Shahid says, ‘Here I must say goodbye. Go, go quickly my friends …’
Wordlessly, we clutch his hand and run after Mahsood. In Pakistan women and men are searched in separate areas. I have to go off into a cubicle to be frisked. The Pakistani girls, who do the cursory body check, seem more interested in where I bought my dupatta, but I am by now so paranoid and hyped-up I expect to be stopped at any moment.
My cases slide through the X-ray machine and I join the women’s queue for the last security check. I take off my sandals and belt. My handbag and laptop are checked once more. Nervous women with small children and countless bags and buckles and layers of clothes make this slow progress.
I am hyperventilating. This is the only part of airport security Mahsood cannot fast-track or influence. Then, suddenly, I am through and out the other side with Mike. Mahsood gallops us towards the business lounge. He is tense and sweating.
My flight is called first and Mike cannot hide his distress.
‘Go quickly, just get on that plane, darling. I’ll ring you from Dubai …’
Now, I am running with Mahsood down the long concourse to the lip of the plane and my heart is pounding. He hands me over, with visible relief, to a flight attendant and gives her rapid instructions.
I hold out my hand to him. ‘Mahsood, thank you, thank you. I hope you will not be in trouble.’
With a flicker of the first smile I have ever seen from him, Mahsood gently takes my hand.
I fall into my seat stiff with fear and anxiety. I make myself breathe. In. Out. In. Out. Passengers file in and find their seats. My bags are stowed away in the overhead locker. The engines start to rev. A flight attendant bends to me. She has a message for me and I freeze. She smiles. ‘Your husband, he is on board flight 21090 for Dubai.’
I close my eyes with relief as the doors of the plane finally shut with a clunk.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
Karachi, 2010
We taxi slowly along the runway. I look out of the window at the receding airport buildings and stacked planes. The chatter of passengers’ voices flows around me in warm circles of sound. A flight attendant gives me fresh juice and a hot flannel. My iPod and book lie on the empty seat beside me.
The engines rev up for take-off. The plane roars along the runway and we are airborne. I let my breath out, open my eyes and press my nose to the window to catch my last glimpse of Karachi lying below.
Flattened houses spread out in clusters across the baked earth, a ribbon of road snakes towards the city. Featureless, Lego buildings disappear into cloud. Nothing feels benign anymore. It is a horrible way to leave Pakistan. It is only when Karachi disappears behind me that I slump back against my seat and begin to shake.
I feel a touch on my arm. I look up and see Sergei Orlov.
‘Gabriella!’ he says, smiling down at me. ‘I have asked if I may change my seat to sit beside you. Would that be acceptable to you?’
Astonished to see him, I nod. The Pakistani flight attendant is hovering to make sure he is not bothering me. I lift my things from the spare seat and Sergei lowers his large frame beside me as his hand luggage is stowed above us. I am unsure if I am up to conversation.
‘My driver got caught in traffic. I nearly missed the plane,’ Sergei says. ‘How wonderful that I spot you for this long, boring day journey to London.’
To my horror tears spring to my eyes. I turn away from Sergei to the window, struggling and furious with myself. Sergei takes two sets of headphones from the male attendant and continues chatting as if he has not noticed.
‘Let us see, what awful films can we watch to pass the time. We will never see the end of course … the crew will shut it off to serve a meal or land the plane and we will leave never knowing the end of a story and it will haunt us for the rest of our lives, requiring some sort of counselling …’
Sergei keeps talking rubbish until I have control of myself and start to smile.
‘Gabriella. I am sorry. Of course I’ve heard about you and Michael. Also, I see him in the airport. He looked terrible, as he deserves …’ His voice is gentle. ‘My mother used to say, All things will pass. We never believe it, my dear Gabriella, but they do. That is why they become clichés. It is a pity that we cannot drink a bottle of wine together on this journey …’
I think that it’s just as well we can’t. I would get maudlin and cry.
As we fly through fat white clouds hovering over Afghanistan, copious amounts of food are served. Sergei leans towards me.
