A Place to Call Home

by Carole Matthews

  At first I lay awake at night worrying about what I’d done. Sabina cried in her sleep and nothing I could do would bring comfort to her. My life was so good at Hayden’s home. I worried that I’d been far too reckless in throwing that all away. I missed him so desperately, more than I ever thought a person could. In the small hours, I would hold myself and pretend that it was Hayden’s arms around me so that I could feel closer to him and not so terribly alone. But the only thing I had to be concerned about was keeping Sabina away from Suresh. That filled my mind. Nothing else mattered.

  The next day and the one after, I walked the full length of the promenade and narrow streets of this small town, asking at every café and shop whether there was a vacancy for me. On the afternoon of the second day, I struck gold and was offered a job in this little café. Home Foods has eight tables and the owner, Ben, couldn’t be kinder to us.

  I’m so very grateful that he was prepared to take a risk on me, despite the fact that I had no experience as a waitress. He told me later that he thought I looked honest and desperate in equal measure. I think that was a fair assessment.

  Immediately we fell into a warm friendship. Ben has long, blond dreadlocks which he ties back in a ponytail, and a kind face. When I volunteered to make some of my home-made specialities to sell to his customers, he jumped at the chance. Now I’m well settled in and am doing as much cooking as I am waiting on tables.

  Ben has even opened on Saturday night so that we could put on two special Sri Lankan evenings, for which I have cooked all the food. Even though I say it myself, they’ve been a great success and we’ve filled two sittings each time. Now Ben is keen to make it a regular feature on the calendar, if I want him to. Which I think I would very much like.

  There’s another one coming up this Saturday – also full – and I’ve splashed out and bought a new shalwar kameez especially for the evening. It’s the colour of honey and is decorated with caramel and gold beads, which I think will look pretty with my dark hair and skin.

  Suddenly, I get an urge that tells me there’s something I must do. And I must do it now.

  We’re past our busy part of the day and it’s nearly time for me to leave to collect Sabina from school.

  ‘Ben, I have something I need to do,’ I tell him. ‘Is that all right with you? I’ll be back in two minutes.’

  Ben shrugs. ‘Sure.’

  He’s a very easy man to work for, I think, and always tries to help me and accommodate my wishes. So I take a moment to run up the stairs to my little home.

  The best thing of all is that there’s a small apartment above the café. It had been used mainly as a storage area, but when I told Ben of my plight and that I was looking for somewhere to rent on a permanent basis, he cleared out all of the boxes. Together we spent the weekend decorating it to make it habitable. He charges me well below the commercial rate, I’m sure.

  Over the weeks, I’ve spent a little of my wages on making it quite homely. There’s only one bedroom, so Sabina has that while I sleep on the sofa in the living room, but it’s very comfortable. We have a small shower room and kitchenette too. If you look out of the window and crane your neck just so, you can even see the sea. All that we need.

  Going to our single wardrobe, I take out my old, dowdy shalwar kameez. It seems to symbolise my time as a married woman. It’s worn, faded and soiled. I stare at it for a moment, thinking that it feels as if it belonged to someone else entirely. Then, before I think better of it, I rush downstairs with it clutched in my hands.

  Back in the café, I say to Ben, ‘Do you have the matches?’

  ‘Yes.’ Puzzled, he hands them over.

  ‘Come with me,’ I say. ‘You can be my witness.’ I take him by the hand and pull him in my wake.

  Together we go out to the backyard of the café.

  It’s a small area, enclosed by high walls of warm, worn bricks. Ben thinks that he might tidy it up and put one or two tables out here for next summer. I think that would be a lovely idea as it’s a warm, sheltered space. A sun trap. For now, I’m doing nothing to spoil it, so I place my shalwar kameez reverentially in the centre of the cobblestones.

  ‘Wow,’ Ben says. ‘Are we having a ritual burning?’

  ‘Yes,’ I tell him. ‘I want to watch my old life go up in smoke.’

  ‘Goody.’ Ben claps his hands as a child would. ‘I’m all for that.’

