my eyes we are together at the beach café eating ice cream after school. If I keep my eyes tightly closed you will still be here …

We are climbing into Papa’s boat and motoring out on the evening tide to fish for mackerel. You and Papa are singing to the fish and embarrassing me.

I love the silver-purple flash of their skins as we reel them in. You are quick at taking the hook out of their mouths but I can’t do it. I hate seeing Papa bang their heads against the side of the boat.

‘Pff!’ you say to me, ‘you like to eat them barbecued with Maman’s frites, though, don’t you? You love her mackerel pâté stuffed in crusty rolls …’

We moor the boat and walk round from the quay with the fish. Maman is sitting on the beach in the last of the sun with a picnic. There is lettuce and tomatoes from the allotment, great sticks of French bread, sausages and chicken, pâté and cheese.

There is always loads of food because Maman knows your friends will wander past hoping she will call out to them to join us. Maman feeds everyone.

‘She’s French!’ you say, shrugging. ‘Food is what Maman does.’

Maman and Papa drink red wine from little kitchen glasses and Papa says, ‘My beautiful girls! Look at my beautiful girls!’

You are the beautiful one. Maman is pretty, too, but I am not. I stand out because of my hair. It is fair and thick with tight springy curls. I don’t have shiny, blue-black hair like you and Maman.

I get teased about my hair at school but you tell me that it is unique. You say that anyone can have straight dark hair but hardly anyone has curly, fair hair, green eyes and olive skin. You tell me I am cute and clever. You tell me you could never make up stories like me, nor read three books in a week. But I would like to be like you, so beautiful that people turn their heads to take another look as you walk past …

‘My beautiful girls. Look at you all sitting on the rug … I must take a photo …’ Papa sighs.

‘Too much red wine,’ Maman says, rolling her eyes.

You can never wait for summer to come. You love it when the campsite opens up on the hill and the beach café stays open until dark. You love it when the tourists start to pour in and the village fills up. You stop pretending to be bored by the grey winter and the empty town. You come alive again like the trees.

What will I do without you? What will I do? You have millions of friends, but I don’t, and you hardly ever say no if I want to play with you. ‘She’s my sister,’ you say firmly. And that’s that.

I know all the places you go when you are fed up, when you and Maman argue. You climb down to forbidden Nannaver Beach, tucked under the cliffs, but you make me promise never to go on my own.

Do you remember that day we made a den up in the fields underneath the hawthorn? A fox or badger had made a hidden path between the thorns. We pinched Papa’s sandwiches and flask and stayed there all day to get out of cleaning our rooms.

When we got home Maman was cross and said we smelt of fox poo. She didn’t think it was funny. Papa did, and he hosed us down with the freezing water from the garden hose.

Last May Day, you took me with you over the fields to Marazion Festival.

You held my hand as we ran. Your hair was flying out behind you in a great snaky wave and getting in my eyes. You were laughing as you pulled me along because we were late and your friends were waiting.

The Mount was lit up like fairyland. We could hear music coming from the causeway and the sun was falling into the sea.

There was a German family walking the other way, back to the campsite. They smiled and asked if they could take our photos. I was in jeans but you were in your favourite, faded, once-pink summer dress. The dress everyone smiled at you in; the dress Maman and Papa did not like you to wear. There was trouble later when they picked us up and saw that you were wearing that old dress.

Once, when we were in Penzance, a woman stopped us in the street. She had been staring at you from the other side of the road. She said she was a talent scout for a model agency. She tried to give Maman her card but Maman said she did not want it, that you were only thirteen years old. The woman looked amazed and said, ‘She is incredibly voluptuous for a thirteen year old.’

Neither of us knew what voluptuous meant but it made Maman furious and she was very rude to the woman in fast French and we both got the giggles.

One rainy day you pricked both our thumbs and pressed our blobs of blood together. You wanted us to be real sisters, not half-sisters, but you were always my real sister even before our blood was joined.

Dom, I don’t know what you did for Maman to send you away, but don’t worry. She will come and get you. She doesn’t mean it. She will want you home soon with Papa and me. There have always been four of us. You, me, Maman and Papa …

I wake on my own in the London house sobbing in the hours before dawn. The dream is visceral and still powerfully alive. I thought I had dealt with and buried all this long, long ago.

CHAPTER FIVE

London, 2009

It is a strange, uneasy summer in London. The war in Afghanistan dominates the news. The sight of huge RAF planes lumbering into Brize Norton carrying coffins and mutilated soldiers casts a pall everywhere.

Publishing is in a difficult place at the moment. Commissions are slow and Emily and I feel anxious. Book translations are harder to obtain and I have not been able to place any new foreign authors for months. It has taken me years to build up a good little bilingual team and I do not want to have to let anyone go.

Then, with serendipitous timing, Isabella Fournier, a bestselling French author I met last year at a Paris book launch, asks if I will take over the translation of her latest book. It is a bit of a coup and it has given us some clout. I relax, feeling sure that the year is going to improve.

For the first couple of months Mike and I manage to Skype each other regularly. He is living in a hotel near Karachi Airport but quite a distance from the city. Mike would never admit it to me but I think his first few weeks in Pakistan are proving daunting.

He cannot leave the hotel without security and for some reason it seems to be taking a long time for a driver to be vetted and a car allocated to him.

‘They were in such a hurry to get me out here, so you’d think they could sort out security before I arrived …’ he tells me irritably. ‘Everyone in the office is bending over backwards to make sure I have everything I need, but at the end of the day they all head home to the city and I am stuck out by the airport in this bloody awful airline hotel full of passing and inebriated cabin crew …’

The hotel is not bloody awful. Mike showed me round it on his iPad, but he obviously feels trapped and bored.

‘Surely there must be secure hotels in the city?’

‘Of course there are. They are just being overcautious with me. I’m the only European employee out here at the moment and it would be embarrassing for them if anything happened to me …’

Mike does not mention meeting up in Dubai as we planned, but by the middle of July he sounds more cheerful.

‘I’ve just been assigned a personal manager. His name’s Shahid Ali and he’s a really nice guy with a great sense of humour. He’s enlightening me on the cultural pitfalls of office politics. What’s more, he’s determined to find me a safe hotel in Karachi. Much more of this hotel room and I will be climbing the curtains …’

‘That’s great, Mike.’

‘The timing’s perfect. I’m experiencing my first taste of antipathy to a gora, a foreigner, running the Karachi office. There was bound to be some resentment and veiled hostility in certain quarters, so it’s good to have someone I can trust at my side …’

‘Are you worried about the hostility?’

‘No, I expected it. I just have to keep my wits about me. Sometimes, it’s all smoke and mirrors. I suspect that I’m only being shown what people want me to see. Pakistan is a very secretive society, so Shahid is an absolute godsend.’

‘I thought you said you weren’t going to be the only European out there?’

‘I was told there was going to be a Canadian director based in Karachi with me. But he’s actually a Pakistani Canadian called Adeeb Syad and he’s a bit of a mystery. He’s hardly ever seen in the Karachi office. People joke that he’s secretly retired without telling anyone. Shahid’s convinced he has been bought off for turning a blind eye somewhere along the line, taking back-handers for keeping out of the way …’

‘That sounds serious. Can you prove it?’

‘Not yet, but I gather he got Shahid transferred to Lahore when he got a bit too close for comfort. Shahid feels as strongly as I do about corruption. There are so many little scams that have been going on for years. People with authority have been steadily bleeding the airline and I’m not going to tolerate it. I’ve made that clear. No one in the office has any illusions about my intentions. I will stamp it out …’

‘Oh dear, Mike, you’re going to make enemies.’

‘It goes with the job, I’m afraid. That’s why I’m paid well and that’s why it’s good to have someone I can trust working with me. It’s going to make a big difference …’

I can hear Mike’s relief.

‘Any regrets? Wish you had taken an easier job?’

‘No. You know me, Gabby, I thrive on a challenge …’

As the summer slides by I idly Google flights to Dubai and run them past Mike, but he cannot commit to any dates so nothing is fixed. Will and Matteo are home for the summer and I work on Isabella Fournier’s book from home so that I can see something of them. They drift in and out of the house then disappear. Will goes off sailing in Scotland. Matt takes off on a cheap package holiday with friends to Spain.

London is humid and claustrophobic. Battling to work through thousands of tourists is no fun. I begin to run out of energy covering for editors off on summer holidays with their families.

I yearn for Cornwall and the beach. I dream of plunging into sharp, foamy surf; of being battered and reinvigorated by waves. I long for a cool wind straight from the sea to sting me alive.

I want to stand by the back door of our house and look up at the night sky clear of pollution and watch a scatter of stars fall. I want to get on the train to Penzance and have Maman and Papa waiting there at the end of the line. As time passes I miss them more and more. Sometimes, I cannot believe they are both gone.

I ring Dominique to ask if she feels like a long weekend in Cornwall. She says she is much too busy with the London wedding dress to take time off. She sounds tired and unaccustomedly distant.

Mike emails to tell me that at last he has been given a car and a Pashtun driver called Noor. I print out the email and read it on the little bench in my sunny garden.

It’s fantastic to be independent at last! Life’s a whole different ball game!

Noor drives me to meet Shahid at the Shalimar Hotel, which is in the middle of Karachi. This is the hotel where we hold a lot of PAA conferences. It is also the hotel that most of the diplomats, journalists and NGOs use for passing through Karachi. It has good service, wonderful food and there is a private swimming pool in a shady garden. The entrance is heavily guarded so it’s considered one of the most safe and secure hotels in Karachi. The manager is a charismatic Malaysian Chinese called Charlie Wang. He has a secret cache of wine in his apartment that he generously likes to share … Hope you are having a great weekend …

I think of Mike heading off to the lights and smells of an unknown city, the heat fading from the pavements, the smell of enticing food wafting on the night air with all the excitement of exploring somewhere new.

A breeze moves the leaves of the small red acer on the lawn. They are reflected in the windows of the house, like delicate hands waving. Loneliness swoops like a sudden murmuration of starlings filling the sky.

Behind me, my house lies empty. How do I cope with just being me all over again when I longed for an us? I had the illusion that this summer would mark a change, that Mike would finally be around, that the four of us would take a holiday together and then Mike and I would move on to a new phase in our lives.

I shiver in the night air as I face the truth. I am still here in the same place I have always been. Mike has moved on to the next phase of his life. Will and Matteo have their own lives. I am no longer central to their world nor will I ever be again. Mike, after a lifetime of working abroad, still chooses to live and work away from home and away from me.

In the house the phone rings. It is Kate.

‘Hugh says he will take us out to supper if you’re free. We’re both suffering from summer in the city blues. We never see the girls, they are off doing exciting things in the country with friends who have horses and jolly parents who are obviously much more fun than us. We’ve just cracked open a bottle of wine while we contemplate the meaning of life …’

I laugh. ‘I’m ordering a taxi now.’

