a bump onto a low wall. He was crouching over her, his arm still around her shoulders, his breath warm on her cheek. His body ran solid and safe down her side.
‘Ellie?’
She managed to part her glued eyes a crack. She was off the road now, looking back at a chaos of figures, some running, some crouching, dazed, on the central reservation, others curled on the ground, still and bloodied. Fresh police sirens, distant, started to wail. A young police officer was rushed past, carried by colleagues, his legs hanging limp, spilt blood stiffening his moustache.
‘Can you hear me?’
She forced herself to turn her head and looked into his face. It hung, eyes large with concern, in her vision. Him? She blinked, tried to swallow down the nausea, to focus. No. Impossible. She closed her eyes again, breathing thickly. A moment later, she tried again, forcing open her eyelids and peering at him. ‘Frank?’
‘Hey.’ His mouth broke into a smile, showing neat, whitened teeth. Lines fanned into cracks around his eyes. ‘Who’d you expect?’
The office was brightly lit and chill with air conditioning. The cut above her eye was painful. The sheen of sweat on her skin found its way into scratches and made them sting. Frank had half-carried her across a short hallway and now she was sitting in a hard plastic chair, sagging backwards, her head propped against a wall beneath a giant corporate logo which read: FOOD 4 ALL. She closed her eyes. People rushed round her, fussing and exclaiming. Her head throbbed.
Frank was at her side again. ‘Mind if I take a look?’ He eased her head back with gentle hands, swabbing her face and eye. Cotton, cool and wet. A trickle of water ran down her cheek and the curve of her throat and she lifted her hand to it. A moment later, the lids of her puffy eye sprang apart, freed. His face was close to hers, his lips pursed as he concentrated, assessing her cuts and bruises.
His hair, dishevelled, was completely white at the temples. Beyond them, it was streaked with grey. Middle age had rounded out his cheeks. But his eyes were the same, as intense as she remembered. When he looked directly at her, she could still see the young man of twenty he had once been.
‘You’ll live.’ His expression was amused. ‘No real damage.’ He squeezed sticky white ointment from a tube and dabbed it over her eye, then shook two tablets into her hand and gave her a paper cone of water to swallow them down. ‘Sit there, would you? Five minutes and I’m done.’
She didn’t argue. A young woman brought her a cup of sweet, milky Pakistani tea. Two tea bags were stewing inside, strings thrown out over the brim like lifelines. She sipped it, looking round. FOOD 4 ALL’s offices were cramped, with temporary partitions and an air of chaos. Large colour posters on the walls showed images of needy children with big eyes and babies squirming in their mother’s arms. Cardboard boxes of supplies were stacked along a side wall: oral rehydration salts, blankets and high-protein biscuits. The mix of English and Chinese characters on the packaging suggested it was all from China.
A television on a stand in one corner flickered, its sound muted. A Pakistani news channel was interviewing its reporter live from the scene of the demonstration. They’d named the item Chaos in the Capital. The reporter was standing in front of a pile of smouldering tyres, making the most of the dregs of the violence. The black smoke rose calmly, almost wistful as it billowed and gently dispersed. The street behind was littered with debris – the remnants of trampled placards, a torn shirt, a lost shoe. She wondered how honest the reporter was and if he’d placed them there himself. Around him, the sun was already losing its power. Dark pools glistened on the surface of the road. Blood perhaps, or just oil. To one side, almost out of shot, riot police were clambering back into their vehicles and pulling away.
A written commentary ran across the bottom of the screen: Home Minister condemns violence, blames opposition for illegal protest. Opposition leaders slam police, label action heavy-handed. Three thousand demonstrators, say police. An underestimate, she thought. Scores injured, organizers claim.
Frank reappeared. ‘How’re you doing?’ He leant past her for his bag, a battered leather case thrown on its side. If someone had asked her what Frank smelt like, she would have thought them crazy. But now, as he bent close, a hint of his old, familiar smell caught her unawares, hit the pit of her stomach. Warm and floury, like crumbled biscuit, cut with a Christmassy spice. Aftershave, perhaps. She stared after him as he moved away without waiting for an answer, bag swinging from his hand.
He was finishing off his day, hanging around the doorway of each small sub-office, asking questions, issuing instructions. She sat quietly, watching him, glad to be still and adjusting to the sight of him again.
As he strode back to her, he winked and made her smile. ‘Come on, Ellie.’ He reached down and hoisted her to her feet. ‘Let’s get you home.
The guesthouse where Ellen was staying was just outside Islamabad and a welcome escape from the city. It was early evening by the time Frank drove her through the gates. Upstairs, in her room, she showed him where she hid her bottles of gin and tonic, pointed him to the small fridge for ice, and let him fix the drinks. They sat outside to drink them, side by side on the first-floor terrace, warming themselves in the mellow gleam of the falling sun. She rocked her glass against her face, cooling her swollen skin.
He slipped off his sandals and propped his feet on the rail. They were sunburnt, red with white stripes where the leather had been.
She looked out past his toes to the tips of Islamabad’s tallest buildings, just visible in the natural basin below. The tiles on the domes of the mosques glittered in the dying light. It was peaceful here, removed. She glanced at Frank. His strong Roman nose was more prominent than she’d remembered, the chin now soft with flesh.
‘So . . . ’ She looked into her glass. ‘Still do-gooding?’
‘You mean, actually making a difference to people.’ His tone was bantering but she sensed bitterness. ‘As opposed to stirring up trouble.’
She felt stung. ‘No fan of journalism then?’
‘Course I am. Huge.’
They sat in silence for a moment. She didn’t know what to say, where to start. Her mind was weighted by exhaustion. When she closed her eyes, she saw stamping feet, bloody faces trapped in the crowd. She’d been lucky to get out. She thought of his hand, reaching for her.
‘How come you were there?’
He didn’t answer for a minute, then threw back his head and laughed. It was a forced laugh, mirthless. ‘You’d like to think that, wouldn’t you? That I’ve been following you around the world, staking you out, waiting for a chance to save you.’
She shook her head. ‘I didn’t—’
He lifted his feet from the rail. For a moment, he seemed about to leave, then he rearranged his ankles and settled again, sipped his drink. ‘I was heading for the office, that’s all. Stopped to watch the fun. And there you were.’
‘There I was.’
His voice was the same. Lush and chocolaty and lazy with American vowels. It had seemed so exotic to her when they were students.
‘You look just the same,’ he said. ‘Haven’t changed a bit.’
She put her hand to her sore, battered face. ‘I’ve changed.’ He’d aged too.
Another silence. They
