by Monica Ali
The next day she followed her morning routine of walking and swimming. Every step and stroke took her farther away from John Grabowski, made her believe that he had really gone, that he was no longer on her heels. She shook him off. She found her balance. He would still be looking for her, and he would never understand that the person he was looking for was no longer to be found.
She couldn’t think of any more tasks to do around the house. She mopped the kitchen floor again. Then she went to the boxes and flipped through the gardening magazines. She looked at an atlas. She picked up the coverless novel and started reading, still sitting on the floor.
She moved up to the couch and read on. It was about a character called Ivan Denisovich Shukhov, an inmate in some kind of prison camp. She turned the book over and flicked through, trying to find the author’s name. All the characters’ names were Russian so the author was probably Russian too. It was an easy book to read, short sentences and nobody spoke like Lawrence, straight from the dictionary. The prisoners had to work at a construction site and they were so cold and hungry that all they could think about was how to survive another day. It was forty degrees below zero and the prisoners were badly clothed. If they added extra layers beneath the prison uniform they were punished. Shukhov thought about the piece of bread he’d saved from breakfast and sewn in his mattress.
She thought he would die by the end of the book, that would be the story. The conditions were so extreme, that would be what would happen. She read on. Can a man who’s warm understand one who’s freezing?
For the next four hours she read without lifting her head; when Rufus jumped up and wanted to play, she petted him but carried on reading. She moved around the couch, changed positions, stretched her legs, switched the book from one hand to the other, all without interrupting her flow. It was starting to get dark and she fumbled for the lamp. The guards were searching Shukhov and he had a piece of metal hidden in his glove. They didn’t find it and she breathed easier. She wasn’t so sure he was going to die, he was a survivor.
At the end of the book Shukhov was grateful to have lived another day. He’d decided it was a good day, he’d managed to get some extra rations. She closed the book and sat there filled with a longing, a yearning, so strong that it made her tremble.
She walked outside to look up at the stars. When she came back inside there was a new text on her phone, and this time it was from Carson. Where are you? I miss you. Can we try again?
For a while she sat and stared at the screen. She hadn’t decided what was possible. Was she going to leap again into the unknown?
She got undressed and went into the bathroom and picked up a towel. Then she ran out of the cabin, across the deck and down the stairs, and without pausing ran thigh-deep into the water. She plunged in and swam in the dark and she was swimming away and toward and she saw Lawrence in the rowboat, the gleam of his bald head, bobbing up and down, and she raised an arm and waved at him, and he disappeared but she swam on.
Acknowledgments
My research for Untold Story relied on many books, articles, and websites about the institution of royalty, how it has evolved in recent years, and the role that the paparazzi have played in that change. In particular, I drew inspiration from the facts and insightful analysis contained in The Diana Chronicles by Tina Brown. I would also like to acknowledge my debt to four other books: Diana: Her True Story by Andrew Morton, Diana: The Life of a Troubled Princess by Sally Bedell Smith, Diana and the Paparazzi by Glenn Harvey and Mark Saunders, and Paparazzi by Peter Howe. I am grateful to all these authors.