I am glad when September comes and everyone is back from their holidays and the office gets back to normal. Will and Matt head back to Scotland, fit and brown. They have so much luggage I drive them to the station.

‘Thanks for the lift, Mum. Don’t be lonely. Not long until Christmas and then you’ll see Dad.’

‘You can practise light packing for Oman, Maman. By the time we get home you will have perfected the art …’ Matteo says, patronizingly.

I raise my eyebrow at his carpet of luggage. ‘I don’t think it’s me who needs to perfect the art of travelling light, Matteo …’

They hug me and are gone in a blur of rucksacks and loudspeakers, disappearing into the busy crowds, moving swiftly back into their own worlds.

I head for the office through the choked traffic. It is Emily’s birthday and we are all taking her out for lunch. As I pass the park I see the leaves on the sycamores are beginning to turn. The air is cooler, the shops are filling up with autumn clothes and the sun now sets beyond the garden. Summer is nearly over.

CHAPTER SIX

Cornwall, 1966

From the moment we moved into Loveday’s house Dominique and I forgot Redruth. We slipped off our lives there as easily as discarding a coat we had outgrown. We moved in time for the summer holidays and my parents were so busy working on our new home that we were allowed to run wild.

Papa brought us small knapsacks. Maman made sandwiches and a drink and off we set each day, mini explorers with a new world to discover.

Dominique was only ten that first summer but she had inbuilt common sense. She was fiercely protective of me and my parents trusted her. In a few years beauty and hormones would turn her into a bit of a wild child but I remember our first years there as near to idyllic.

There were strict rules. We had to know the tide times each day. We were never to go into the sea without an adult and there were unnegotiable boundaries beyond which we must not roam.

The village was full of summer people down in the holiday cottages by the harbour. Within weeks of moving in we were suddenly part of a little gang. There was a doctor’s family with identical twin boys, Benjamin and Tristan. They were Dominique’s age but wild and undisciplined. Their parents seemed to have given up trying to control them, but Dominique, somehow, managed to harness their energy and imagination. If they broke gang rules they were out.

The twins were in awe of Dominique and the three of them instigated most of our adventures. They made maps of our kingdom from Nearly Cave to Poo Tunnel. From Forbidden Beach out to the rugged cliffs and down to Priest’s Cove where the Pirate Boats came in with plunder.

After a while Maman and Papa let us roam a little further, as long as Dominique and the older children were with us. Papa would drop us off in his truck at Priest’s Cove to play soldiers and pirates on Smuggler’s Bridge. Later, Maman would walk along the coastal path to meet us with Mr Rowe’s old collie, Mabel.

None of us ever fell off the edge of a cliff or drowned. Nothing dire happened apart from us occasionally getting tired and quarrelsome. I was the youngest and wilted first at the miles the older children covered. Often Maman made me go home with her and I was secretly grateful. I am sure keeping up helped with my running when I was older. I learned stamina. I learned that if you whined or dragged your feet you got left behind.

Of course, it wasn’t a Mary Poppins life. Papa liked the pub a bit too much. Maman was possessive and jealous of other women. They had spectacular rows. Sometimes, Dominique and I would cover our ears and run out into the wild garden.

I would get upset but Dominique just laughed and shrugged.

‘Pff! It’s only Papa flirting or Maman thinking he is. They will make up.’ And they always did. We would return home to find Maman flushed and happy in a mysteriously embarrassing way. Papa would wink at us as he self-consciously helped Maman prepare our tea.

‘Guilty!’ Dominique would whisper.

‘Of what?’ I would whisper back.

Dominique would lean behind her hand. ‘Flirting with Miss Hicks. He’s mending her roof. Maman accused him of fancying her.’

‘Is fancying the same as flirting?’

Dominique considered. ‘I think it is one step worse. It’s okay though, it’s what grown-ups do. They get married, then they like other people and have rows.’

‘But … Papa still loves Maman?’

‘Of course he does, Rabbit. Look at them, all lovey-dovey …’

Dominique would roll her eyes and put a finger down her throat and pretend to be sick.

My sister was the font of all knowledge and my lodestar. When she went to secondary school I would wait for her at the bus stop every afternoon.

One day, she did not get off the school bus as usual. A girl in Dominique’s class told me that my sister had got off a stop early so she could walk home with her friends.

I was stricken by the sudden realization that Dominique was too kind to tell me that she wanted to spend more time with her friends, less with me.

I took off for the beach, mortified, and sat for the rest of the afternoon finding flat pebbles to skim, determined not to cry. Papa spotted me driving home in his truck. He came and sat beside me as I skimmed the stones into the waves. I did not say anything but somehow Papa knew.

‘Dominique needs a bit of space sometimes, sweetheart …’

From then on Papa tried to come home early on the days Maman was giving French lessons or privately tutoring. He took me body-boarding. He bought a double canoe and we towed it off to the estuary. I would do my homework or read a book while he fished.

Dominique had discovered the Jubilee Pool in Penzance. Everyone went there in the summer. Papa would drop me off after school to join her and her friends. That was where I met Morwenna, my first best friend.

She lived in a cottage the other side of the point by the harbour. Her father was a fisherman and her house always smelt of fish. Like Maman, her mother was always working too. In the Co-op, in the chippie and she cleaned holiday cottages.

Morwenna also had an elder sister, called Ada. Ada was not kind or pretty like Dominique. She had the disturbing, hard little face of an adult. A girl who grimly believed she had been cheated of something everyone else had. She had cause, I think, because her tired mother expected a lot of her.

Ada loathed Dominique with a passion that was unnerving. She had a vicious tongue and she lied about people. She liked to make trouble for Dominique both with Maman and at school. I always believed that Ada had something to do with Maman sending Dominique away, but I could never prove it.

The winters of my childhood could seem endless. There were days and days of damp sea mist that descended like a dark cloak to the very doors and windows. It made the trees into eerie, shapeless monsters. It suffocated sound, gave us headaches and made us irritable. Then there were the biting easterly winds that hit the house head on with a vicious intensity that made the windows and doors rattle.

Maman was always cold. Papa was constantly fixing windows and plugging gaps under doors. Winters meant being claustrophobically closed in together. If the weather stopped Papa working outside he would get frustrated and march about the house at weekends snapping at everyone.

Maman would happily bake if she was kept inside, but Papa would pace up and down driving her mad. Dominique, bored, would thump up and down the stairs unable to keep still. I could curl up and read but Dominique never could.

Maman and I would wait for the explosion as Papa and Dominique got on each other’s nerves. Papa would tell Dominique to do something constructive like tidy her room or get on with some homework. Dominique would snap straight back with a rude, ‘Why don’t you do something constructive like helping Maman with the housework for a change …?’

Woomph! Like lighting touchpaper, Maman, Papa and Dominique would all jump up and down shouting and waving their arms. I would pick up my book and fly to my room for peace.

Then, slowly, spring would start to emerge. Translucent leaves on the trees would begin to unfurl. The daffodil fields in the valleys would turn from tight green buds to a blaze of yellow. The hedgerows came alive with hundreds of wild flowers.

I would look out of my window and see Maman feeding the chickens in the orchard. I would see Papa and Dominique bent together painting the bottom of his upturned boat. Behind them lay a sea, no longer rough and sullen, but turning from winter navy to a translucent greeny-blue.

Those days seem halcyon now. I was too young to know how transient happiness is. I knew nothing of fear or jealousy or the reach of the past. I could never have dreamt that the four of us – Maman, Papa, Dominique and me – could ever be ripped apart.

CHAPTER SEVEN

London, November 2009

Emily comes up the stairs to my office with a coffee and some contracts to sign. She has been restless and preoccupied lately and I suspect that someone has approached her with a job offer. She’s my right hand and I don’t want to lose her.

I take my coffee and wait until she is sitting down. ‘Rumour has it that someone is trying to entice you away from us, Em. You would let me know if you are thinking of leaving us?’

‘Honestly!’ Emily says quickly, looking embarrassed. ‘Of course I’d tell you, Gabby. Adrian Lang put out feelers, that’s all. They are looking for someone to head their foreign rights department …’

‘He’s a good agent. You’d be your own boss. It must be tempting.’

‘Well, it is.’ She grins at me. ‘But you must know they can’t match my current salary. I know they approached you last year …’

‘They did and I refused but I’m a lot older than you, I don’t want to amalgamate agencies or do two jobs. I’m not surprised that Adrian’s approached you. You have wonderful organizational skills, Emily, as well as being an extremely competent translator. I’m aware that you could do my job more efficiently without me than I could do it without you …’

I smile. ‘It would be natural if you felt fidgety, but I’m afraid I’m not ready to retire for a while, so I would quite understand if you wanted to take off to be your own boss …’

I’ve been lucky to have Emily for so long and it wouldn’t be fair to hold her back. She looks at me earnestly.

‘Gabby, of course I was flattered to be approached but if I was seriously considering Adrian’s offer I would have come and told you. It was just nice to leave it on the table and pretend to myself I was thinking about it …’

She shuffles the papers she is holding into a neat pile. ‘I don’t want to leave. Why would I? We have a perfect working relationship. You give me a free rein and you’re a good friend. I couldn’t replace that. Yes, I might be efficient at organizing things and running an office, but you’re the one who can instantly spot talent amid the dross. You’re the one who can translate an author into another language yet instinctively keep their true voice. It’s a hell of a skill. That’s why you’re so respected and why I’m still learning from you all the time …’ Emily grins. ‘So, I’ll sit it out and wait until you are too doddery to do the job, then I’ll jump you …’

‘Thank you, Emily.’ I laugh, touched. ‘Come on, I’ll sign these contracts, then I’ll take you out to lunch to celebrate you not leaving.’

‘Done!’ she says.

Christmas is looming and the boys are home. We are all excited and rush about getting small presents we can carry to Oman. I have supper with Kate and Hugh before I leave.

Hugh pecks my cheek. ‘Gosh, you look glowing and happy.’

Kate peers at me. ‘You do. It’s good to see. I thought you were a little down the last time I saw you.’

‘A lot has happened in the last two weeks …’ I grin at them both. ‘After Christmas in Oman with the boys Mike wants me to fly back to Karachi with him for New Year.’

They both look appalled. ‘Is it safe?’ Hugh asks.

‘It is deemed safe unless there is trouble or the situation deteriorates. I have been officially sanctioned by the airline.’

‘It’s a bit sudden, isn’t it? You didn’t mention anything at Laura’s launch,’ Kate says, handing me a glass of wine.

‘I didn’t know then. Mike made friends with the Malaysian manager of the Shalimar Hotel in Karachi. Charlie had an old apartment waiting for a refurbish and he offered it to Mike for a reasonable rent. Mike jumped at it. He moved in straight away. He’d been living out near the airport so he’s thrilled to be in Karachi and he wants me to see where he’s living.’

‘Are Will and Matt going with you?’