‘Have you noticed it is always the middle-aged ladies in burqas who eat the most. Are they hungry servants? No, because they would not be travelling in business class. So they must be neglected first wives eating until they burst because they are deprived of hanky-panky by a younger, slimmer wife. What do you think?’
I laugh. ‘They might just be greedy women who can eat all they want on a plane?’
Sergei looks disappointed. ‘Why didn’t I think of that?’
‘Because it is not as interesting as your hypothesis!’ We grin at one another and I go back to picking at my food. Sergei is distracting me and I’m grateful.
By the time the food has been cleared away, I feel exhausted.
‘I’m going to close my eyes for a while,’ I say. I press the button on the armrest and glide blissfully horizontal. Sergei tucks the airline rug round me as if I am a small child, and I feel safe, as if nothing bad can happen on his watch. I don’t sleep but I float, dreamlike, eyes closed, in my own cocoon, suspended in a hum of humanity, warmed by the kindness of someone I don’t really know. I think of Mike alone and heading to a different destination and wonder if he is feeling the same emptiness and suppressed fear of an unknown life ahead.
I float and doze and think of Dominique and wonder how she is. I think of the conversation I would have with my parents if they had been alive.
Come straight home, my bird, Papa would say.
Gabriella, are you sure you can’t put this right. What about the boys? Maman would say.
I think of the pet names Papa called me. I loved them all. My bird, my handsome ducky, sweetie, my lovely girl. I think of the smell of him, sea and dust, wine and tobacco. Oh, sweetheart, he would say, meeting me from the train. Maman’s got your old bed ready. She’s cooking your favourite French mushroom thing …
Chérie, Maman murmurs. You are too thin. Come eat …
I can almost feel the heat of the old Aga on my back as I stand against it. Papa brings me a glass of red wine and we stand together as we always do watching Maman cook …
When I open my eyes the cabin has been darkened and Sergei is reading in rimless glasses. I watch him for a moment. How serious he looks when he is concentrating. Somehow, comfortingly familiar.
Looking back, apart from university, I jumped single-mindedly straight from my parents to a relationship with Mike. Then I had the boys. I’ve never really been truly on my own. Sergei turns and our eyes meet and hold in a small moment of companionship.
‘Hello,’ I say. ‘I’m glad you are still here, Sergei Orlov. Tell me, why are you going to London?’
Sergei takes his glasses off and folds them and operates his seat back to meet mine. ‘I am going to London for a business conference. I am also visiting my lovely daughter who is in London and about to be eighteen. Once, long ago, I loved her English mama and we are still good friends …
‘We have one life, only, Gabriella. I try never to look back on anything or anyone with regret. I look only forward with expectation. I grew up in a violent and unpredictable country and I work in another, so I have learnt to do this …’
‘Tell me about your life. I’m curious.’
Sergei tells me that he is divorced from his wife Katrin who is a teacher and lives in Moscow. ‘This job that I do made me an absent husband and father. When I was offered the post to head IDARA in Karachi, Katrin stayed behind with our two teenage boys. She did not want to put them in boarding school and she was in love with a fe
llow teacher. I understood. Why should my nice wife suffer for the life I want to lead? Now she is settled with her kind, dull husband. My boys are grown and I see them every time I return home. See, very boring life.’
I smile. ‘You found an English girl to love.’
‘Well, I had my beautiful, unplanned daughter.’
‘And the English girl?’ I ask, fascinated.
In the dark people start to stir, to wake from this false, created night. Soon, the Pakistani flight attendant will come to tell us to put our seats upright. The spell of intimacy will be broken. I will no longer be suspended in space with a stranger. I will be forced to move forward and tackle my own future.