  I strike the match and throw it on to the shabby clothes, which instantly ignite. The cheap material shrivels and burns, smouldering with acrid smoke.

  ‘You should say a prayer or something,’ Ben advises, as if he does this every day.

  So I close my eyes and pray. I pray that I will always make wise decisions in the future, that I will give my daughter a good life and that I will reach the end of my days knowing that I have been loved.

  When I open them again, there’s nothing left of the shalwar kameez but charred ashes.

  I wish that Crystal, Joy and my dear Hayden could have been here to witness this too, and my heart feels a pang of empty longing for them all.

  ‘That’s the last of the old me gone for ever,’ I say to Ben.

  ‘Excellent. Then I think we should have a cup of tea and a cake to celebrate.’

  I smile at him. ‘I’d like that.’ There’s a calm at the centre of my being that I really like. I like it very much.

  So we go back inside and Ben makes tea for us. We sit at one of the tables in the now-empty café, sipping tea and each eating one of the cupcakes he buys in daily.

  He raises his cup to me. ‘To the future.’

  ‘To the future,’ I echo.

  Soon he glances at the clock. ‘Better get going if you’re going to be at the school to collect Sabina.’

  ‘Oh my goodness.’ I too look up. ‘I hadn’t realised the time.’ Now I’ll have to hurry. Quickly I pull off my apron and slip on my cardigan. It’s the end of the summer now and we’re slowly sliding into autumn. The air, I’ve found, is cooler down by the sea and the evenings are chilly. ‘I’ll see you in the morning.’

  ‘Thanks, Ayesha. Enjoy the rest of your day. Any plans?’

  ‘I might try to spend an hour or two on the beach before we’re no longer able to.’ It’s Sabina’s very favourite place, and mine too.

  ‘You might be surprised. The winter here is also lovely,’ Ben says. ‘Quieter. When all the tourists have finally packed up and gone, the seaside has a different charm in the colder months. You’ll see. There’s still plenty to do.’

  Ben has two daughters, one of them Sabina’s age, and they’ve become firm friends at school. His wife, Megan, has also been so very kind. She passes on clothes that her eldest child, Layla, has outgrown as she’s so much taller than my tiny Sabina. I have to put big hems on the dresses, but they’re a godsend to us.

  I feel as if I’ve been truly blessed to find this place and I can only thank Hayden for that. As soon as I realised that I had to leave, I knew this was where I would come to. My heart is happy here.

  ‘Don’t dilly-dally,’ Ben says, ‘or I’ll find something else for you to do.’

  ‘I’m on my way,’ I tell him. So I grab my bags and rush out of the door.

  Chapter Ninety

  Sabina’s new school is lovely and she’s settled in well. It’s ideally placed as it’s only a five-minute walk from the café and our new apartment. We’re making a good, quiet life here. One evening each week Sabina attends ballet classes at the local community centre, which she loves. It’s a simple pleasure that, at one time, seemed beyond our reach. Some weeks it’s difficult to spare the money, but I so wanted her to have the opportunity, and she’s proving to be a dainty dancer.

  There’s not a moment of the day that I don’t think of my life in London; and Hayden, in particular, is never far from my thoughts. I thought the pain would lessen as the weeks went on, but as yet it hasn’t felt eager to leave me at all. I miss them all so terribly. Despite the difficult times we endured, they brought fun and
love into my life again and I’m poorer for not having them by my side.

  Sabina talks about them constantly – When will we see them? Can we call them? – and I’ve had to fend off all her questions with vague responses. She misses Hayden terribly. Sometimes I catch her singing his songs and my heart contracts in my chest. The pain of my yearning is palpable. When I’m feeling down, I think of them at the piano together, laughing, and how he would look at her with the love of a father.

  As I walk, I tap Crystal’s number into my phone. I haven’t yet spoken to her as I didn’t know how to apologise for leaving in such haste and didn’t dare contact her for fear of somehow being discovered again. Now I must redress that. I can only hope she understood why I needed to go and is still my dearest friend. I’m sure that she’ll know my news by now. I hesitate to call it good news, as the death of a person can never be called that. But, for me, finding out about Suresh’s death brings nothing but a sense of overwhelming relief. It means that at last I am a free woman.

