The Chain

by Joy Richards

  “Mum,” he replied slowly, “I don’t think it is going to work out.”

  “What did Penelope say?” Claire immediately regretted speaking her name.

  Aaron took a big sigh, his shoulders slumping. “We realised that we can’t open a charity together and get a divorce at the same time. We would both rather have the charity, but we very much need a divorce.”

  Claire put her hand on his shoulder. “Darling, are you sure about that? Is there nothing you can do?”

  “Do you know,” he replied, pulling himself up, “I genuinely thought, for a while, that we could patch things up. Have a common project to work on, be a team against all odds once again. The refuge was already pulling us together, in a way.” Elijah got up and slumped his arms around Aaron’s shoulders.

  “But it’s like Pandora’s box, you know?” he continued. “Once you let it all out, you can’t put it back in.”

  “Oh, Aaron, I’m so sorry.” Claire could feel tears pooling at the back of her throat. No matter how old and wise her children became, they would always be her babies.

  “That’s okay, Mum,” he replied quietly. “I think one way or another, we’ve always had it coming.”

  “It’s so awful. I think the idea of the refuge was fantastic, and I think you would be so suited for that type of work.” She sniffed loudly, trying to contain herself. This was no time to cry.

  Jacob got up and moved towards the back wall of the kitchen, which featured four large corkboards. Claire had used them to help Aaron and Penelope set up the refuge and it was covered in a web of pinned papers, photographs and scribbled Post-it notes. In no official capacity, she and Michael had put in their fair share of hours helping develop a plan for the refuge, running ideas by Penelope as she came to visit. Jacob took his time, surveying the boards. Claire had not been able to bring herself to take them down, even now she knew the whole idea would never become reality.

  Finally, Jacob turned round. “Dad, would you be sad about missing out on your new flat?”

  Michael let out an audible snort. “This is funny. I asked the same exact question to your mother the other day.”

  Michael and Jacob turned towards her. She shook her head. “I guess neither of us was really too excited about moving. We love this house and…” she cleared her throat, “the only reason we are moving in the first place is that it’s impractical for two people to live in a five-bedroom house.”

  Elijah raised an eyebrow. “So you didn’t like your new place?” He sounded surprised. “But you said you loved it!”

  “Well,” Claire replied, slowly, “we did love it at the time. But I guess at least for me, I loved it the way you love a hotel room. It’s nice, but I don’t know if I would love living there.”

  “I think your mum is right.” Michael put his hand on the back of her chair. “We did love it then. But then we realised we were not that upset about the idea of losing it.”

  “To be fair, Dad, it sounds like the only thing you are really upset about is the refuge.” Gideon had his own, journalistic, way of surgically cutting through all the nonsense.

  “You’re right, love,” whispered Claire. She was no longer going to cry, she just felt really sad.

  They all sat in silence for a few minutes. The sun was coming up, filling the kitchen with a faded winter light. The only sounds were the chattering of the birds outside, and the soft clinking of the tea mugs on the kitchen table.

  “Mum,” Aaron said suddenly. “I know this is weird, but hear me out.”

  22

  Claire

  It was summer again. The garden had blossomed and was filled with light and the heady scent of freshly-cut grass. It would be time for lunch soon. Claire walked in from the garden carrying a large basket filled with green beans from her vegetable patch. She looked at the clock. Michael and the kids would be home in half an hour, she had to get a move on. If lunch wasn’t ready by the time they got back, there would be hell to pay. She pulled out a large bowl of hard-boiled eggs from the fridge. They were raising chickens again, and always had more eggs than they knew what to do with. So that, she thought, was to be lunch. Hard-boiled eggs, steamed green beans and those two loaves of bread she had picked up from the bakery in the morning. There were pears for dessert, and she could make a quick custard to go with it.

  As she hurried around in the kitchen, Aaron walked in. He was wearing his work clothes: a light pink shirt, and dusty blue chinos. A braided belt. Turns out, he cleaned up pretty nicely; now that he worked for MSF at their London offices, he had to.

  “I’ll go right after lunch,” he said. “Would you like anything from London?”

  “I think we’re okay. Thanks, love.” Claire smiled. “When are we expecting you back?”

  “Oh it’ll be quick, I only have a couple of meetings today and one tomorrow morning. And that’s it for the week, I don’t have to go in until Tuesday.”

  “That’s nice.” Claire had to raise her voice over the sound of the tap filling the steamer.

  “I’m staying with Elijah, we might even go to the pub after dinner.”

  She smiled even wider. That was good. Since he’d made the move down to Surrey, only sporadically commuting up to London, Aaron was starting to heal. He was getting out, going to the pub or out to dinner with his brothers and old friends. No dates yet, but that was probably too early. Penelope had left King’s Hospital to return to the Middle East, and their divorce was looking relatively straightforward. Still, it was awful even to think about. But Aaron seemed to be doing better and better.

  “Where’s Dad?” he asked.

  “He’s gone to the allotment with the kids,” she replied, pouring the green beans in the steamer.

