by Karen Swan
She darted out of the room and was just getting to the front door when it rang again.
‘Hey!’ she said, smiling back at Liam. ‘Just the man.’ He looked so good it should be illegal – navy velvet jacket, black narrow trousers, polished shoes – and she had a sudden pang of regret that maybe this wasn’t such a good idea after all. Perhaps making Mila’s dream come true with a perfect date wasn’t a kindness if it only made her fall harder for him?
‘Lee.’ He stepped into the warmth of the hall, wrapping his arms around her gratefully. ‘I don’t know how the hell I can ever thank you for arranging this. My boss now thinks I’m the messiah. He’s already booked me in for a one-on-one meeting on Monday.’
‘I’m glad.’ She glanced behind her and lowered her voice. ‘But just remember to keep your end of the bargain tonight as well. Look after our girl tonight, make sure she has a good time. Do not abandon her and under no circumstances is she to go near married men. They’re like catnip to her.’
‘Sure, absolutely, got that,’ he said earnestly.
‘Good.’
The delicate clip-clopping of heels sounded on the stairs and they both turned to find Mila coming into view, her lean legs gleaming with iridescent dry oil, the straps of her shoes hanging loose around tiny ankles.
‘Hi Liam,’ she beamed. ‘Lee’s made me promise not to embarrass you. Will this do? I’m not overdressed, am I?’
And she held out her arms to show off the dress as she descended, looking like a Hollywood siren on a film set.
Lee glanced back as a silence opened up. Liam was staring as Mila as she reached the bottom and did a twirl. ‘No. It’s . . . fine.’ He cleared his throat.
Fine? Lee scowled at him. Mila looked crestfallen.
But a tiny smile began to play on Lee’s lips as she watched Liam’s eyes sweep up and down over Mila’s silhouette while she put on her coat.
Mila tied the belt tightly around her waist. ‘Okay, well then, I guess I’m all set.’ She hugged Lee tightly. ‘Have an amazing time in Friesland. Ring me when you’re back.’
‘You have an amazing time tonight. You look glorious. That dress is a Man. Slayer. Isn’t it, Liam?’ she demanded in a pointed tone.
‘Huh?’ He looked back at her. ‘Oh yeah, right. It is. Man. Slayer.’
‘Incredible night!’
The message pinged, lighting up the dark room with a blue light. Lee was in bed, staring at her ceiling and failing to sleep. To think that last night, only last night, Sam had been lying in these sheets with her; that only this morning he’d been in that shower; this afternoon, back in her kitchen . . . It all felt so natural, so very normal that he should be here, doing these things.
She turned her head and looked at the name on the WhatsApp. Mila.
She grinned, picking it up. ‘Tell me everything,’ she typed.
She waited, the room glowing blue again several moments later. ‘Laughed so hard. Danced for three hours straight. And Haven was playing, can you believe it?’
‘Three hours? You must be crippled now.’ Lee grinned. ‘Liam good?’
‘Amazing. And so loyal. Stopped at least 3 marrieds in their tracks. Sent them packing.’
‘So a good man then, in spite of being appalling tart.’
‘Ye, we talked about that acc. Got rlly deep. Did you know his mother died when he was young? Heartbreaking. So sad. Tears in his eyes. Scared to commit.’
‘Aw bless. Never knew.’
‘No. Guess what tho?’
‘What.’
‘Got number of a hot guy. Not married.’
Lee’s eyebrows shot up. That was not what she’d expected to come next. ‘*screaming* Deets please.’
‘Early 30s, events marketing, Alexander Skarsgård vibes. Going skating tomorrow. Got feels!’
Had her plan backfired – or worked? Had the reality of a date with Liam not matched the fantasy? Was Mila, at long last, finally over him and onto the next? ‘Sabbatical off then?’
‘Totally. Brunch? We can debrief.’
‘Tricky. Have switched my weekly Mon slot with Dr H for a Skype sesh tomorrow in the a.m.; she’s going to Friesland too. Hitting the road after lunch.’
‘Back when?’
‘Tuesday.’