  My heart is pattering with excitement to speak to Crystal, but the call goes straight to her voicemail.

  I take a deep breath and launch in. ‘My dearest Crystal,’ I say breathlessly. ‘This is your good friend Ayesha here. I would so love to talk with you again. I miss you terribly. I will call back very soon.’

  I hang up, a little disappointed to find that she’s not available. I wonder where she is, what she’s doing. I can picture her working at the nail bar and think fondly of that time. I’m hoping that Joy, Crystal and perhaps even Hayden will soon, very soon, come back into our lives.

  Striding out now, I hope that I’ll not be late for Sabina and hurry as fast as I can. I don’t like her to be waiting outside the school for me. Even though I know that Suresh can no longer touch us, it will take the anxiety a long time to leave me.

  As I reach the gate, I see my child coming through the playground. Every single time I look at her, my soul soars on light wings.

  ‘Mama!’ She breaks away from her little group of friends and runs the last few metres towards me. I hug her tightly to my chest.

  ‘How is my beautiful child? Did you have a good day?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ she says. ‘I’ve three new books to read.’

  I’m so proud of her because she’s clever in class and at home she’s a dutiful daughter. Well, mostly. But I love the times when she raises her voice to me in defiance. It makes me smile to myself. My daughter is no one’s fool and I hope that I have, in the last few months, taught her that too. Sabina is her own person. Now that she’s found her voice again, she certainly likes to use it, and I take no issue with that.

  ‘They look as if they’re most excellent books.’ I so miss my reading times with Hayden, and it’s in the evening when Sabina is tucked up in bed that I’m at my loneliest. I read to myself then, but often I’ll find my mind drifting, going over the times that I shared with him. Sometimes it’s so vivid that I can almost feel his kiss on my lips. Sometimes, when I’m sure that Sabina can’t hear, I cry for the want of him.

  I turn my attention back to my daughter. ‘Shall we go to the beach for a little while before we go home for our tea, and then we’ll settle to read them later?’

  ‘Yes.’ She skips along beside me, chattering all about her day; I never get tired of listening to her.

  When I saw the news about Suresh in the paper, it made my heart bleed for him. How terrible for him for his life to end like that. Even now he’s dead, it frightens me to think how close he came to getting us back, and I’m so thankful that due to Crystal and Joy we were able to escape.

  Yet I wept when I read the story. I wept for the man that I once called ‘husband’. I wept for the man he’d become and for the man that he might have been but never was. I wept that he had, through anger or greed, stooped so low in his life. I wept for the man who’d been killed in the tragedy and for his bereaved family. Arunja and two other men, who I’m sure I’d seen at the house, have all been arrested. But for Suresh, the suffering is over.

  The truth, though, is that, as sad as that makes me, I also know that I can now live my own life out of his shadow, and for that I feel nothing but joyous liberation. A heavy weight has been taken from me and I know now that I’ll never have to run away again.

  I was so worried about how to break the news to my daughter. There’s always the fear lurking in my mind that a shock will take her voice again, but I needn’t have been so frightened. Sabina took the news with calm equanimity and hasn’t mentioned her father since. I hope that one day, when she’s older, we’ll be able to discuss more fully what happened.

  My daughter has, however, asked about Hayden frequently. More so in recent days. She wants to know where he is, when we’ll see him again. I can only tell her that I hope we’ll see him again soon. I pray with all of my being that that is the truth.