‘No, they don’t have visas. Mike applied for mine when he took the job. It’s not possible to roam freely around Karachi sightseeing and more dangerous if you are young and male. Anyway, it’s only a flying visit and after a week with us the boys will be raring to get back to London for New Year with their friends.’

‘How exciting,’ Hugh says. ‘Oman and Karachi. Some people have all the luck …’

‘Wow, what an exotic Christmas and New Year you’re going to have, Gabby,’ Kate says.

I laugh. ‘Mike gleefully announced that the British Deputy High Commission has already earmarked him as a dinner guest. You know what Mike is like.’

‘We do.’ Hugh grins.

We go and sit at the large scrubbed table where I have had so many suppers.

‘Don’t you ever feel jealous of Mike’s glamorous lifestyle?’ Kate asks suddenly. ‘He’s always living another entirely separate life.’

‘Of course I do,’ I say, with a little intake of breath. Kate rarely makes unhelpful comments like this, but we’ve all had quite a lot of wine. ‘But, I’m used to it now. I don’t know anything else. And,’ I add, because Kate and Hugh are watching me across the supper table and I know what they are thinking, ‘after a lifetime of working away, Mike always comes home to me and the boys.’

Kate and Hugh lift their glasses to me and make a Christmas toast but I see Kate place her left hand flat on the reclaimed kitchen table as if she is touching wood.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Oman, Christmas 2009

Stark brown mountains rise up out of a choppy indigo sea. Sunlight falls on rocks making golden veins among the shadows of crevices. Fishing dhows scud across the water. I watch Will and Matteo floating in the aquamarine infinity pool that slides swimmers effortlessly towards the glistening horizon. There is sensory pleasure everywhere. Small tables lit by flickering candles among palm trees. Sunloungers placed on a crystal beach of tiny shells. Our adjoining rooms have small balconies that open out onto the Gulf of Oman and the turquoise Arabian Sea.

On Christmas morning the boys appear in silly hats and wake us. They have filled tiny stockings for us and they sit on the end of our bed watching as we open them. Mike laughs but I can see he is touched by their small student gifts.

We sit in a huge bed facing our lanky sons with their crossed hairy legs and dishevelled hair and Mike says, throwing his arm round me, ‘My God, where did the time go? How did my sons get so enormous? I still see them in those tiny white dressing gowns I bought in Dubai …’

‘I still have those little dressing gowns,’ I say.

This might be the last time the four of us spend Christmas together, without girlfriends, without Will and Matteo itching to be skiing with friends or elsewhere.

In the evening, after we have eaten under the stars, Will and Matteo head off to find other young people at an organized beach party. Mike cautions them about keeping away from anyone doing drugs and stresses the strict penalties in Oman for breaking the law.

Will says, ‘Dad, we’ve been in and out of Muslim countries all our lives … we’re not going to be that stupid.’ And they disappear towards a crowd of noisy young people congregating on the beach.

Mike and I sit watching the decorated camels with elaborate headdresses sitting crouched by the candlelit night stalls. Veiled and silent Saudi women watch their husbands smoking hubble-bubble pipes. I wonder how these women keep their boredom in check. The camels have more fun.

‘Let’s walk,’ Mike says, stretching and taking my hand. We drift among the hibiscus gardens down to the beach path.

There are long, squishy sofas under the palm trees, full of small collapsed children. The last time we were here Will and Matt were six and seven.

‘Where did the time go, Gabby?’ Mike says, echoing my thoughts. ‘It’s hard to accept my sons probably don’t need a lecture on the risks of drug taking in a Muslim country.’

Is Mike mourning the loss of his children or his own lost youth?

‘Oh, I think they do need reminding. They’re still young and not immune from peer pressure.’

I notice the tiredness around his eyes. It has been a lovely Christmas, but Mike seems preoccupied and quiet.

‘How is it going in Karachi?’ I ask. ‘Truthfully.’

‘I’m fine.’ He is abrupt. ‘I want to forget about work for a few days.’ But, he doesn’t. He can’t.

I ask someone to take a couple of photos of us standing with our backs to the Arabian Sea. Later, I see they are too dark. My flash has not worked and we are like ghosts in a landscape of stars. Christmas 2009. Mike and I, not quite real, standing in a backdrop of navy sea.

For the rest of our holiday Mike lies comatose on his lounger, plugged into his music. In the afternoons, he goes back up to the hotel to sleep in the cool. It feels a little as if he is screening us out. I tell myself not to be selfish, that he needs to unwind.

Will and Matteo float between us and the groups of young people who migrate together like starlings. I stay outside under a sun umbrella. I don’t want to miss a moment of sun and sea and mountains.

One afternoon, Matteo, reading beside me, puts his book down. ‘Dad seems a bit played out this holiday. Usually, he wants to hire a boat or do something.’

‘He would never admit it, but I think his job is proving a challenge. He’s weary, Matt.’

Will appears. He had gone back to the hotel to fetch his iPod.

‘Dad’s not resting, Mum. He’s bloody working. He’s writing emails and phoning Karachi …’

Will sounds so unaccountably angry I sit up, startled.

‘I told him that if he’s not sleeping he should be spending time down here with you. You’re on your own the whole bloody time. He’s spent a fortune on getting us here and then he slopes off to work every afternoon …’

‘Will, come on, be fair. He has to keep in touch with his office …’

‘There you go again. Just accepting everything, all the time, just as you always do. You’ve been apart for six months and Dad can’t even be truthful about why he slopes back to his room every afternoon … You know what, Mum, how different are you from those veiled … passive Saudi wives we saw at lunch today, lifting their stupid bits of material so they can poke food into their mouths, because of some male edict …’

Will throws his iPod and book onto his lounger and heads for the sea.

Shocked, I watch him walk away. This is so unlike him.

‘Go after him,’ I say to Matteo. ‘Do you think they had a row or something?’

Matteo walks across the sand and he and Will both stand with their backs to me, heads bent together. Voices carry over water and I hear Matt say, ‘Will, you can’t be sure and you certainly can’t say anything to Mum …’

Will shrugs, enters the water and starts to swim away. Matt walks back to me.

‘What is it?’ I ask.

Matteo drops on the sand beside me. ‘Will’s not angry with you, Mum. He caught Dad sitting out on the balcony having a long chatty conversation. He got mad that he wasn’t down here talking to you. Dad’s gone to all this effort and expense but he isn’t really here with us, is he? He’s still in Karachi.’

I know Matteo is right, but I say, ‘Matt, if your dad wants to disappear in the afternoons to rest and unwind, why shouldn’t he?’

‘But he’s not resting and unwinding, is he? He’s working. Dad chooses to live and work away from us. We are only with him for a few days. Is it too much to ask that he unplugs his bloody music and engages with us when we are all together? That he doesn’t leave you on your own every single afternoon?’

‘I don’t mind …’

‘Well, we do. We worry about you, Mum …’ He jumps up. ‘Listen to me. This is stupid. Will and I are adults, for Christ’s sake, not four year olds. Dad will always be Dad. It’s just, Will and I always hope things might change as we get older and it never does …’

I never knew. I never knew my sons felt like this.

On our last evening in Oman, I sit on the sea wall looking out over the Arabian Sea towards Iran and Pakistan. Behind the mountains the sky is ochre and pink and gold. A small wooden dhow with a white canopy is moored, turning in the breeze.

Will and Matteo come and sit each side of me. We sit in companionable silence watching the sky and sea catch fire.

‘Reminds me a bit of Cornwall,’ Matt says, after a while. ‘That feeling of awe and sad insignificance in the sheer power of …’

‘Sad insignificance!’ Will jeers, leaning over me to peer at his brother. ‘Wha …’

‘Oh shut up,’ Matteo says before Will can say any more.

I smile. My eldest son will now make everything sadly insignificant all evening.

‘Ignore him,’ I say to Matteo. ‘I know what you mean. The power and beauty of nature does make you feel small and insignificant.’

‘Sometimes,’ Matteo says, ‘I forget Mamie and Gramps are dead.’

‘I wish we could have kept their house in Cornwall,’ Will says. ‘We shouldn’t have sold it.’

‘We had to sell. Dominique needed the money and …’

‘Why couldn’t you and Dad have bought her out?’

‘Because the house needed a fortune spent on it and we still have a sizeable mortgage on the London house …’

‘But it would have been possible, wouldn’t it, if Dad had wanted to keep it too? You could have rented it out for a fortune each summer to help with the mortgage.’

I do not want to revisit the pain of letting my home go. Mike and I had argued vehemently. It was the only thing I had ever asked or fought for. He was right though. We had two boys to put through university. Pouring money into repairing a house hundreds of miles from where we lived was not practical. We did not have unlimited resources. Yet selling it nearly broke my heart.

‘It was the wrong time. Too much work and too much money and I was reeling with shock …’

‘It was awful. I can’t imagine what it would be like if you and Dad died within months of each other …’ Matteo says.

‘Mum?’ Will says. ‘Did you ever think it odd that Gramps drowned?’

I stare at him.

‘I mean. He knew the sea. He fished all his life …’

‘Fishermen drown, Will.’

‘Yes, but Gramps could spot weather coming in faster than anyone. He never got it wrong. So why was he out in a force eight gale?’

‘He was in his eighties. He must have misjudged the speed of the storm …’ I say, uneasily, trying to banish the image of a little boat foundering in huge seas.

‘We’ll never really know why he was out in rough weather, will we?’ Matteo says quietly.

At that moment, Mike arrives looking showered and spruced, followed by a waiter carrying a glass of drinks.

‘Ah!’ he calls. ‘I’ve found you. My lost family! As it’s our last night here, I have pushed the boat out. I have champagne!’

Never have three people been so happy to see him. He’s seemed so much happier and more relaxed these last two days. We jump up and hug him until he is overwhelmed. Who knows when the four of us will all be together again.

‘My God! What did I do to deserve all this? It is only one bottle of probably doubtful champagne …’

Will holds his glass up to him. ‘Every now and then, Dad, you remind us of why we love you. Your timing is impeccable. This is perfect.’

I watch Mike’s face. A myriad of emotions cross it. He is touched and trying not to show it. My heart turns. I don’t need to be reminded of why I love him.

CHAPTER NINE

Karachi, 2009

Nothing could have prepared me for Karachi Airport. It is a swirling mass of earthy, colourful humanity. As the plane doors slide open there is a tall security man with a thin moustache and a severe, unsmiling face waiting. I know this is Mahsood, an alarming ex-military man, who regularly navigates Mike through the horrors of Jinnah International Airport.

We are first off the plane but there is a press of people behind us. Mike grabs my hand luggage and Mahsood grabs my documents and passport.

‘Follow close, please …’ Mahsood takes off at speed through the masses pouring off incoming flights. Mike and I dash after him as he navigates a passage through the crowds.

‘Don’t take your eyes off his back,’ Mike says. ‘Or we will lose him.’

