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.
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.
