by Karen Swan
‘That’s precisely the point of godfathers.’
‘You won’t say that when he becomes a teenager and I send him to go and live with you.’ She walked over to the bar area – a small console set up with various spirits and mixers. ‘We thought we’d try gin and Dubonnet tonight. Good for you?’
‘God yeah.’ He sank deeper into the stool. ‘Make mine a double.’
‘Tough day?’
‘Oh man.’ He dropped his head, looking worn out. He’d been made a manager in the summer, a job far more perilous than it ought to have been. ‘We had a stag party from Berlin booked in for a private cruise today. Three got so drunk they jumped into the Herengracht canal and the driver, in trying to fish them out, ended up crashing into the side of 7 Ponti Bridge.’
‘Oh no!’ Mila winced.
‘Oh yes. Structurally it’s fine but it’s more paperwork to deal with. Not to mention, one of the idiots who jumped is now threatening to sue us.’
‘For what?’ Mila cried, outraged.
Noah gave a weary shrug. ‘Reckless endangerment? Negligence? Whatever a lawyer thinks they’ll be able to get away with.’
Lee handed him his drink. ‘Fuckers,’ she said sympathetically.
‘Yeah.’
She went back to her spot on the kitchen table, watching Mila chop. Jasper was jumping around the sofas, swishing his lightsaber dramatically with his shadow.
‘Anyway, how about you, busy lady?’ Noah asked her. ‘I’ve been seeing posters for your upcoming exhibition everywhere.’
‘Have you?’ She felt another spike of nerves.
‘Yeah, me too,’ Mila chipped in. ‘There’s one outside the office.’
‘It’s next week!’ Noah said, incredulous. ‘Aren’t you supposed to be flat out and frantic with last-minute preparations? I’m feeling deeply honoured you’re hosting us tonight.’
‘Well, clearly I’m a woman of limitless capabilities and abundant energy,’ Lee quipped, giving a lackadaisical shrug from her spot rooted on the table. ‘Mila, are you sure I can’t do something?’
Mila shot her a wry look. They all knew Lee’s idea of ‘help’ was to open another bottle.
The sound of the front door slamming shut made them all jump. ‘Relax! I’m here!’ a voice called from downstairs. Lee and Noah both looked over at Mila, who had dropped her knife and was checking under her eyes for smudged mascara.
A moment later, Liam’s handsome face appeared. Blessed with a boyish look, he was tall and lean, with soft light-brown foppish hair and backlit blue eyes; he looked as good in trackies as in a narrow suit and cashmere scarf, and he couldn’t walk down a street without women stopping to turn and stare. He was too pretty for Lee’s tastes but Mila practically wilted in his presence, although thankfully Liam appeared to be unaware of his effect upon their friend. ‘How are we all?’ he grinned, clearly already loosened with a few drinks.
‘Ready to kick off now you’re here,’ Lee replied with a smile. Things were always amusing when Liam was drunk. He had an enviable contacts book and a taste for gossip. As Lee was constantly trying to tell Mila, it was far better being his friend than girlfriend.
‘You look stunning tonight, Mils,’ she heard him saying with a note of surprise. ‘That colour really suits you . . . No, wait – is it the make-up? What’ve you done that’s different?’
Mila tucked her hair behind her ear, blushing madly as Liam scrutinized her, trying to pinpoint the change.
‘Haircut,’ Lee said, putting them all out of their misery.
‘. . . Oh yeah!’ Liam said brightly, before realizing what a dramatic haircut usually signified; God only knew, he’d been behind enough such makeovers himself. ‘Oh Mils, I’m sorry. What was it this time?’
‘A wife.’
‘Ah, babe,’ he said, sweeping her up in a tight platonic hug. ‘He’s a tool not to see what a good thing he had with you. You’re an amazing girl. The best.’
Lee and Noah glanced at each other.
‘He’ll be sorry once he sees that new look on you, I guarantee it.’ Liam put her back down again and looked at the others. On to the next thing. ‘So – who do I have to sleep with to get a drink round here?’
‘That would be me, you lucky sod,’ Noah drawled, getting up to pour him a drink before Mila could offer.