Easy to say, but there are people pushing in all directions, struggling with parcels and bundles and small children, all pushing relentlessly forward before coming to an anxious halt at one of the numerous security checks.

Mahsood guides us to the head of a queue, like VIPs. We stand awkwardly to one side as he offers up our passports to moustached officials. Even Mahsood cannot hurry the deliberately slow perusal of our papers. Dark eyes flick over us from stiff official faces. I am relieved when we eventually reach the baggage carousel.

‘My God,’ I say to Mike. ‘I wouldn’t like to go through this airport on my own.’

‘It’s hell. I wouldn’t even try without Mahsood.’

Mahsood keeps us close to him like a sheepdog, his eyes ranging nervously across the airport as if danger might come from any direction. When I ask to go to the lavatory, he comes to the door and stands guard until I return.

As we wait for our luggage Mike chats to some PAA airport officials. Other than the briefest of nods I remain unacknowledged. I feel like a stranded alien in the middle of a dizzying island of chaos and I have my first glimpse of what it might be like to be a woman in Pakistan.

I am relieved when we have our luggage and Mahsood is herding us briskly out of the terminal. It is early evening and the sun is low. There is the smell of dust and petrol and, faintly, of sewerage. The world is tinged in an orange glow and I feel a visceral pull, as if I am standing on the edge of a still photograph about to plunge into lives both unknown and familiar.

Mike smiles at me. ‘Okay? The worst bit is over!’

Armed soldiers are weaving between the taxis, looking into the boots of cars. I can see there is a heavily guarded checkpoint in and out of the airport. Mike had not mentioned there were guns everywhere. It is a bit of a shock.

Noor, Mike’s Pashtun driver, is standing by his car waiting for us.

‘Welcome to Pakistan, mem.’

He is a young, stocky man with extraordinary, luminous green eyes and a big smile.

‘Thank you.’ I hold out my hand and Noor grasps it.

Mahsood climbs into the front seat and the car is waved through the checkpoint. Mike leans towards me.

‘Gabby, women don’t offer their hands to men in Pakistan. I just thought I would tell you …’

‘Oh,’ I say, surprised. ‘Noor did not seem to mind.’

Mike laughs. ‘Of course he didn’t mind. He will have taken it as a compliment …’

After a few miles, Noor turns off the dusty road and stops in the middle of a treeless square. Apartments as bleak and lifeless as a Russian suburb rise up in the distance. Mahsood slides out of the car and disappears into the shadows like a moth.

I stare after him. ‘That’s spooky. Where does he go? It’s pure John le Carré …’

‘I presume Mahsood lives in one of those flats,’ Mike says.

As we join the main throughway traffic thunders with frightening speed on both sides of the car. There are entire families on motorcycles weaving and wobbling through the traffic. Toddlers are wedged between their parents; babies are literally dangling over handlebars.

Mike and Noor laugh at my horrified face. ‘It still rush hour, mem,’ Noor says.

Fascinated, I peer out of the window at the explosion of vehicles and roar of sound. Intricately painted buses, lopsided with people, sway past like decorated elephants. I catch glimpses of gold-ringed fingers and frangipani bangles on thin wrists. Everywhere there are fleeting flashes of colour like the sun blazing through trees. There are saris and shalwar kameez, in red, gold and aquamarine.

Eyes rest for fleeting seconds on mine as they shoot past. Rings glitter on exquisite noses. Dupattas are drawn over glossy dark hair. Horns blare, insults are exchanged, accidents averted by a whisker. This is not so much a journey but an abrupt and terrifying assault on the senses. I am captivated.

When we reach the gates of the Hotel Shalimar there is a checkpoint. Armed security guards peer into the bonnet of the car and run a bomb detector over the passenger seats and floor and then under the car.

We drive up a small drive with another ramp and Noor parks outside the large glass entrance. He places our luggage on an X-ray conveyer belt that slides into the hotel. A uniformed doorman scans Mike’s wallet, my bag and our mobile phones.

I follow Mike through the glass doors. It certainly is a secure hotel. The foyer has a marbled floor and is full of lighted chandeliers, potted plants and soft music. Two women in beautiful shalwar kameez stand smiling behind the reception desk.

‘Mr Michael! Welcome back! Welcome, welcome, Mrs Michael, to the Shalimar Hotel! We are so happy that you have come to visit Karachi …’

I can see Mike is pleased at their effusive welcome.

‘Gabby, this is Rana, the head receptionist at the Shalimar, and this is Pansy, Rana’s able assistant. They are magicians and will find you anything you need …’

Rana, the older woman, shakes my hand. She has a sweet open face. ‘Indeed, Mrs Michael, we are here to help …’

Pansy places her hands together in a shy bow. She is well named. She is an exotic little flower.

A boy puts our luggage on a trolley and then heads for the lifts.

‘It’s good to be back,’ Mike calls to the two women as he guides me after him. ‘Thank you both for a lovely welcome …’

‘Please, to let us know if anything is missing for the comfort of your wife, Mr Michael …’ Rana calls after us as the lift doors open.

In the lift, Mike starts to laugh. ‘Rana and Pansy are usually off-duty by this time. They were obviously determined to catch a glimpse of you before they went home. Rana can seem a bit overwhelming in her desire to help, but it is the hospitable Pakistani way. She genuinely wants everyone in the hotel to feel at home …’

On the third floor we walk down a long empty corridor. Mike puts his card in the lock of a door and pushes it open. He waves me inside with a little flourish and tips the boy with the luggage.

The main room is huge, with picture windows from floor to ceiling that frame the reddening city below. There are dusty crimson drapes everywhere, even around the double bed that lies in state at one end.

It is as if time has stopped. The rooms are full of dust motes caught in the last swirling rays of the sun. Everything is faded by sunlight. A defunct old fan is still attached to the ceiling. I can almost feel the colonial swish of it displacing the air.

The shabby drapes hold a hint of tobacco smoke deep in their folds. I turn round in the middle of the room, captivated by a feeling of other lives, other tongues, lost worlds.

In the shadows lies a disappeared Pakistan, filled with dignitaries who drank and smoked and partied with impunity. There is a little smoking room with sagging sofas and two bathrooms with yellowing cracked baths.

There is such an evocative, dilapidated glamour in Mike’s new home. A place frozen in time; a place of ghosts, a place to paint, to write books or dream.

Mike is watching me. ‘I know it’s a bit shabby …’

I turn and stare at him. ‘Shabby? It’s wonderful, Mike. Apart from the bathrooms.’

His eyes light up. ‘It is of its time, isn’t it? Just shower, don’t bath. Kamla, the cleaner, comes each day but something else just falls off in the bathrooms …’

Mike fiddles with the air-conditioning. ‘Gabby, would you mind if I ordered supper up here, tonight? I’ve been away for a week and I need to ring Shahid to bring myself up to speed. If we eat in it means I don’t have to change. Eating in the dining room is quite a long drawn-out process as the waiters will want to try to tempt us with new dishes.’

I don’t mind at all. In fact it is lovely. Two young waiters roll in a trolley full of silver dishes, then set up a table with a white cloth and starched napkins.

I glance at my watch. How strange. Here I am, in a world of pink drapes and armed guards, and Will and Matteo will still be in the air, somewhere, heading for London.

As we lie curled in the huge, draped bed, I have a stab of pure contentment. I don’t think either of us was entirely relaxed in Oman. Maybe there was too much pressure to have a fantastic Christmas together. I wish Mike could have been as easy as this with the boys.

I lie listening to the noisy air-conditioning. It sounds like the roar of the surf in a storm, a sound so familiar it lulls me to sleep in seconds.

CHAPTER TEN

Cornwall, 1967

Maman rarely talked about her childhood. If Dominique and I asked questions she would evade them. If we persisted, her face would close and she would walk away from us and remain distant for the rest of the day.

It was as if her life started from the time she met Papa. We heard that story enough times. Dominique especially loved it because she featured in it.

Papa, moored in a Brittany harbour on his father’s fishing boat, caught sight of a lovely woman and a pretty little girl dancing at a festival.

‘Love at first sight!’ Papa declared; for both Marianne and Dominique, aged three.

The rest is history. Well, not quite. He could not carry them both home to Cornwall in a fishing boat. Women were not allowed on the boats in those days and in any case Maman took some persuading. She was wary of men and did not want to leave France. But of course, Maman was never going to lose her handsome Cornishman. When she came over to visit Papa she realized that living in Cornwall would not be very different from living in Brittany.

Maman was connected to the earth in a very French way. Gardening mainly meant food and I loved watching her grow a huge array of fruit and vegetables in the kitchen garden. Papa dug out a small allotment for her out of the corner of the small field behind the orchard.

She planted sweet peas and flowers between the fruit and veg and she fed half the village. When she got chickens Dominique and I hastily gave them all names so that she could not cook and eat them. Tilly, Misty, Hetti, Susan, Agnes …

Maman capitulated and grew to love all her chickens. She would pick them up and stroke them like cats. She cried as hard as the rest of us when the fox did his worst, which he often did.

Neither Maman nor our aunt Laura ever talked about their childhood or our grandparents. It was a mystery, a closed book. Aunt Laura once told Dominique and me that it was the kind of childhood you left behind as soon as you could and tried never to revisit.

Maman was an enigma. She loved to help people yet there was a core of steeliness in her that sometimes shocked. I hoped that when she grew old she would tell me about her childhood, about my grandparents, but she never did. Her paternal grandmother had been Moroccan but we only knew this from Aunt Laura.

She was also unforthcoming about her life before she met Papa. As Dom grew older she was naturally curious about her biological father. She wanted to know how she came to be born. Maman was unnecessarily truthful and evasive at the same time. She always said the same thing: Dominique’s father had just been someone she had gone out with a few times. He was a student. She knew little about him. He had disappeared before she even knew she was pregnant. She was sorry, but there was nothing more she could tell Dominique about him.

How old was he? What was he studying? Was he good looking? Was he nice? What had they talked about? Dominique would not let it go. Was she like him? Had Maman got a photo of him?

The stories our parents tell us of our birth root us in family life. How hard would it have been for Maman to make up a little comforting fairy story for Dominique? But she never did. As I got older, I realized there must have been shame and trauma attached. Maman simply could not bear to talk about him.

If Dominique appealed to Papa for more information he would look uncomfortable. He was loyal to Maman and, I think, embarrassed about how little he knew of her life before he met her. Maman must have told him something about Dominique’s father before she married him, but Papa was never going to talk to us behind her back.

He would beg Dominique and me not to upset Maman, to respect her wishes and her right not to talk about her past.

‘Don’t I have a right to know who my own father was?’ Dominique would cry.

‘I hope you think of me as your papa, my little bird. I couldn’t love you more,’ Papa would reply.

It was true and Dominique knew it. But once she became a confused and difficult teenager with hormones screaming round her body, the onslaught of questions about her father began all over again. She was constantly at war with Maman and screaming at Papa.