‘I met her when I was asked to give a lecture on IDARA at Exeter University. Zoe was interested in IDARA and infatuated by the fact I was a Russian. I was flattered. The next day I left for Brussels. You can guess the rest. The poor girl was pregnant because of a one-night stand with an irresponsible middle-aged Russian. Neither of us would consider an abortion but I was able to give her financial security and support to go on to finish her postgraduate degree. In return she gave me my only daughter, Ellie …’ He smiles. ‘We both love her with equal passion and remain good friends. She is happily married to a doctor and Ellie has two half-brothers …’
Sergei takes my hand and holds it for a moment. ‘So you see, my dear lovely half-Frenchwoman, you will feel better. You too will move on. I do not like to see you sad, and if I might say so, I think Michael is a particularly stupid man …’
I smile and let his hand go. I have the urge to tell him it is not only Michael that has been making me sad, but the lights come on. We push our seats upright, no longer suspended in the dark.
Sergei has managed the impossible, to make me laugh and to make this journey back to London much easier.
We are nearing the end of our journey and England lies somewhere below us. I will catch the Heathrow Express to Paddington and get a taxi to my empty flat. Emily is with an author in Helsinki. Will and Matteo are flotilla sailing round the Greek islands with friends and will not be back until the weekend.
Sergei is filling in an immigration form with his glasses on the end of his nose. Even when he is doing something mundane he seems to emanate a charismatic force. He has enchanted the female flight attendants. He radiates a sheer love of life and a rare ability to make every woman feel special.
I lie back enjoying these last moments of a reprieve in space beside this large Russian. I open my eyes when the plane wheels hit the earth with a shuddering thud.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
London, 2010
At Heathrow Sergei refuses to leave me to battle with hand luggage full of presents and my large case. We catch the Heathrow Express together to Paddington. At the taxi rank he insists on getting into the same taxi so he can see me safely home.
‘Your case is heavy. I do not trust the taxi driver to help you.’
When the taxi stops outside the house I feel a sudden dread of walking up the steps and through the front door. I left my house with so many expectations and am returning with none.
The house smells of closed windows, of other people. I always kept a vase of white lilies on the hall table so the scent would permeate the house.
Sergei lugs my case up to the first floor where I dump my things in the tiny spare room. He looks round the room doubtfully.
‘It is very small, even for a small person,’ he says.
I tell him about Emily renting part of the house from me while I have been away, and explain that I will probably sleep upstairs on the top floor with the boys when I have sorted myself out.
I look around, feeling a stranger in my own house. Emily’s bits and pieces are everywhere, but the house has an air of single occupancy, a place that is slept in but not much lived in. I feel a surge of melancholy. Life, and my house, have moved on without me.
‘I feel a bit like an intruder,’ I say to Sergei, who seems to fill my kitchen.
‘Will you share your lovely house with this Emily or will she look for somewhere else?’
‘I’m not sure, but it’s fine for now … I don’t know what’s going to happen. Maybe the house will have to be sold …’
‘Come, let me take you out to lunch.’ Sergei’s voice is gentle. ‘Unless you have plans or friends to see …’
‘Sergei, please don’t feel …’
‘I see … you are already sick of this Russian. I am boring you …’
I laugh. ‘Of course not! I just thought you might have appointments or things you need to do …’ I feel awkward suddenly, wary of his kindness or his pity.
‘I have nothing until my business conference tomorrow. Tonight, I am staying in the Royal Overseas League. We could drop my bags there and walk from there to Hyde Park and eat by the Serpentine … if you would like?’
I would like. I don’t want to stay in this empty house. I make Sergei a coffee while I have a quick shower and change out of my shalwar kameez. It feels strange to pull on jeans and a pink linen shirt. I grab my bag and we lock up the house full of stale air and too many memories and head for Park Place.
The Overseas Club is rather exotic and heaving with voluble Chinese musicians. While Sergei takes his case up to his room, I sit in the terraced garden with a coffee.
It is a perfect summer day and I feel familiar pleasure as we walk to Hyde Park. We are waiting at traffic lights to cross the road when the sirens start up a spine-chilling howl. Police cars with lights flashing shoot through the red light in front of us as the traffic tries to jerk out of their way. Sergei and I both jump sky high and then remember we are not in Karachi.