  In addition to the back-garden vegetable patch, they had an allotment. Every day in the summer, the children would spend long hours there gardening. As well as weeding and pruning, they ran around chasing each other with the water hose, giggling in excitement. They had only been with them a few months, but they had already formed a tight pack, an indivisible unit. They all attended the local school together, the same school where Claire’s children had gone.

  They all played together and they even slept together. The big knocked-through bedroom her boys had asked for when they were younger had been turned into a dormitory-style space with four bunk beds. Aaron now lived in the old guest room, and they had converted the loft into a large light-filled playroom. The last remaining room, which had, for the longest time, stored boxes and old exercise equipment, was occupied by Nadia, their new residential assistant and nurse. She was a fantastic girl, and Claire was harbouring secret plans about her and Aaron getting married and having many babies.

  It wasn’t all sunshine and trips to the allotment, of course. The kids they hosted had seen more horrors in their short lives than most British adults could even imagine. They all had special medical needs, from diabetes to an amputated leg. One little girl had, horrifyingly, been branded on the nape of her neck with what looked like a hot poker. Claire and Michael had, in many ways, been preparing their whole lives for their new roles. In between the two of them, they had over fifty years’ experience working with refugees all over Africa and the Middle East. They had spent years working in Hutu camps in Tanzania and Zaire. There was nothing they had not seen, and nothing they had not heard of. In fact, the children seemed to relate to them well.

  Claire showed the older ones pictures of what life was like in refugee camps of the eighties and nineties, and she was amazed to find what they were most surprised at was her and Michael’s youthful appearance. They also responded well to Michael’s brain injury. They asked to see his scar, hidden by the hair that still grew on the side of his head. They weren’t frightened or grossed out. In fact, they understood better than most. They all knew someone who had been shot, or badly hurt by a landmine.

  In a selfish self-centred way, Claire felt as though the children were healing them more than the other way around. They listened to their war
stories, and asked for more again and again. They looked up to Michael in a way his own children had not since he had been shot. They were survivors, and knew about surviving. Claire hoped that this was mutual healing, that her and Michael were not unloading their heavy past on the already overburdened shoulders of these poor children. She hoped that was true as she saw the kids come out of their shells, gently, slowly, and start playing again. She found herself playing with them more than she ever had with her own grandchildren, chasing them around the allotment with a water hose and allowing the two little girls to braid her long grey hair with flowers from the garden.

  As she drained the green beans, Aaron put his arm around her. He squeezed her tight and kissed the top of her forehead.

  “How’s the book, Mum?”

  “It’s good, actually.” That was the other thing. As she was feeling lighter and happier, Claire was feeling inspired. When she had sold the idea of a short book of refugee stories to her publisher, Claire was thinking of a quick short stocking filler to raise funds for the refuge. However, it had blossomed into something more. For the first time in over a decade, she felt the urge to write.

  It wasn’t the children’s stories, it was stories for the children. It was tales of young princes and princesses who had been stranded in a foreign land, without their mums and dads and aunties and uncles. She knew she risked falling into a cliché: refugee children notoriously make for excellent characters, from The Chronicles of Narnia to The Railway Children. And yet she could not help herself, and woke up earlier and earlier in the morning to get a few hours of writing done before everyone else got out of bed.

  Aaron was often up with her, bringing her cups of coffee and rubbing her shoulder as she typed away at her outdated keyboard. For the first time in her writing career she had no deadline, and yet she worked as though she did. She had a glint in her eye and a spring in her step. She typed with rhythm and gusto. Words flew straight from her mind onto the page, and compounded into sentences, which piled up into paragraphs, which made entire chapters out of thin air. After many years, she felt she was back.

  “Mum?” Aaron whispered.

  “Yes, darling?”

  “I love you.” He never said that, not out loud. She had never needed him to.

  She smiled, softly. “I love you too, baby.”

  There was a bang at the door. Someone yelled out her name. The thumping of feet. The rustling of bags. The children were home.

  23

  Alex and Sarah

  They met by chance, at the wine bar that connects the two halves of the Logan airport food court in Boston. He was waiting for his flight to Washington, where he was headed for a two-day meeting with a client. She was on a layover, from Zurich back home to San Francisco. They were sat at the bar and spotted each other under the brightly coloured TVs that were showing the Red Sox game. It had been five years since they had sold the flat they used to own together in Canary Wharf.

  They briefly considered pretending they hadn’t seen each other, but quickly realised there was no real escape. She smiled and lifted three fingers from the counter in a shy greeting. He waved, ducked to collect his coat and briefcase and walked around to join her at the other side of the bar. They hugged, stiffly, each very conscious of the other’s body. They both knew everything about each other, thanks to Facebook and their many common friends. It was awkward to admit they had kept tabs on each other. They had not spoken in person since that last stunted phone call, weeks after their final argument.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked, rather stupidly. Of course, she thought, he must be catching a flight. He lives in Boston now, this is clearly his airport.

  He smiled. “Just off to Washington last-minute for a couple of days. Clients,” he added, rolling his eyes. He knew she would remember his demanding and capricious clients, how he lived at their beck and call. Of course, much less so now he was in a senior role and had moved to a smaller, more family-oriented firm. The money was nowhere near as good and the clients were nowhere near as interesting, but he was home every day by six and did not have to send a single email at the weekends, unless he wanted to.