  When I sent him the postcard from our little seaside town, I secretly hoped that he would come to us. When he knew where we were, surely he wouldn’t be able to stay away? But that hasn’t proved to be the case. I sent it him so that he’d know we were safe and we hadn’t, for one single minute, forgotten him. A million times I’ve thought about picking up the telephone and calling him, but I haven’t had the words to say how I feel. Whenever I start to dial his number, my palms grow damp with anxiety and I have to hang up. What if he’s angry with me and doesn’t wish for me or Sabina to be in his life? What if he’s changed his mind about us? Perhaps he’s decided to enter the world of music again and sees us as an unnecessary burden. It will be a great sadness in my life, if I’ve had to forfeit Hayden’s love to find peace, but I’ll bear it the best as I can. For now, I would rather remain in uncertainty than know the pain of absolute rejection. But I’d so love to hear his sweet voice again.

  I hope that Joy is well too. Now that Suresh has gone, I can contact my friends again freely without fear of being found out or of them being hurt in any way. It would be my dearest wish for them to visit me. I’ve also written to my parents, to tell them of our circumstances, and I’ve vowed to diligently save some of my wages every single week so that one day Sabina and I may fly home to visit them.

  Now I must write again to tell them that my husband is dead, although I’ll spare them the terrible details. My last letter will be to Suresh’s parents. They’ve suffered greatly at the hands of their son and they are not deserving of such pain. Their shame will be hard for them to bear. I’ll write to them with my sincere condolences, in the hope that they will one day embrace me as their daughter once more. Sabina, I know, would love to see her grandparents again.

  My dear daughter slips her hand in mine and we step on to the crescent of sand by the pretty harbour. The late afternoon is cool and I’ve brought a little sweatshirt for Sabina even though she doesn’t seem to feel the cold as I do. She kicks off her shoes and socks.

  Despite this being a regular habit, she jumps excitedly on the sand, holding her arms out to embrace her freedom. I lay down our small rug, then, in my bag, I find the shorts I’ve brought for her. She wriggles them on under her school skirt and then she peels that off to give to me. It’s a routine she knows well, as we spend as much time as we can down here by the sea. The manicured beauty of Lyme Regis is so very different from the wildness of my native home, but it reminds me of it all the same. Somehow, across the miles of ocean, I feel connected. I can stand at the edge of the waves and know that, in another place, my sister, my mummy, my daddy will be doing the same thing. They feel so close to me that I could almost touch them.

  I stand and breathe in the air. I love the tang of the salt on the breeze, the call of the wheeling seagulls, the way the wind lifts my hair, the feel of damp, scratchy sand beneath my toes. I could be content here for ever.

  While I fold her skirt and brush sand from her shoes, Sabina runs up and down on the beach, arms wide, crying out for joy. Unbidden, there’s a tear in my eye as I watch her. She’s my life, my reason for being. Whatever we go through in our days t
ogether, if she is happy and finds love, then it will all have been worth it.

  ‘Come on, Mama,’ she calls impatiently. ‘Play with me.’

  So I brush away my tear and, kicking off my own shoes, I run to her. We hold hands and scamper down to the sea. Together we jump in the waves as Hayden showed us how to do. We laugh as the shocking coldness of the water on our legs takes our breath.

  Sabina turns and, as she does, she suddenly lets go of my hand and her mouth falls open. Then she’s running, running out of the sea and away from me up the beach.

  ‘What is it?’ I call after her, perplexed by her haste.

  ‘Mama!’ she cries. ‘Mama, it’s Hayden! It’s Hayden!’

  I put my hand up to shield my eyes from the low evening sunshine. She’s right. It’s Hayden. He’s standing there on the beach before me.

  When my daughter reaches him, he scoops her into his arms and twirls her round with exuberant delight, holding her tightly. Over her head, he smiles at me.

  And I run to him. I run to him with a smile on my lips, the sun on my face and hope in my heart.

  Acknowledgements

  Thank you to all the people who helped to make this novel the best that it could be, including the fabulous team at Little, Brown who make an author’s life a joy; to my lovely friend Ayesha Bernard and also my dear Lizzy Kremer, who has the most amazing eye for a story. And, as always, to Lovely Kev for many and varied services above and beyond the call of duty.

  Table of Contents

  Also by Carole Matthews

  Copyright

  A Place to Call Home

  Table of Contents

  Dedication

  Hello!

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven