heart to lose these. Can we check them on your television?’
‘Of course. Julie and I can go to bed if you want privacy.’
‘If it’s okay with you,’ Henry said diffidently, ‘it’s better to share. I mean...Amina needs to...well, her history seems more real to her if she can share. Right now she’s hurting. It would help...if you could watch. I know it’ll be dull for you, other people’s memories, but it might help. The way Amina’s looking... Losing our house. Worrying about me. The baby... It’s taken its toll.’
‘Of course we can watch.’ It was Julie in the doorway behind them. ‘Anything that can help has to be okay by us.’
* * *
The television worked. The USB worked. Ten minutes later they were in Sri Lanka.
In Amina and Henry’s past lives.
The files contained photographs—many, many photographs. Most were amateur snaps, taken at family celebrations, taken at home, a big, assorted group of people whose smiles and laughter reached out across distance and time.
And, as Julie watched her, the stress around Amina’s eyes faded. She was introducing people as if they were here.
‘This is my mother, Aisha, and my older sister Hannah. These two are my brothers. Haija is an architect like you, Rob. He designs offices, wonderful buildings. The last office he designed had a waterfall, three storeys high. It wasn’t built, but, oh, if it had been... And here are my nieces and nephews. And Olivia...’ She was weeping a little but smiling through tears as the photograph of a teenage girl appeared on the screen, laughing, mocking the camera, mischief apparent even from such a time and distance. ‘My little sister Olivia. Oh, she is trouble. She’ll be trouble still. Danny, you remember how I told you Olivia loves trains?’ she demanded of her son. ‘Olivia had a train set, a whole city. She started when she was a tiny child, wanting and wanting trains. “What are you interested in those for?” my father asked. “Trains are for boys.” But Olivia wanted and wanted and finally he bought her a tiny train and a track, and then another. And then our father helped her build such a city. He built a platform she could raise to the roof on chains whenever my mother wanted the space for visitors. Look, here’s a picture.’
And there they were—trains, recorded on video, tiny locomotives chugging through an Alpine village, with snow-covered trees and tiny figures, railway stations, tunnels, mountains, little plastic figures, a businessman in a bowler hat endlessly missing his train...
Danny was entranced but he’d obviously seen it before. ‘Olivia’s trains,’ he said in satisfaction and he was right by the television, pointing to each train. ‘This green one is her favourite. Mama’s Papa gave it to her for her eighth birthday. Mama says when I am eight she’ll try and find a train just like that for me. Isn’t it lucky I’m not eight yet? If Mama had already found my train, it would have been burned.’
‘Do you...still see them?’ Rob asked cautiously.
Amina smiled sadly and shook her head. ‘Our house was bombed. Accidentally, they said, but that’s when Henry and I decided to come here. It’s better here. No bombs.’
‘Bush fires, though,’ Rob said, trying for a smile and, amazingly, Amina smiled back at him, even as she put her hand to her obviously aching back.
‘We can cope with what we have to cope with,’ she said simply. She looked back at the television to where her sister was laughing at her father. Two little steam engines lay crashed on their side on the model track, obviously victims of a fake disaster. ‘You get up and keep going,’ she said simply. ‘What choice is there?’
You can close down, Julie thought. You can roll into a tight ball of controlled pain, unbending only to work. That was what she’d done for four long years.
‘Would you like to see our boys?’ Rob asked and her eyes flew wide. What was he saying? Shock held her immobile and it was as if his voice was coming from the television, not from him. But, ‘I’d like to show you our sons,’ he was saying. ‘They’re not here either, but they’re still in our hearts. It’d be great to share.’
No. No! She wanted to scream it but she couldn’t.
‘Would you like us to see them, Julie?’ Amina asked shyly, tentatively, as if she guessed Julie’s pain. As she must. She’d lost so much herself.
‘We lost our boys in a car accident four years ago,’ Rob told Henry. ‘But it still feels like they’re here.’
‘But it hurts Julie?’ Amina said. ‘To talk about them? To see them? Is it better not?’
Yes, Julie thought. Much better. But then she looked at Rob, and with a shock she realised that his face said it wasn’t better at all.
His expression told her that he longed to talk about them. He longed to show these strangers pictures of his sons, as they’d shown him pictures of their family.
‘It’s up to Jules, though,’ Rob said. ‘Julie, do you know where the disc is of their birthday?’
She did, but she didn’t want to say. She never spoke of the boys. She never looked at their photographs. They were locked inside her, kept, hers. They were dead.
‘Maybe not,’ Amina said, still gently. ‘If Julie doesn’t want to share, that’s her right.’
Share...share her boys... She wanted to say no. She wanted to scream it because the thought almost blindsided her. To talk about them...to say their names out loud...to act as if they still had a place in her life...
To see her boys on the screen...
‘Jules?’ Rob said gently and he crossed the room and stooped and touched her chin with his finger. ‘Up to you, love. Share or not? No pressure.’
But it was pressure, she thought desperately, and it was as if the pressure had been building for years. The containment she’d held herself in was no longer holding.
To share her boys... To share her pain...
Rob’s gaze was on her, calmly watchful. Waiting for the yay or nay.
No pressure.
Share... Share with this man.
A photo session, she thought. That was all he was asking. To see his kids as they’d been when they’d turned two. How hard was that?
‘Don’t do it if it hurts,’ Amina whispered and Julie knew that it would hurt. But suddenly she knew that it’d hurt much more not to.
They were her boys. Hers and Rob’s. And Rob was asking her to share memories, to sit in this room and look at photographs of their kids and let them come to life again, if only on the screen. To introduce them, to talk of them as Amina had talked of her family.
‘I...I’ll get it,’ she said and Rob ran a finger the length of her cheek. His eyes said he did understand what he was asking, and yet he was still asking.
His gaze said he knew her hurt; he shared it. He shared...
She rose and she staggered a little, but Rob was beside her, giving her a swift, hard hug. ‘I