‘You are not my real father. You can’t tell me what to do!’

Mostly, Papa was patient but one day he had had enough.

‘Dominique, stop this! It is pointless and cruel to constantly bully your mother for answers she does not have. Stop making yourself miserable. Just accept that your biological father was a good-looking, nice young man Maman knew little about. She cannot change what happened. Isn’t it enough that you are beautiful and much loved? You are making us all miserable … especially Gabby, is that what you want?’

I never doubted Maman loved Dominique but she was hard on her when she reached puberty. Sometimes, when I look back, I wonder if, subconsciously, Maman was punishing Dominique for her own mistakes. Papa and I both tried to protect her from Maman’s tongue, even though Dominique pretended she did not care.

My feisty, stunning sister was a free spirit. Her beauty made her stand out as she grew up. She drew everyone to her like a magnet. It was not hard to see why Maman was terrified that life would repeat itself.

I can still see Maman out in the orchard with her dark hair pinned back in a neat plait only the French can manage. She could look chic even in wellington boots. She was slim and always wore blue denim jeans or white shorts, with crisp cotton shirts, topped with a navy guernsey; like a sort of uniform.

She would pick the apples from the ground, wary of wasps, and turn them carefully searching for bruises, placing them on old wooden trays so they did not touch, like they used to do in Loveday’s time. Every now and then she would smile and lift her head and gaze out to the blue sea shimmering sinuously below the house. It was as if she could not quite believe she was here, in this garden, in this safe place that had become her whole world.

This world was small and insular but she was a loved and respected teacher. She had standing in the village and I sensed, even when I was small, that Maman would fight like a lioness if anything ever threatened her home, her family, or the life she loved.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Karachi, 2009

The Shalimar lies on the edge of Karachi. The large windows of Mike’s apartment look across tree-lined roads that surround the hotel from two sides. There is the distant roar of traffic hurtling towards the centre of the city and I can glimpse cranes rising from the docks on the skyline where the sea lies invisible.

The hotel is having a facelift so half the floors have been modernized but Mike’s apartment is in the old wing at the top of the building.

As we come out of the lift and walk across the reception area for breakfast Rana calls out, ‘Assalam-o-alaikum, Mr and Mrs Michael! Good morning! Good morning!’

Two breakfast waiters are standing by the door of the restaurant like sentinels. They rush over to Mike and usher him to a table by the window.

‘Good morning, Naseem. Good morning, Baseer,’ Mike says.

‘Good morning, sir. Good morning, mem.’

I can see this is a morning ritual. Mike grins as both Naseem and Baseer shadow me around the abundant islands of food laid out on crisp tablecloths. Fruit cascades among glittering ice. Bread and croissants nestle in baskets. On a separate island there are heated containers.

‘This, halwa puri cholay, mem,’ Naseem tells me. ‘It is Pakistani breakfast. Sweet halwa, spicy chickpeas, hot crunchy puris …’

I smile at him. ‘I don’t think I’m quite ready for a Pakistani breakfast yet, Naseem.’

Naseem smiles back. Like Noor, he has the startling green eyes of a Pashtun. I choose fruit, fresh yogurt and order a delicious coriander omelette.

I seem to be the only woman in the restaurant this morning. I am conscious of curious eyes of both waiters and businessmen following me around. It makes me self-conscious. Mike glances at me.

‘Anyone new and foreign is interesting for the staff here. You’ll get used to it …’

The restaurant looks down on the garden where an empty swimming pool glitters invitingly. Small tables are dotted about under the trees in the shade.

I watch a pool boy below us fishing leaves out of the pool with a long net. The garden is empty and the scene as peaceful as a painting.

When we go down the steps into the garden the pool boy rushes over with towels to place on our loungers.

‘This is Zakawi,’ Mike says.

Zakawi beams at me. ‘Mem, you like shade?’

‘Please.’ I smile as he fusses with the towels and the angle of the lounger.

‘Let’s swim while it’s early and the pool’s empty. The garden will fill up later and I know you have reservations about baring your limbs.’

I walk across the grass to the changing room. I do have reservations. Mike has told me that although diplomats and embassy staff come to swim, Muslim women stay covered and out of the water. I bought a very conservative black swimsuit, not unlike the one I wore at school. I cover up again in my linen trousers and top to walk back across the grass. By the time I reach Mike I am so hot nothing would have stopped me jumping into the water.

‘Wrap yourself in your towel and leave it on the edge of the pool,’ Mike says, encouragingly.

I move as fast as I can into the water and sigh as it envelops me.

‘Bliss. Oh bliss.’

Mike swims away from me and turns on his back and looks at his watch.

‘It’s only nine fifteen and humid already. It’s going to be baking. You will have to be careful, Gabby.’

We swim contentedly up and down the small pool stopping to chat every now and then. All feels so well with my world. I close my eyes against the blue, blue cloudless sky and smile. I so nearly did not come.

Mike climbs out and stands on the steps of the pool and wraps my towel around me. Why couldn’t he have shown me these small acts of affection in front of Will and Matteo? It would have reassured them.

Mike says, ‘Dry off and then we should go inside. You need to get used to the heat slowly. We’ll come back down after four when the temperature has dropped.’

I last another half an hour and then we make a dash for the air-conditioning. Mike has a meeting with two of his colleagues in the coffee lounge and I answer work emails and Skype Will and Matteo.

It is New Year’s Eve and I see they have a houseful already. I check Emily is staying over, as we arranged. The boys do not resent this as they consider Emily cool.

‘What do you think of Karachi then, Mum?’ Matt asks.

‘The drive to the hotel was terrifying and fascinating at the same time, but I haven’t been out of the hotel yet.’

‘Are you partying tonight?’

‘We’re going into Karachi for an early meal with some friends of your dad’s. There will be no drinking, though.’

Will grins. ‘No danger of not drinking here. Stay safe, Mum. Say hi to Dad.’

I make my usual speech about the dangers of going out drinking in London on New Year’s Eve and send love to Emily and her new boyfriend who are in the early phase of mutual infatuation and are happy to stay in, house-sitting.

It is late afternoon and the garden is now almost deserted. Mike is on a lounger beside me reading a book. There is the rustle of a breeze against some palm trees and the sound of running water from a small fountain in the courtyard by the steps.

Beyond the wall the distant traffic growls, but the garden is a small place of calm. I close my book; a huge sun is dropping theatrically from a sky turning dusky pink. Kites wheel and hover overhead, dark shadows circling and swooping in an elegant dance of dusk.

I have sudden, dislocating déjà vu, as if I am watching a film reel of myself. I struggle to hold onto a scent, a sound, a thread of a memory. For a fleeting second I feel a sense of a place lost, a homecoming: a sensory moment before dark when the world falls still.

When birds call out and fly low into the tamarisk trees on the edge of the coastal path. When the sun sinks behind streaks of clouds, making a golden path from sea to land. Where, just for an instant, primitive shadows rise from the earth and hover between light and dark and the sliver of lives long gone slip away on the air and evaporate.

In this warm, tropical garden, as a bird calls out a shrill warning and flies into the ivy on the wall, I am standing, a child in the dark by the scarlet camellia tree that sheds its blooms on the lawn like a ruby carpet. I am on the outside looking up at lighted windows where the shadows of people I love move about inside.

I shiver. Mike looks up from his book. ‘Did someone walk over your grave?’ he asks, swinging his legs to the side of the chair.

‘Something like that.’ I turn to him. ‘I had this disturbing feeling I’ve been here before. A flashback, a lost memory that came from nowhere.’

‘Déjà vu.’ Mike smiles. ‘With me, it’s sometimes a place or a building that seems familiar in a country I’ve never been to before. I expect the heat triggered some familiar smell or sense. Do you want another swim before we go up?’

I shake my head. The sun has gone and the poolside is filling up with businessmen staying in the hotel and young Pakistani men showing off to each other.

The lift from the garden basement takes us straight up to our floor, avoiding the foyer. I look at myself in the large lift mirror as the lift takes us up. I look flushed and hot and relaxed. Mike grins at me over my shoulder and pats my wild hair down.

‘You look sexy and happy, Mrs.’

I laugh. Inside the apartment we find a bottle of white wine sitting on the table in a cooler. There is a note from Charlie Wang wishing us a Happy New Year.

‘Charlie must have sent one of the waiters up with a bottle. He’s in Kuala Lumpur with his family for Christmas.’

‘How sweet of him.’

‘Let’s have a quick shower and start our New Year now.’ Mike grabs two glasses. ‘We won’t be able to drink with Shahid and Birjees.’

We stand by the long window looking out at the sun dropping over the rooftops. Mike stands close to me so our shoulders touch.

‘Shall we take our wine to bed?’ he asks softly.

I turn to look at him. ‘What a good idea.’

It is the first time Mike has made love to me this Christmas and I feel a surge of joy in being wanted again, and in the familiarity of our bodies fitting together as they always have. Sex, the wonderful glue of our marriage that means all is well. I stretch and glow with contentment. All is very well.

‘Think you might come to Karachi again?’ Mike asks, propping himself on his elbow and looking down at me.

I smile. ‘Thinking of asking me again? I’d love to come back and explore Karachi properly.’

Mike hesitates. ‘We both have demanding jobs so it’s not going to be easy to plan, but I think this Christmas has shown us both that we need to find ways of spending more time together. The boys are nearly off our hands and that’s when couples drift …’

His mobile bleeps. It is Shahid. I get out of bed to find the wine bottle. The danger of drifting is real. As I cross the floor there is a faint thud and I see a cloud of smoke rising out of the window in the distance. Mike jumps off the bed and comes to the window.

‘Yes …’ he says into the phone. ‘I just heard another explosion and we can see the smoke … No, we can’t risk it. It’s a shame; I wanted you and Birjees to meet Gabby before she went home … Really? If you’re sure it’s safe that would be wonderful, Shahid. Great. We’ll see you later.’

He hangs up. ‘There’s a demonstration going on at the other end of the city,’ he tells me. ‘It’s not safe to drive into the centre. However, Shahid’s going to book a table at a French restaurant this side of town. They’re going to pick us up early because the traffic will be bad later …’ He puts the bottle back in the fridge. ‘Let’s save the last trickle to see the New Year in …’

He adds suddenly, ‘Thank you for coming on to Karachi to see the New Year in with me. I know you wanted to go back to London with the boys. You always worry about them on New Year’s Eve …’

I look at him, surprised. ‘I do, but I’m glad I came, Mike. I can visualize you wandering round this faded apartment like a deposed potentate when I’m back in London.’

Mike laughs and I go to change. I am childishly excited to be going out into the city to meet his friends.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Karachi, New Year’s Eve 2009

The French restaurant has a courtyard with round ironwork tables covered in white tablecloths and chairs with white cushions. It is chic and very French, despite Pakistani waiters and no wine menu. The setting on the edge of Karachi feels a little unreal, like a stage set. Fairy lights are slung in a circle through small trees and the tables beautifully decorated for New Year’s Eve.