‘Hi Jazz!’ Liam waved at the little boy. ‘Cool saber!’
‘So how was your drinks party?’ Mila asked, looking almost trepidatious to hear the answer.
‘It was good, actually,’ he said, taking the stool next to Noah and swinging idly in it, his long legs outstretched. ‘I’m glad I looked in. It was an old uni friend’s thing – a bit of a reunion. Ten years, I think. Saw lots of old faces I’d not seen in years.’ He chuckled. ‘No one’s doing what you thought they would – this one guy, who was top scholar, primed and schooled his whole life to take on his father’s company, jacked it all in and is now working as a potter. A potter!’ he laughed, genuinely amused. ‘And another guy who literally didn’t attend a lecture in four years is now a bestselling author. His book’s sold, like, two million copies.’
‘Oh, talking of books, I had a funny thing happen this week,’ Lee said as Noah handed Liam his drink. She noticed Jasper climb onto the sofa and curl up in the cushions. His lightsaber was still in his grasp but tiredness was beginning to catch up with him; he’d stayed up late to see everybody, but she’d need to put him to bed shortly. ‘Jazz and I were heading off to kindergarten yesterday morning and we found a book in the basket of my bike. A brand new book, just sitting there. How weird is that?’
‘Yes! That’s his book! That’s my mate!’ Liam said excitedly.
‘I haven’t told you which book it is.’
‘I already know which book it is! It’s got the sheep on it.’
Her eyes widened in surprise. ‘How’d you know that?’ she chuckled, amazed. ‘Oh, wait – did you put it in my basket?’
‘No! They’ve got this mad marketing campaign going – he was telling me all about it: they’re just leaving signed copies of the book in random places about the city.’
Lee frowned. ‘Why?’
Liam struggled to remember why. ‘I think because it’s a . . . nice surprise? Something about . . . paying it forward?’ It was clear he had no idea what was being paid forward. Liam worked in finance, so had no concept of anything ever being free.
‘Well, next time you see him, you can tell him your friend got one of them.’ Lee shrugged.
‘I’ll introduce you to him and you can tell him yourself.’
Lee was bemused. ‘I think you’re overestimating my excitement about it.’ She glanced over at Jasper, his head on the cushions, eyelids drooping . . . ‘Come on, Jazz: time for bed, bud. Come and say goodnight to everyone.’
‘No seriously, I’m thinking about having a Christmas party,’ Liam continued as she got off the table. ‘I’ll introduce you.’
‘Yes! Get in!’ Noah cheered. ‘A party! New women! Thank God! I’m in severe drought over here. I’ve not had a whisker of action for months now.’
‘Months? Oof.’ Liam gave a pained look that suggested he never went more than days if he didn’t want to. Mila’s face fell.
Jasper came over and they all sank to their knees in turn to give him goodnight hugs and kisses. ‘Goodnight, buddy,’ Liam said, giving him a high-five.
‘Don’t let the bed bugs bite, little dude,’ Mila whispered, kissing his cheek.
‘You keep sleeping tight and you’ll be as big as me before you know it,’ Noah said, wrapping him close to him so that all Lee could see, for a few moments, was the top of Jasper’s head.
‘Up you go,’ Lee said as Jasper passed her. ‘Brush your teeth, I’ll be right there to tuck you in.’
She watched him climb the stairs, his lightsaber banging against the treads.
‘I’ll tell you who has been getting some action, though,’ Liam said in his most gossipy voice. He looked across at her again, not mi
ssing a beat. ‘Your old friend Harry Cunningham. His wife’s pregnant!’
Lee felt her body go very still as three pairs of eyes settled upon her. ‘Yes, I know.’
Liam deflated again at her apparent boredom on the issue. ‘Oh. The way they said it, I thought it was a big deal.’
‘Why? How did they say it?’ Mila asked, her eyes flitting over to Lee.
‘Well, I got the impression they must have been trying for ages and that’s why they kept the pregnancy so hush-hush for so long. Harry’s getting on, let’s be honest.’