‘Argh. Okay. Can wait. Sleep tight Mary Ellen.’
‘Night John-Boy x’. It was their usual The Waltons sign-off, a childhood echo she’d brought over from England with her.
The room went dark again and Lee sank back into the pillows, feeling the unfamiliar glow of contentment; happiness sat cradled in her palm like a roosting robin. Mila was happy, Jasper was happy, she was happy . . . This was the first time since she’d left the war zone that she actually felt at peace, and it was an alien feeling; she could still feel a small vibration of resistance deep within her, as though waiting for the twist, the bad news story that was going to take it all away again.
But she knew she couldn’t think like that. Wasn’t this everything she’d never dared to want? She was being given a second chance at love. Life. She closed her eyes with a determinedly steady breath. She just had to trust. Lightning never struck twice. Things would be different this time.
Old wooden desks pushed together, chairs on their sides, a blackboard still with a poem on it, a sharp but broken pencil in one of the pen grooves. Most of the windows had long since been blown out, glass littering the floor like chicken feed. She looked out of the one nearest the door and gave the signal. Cunningham and Moussef were waiting in the truck, checking she got in safely. (Got in safely! The notion was almost laughable. As though she was a teenager with a curfew.) Cunningham signalled back and jumped out of the vehicle, ready to work. Restless to get on.
She turned back into the room. It was perhaps six metres by eight, a row of windows on the opposite side. She wandered over and looked out. The view gave onto the village, looking straight up a street that led to the market.
An old man was walking down, dressed in white tunic and trousers, his head covered by a tan kufi hat. His arm was outstretched to the side and holding a wide, shallow basket of figs that balanced on his hip. He had a thin, lined face but his eyes were velvety soft and he was talking, or perhaps singing to himself, quietly, his lips moving.
Lee, never one for a zoom lens – it felt like cheating to be so far from the subject – waited for him to draw closer, then lifted her camera, unseen at the old school-house window, and went to shoot—
The flash, in the next instant, was blinding, sending her flying backwards, pressure on her chest, as everything went quiet. She lay on her back, blinking up, stunned, at the ceiling. She couldn’t hear anything, not a single thing, just a ringing silence.
For several long moments, she felt paralyzed, not sure if she was alive or dead. Hearing nothing, feeling nothing . . . but gradually awareness began to dawn, sound coming back in threads. She felt the glass beneath her back, the breeze on her face through the open window. She coughed as the dust swept into her lungs, her eyes watering as the metallic smell filled the room.
Gingerly she tried to move, rolling onto her side and pushing up, shards of glass pressing against the skin. Her head dropped down from the effort. Everything felt laboured and heavy, amplified and yet distant at the same time. Her ears were ringing but gradually sounds were permeating her brain – a car alarm wailing incessantly, someone screaming, the staccato of gunfire tripping off in rhythmic rounds, no more screaming . . .
Carefully standing, she instinctively checked her camera for damage; she had been shooting right until the moment of the explosion. She tried to walk, staggering back to the wall again, her fingers reflexively fumbling with the lens as she peered around the blown-out window. On the street, the remains of a car were ablaze and beside it lay most of the body of the man she had just been photographing, a river of his blood trickling into the dirt, the basket of figs he’d been carrying now on the ground beside him, strewn by his splayed feet as if in a grotesque still-life. Her finger
clicked on the button instinctively, a startle reflex almost.
The man had lost his right arm, but she couldn’t stop staring at the holes in the soles of his shoes, the leather worn so thin it must have been like walking in gloves.
She saw a jihadist in black fatigues come out of a house. His head was wrapped with a black and white keffiyeh and he had an automatic weapon slung casually over one shoulder like it was a handbag. There was no tension in his body as he scanned the deserted street. Had he put the bomb under the car? He seemed to know there were no soldiers here; so much of the surrounding area had already been captured by ISIL and most of the Kurdish fighters were now in Kobanî, fighting the siege there. Here, with no defence, it must be like shooting fish in a barrel.
He glanced over casually, disinterestedly, at the corpse. He seemed to hesitate for a moment, before walking over, bending down and picking up one of the figs. He inspected it, as if for bruising or dirt or blood, then took a bite, juice dribbling down his chin.