Shahid is a tall man with a bushy moustache and kind eyes. Birjees is small and neat with glossy hair and a sweet rather serious face. She wears a beautiful shimmering, pearl grey shalwar kameez and a long flowing dupatta that keeps slipping from her shoulders. The night is cool and we sit outside as guitar music strums softly in the background.

‘Welcome to Karachi, Gabriella.’

‘It’s good to meet you both. I’ve heard so much about you from Mike. You have transformed his life in Karachi.’

Their faces light up and Shahid apologizes for not being able to take me into the centre of Karachi.

‘It is bad luck to have a demonstration tonight of all nights.’

‘I’m just happy to be here. This is perfect,’ I assure him.

‘You’ve brought my wife to a French restaurant!’ Mike jokes. ‘Of course she’s happy.’

A haughty young Pakistani waiter produces huge menus and takes our order for cold drinks. Shahid and Mike exchange amused looks.

‘It’s an art form,’ Mike says. ‘French restaurants must insist on waiters with an innate ability to look down their noses …’

‘Then we will try not to be patronized, Michael,’ Shahid says.

Mike raises his eyebrows. ‘I would like to see him try with Gabby.’

I am already looking at the menu. It looks delicious. I am pleased to see that Shahid and Birjees take the ordering of food as seriously as the French. It takes us all a long time to make up our minds and the young waiter grows irritated, although the restaurant is nearly empty.

When I order our food in French the waiter stops being surly and beams. He tells me his brother is the chef. They both trained and worked in Paris for fifteen years. They were very happy there and only returned home to Karachi because their mother became ill.

As he hurries away with our order, I am struck by the fact that two young men gave up their careers to come home and look after their mother.

‘If a woman does not have husband then the eldest son must, of course, take responsibility for looking after her and family,’ Birjees tells me, looking at me surprised. I do not say that I would hate Will and Matt to give up their lives to look after me.

‘Did you grow up bilingual, Gabby?’ Shahid asks.

‘When I was a child my sister and I always spoke French with my mother and English with my father,’ I tell her. ‘We swapped effortlessly without realizing we were doing it. People would ask us what language we thought in and we never knew …’

Shahid laughs. ‘We Pakistanis do this too. We swap from Urdu to English without realizing it. Michael is sometimes completely lost in meetings!’

‘Very true,’ Mike says.

Our now-smiling waiter places small, decorated glass mugs of cinnamon beer on the table.

‘I should have anticipated some trouble on New Year’s Eve,’ Shahid says. ‘Trouble always comes when the streets are full of people celebrating and enjoying themselves …’

‘We have a son and daughter, both at university,’ Birjees says, her face lighting up at the mention of them. ‘Tonight, because of demonstration, Shahid has told them they must stay home. I have prepared food for them, but they are not happy to be seeing this New Year in with us.’

‘That is understatement, Birjees,’ Shahid says. ‘Samia and Ahsen should take up career in Bollywood. I am very pleased to be here in this peaceful garden for a little while …’

Mike laughs. ‘Don’t get Gabby going on New Year’s Eve dramas. We’ve had a few with our sons …’

When the food comes it is French cooking at its best and delicious. Mike and Shahid pretend not to talk about work. Birjees and I chat about our children and their increasingly electronic lives. Whatever the distance in our lives and our culture, some of our worries appear to be the same. The face of the world has changed forever but the fear of harm coming to our children never changes.

Birjees leans towards me. ‘It is hard for the young to grow up in Karachi at the moment, Gabriella. Each generation, they become more educated and frustrated with religious fanaticism and politics. They have talent and ambition, but there is much nepotism, threat of violence, demonstrations and random electric cuts that disrupt our lives …’ She turns her glass round and round in her fingers. ‘Shahid and I, we pray for things to get better for our children; that everyone will get jobs on merit and not given to son of corrupt official. I pray each morning when my husband and children leave the house, that violence, it will not erupt, that they will all come safe home to me. Each time they return, I give thanks to Allah …’

I stare at her, shocked. How terrible to wake each day to the possibility of violence, to the ever-present fear of something happening to the people you love.

Shahid turns to me. ‘I would like to believe that things will indeed change for my children’s generation, but the truth is, it will take longer. So, Gabriella, I must hope for a safer, less corrupt, less feudal Pakistan for my grandchildren.’

‘The world is becoming increasingly violent and corrupt, so it’s impossible not to fear for the young,’ Mike says. ‘We’ve lost faith in the quality of our leaders. Governments no longer appear to have the will or ability to prevent war and atrocities anywhere …’

‘Come on,’ I say as the mood takes a dip. ‘We all have the capacity to change things and make a more peaceful world. We have to believe that or we may as well jump in the sea. We might not be here to see that better world but our children will …’

I lean towards Birjees. ‘I read fantastic books written by the young from all over the world. They are crammed full of hope and depth and imagination. They are passionate and positive where we have been complacent. They won’t make the same mistakes …’

‘And the truth,’ Mike says, ‘lies somewhere between Gabby’s jolly optimism and my gloomy pessimism …’

Shahid smiles at me. ‘If you do not mind, Mike, I think I will go with Gabriella’s jolly optimism …’

‘I too choose Gabriella’s words, they are the most comforting,’ Birjees says, smiling at me.

‘Can’t think why.’ Mike laughs and raises his glass of cinnamon beer to them.

As we’ve been talking the restaurant has been slowly filling up. Beautifully dressed women float past greeting each other. Young men follow in a wake of perfume. There is noise and laughter and a sudden buzz of excitement in the small courtyard garden.

‘Pakistanis, they love to party,’ Birjees says, taking a keen interest in what everyone is wearing.

‘I can see that!’

She laughs. ‘Oh, Gabriella, I hope you will come back to Karachi. Shahid and I would love to show you many beautiful places in our city …’

She leans forward with sudden intensity. ‘Then you can explain to people in England that in Pakistan it is not all violent extremists but happy, family people who shop and party and create music and art and beauty, just like everyone else …’

How must it feel to live in a country that is so often depicted negatively? How must it feel to long for your country to be defined by the warmth of its people and the beauty of its landscape, not by violence?

I look out at the courtyard blazing with lights and flowers. The air echoes with the rise and fall of excited voices. The evening is pervaded by the simple delight of people happy to be together despite the unrest in their city. Simple joys are so easy to underestimate.

‘Inshallah,’ Birjees says softly, ‘you will come back to Karachi, Gabriella.’

‘Inshallah,’ I reply. ‘I hope so.’

At midnight Mike and I toast the New Year in with a last half glass of wine back at the Shalimar.

‘I think this is one of the nicest New Year’s Eve we’ve had for a long time,’ I tell him.

‘It’s certainly the most abstemious New Year we’ve had for a long time,’ Mike replies as both our phones bleep with Happy New Year texts from our sons.

‘That’s probably ten quid each,’ Mike grumbles.

‘I suppose it’s just as well there isn’t another bottle of wine,’ I say, wistfully. ‘Or I’d be flying home tomorrow with a hangover.’

‘It’s been fun, hasn’t it?’

‘It has. I love Birjees and Shahid. I’m so glad you have them as friends.’

‘They loved you, Gabby. I think they’re already planning your next visit …’ He smiles. ‘We’ll have to juggle round our various work commitments to try to make it happen, won’t we?’

He picks the wine glasses up to take them to the kitchen.

‘Actually, I’m back in London sometime in February for a meeting at Canada House. I’m planning to take a week’s leave. Let’s go somewhere. I’ll send you the dates. Hopefully you can take a few days off. After that, I’ve no idea when I’ll get a break. I’ve got endless conferences in the UAE …’

I smile to myself. It amuses me; Mike’s assumption that his business commitments are sacrosanct while mine can be dropped whenever he gets home. It is partly my fault because I nearly always accommodated him.

In the night I hear Mike’s phone bleep. Then bleep again. After a minute he gets out of bed and pads across to his desk to look at it. When he does not come back to bed I push myself up on my elbow to see where he is.

He is standing very still by the window looking down on the city. I can’t make out his expression but I notice the stress in his shoulders. He looks so alone. I would like to go and place my arms around his waist, lean my head on his back. But I don’t. Mike can be emotionally unpredictable. One minute you think you are close to him, the next he will gently shut a door in your face. I learnt early in my marriage not to be hurt. In a way I understood. I shy away from too much emotion. I never wanted the sort of exhausting marriage my parents had. I used to wonder if my father felt suffocated by Maman’s love and that was why he sloped off to the pub so much.

Mike turns from the window to his desk, picks his phone up and begins to text. After a second he makes an angry noise in the back of his throat and throws the phone down and comes back to bed.

He sees that I am awake. ‘Sorry, did my phone wake you? I should have turned the bloody thing off.’

I smile. ‘You know you never can.’

‘Come here. I’m going to miss you.’

As we lie in the dark, Mike says, ‘It’s silly, but now you’ve been here, in this apartment, in my bed, in Karachi, you’ll feel much nearer to me when you’ve gone …’

I wonder, for a second, if he is trying to convince himself. Then, I think about him standing alone in the window of a foreign city. Something he has done most of his life. I roll towards him. ‘I always miss you,’ I say.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

London, March 2010

I’ve started running again. Running makes me feel more in control. It is a cold dark morning but the leaves will soon unfurl and the world will turn slowly green. I take the path round the lake and my spirit starts to lift. I find my stride and relax into a rhythm. The leaden sky begins to lighten and I think about the day ahead.

January and February have been grim. This is the first time in my working life that a myriad of things have gone wrong at the same time, threatening my reputation. The fact that I had no control over any of them has been unnerving.

One of my authors had a meltdown and wanted to withdraw her book just before publication. One of my translators, in the middle of a messy divorce, got so behind with an important Icelandic thriller he was working on that he missed a vital deadline with devastating consequences. To make matters worse, Emily’s mother died suddenly so she has been away for weeks.

Up to now, I have had a dependable little team and I feel shockingly let down. For an experienced translator not to admit, until the last minute, that he is way behind schedule is totally unprofessional. We all rely on each other. Life happens. If anyone is struggling to cope we can give practical support. Authors and publishers depend on us. We cannot afford stubborn pride. Publication dates are sacrosanct.

Thank goodness that Emily is back; her anger is at least distracting her from the grief of her mother’s death. Managing the office is her domain. I work upstairs and she is so efficient I rarely interfere.

After calling a meeting and stressing the importance of admitting any personal difficulties that might impact on deadlines, Emily and I decided to sack our charming but lazy intern. Having begged us for a job, he has proved averse to mundane tasks. We have caught him on his smartphone during working hours too many times.

As I run round the lake, I wonder if I have become less observant about the people who work with me. Was it male pride or depression that stopped Ayer, my translator, approaching me in time? Have I left too much to Emily? She is extremely competent but not always entirely empathetic to people’s domestic problems.