  She spotted his golden wedding band on his ring finger. She wondered whether his wife minded, him taking off at short notice like that. Leaving her alone with the kids, with no time to organise a babysitter.

  He looked over at her wedding band, small and silver, sitting neatly beside an impressive engagement ring. He thought back to the photos of her wedding he had seen online. It was at a vineyard in Napa Valley, surrounded by picturesque rows of olive trees. She had worn a white satin jumpsuit, and had a bouquet of vine leaves. It had been so beautiful it had made it into a wedding magazine. For someone who always claimed to have no interest in weddings, Sarah had by all accounts organised a truly magical day.

  Quite a few of their London friends had attended, and a couple had stopped over to visit him in Boston on the way back from San Francisco. He had only recently moved up to Boston from New York, and he and Rita were still refurbishing the house. The visitors were crammed on two air mattresses in the lounge, and had been awakened in the early hours of the morning by the twins, who were only six months old at the time and required their breakfast before dawn.

  “How are your children?” Sarah asked. She would never cease to surprise him, with her ability to read his mind.

  “They’re great,” he replied, lighting up. “They’ve just turned three and it’s such a great age!” Alex tried to be careful with his words. He knew she didn’t have any kids, at least not yet. It could be infertility, a sore subject. He did not want to rub it in. He who had not wanted kids, blessed with twins. She who had wanted them enough to uproot their whole lives together, still nothing.

  Sarah saw a cloud go over his face as he mentioned his children. He must wonder what life could have been like if I’d said yes when he asked me to come to New York and start a family, she thought. She had felt deeply relieved when she’d found out he and his new girlfriend were expecting. The rumour on the grapevine was that it had been an accident, that she had gotten pregnant by mistake and could not bring herself to have an abortion. Sarah suspected otherwise. She thought those children were planned, and very much wanted.

  Alex had wanted a family badly enough to end their relationship, he must have decided it was time to look elsewhere for the mother of his children. Rita, according to mutual friends, was a curvy and bubbly blonde from his office. They had started dating casually, and suddenly she had fallen pregnant. They had moved to Boston to be close to her family, and he had found a much less demanding job that allowed him to still have a career in finance while raising his children. That was the life he must have dreamed of when he had first asked Sarah to move to America with him.

  They kept chatting and drinking for a few minutes.

  “So,” he said, “San Francisco. How did you end up there?”

  She smiled. “Do you remember my horrible boss, Lewis?”

  Of course he remembered. The man was a twit, and a sexist.

  “It turns out he was not actually horrible. He was just given really bad direction from management, and had to do a lot of things he did not want to do. Like giving me that terrible wedding account.” She smiled. She had actually been very grateful for all the work she had done on the wedding gown client when it came to planning her own wedding, with only two months’ notice and Homeland Security breathing down her neck.

  “At any rate, about a year after you… left,” it was still awkward to mention Alex leaving, “he decided to start his own marketing firm in San Francisco. He had a lot of contacts there, and asked me if I would like to come with him as a minority partner.” She had not even needed time to think about it, she had said yes there and then, in the lift where he had asked her. Things had ended with Steve a few months prior, as she knew they were not going anywhere. She was still living with her sister and ready to move.

  “That’s amazing!” Alex seemed genuinely thrilled for
her. “What is it like, having your own firm?”

  She shook her head, taking a big gulp from her wine glass. She had to start gathering her things, her gate would be announced soon. “I don’t work there anymore, actually. We got bought out after a year or so. Thankfully I got to marry my husband and stay in the country.” That was a slightly misleading description of what had happened. That evening, she had met up with Vin for dinner, and had told him the news. They were getting bought out, which was financially good news but meant she would have to leave the US. They had only been dating for about a year, but he did not hesitate. She must stay, he’d said. They must get married so she could stay. She had shaken her head with a sad smile. She was over visa weddings. Vin said he understood. Sarah had told him everything about what had happened with Alex, and he knew how hard it was for her to find herself in the same situation again.

  She had gone home that night desperately thinking of ways to stay in the country. She had turned the key in her apartment, only to find Vin inside, ready to propose for real.

  “Don’t marry me for the Green Card,” he’d said with a serious look on his face. “Marry me because I love you.”

  She’d said yes, immediately, and immediately regretted it. It was too soon, it was far too soon. She had a hard time trusting men, she explained to Vin. She had a hard time trusting that the life they were building together was for real. He’d said nothing, and booked himself an appointment for a vasectomy.

  At first, she’d thought he was mentally unstable. She told him to cancel his appointment. He refused. She asked if she could go with him. He said yes. They sat in the waiting room, holding hands. She had never heard of a grand romantic gesture taking place in a urologist’s office, and yet there they were. Once he got out, limping and smiling, she asked him whether he would rather get married on the coast or in Napa Valley. He’d kissed her in the parking lot and said he didn’t mind, as long as he got to be her husband.