‘I love coming to London,’ Sergei says, letting his breath out. ‘It feels good to walk freely, to feel safe.’
I smile. ‘Relatively safe. It’s odd how quickly we get used to being restricted, to not being free to walk wherever we like in Karachi. In the hotel I used to get the running dream. I would be sprinting along sandy beaches … or here, round the Serpentine … It used to feel so real that I’d wake with aching legs and a yearning to run out of the hotel to find grass and open spaces …’
‘For me it is water,’ Sergei says. ‘I dream I am underwater where all is silent. In my life at work, in my house with two servants, there is never silence, but in my dreams I float below the surface of the sea and there is absolute peace …’
England is in the middle of a heatwave and it is a shock to see the parks so dry and yellow, the trees drooping for lack of rain.
‘I can’t remember ever seeing the parks scorched like this,’ I tell him, as we stand and watch the ducks on the lake and the pedal boats full of tourists.
‘There are more women in burqas here than in Karachi,’ Sergei observes. ‘Let us go and find a drink, Gabriella. I feel as if it is a hundred years since I had a glass of wine.’
We find a table outside in the crowded Serpentine restaurant and Sergei orders a bottle of white wine. I think it is an excellent move to get quite drunk. We eat prawns and salad, crusty bread and chilled wine in the heat of the afternoon. With each glass of wine, I feel my anxious thoughts slipping away from me as if they didn’t really matter.
For a second, if I turn, close my eyes and suspend belief, Pakistan will just be a dream, a fragment of my imagination. Not real at all. Mike too, not real. I am not Gabriella Stratton, wife and mother. Nor am I the single, Gabby Nancarrow, I am a quite different woman sitting by the Serpentine with a Russian NGO having a wonderful time.
Sergei bends to me, his face close to mine. Neither of us are entirely sober.
‘What are you thinking, with that little smile of yours, Gabriella?’
‘I’m feeling happy,’ I tell him. ‘Happy in this moment, in this day. You’ve taught me this.’
‘Have I?’ Sergei looks amused.
I nod and his beautiful brown eyes meet mine. I hold them and we are locked together, perfectly still. In silence we pay the bill and walk back across the park. Sergei holds
my hand. I feel very alive and pretty drunk. We go straight up to his room.
Everything about this day feels right. Sergei’s body does not seem strange but like a map I already know. I am neither self-conscious nor inhibited. It seems so long since a man wanted me. As we move together I feel alight, luminous, free.
Sergei murmurs endearments in Russian as we lie sleepily together, the flow of words foreign, their meaning clear. In a wave of powerful emotion I find I am telling him about Dominique and my parents.
Sergei sits up looking shocked. He pushes my hair from my face and lets me talk until I sleep. Every time I wake in the night his arms are wrapped firmly around me.
We sleep late and wake with a start. Sergei leaps out of bed.
‘I have to give a business lecture in hour and a half …’
‘Go, shower! I will call a cab …’
Sergei laughs. ‘It is okay, there is enough time … They cannot start without me …’
In half an hour we are in the same taxi. ‘I want to talk to you as we travel … It gives us a little extra time,’ Sergei says.
‘I’m sorry for suddenly unburdening to you last night. I hope I did not spoil our happy day together …’
Sergei shakes his head at me. ‘My dear Gabriella, if you had left without explaining this sadness inside you, our perfect day with each other would have had less meaning …’
He turns my hand over in his. ‘I hope you will have time to be with your sister, when she is stronger. I hope that you can both talk and listen to each other.’ He hesitates. ‘I do not think your father would have ever forgiven himself. And that is a life sentence. What he did in reparation counts, Gabriella …’
In a flash, I think of the dolls’ houses my father made for the girls and the tiny furniture he carved with his large hands and how Aimee and Cecile would lay their heads on his knee in joy. I think of how unflinchingly he cared for Maman at the end, hardly leaving her side. Carrying her out into the garden so she could feel the sun on her hands and hear the birds in the orchard. Holding her like precious glass, until there was nothing to carry, nothing to hold any more.
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