Her finger clicked on the shutter again – an instinct, a reflex – as, through the lens, she watched the soldier squat by the dead man, enjoying the ripe fig while still-warm blood pooled around his boots. She watched as he sucked his fingers clean, one by one, and wiped his chin with his sleeve. Disgust and revulsion shuddered through her body, as strong as fear.
She jumped suddenly as she heard something close by and she whipped round, heart pounding – but there was no one there. Her mind was playing tricks on her, her eardrums damaged, adrenaline making her jumpy.
She turned back to the fighter again. He was wiping the blood off his boots on the dead man’s body, leaving vivid streaks of red on the white clothes like lurid gashes. Her stomach turned over, nausea making her skin prickle with a cold sweat.
‘In there.’
She froze. She’d definitely heard that, the words distinct even if the voice did sound underwater to her. Everything seemed so distorted, like the world had been pulled inside out. The voice had come from the other side of the wall and she waited for another sound, her heart pounding like a boxer’s fist in her ribs. Tentatively, she peered out through the window again, knowing she was in shock but unable to free herself from its grip; the jihadist was walking into one of the houses further up the street. Not him, then.
‘Moussef?’ she asked out loud, scarcely able to hear her own voice over the still-ringing silence in her head, slowly gathering her wits again. He and Cunningham must be bringing the girls over here, she realized. The car bomb would have everyone running scared; those girls would be better protected here. With ISIL already in the village, that shack afforded no protection at all now. At least this had a roof and a door.
. . . This had a roof and a door.
The realization made her frown, the fog in her brain clearing fractionally. If this building had a roof and a door, then why hadn’t the women come and hidden in here in the first place? Why hadn’t Moussef helped them to hide better?
Her sense of unease morphed into something more tangible, her mouth becoming dry as fear acquired a shape. She felt something behind her, a stirring of the air, another presence filling the space—
She whipped around to look, to find an ISIL soldier – already in – closing the door behind him. He was dressed in black, his face almost entirely covered, and he calmly walked over to her, setting down the gun against one of the desks. Like he wasn’t going to need that here. Like he’d known she was in here. Like he knew exactly what was going to happen next.
She could see nothing but his eyes as he advanced – a shadow leaked from her nightmares – and they told her he had already lived a lifetime. Death, savagery and barbarism was his daily routine. Peace wasn’t a distant dream; it wasn’t even a dream. All he knew was bombs and gunfire and shelling and screams. Loving touch, clean clothes, birdsong, running water . . . they didn’t exist for him. He was a dead man walking, a human brutalized into one-dimensional ferity.
His arm lashed out, sending her flying across the desks and setting stars spinning. And as she jolted in violent recoil, her finger hit the shutter-button one last time and the one sight – out of all the multitudes of others – that she never wanted to see again, the image of his deadened brown eyes upon hers, was captured forever, in perfect posterity.
‘Jazzy, where’s your red scarf?’ she called up the stairs. ‘It’s not in the box.’ She rifled once more through their accessories basket – myriad single gloves, too-small mittens on strings, a fleece balaclava, a beanie with a dropped stitch and unravelling stripes . . . ‘Can you check in your bedroom please? Has it been kicked under your bed?’
‘I’m doing my banner!’ his voice came back from the middle floor.
‘Ugh.’ Lee gave a groan of annoyance as she jogged up the stairs herself. She was irritable and tired after a bad night’s sleep – nightmares clawing at her now that her bed was empty again – and she’d been drained by Dr Hansje going in hard in their session this morning, pushing her on details she just wanted to forget. ‘Honestly Jasper, I’ve got quite enough to do, packing everything up. You could try to be helpful. Did you brush your teeth yet?’
No answer.
‘Jasper?’
‘When I’ve finished this, mama!’ he said, equally as irritably as her. His sleep had been disturbed too, of course.