‘Mmm.’ Lee nodded noncommittally but her mind was racing. They’d kept it quiet? How far along was Gisele, then? Lee had assumed just a few months at most. ‘How did you hear about it?’
‘One of the guys at the party just now goes to the same gym as her. Don’t tell Harry, but I think he’s always had something of a thing for her. Anyway, he said he hadn’t seen her around for months and then bumped into her in the street sporting this massive bump.’
‘Right.’ Lee sincerely doubted anything about Gisele was massive. From what she remembered, the woman was a doll. ‘And how did you and he get onto the topic of Gisele being pregnant? She didn’t go to university with you, did she?’ Lee knew she was six years younger than them, for a start.
Liam thought back for a moment, trying to recall the flow of conversation. ‘Oh. It’s because I said I was coming on here, to yours. And Viktor recognized your name of course, because of you and Harry winning the Pulitz—’
‘Right,’ she said brusquely, cutting him off. She couldn’t even bear to hear it said out loud.
‘Anyway,’ Liam continued, already well oiled with drinks and oblivious to her stony stare. ‘She’s in bits, apparently.’
‘Why?’
‘Well, why go to all those lengths to have a baby – for him to just bugger off to Syria with a few weeks to go?’
‘What?’ It was Mila who cried the word, but Lee felt the colour draining from her cheeks, the blood pooling in her feet. ‘Syria?’
Liam looked across at Mila. ‘Yes, Harry’s gone jungle again.’
Lee reached for the door frame, needing to feel connected to something. It felt like the world was tipping on its side, everything sliding off. ‘But he’s injured,’ she said slowly, as though self-control would somehow make this okay. ‘His leg . . .’
Liam frowned as he saw how pale she had grown. ‘Didn’t you know? I just assumed—’
She ignored the question. She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. There had to be a mistake. ‘You’re sure he’s gone to Syria?’
‘Yes.’
‘Where in Syria – Homs? Damascus? Aleppo? Raqqa?’
‘I don’t know. Syria’s just . . . Syria, isn’t it? There’s no good places there.’
It was the sort of comment that made her want to scream, the sort of comment that made her feel it had all been for nothing. People still knew nothing. They were ignorant. They didn’t care.
She walked over to the table and knocked back the rest of her drink, needing something to take the edge off her nerves; they felt aflame. Cunningham was back in Syria. That was why he’d really come over the other day, she realized. It wasn’t just to tell her about the pregnancy – he knew she wouldn’t care about that; his happy personal life was none of her concern. But he’d been to Afghanistan and the Rohingya region and Iran since she’d quit and he hadn’t notified her of his movements then. So why now? Why come over to tell her he was going back there?
She closed her eyes, remembering how they’d first met in Sirte, when Colonel Gaddafi’s grip was failing. She’d been a freelance rookie desperate to make her name, he was the senior correspondent for the Washington Post, both of them choosing the same small pile of sandbags to hide behind as sniper bullets zipped past their heads. Later, when they’d escaped, both shaking like tambourines, he’d taken her to a hotel bar where whisky was served in eggcups, and he’d introduced her to all the other reporters and journalists out there. He’d taken her under his wing and it had been like a sparrow being sheltered by an eagle; at twenty-one years older than her and a living legend in the war-reporting community, he knew everyone, and that meant that pretty soon they all knew her. Friendships formed fast in situations like that, becoming at once both deep and yet also transitory – your life might rest in that person’s hands the very next day, hour, minute. On the other hand, people did die every day, hour, minute and you somehow had to keep going; there was no time for grief. Not getting shot whilst getting the shot was all that mattered.
She was brave, he was experienced and something about them just clicked. People were constantly moving about, losing track of one another for weeks, even months at a time, but always somehow converging again in unexpected predicaments, meeting by chance in the most unlikely scenarios; she always remembered Cunningham telling her how he had once met a woman he’d photographed in Bosnia – weeping by the bodies of her father, uncle, two brothers and teenage son – crossing the road seven years later in London with Sainsbury’s shopping bags. That was how it had been for the two of them, meeting time and again in random coincidences until finally he had asked her to be his exclusive photographer – no more freelancing, hawking her images to the highest bidder. They had officially become a team.