I had been looking forward to talking to Mike about everything when he came home in February. I thought he would sympathize and offer good advice. He is good at damage limitation, at narrowing down a problem and making it seem smaller. It is what he does for a living. Not this time. He arrived from Karachi irritable, dismissive and bored by my saga.

Despite being aware that I was in the middle of a crisis, he had gone ahead and made plans to go walking in the Malverns without consulting me. I had to tell him going anywhere was out of the question; I had apologetic meetings with publishers and alternative deadlines to set up.

Mike went off in a huff, sailing in Lymington with Jacob for two days, and came back monosyllabic and sullen.

‘I hoped you might have cheered him up a bit,’ I said when Jacob dropped him back home. Mike had gone upstairs to change out of wet trousers. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen him so bad-tempered.’

Jacob snorted. ‘Come on, Gabby, you’ve been married to him long enough. Mike can be impossible if things don’t go his way. In Dubai, we all used to keep out of his way when he was thwarted at work … He really can be a moody bastard sometimes.’

‘That’s why we let him work a long way from home,’ I joke, startled by Jacob’s honesty. ‘Has he told you his problem?’

‘Nope. Just cast a shadow over my sailing trip.’

‘I’m sorry, Jacob.’

Jacob drained his glass. ‘You’ve got nothing to be sorry about …’

He came over and pecked my cheek. ‘I’m off. Don’t take Mike’s behaviour with such good grace, Gabby. He’s bloody lucky to have you. Flora wouldn’t put up with it, or with me working away from home most of the time. Mike can’t expect your world to stop dead when he decides to take leave … I’ll call goodbye to him on my way out …’

He turned at the door. ‘If it’s any comfort, Mike has pissed me off this time too.’

I could hear Mike on his mobile phone, walking up and down on the landing. I wondered who he was talking to, because he was being very charming to whoever it was.

I poured myself a glass of wine and went and looked out of the French windows into the garden. I had been restless ever since returning from Pakistan. I looked at the tiny wild cyclamen under the magnolia tree and realized that I could not wait for Mike to go back to Karachi.

‘You do realize that this has been a total waste of my leave,’ Mike said, coming down the stairs, leaving his charm on the landing.

I did not answer. I try to avoid rows. It achieves nothing; it just brings out the worst. I had watched Maman, a master class in wasted emotion.

Mike got a beer out of the fridge. ‘Do you really think your little empire would have toppled if you had spent a couple of days away with me? I don’t ask much of you.’

I turned to look at him. ‘You ask quite a lot, actually. You just don’t recognize it. For the first time in my life, Mike, I don’t like you very much. In fact, I can’t wait for you to get on a plane back to Pakistan …’

Mike looked shocked as I turned and walked out of the room. I had never challenged him on his moods before, but I had had enough. It was the only time, apart from when my parents died, that I had ever needed his support.

Mike slept in the spare room and when I woke he had already left to catch his flight. I had a sick hole in my stomach that he had left on a bad note, that we had not even said goodbye. But I was relieved he had gone.

I stop now by the green oak to stretch my legs. We have not spoken since he got back to Karachi. He sent me a short message to tell me that he was off to Abu Dhabi for an exhibition for airline software and I politely acknowledged his email.

Luckily, I am so busy that I don’t have much time to think about Mike. Work life is improving. I have persuaded my panicky French author that her book is wonderful and a joy to translate. Kate and Hugh have convinced me that I have an excellent record and one hiccup isn’t going to send the whole publishing world scurrying for translators elsewhere. Best of all, Dominique is in London delivering her wedding dress, and she is going to spend the night with me. We will have the house all to ourselves. It does not often happen and I can’t wait.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

London, 2010

I stare down at a photo of Dominique’s completed wedding dress. It is stunning. Simple. No froth or flounce. Just a plain cream dress with petal-shaped sleeves and side panels containing hundreds of tiny shells sewn into the material.

‘I can’t quite believe I have done the final fitting and delivered it,’ Dominique says. ‘It’s been such a mammoth task.’

‘It must have been,’ I say, feeling emotional at my sister’s talent. ‘It’s breathtaking.’ I look down at the pretty smiling girl wearing Dominique’s creation. ‘She looks sublime in it. She must have been thrilled to bits.’

Dominique smiles. ‘Ellie was speechless. Her mother, Theresa, was not. She wanted her daughter floating down the aisle in yards of froth and tulle à la Princess Di. Then, one day, when I was doing a fitting, the poor girl burst into tears and told me all she wanted was a small wedding, in a simple dress, with close friends.

‘I promised her I’d make her a dress she loved, but one that was exotic enough to please her mother. It was all clandestine. Ellie came to Paris for secret fittings. I needed to cut the dress precisely so that it hung and moved with her. The panel of shells was a sudden inspiration …’

‘They must have taken weeks.’

‘They were a nightmare. There were six of us doing shifts in the end, wearing special white gloves and losing the will to live.’

‘What if the mother had ranted and raved and refused to pay for a dress she didn’t ask for?’

Dominique laughs. ‘I had Plan B, a frothy, emergency creation that I knew I could sell elsewhere, but when Ellie put the dress on Theresa just melted …’

I hug my sister. ‘I am so proud of you, Dom. You should be a wealthy woman with your talent.’

‘I do okay, Gabby. Compared to how life used to be I feel wealthy. I’m content as I am. I have loyal women working for me, I don’t want to expand and Theresa was so delighted she gave me a generous bonus on top of my fee in the end.’

‘Fantastic! So she should …! I’ve got a bottle of champagne somewhere …’

Dominique smiles at me, her old lovely smile. ‘No need to go overboard, darling.’

‘This is a celebration. How often do I get to see my sister like this? You hardly ever stay with me and it’s wonderful …’

Dominique stretches and sighs. ‘It’s perfect, darling, just what I need. Now, come on, your news. You said you had an awful February?’

I give her the story of author meltdown, Icelandic divorce and Emily’s bereavement.

‘Oh dear!’ she says. ‘Did you say Mike was back in February too?’

‘Yes, but it was impossible to take any time off. I had no Emily and I was bang in the middle of damage limitation. I’ve never had to let any publisher or agent down before and it’s especially mortifying when some of them are your friends …’

‘Poor you.’ Then she adds carefully, ‘Did Mike understand?’

‘No,’ I say before I can stop myself. I am still raw but I rein myself in. I can’t give Dominique an opening; it would make me feel guilty and disloyal. I pop the cork and fill our glasses. ‘To you, Dom!’

‘To a better month for you, Gabby! I’m sorry it’s been tough.’

The evening sun is sliding across the patio. I fill two bowls with crisps and nuts and we pull sweaters on and go and sit on the garden bench so Dominique can smoke. The magnolia tree is out and the faint musty scent of the waxy blooms wafts over.

I smile. In Cornwall the …

‘I miss the sea,’ Dominique says as if she can read my mind. ‘That blur of blue everywhere you turn …’

‘The hawthorn and gorse will be coming out now …’

Great frothy white bushes and low-lying yellow gorse shimmering over the cliffs and smelling of …

‘… marzipan filling the air and giving us constant hay fever …’ Dominique says and we both laugh.

‘When I’m homesick I walk the coastal path. I can remember every stile, kissing gate and muddy path from our house to Priest’s Cove …’ I tell her.

‘Forbidden Beach. That’s where I go.’

‘I wonder if the secret path down through the hawthorn tunnel is still there?’

‘Do you remember the tiny shells brought in by storms we sometimes found in the rock pools?’

‘Is that what gave you the idea for the wedding dress?’

‘Perhaps. Subconsciously. When I need inspiration I go back to the sea in my head. It gives me the illusion of space and freedom. At night a city is never still. Nothing stops. Do you remember that particular silence? Sitting in a field in an absence of anything but birdsong and the swoosh of the sea?’

‘I remember,’ I say and hear the sadness in my voice. ‘How small silence made you feel. I remember that beautiful fox as big as a Labrador and the buzzards weaving and diving over the cliffs …’

I remember the seals off the rocks and the spine-tingling howl a mother seal sometimes makes when they lose their young. I don’t say this, I can’t say this, for the howl is banging around inside me for the things Dominique and I seem never to be able to talk about. Even though Maman and Papa are dead we never address the elephant in the room: the catastrophic end of our idyllic childhood together.

The sun slides behind buildings leaving charcoal and pink clouds. We are in shadow. We shiver, pick up the glasses and bowls and go inside.

‘Mushroom omelette?’

‘Lovely.’

As Dominique prepares the salad for me I glance at her face. Her dark hair is pulled back in a ponytail revealing an intent expression I know well. She wants to tell me something. It is a long time since we have been together like this, without Mike, without our children.

I slide two fluffy omelettes onto plates and Dominique pours more champagne.

‘Let’s finish the bottle? It is Sunday tomorrow.’

‘Dominique?’ I ask, suddenly. ‘You wanted to go to Cornwall last year. Shall we plan a trip back together? Maybe see what the new owner has done to our house?’

‘No, Gabby.’ Dominique shakes her head. ‘The moment has gone, darling. I’m planning a trip to New York to see the girls in June.’

‘Oh. That’s wonderful,’ I say, deflated. ‘Are they both okay?’

Aimee, Dominique’s eldest, is a paediatrician and expecting her first child with her American husband. Cecile is living with a musician in Manhattan and doing a PhD in something obscure.

Their Turkish father walked out on Dominique when she produced a second girl. Despite the rackety, uncertain lifestyle Dominique used to live, the three of them are very close.

‘Are you staying with Aimee?’ I ask.

‘I’m staying with Cecile for the first week. She’s taking me on a surprise holiday. Then I am going to Aimee. I’d like to be there when she gives birth, but we’ll see. I don’t want to outstay my welcome.’

I smile. ‘I can’t believe you’re going to be a granny! Seeing the girls is just what you need after the Marathon Dress.’

Dominique puts her fork down and stares at me. ‘Actually, Gabby, I’m … I’m …’

I catch a sudden bleakness in her eyes. ‘Dom? What is it? Tell me. I know something’s worrying you …’

She hesitates. I hold my breath. Tell me. But my sister closes her eyes, sighs and changes her mind.

‘Pff! I’m getting maudlin. It’s the champagne …’ She smiles at me. ‘At least, I can promise the girls I will be a better grandmother than I was a mother. I have so many regrets for what I put them through.’

‘Look how they have both turned out. You can’t have got it all wrong. You know they love you to bits.’

‘They seem to, don’t they?’ She holds her glass up and meets my eyes. ‘Don’t let’s delve into my past and spoil our evening together. It’s been lovely, Gabby.’

The moment has passed, as it always does. ‘It has been lovely.’ We clink glasses. ‘We must try to do this more often …’

Dominique laughs and glances over my shoulder. ‘Oh! I just saw a fat little piggy fly by …’

In the morning Dominique and I are both hungover. I drive her to Gatwick to catch her plane back to Paris. As we say goodbye I realize how much weight she has lost. She was wearing a loose dress last night so it was hard to see. She looks smaller and frailer this morning, and I feel a stab of fear.