‘If I ask you to do something . . .’ She stomped over to where he had set up his craft-making activities on the floor in front of the fireplace, in the shadow of the Christmas tree. Newspapers were spread over the floorboards, a pillowcase laid flat with red paint – but he hurriedly threw his little body in the way, blocking her view. She had made sockets at each end, for a halved broom handle to be inserted, by folding it over and fastening with safety-pins – rudimentary, but it seemed to work – but she was allowed no further input. ‘No, you can’t look yet. It’s a surprise!’
‘Not for me though, surely?’
‘It’s a surprise for everyone.’
She dreaded to think what that might mean. ‘Fine, but you still need to brush your teeth and I still need to find your scarf. It’s going to be cold up there and we’ll be outside, standing around, for a long time.’
‘Okay,’ he said, still not letting her see his masterpiece.
She obediently moved away. ‘We’ll leave in ten minutes, okay?’ she said. ‘They’re already saying the traffic is heavy so I want to get on. It wouldn’t do to be late for dinner, that would be rude, wouldn’t it?’
‘I don’t care. I just want to see Sam.’
‘Yes, well, that too.’ She sighed. If things were moving quickly between her and Sam, it appeared they were moving even more quickly with him and Jasper. ‘I’m going up to your room to find that scarf.’
She went out and was halfway up the stairs when the doorbell went. ‘Ugh,’ she groaned again, turning and going back down both flights. Who needed a gym membership with Dutch staircases?
She opened the door with a less-than-hospitable expression. ‘Liam!’ She frowned, taking in the sight of him. ‘Are you okay?’
His eyes fell to her packed bags in the hallway. ‘Oh God, you’re not going up to Friesland too, are you?’
‘Yes.’
‘You and the entire country!’ He looked back at her with pleading eyes. ‘When have you got to leave by?’
‘Well, I’ve told Jasper ten minutes, but it’ll be more like half an hour. Why? What’s wrong? You look hellish. Overdo it last night?’
‘Can I come in?’
‘Sure.’ She stepped back and let him come into the hallway. ‘Coffee?’
He shook his head. ‘I just need to talk to you.’
‘What’s happened? Did it all go okay with Haven? Andrik texted me this morning saying it went well. Wasn’t your boss happy?’
‘No, it’s not that. I’m flavour of the month now, thanks to you.’
‘So what then?’
‘Have you heard from Mila?’
‘Yes, of course, she texted me when she
got in last night.’
‘And what did she say exactly?’
Lee shrugged. ‘Well, just that you had a great time – danced all night, laughed, talked. I think it was exactly the tonic she needed. She was absolutely buzzing.’
‘Did she say anything about a tall guy, blonde, dodgy shoes?’
Lee grinned. ‘Uh . . . she was telling me about a guy with Alexander Skarsgård vibes? Nothing about the shoes, though.’
‘What did she say about him?’
‘Just that they’re meeting up today. They’re going skating.’
‘Oh God.’ He ran his hands down his face. ‘I knew it. He was looking over at her all night.’
‘So? She said he’s not married?’
‘No, that’s the problem!’
Lee frowned. ‘Well, how’s that a problem? It’s precisely what we wanted for her – to find a guy who’s actually available.’
‘No. You don’t understand, she can’t date him.’
‘Why not?’ She tipped her head to the side questioningly. ‘Liam, what’s going on?’
He gripped his hair with his hands, pressing his elbows together in front of his face. ‘Fuck, this is a disaster. It wasn’t supposed to happen like this. You said take her out and make her feel great and boost her ego.’
‘And you did all that.’
‘Yes. And I’m the sucker who’s ended up falling for her!’
Lee’s eyes widened. ‘What?’ Everything was topsy-turvy – Liam had fallen for Mila, just as she’d gotten over him?
‘I never saw her like that before until last night. She was like my little sister, you know, always clucking around – cooking for us, organizing us. It just never crossed my mind that . . . But then that dress, and she was just so funny, and the way we talked. The connection between us. I mean, I told her things I’ve never told anyone!’ He stared at her. ‘Lee, what the fuck have you done?’
‘Me?’
‘Yes, this is all your fault! You made me take her out. You made me pay attention to her, treat her like a date. She can’t start seeing that guy. You have to . . . do something.’