The last time she had worked with him had been in Syria, six years ago; but the last time she had actually seen him had been here in Amsterdam a few years later, when she’d seen him walking with his pretty soon-to-be wife, Gisele. She had tried to cross the street but it was too late by the time she saw them, Cunningham already breaking away and jogging ahead to catch her attention. She had spent several minutes engaged in polite small talk in which she revealed nothing at all about her life and gave all her attention to Gisele, sensing his growing dismay as she covered her contempt with a smooth, bulletproof politeness; it was the kind of ‘bullshittery’ – his favourite word – that he had always deplored, which had given her some satisfaction, at least.
She had learnt that Gisele was six years younger even than her, but it hadn’t surprised her: he had always attracted younger mates – though weathered from hard years of living in conflict zones, Cunningham had somehow retained a vigour for life that knocked decades off his actual age. His easy, cavalier manner and the half-smile permanently on his lips were juxtaposed with eyes that had seen death too many times, in too many ways, and the fracture this drew through him was intoxicating – men saw the heroic crusader, women the wounded soldier.
He’d invited her to their wedding a few months later but Lee had ignored it, as he had probably known she would; every letter, text and call went unanswered. They had only had one true conversation since Syria and it had been terminal. He knew perfectly well why: he knew what he had done. There was no going back and she had seen the pain in his eyes on the cobbles that day. It gave her a boost if ever she was feeling low.
From what Dita had told her, he’d been back from his most recent trip – to Tehran – maybe ten, eleven months. It was the longest anyone had ever known him be out of the field and she’d assumed, like everyone else, that this was his life now. Semi-retired, he had a beautiful wife, a baby on the way, responsibilities, people who loved and needed him. Why risk that?
He had been badly injured by shrapnel from a drone strike and had had to be airlifted out with a US marine unit, his left leg held together by a splintered floorboard and tied on with the rags of his own trousers. Dita had told her, without being asked, that it had been months before he could walk on it unaided and he might always have a limp now; he certainly couldn’t run about a war zone yet.
And if he couldn’t run, then how could he be safe?
And if he couldn’t be safe, what good was he dead?
He knew all this. He had taught her this. So what the hell was he up to?
Chapter Six
They lay sprawled on the sofa, Lee curled around Jasper, the fire flickering away. They were watching Return of the Jedi and only a few ha
rd kernels of popcorn were left in the bowl on the floor; the lightsaber Noah had bought him was lying on the ground too, ready to be picked up and inter-galactic fighting continued the moment the film finished. To the casual observer, this was just another lazy Sunday in their household, but Lee had been hard at work behind the scenes – she had hoovered; she had stripped, washed and ironed the spare bedroom sheets; she had washed her hair; she had used her most expensive body lotion (her only extravagance: clean, scented skin was the truest luxury after years of no bathing and rubble dust); and under her boyfriend jeans and black cashmere sloppy joe, she was wearing her best lingerie.
She was lying still, Jasper nestled in the crook of her arm, but really she was watching the minutes tick past. She had timed everything to perfection. The film was 136 minutes long – she knew that because she had watched it with Jasper nine times now – so she had ensured they began watching at twenty to five to guarantee a finish just before seven. The last thing she wanted was a meltdown because they received a visitor with twenty minutes of the film left.
The credits began to roll and Lee felt the butterflies take wing in her stomach. She had been unaccountably excited all day. She gave a stretch. ‘Hot chocolate?’ she asked, tickling him in the ribs to get him to move.
‘Only if I can toast marshmallows.’
‘Oh, all right then,’ she grinned, amused that he considered he was doing her the favour.
She got up and began heating the milk in her coffee machine frother when the doorbell rang. Perfectly on time. She swallowed, falling still for a second. This was it, then.
‘Oh, I wonder who that could be?’ she asked aloud, sounding as wooden as a spoon. ‘Jazz, do you want to get that for me?’
He stopped a saber swipe mid-pose and looked at her in surprise. ‘But I’m not allowed to open the door.’