‘You’re losing weight, Dominique. Are you ill? Is that what you were trying to tell me?’

‘Pff!’ She raises her eyebrows in amusement. ‘I’m not ill. You’ve just got used to me being fat …’

‘I don’t like you being this thin …’

‘I will be fat again after I have been to America …’ She touches my cheek. ‘Don’t worry, darling, I’m afraid I’ve got to the age when a hangover is not a good look …’

I hug her. ‘Have a wonderful holiday with the girls …’

Dominique holds me away from her. ‘Gabby, you have too much work and not enough play in your life at the moment. Grab some excitement for yourself while you’re young enough to enjoy it. Your husband certainly seems to …’

And with that cryptic remark she is gone, threading through the crowds.

As I drive past a sign for Paddington Station I experience the old, nostalgic pull for Cornwall. I have an irrational urge to leave everything behind and jump on the Cornish Riviera to Penzance. Except, of course, there will be no one waiting for me at the other end.

It lies, the landscape of my childhood, rooted behind my eyelids. Iridescent blue skies; foaming peacock seas against floating hills of white hawthorn; hedgerows crammed with tiny wild flowers. Silver-winged terns rising from cabbage fields with the precision of a Red Arrows acrobatic team. Vicious winds hitting the house head on, creeping through every crack. All embedded into my being; an internal map of home, waiting for me to revisit, not empty rooms, but happy ghosts before the fall.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

London, 2010

I wake in the night with a start. Someone is in the house. I lie motionless with my heart hammering. My mobile is in the kitchen.

I can hear someone moving about downstairs. For a second I wonder if I am in the middle of a nightmare. But the light on the landing shines in an arc through the doorway. I am awake and this is real.

Someone once told me that if you ever hear someone in your house you should stay in bed and pretend you are asleep. You’ll lose possessions but you won’t be raped. I need to be upright. I leap out of bed in one movement, open the wardrobe and take out Mike’s old cricket bat.

I stop and listen. Silence. I go to the door and look out onto the landing. I can hear someone in the kitchen. I grip the bat, and, to give myself courage, I start to yell as I run downstairs, ‘Get out! Get out of my house!’

I reach the bottom of the stairs and raise the bat. The kitchen light snaps on and Mike calls out, ‘It’s me, Gabby! It’s okay! It’s me!’

His startled face appears in the doorway and he looks even more unnerved as he sees me wielding his cricket bat. Then he begins to laugh.

I am furious. ‘What the hell are you doing creeping about in the dark? I was scared to death. Why didn’t you call out? Why didn’t you let me know you were coming? You stupid, stupid, irresponsible … idiot. You should have let me know … you …’

I throw the bat on the kitchen floor and burst into tears of rage and relief.

Mike looks stricken and rushes towards me and puts his arms around me. ‘Gabby, sorry, sorry. I didn’t mean to frighten you. I sent you a text to say I would be arriving in the middle of the night and I’d try not to wake you. I should have put the lights on and called out. Come on … it’s all right … I just gave you a terrible fright …’

I can’t stop shaking and Mike runs upstairs, gets my dressing gown and folds me into it, then sits me down at the kitchen table.

‘I’m going to make you a hot chocolate.’ He opens the fridge door and takes out the milk. Finds a pan. Bewildered, I wrap my arms around myself.

‘What on earth are you doing home?’

Mike turns from the stove. ‘I was in Dubai for a meeting. At the airport I saw there was a flight straight to Heathrow. I decided to jump on it and come home for forty-eight hours instead of catching the flight back to Karachi …’

He measures the milk into the pan and gets the hot chocolate out of the cupboard. His movements are slow and deliberate. There is tenseness in his shoulders. He is conscious of me watching him as the milk heats.

‘Why?’ I ask.

Mike pours the milk into the two mugs, stirs the hot chocolate round and round and brings it to the table. ‘This will warm you up.’

He sits opposite me. ‘You know why. It’s the first time in our whole married life that you haven’t emailed or phoned me when I’ve flown away. You always want to know that I’ve arrived safely. Not this time.’

I place my hands round my mug.

‘I’m home, to say I’m sorry for being crass and selfish and for taking you for granted … as well as being a pompous arse …’

I smile despite myself.

‘I’ve been wretched, Gabby. I don’t know what got into me. I know I crossed a boundary. You’ve never given me the silent treatment before.’

‘I’ve never needed you more than I did the week you were home but you could not have been less interested. That hurt, Mike.’

He grimaces. ‘I had this plan, a desperate need, to take you to a lovely hotel and spend a couple of days walking in the country with you. Karachi can be claustrophobic. I behaved like a disappointed, spoilt brat when I realized it wasn’t going to happen …’

‘Because it’s always about you, Mike. You’re so used to me dropping everything to fit in with you.’

‘It’s true,’ Mike says. ‘I’ve realized that.’

‘Why didn’t you try to explain how you felt instead of getting angry?’

‘I wasn’t in an explaining mood, was I?’

‘No, you weren’t.’

‘I’ve flown a long way to apologize, Gabby.’

‘Yes. That does amaze me. The trouble is you didn’t just hurt me, Mike, you made me see how little importance you put on my life and work. My business is something I’ve built up and treasured while you spent years away. I’ve always thought you were proud of what I did, but last week I realized that it was an illusion. You see my work as a convenient hobby to keep me busy while you’re pursuing your career and something to be dropped when you come home. You were casually dismissing my life’s work by not caring if it failed …’

Mike stares at me. ‘Can you really believe I don’t value your life and all you’ve achieved? How can you think that? Of course I’m proud of you …’ He turns away. ‘Would I fly back to apologize to you if I did not value you? I know I can be difficult and I don’t often say it, but I do love you and the boys …’ He hesitates. ‘Gabby, you said the other week that you didn’t like me very much. That shook me. I don’t like the person I’m in danger of becoming. We need to find a way to spend more time together.’

He smiles at me. ‘I’ve got a little proposition to make … but it’s late and we’re both exhausted. Let’s finish this conversation in the morning.’

‘Well, I’m not going to sleep now, am I?’ I say. But, somehow I do.

In the morning Mike makes coffee and toast and brings it up to bed on the big wooden tray. Unnerved, I sit up against the pillows. ‘Proposition?’

‘I realize the timing is far from brilliant, especially with the problems you’ve been having at work. It might also seem selfish and self-serving, so, all I’m asking is that you think about it when I go back to Karachi tomorrow …’

‘For goodness’ sake, Mike, tell me.’

‘Charlie has offered me a newly renovated apartment in the Shalimar. How about coming out and living with me in Karachi? There’s good Internet access. You could work from an apartment in Pakistan, couldn’t you, like you do from home? There are regular flights between Karachi and London. You could fly home for meetings or to see the boys anytime you wanted. I don’t want to be on my own in Karachi any more, Gabby.’

I stare at him, startled. Mike takes a swig of coffee. His long hands with their scattering of dark hairs move nervously. I have never seen him strung out like this.

‘Is it such a preposterous and unrealistic idea, Gabby? Please say something.’

I am thinking. A deep excitement is stirring inside me, but so is a vague sense of unease. This is so sudden a change. Mike is Mike. Instinct tells me something else might be powering all this emotion.

‘What’s brought all this on, Mike? Why now?’

‘Life,’ he says, meeting my eyes. ‘Middle-age; the sudden consciousness of time passing; a difficult job in a country where I have to watch everything I say …’ He smiles. ‘And I can’t run off my frustrations in a park. I don’t want the sort of rift we had to become a gulf because we’re living apart. I’ve just been offered a lovely apartment and I’d like to share it with you …’

A blackbird is singing out in the garden, a beautiful sound that gives Mike’s honesty a touching resonance. These words will not have come easily and I recognize not just the love behind them, but the vulnerability, in both of us.

Until Mike spoke I had not realized how tired I am of the predictability of the life I have. The thought of going on and on in exactly the same way until I retire makes me limp with ennui. I do not know why this has slyly crept up on me, but it has.

Mike has never been so open with me. He has never asked me to share his life. Never faltered in self-confidence or wearied of living and working on his own.

‘Have you thought this through, Mike? You’ve always preferred not to have me with you when you are working so you can concentrate on the job.’

‘I’m always going to put in the hours, Gabby. I’m always going to get tired and crabby. The point is, you would not be on holiday, you would have your own work, your own routine …’ He smiles. ‘I saw how you were at New Year with Birjees and Shahid. You are eminently capable of making friends and having a little life of your own in Pakistan …’

‘But there’s a huge difference in coming for a short time and living there permanently. I would be entirely dependent on others to go out and explore, Mike. Wouldn’t it be better for me just to come out to Karachi regularly? I can still bring my work.’

‘No,’ he says quickly. ‘It would defeat the object. I want to establish you out there as my wife. You will have access to Noor and security. It means we can take off together at a moment’s notice; explore as much of Pakistan as we can.’ He pauses.

A little path is opening up where I least expected it.

‘I need you with me to keep me sane, Gabby,’ Mike says.

As we hold onto each other I feel my heart soar with the sudden possibilities for a different life. Emily can run the office blindfold. I can translate books anywhere. We have the Internet. Long-distance flights make the world smaller and our lives simpler. I can fly home to be with the boys in a few hours …

Inshallah, you will return, Gabriella.

I laugh. It’s not much of a decision.

PART TWO

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Flight to Karachi, April 2010

The aircraft cabin is hushed and dark when I wake. I lie listening to the sound of people turning and sleeping, coughing and snuffling. The hushed voices of the crew chatting in Urdu rise and fall in a distant, hypnotic rhythm from beyond the curtain.

It must be near dawn. I lift the window blind. The sun is edging over the horizon and spreading gold light over the stark, brown mountains of Afghanistan. Iridescent colour flickers across the shadows of a vast, empty landscape.

I feel suspended between worlds, hovering over unknown territories. I am looking down on a hostile, unforgiving land of death and apricot orchards. Down there, in the red dust, NATO soldiers are defusing bombs and losing limbs in the fight against the Taliban. I think of all the people living their lives against insuperable odds amongst those sharp mountains and hidden valleys. Thousands and thousands of miles of uninhabited land where there are no trees, where nothing moves.

I think of Emily in my house back in London. Her bright patchwork throw over my bed, her possessions scattered around my home. It all feels unreal. I have a moment of heart-thumping panic. What am I doing? Everything I know is back in the UK: my sons, my friends, my work, my whole life.

The plane turns. The interior lights go on. Blinds are lifted to view the new day coming to life outside. A flight attendant in an unflattering shalwar kameez is handing out landing cards as we fly over an unseen border into Pakistan. I wrap my arms around myself. I have taken a risk. I am making a leap into the unknown, with Mike and with Pakistan.

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