Cai had become very still, and Satish wondered if this at least could benefit him. Surely he couldn’t be attacked while Mr Brecon was actually watching? He caught a sudden flare of memory, a night in Kampala five years earlier. There was a voice in the dark, his mother’s, and Sima’s head nestled into their father’s neck as they jogged across the tarmac towards the plane. They’d made it to safety then, guided by their own blunt-headed determination. Perhaps he could save himself now.
He took a step away from the fence, and then a second, feeling the swell of pain as he moved. Another brought him behind Cai, who still hadn’t budged. When Satish looked at Mr Brecon again, he saw why.
Satish’s line of sight was now the same as Cai’s. From here you could see Mr Brecon behind the glass. But you could see Cai’s reflection too, the boy superimposed on the man. Both were tensed for conflict, welcoming it even, arms stiff at their sides, hands bunched. Both were jutting their heads forward, their expressions combative. Mr Brecon could see only Cai, of course. But Cai could see them both, and the sight had stopped him short. His eyes were fixed on the glass, and Satish could not tell which one of them he was looking at: himself or his father.
Mr Brecon blinked once, slowly, then turned away from the window, his lazy movement the final confirmation; he would not stop his son doing whatever it was he was about to do. Then the window was empty and dark again, and Satish was alone.
Cai was still looking across at where his dad had been. Satish told himself: Do it! Do it now and you’ll stand a chance! But even as he formulated his plan Cai turned quickly and grabbed Satish by the arms. There was a fresh heave of pain.
Satish yelled, anger and pain together, incoherent. Cai pulled at him and Satish, resisting, reached out and hit Cai’s face with his good arm, and now Cai was shouting something, using Satish’s name but shouting it away from him, shouting towards the house.
‘Satish!’ he yelled. ‘It’s OK! It’s over!’ He threw it like a stone against the window where his dad had been. ‘We’re mates! You’re OK!’
‘Let go!’
But Cai carried on bawling. ‘We’re mates! It’s over!’ And he glared up at the indifferent house, his mouth set in that way that was him and Mandy and Mr Brecon all at once. Satish shoved him aside, staggered towards the gate and made a run for it.
Chapter 32
His scar is the shape of an incomplete circle: a pair of brackets, opening and shutting with nothing in between. It’s the shape of the two curves of metal at the tip of the barbecue tongs. Those tongs were probably thrown out when the Brecons moved to South Africa. Maybe not, though, Satish thinks; they do a lot of barbecuing there, don’t they? Braai, they call it. So maybe those little jaws survived the emigration after all, another household object shoved into a tea chest, in which case they might be under South African soil by now, part of some urban landfill, bedded down in the same strata as the other things disposed of twenty, ten, five years ago. Or perhaps they’ve held on in a shed somewhere in Durban, fallen out of sight behind an old lawnmower, some garden chairs, a can of oil. But before they went, wherever they went, they left a little of themselves in England. Their mark is here, on Satish’s right arm, an inch or so south of the shoulder joint. It’s the sort of place where people choose to put a tattoo.
Satish is sitting at his desk at work, a week before the reunion photograph. His finger finds the scar easily and moves round the broken circle, skipping the gaps each time: on and off and on and off. His hand is tucked into his shirt and he closes his eyes, the better to concentrate. The skin is hard, contracted down, the edges puckered. It has led a curious double life this thing, kept from his parents by sheer luck and ingenuity, revealed to Maya under a false identity. He is intimate with it, though; his hand brushes over it daily in the shower, he catches sight of it in the mirror when he dresses, and whenever he does so he never fails to appreciate its final irony. Like most deep scars, the colour leached out of it within months; it’s a part of him that will always be white.
He is sitting with his hand tucked into his shirt, circling his scar, meditative. In front of him is an ECG printout. The patient, a fourteen-year-old boy, collapsed while playing football. He’s been bounced to Satish from neurology; they can’t find anything wrong. But Satish can. Stretching across the red grids of the graph paper, the boy’s trace shows a long QT interval. There’s the extended slump of the ST segment and the sharp peaks of abnormal T-waves. The boy’s heart went into arrhythmia, beating fast but futile: a cartoon animal, legs a blur, suspended above a canyon. No blood to his brain, no warning of what was coming – he’d have lost consciousness instantly.
On and off, on and off. Satish’s finger moves over his scar. He needs to double-check the history, make sure it isn’t caused by any medication the boy’s been taking. He’s thinking about this next action: pull your hand out of your shirt, get a pen, write a note … and then Stephen Chandler walks in on him. No warning: he doesn’t even knock. There’s a rush of heat to Satish’s face, as if he’s been caught masturbating. He pulls his hand free, and then he registers who it is.
‘I had to come back,’ says Stephen, advancing into the centre of the room. ‘I need you to hear me out.’ He’s ditched the suit and looks more fluid, less restricted in his T-shirt and jeans. As if he could move quickly, if he wanted to. ‘Ford won’t let me do the photograph,’ he says.
Satish once met an air stewardess who told him she checked for fire exits every time she walked into a new environment – a restaurant, a shop, a friend’s home. He wonders how she’d assess his office: one window, one door. One man blocking access to both. He buttons up his shirt. ‘I’m sorry about that, Stephen,’ he says. ‘But it’s not in my control.’
‘Not control, no. But influence. Listen—’
Satish keeps his seat. ‘I think you should leave.’
‘Please, listen. I know I came across … last time, I was … aggressive, maybe. Wound up. I’m sorry. I’ve thought about it …’ Stephen huffs air out of his nose. He looks around the office as if seeking something that might help his cause. Before Satish can speak, he carries on. ‘The photograph’s going ahead, but Ford’s not interested in me. He doesn’t remember me. He doesn’t believe I was there.’
‘There’s nothing—’
‘Hear me out!’ The moment he’s shouted, he’s patting the air down with his hands. Satish doesn’t know which of them he’s trying to pacify. ‘Sorry, sorry. But all you have to do is tell him who I am. That’s it. End of.’
‘I can’t help.’
‘I don’t understand. It would cost you nothing but it could turn things around for me. You know, they’re saying Neil Listick might turn up. Riot Act! Think of the exposure we’d get. Everyone would want the story.’
Part of what makes this hard is the disproportion of it all: Stephen’s reliance on this one, tenuous thing. It’s unbalanced enough to nearly be funny; Satish doesn’t know what to expect next, a punch or the punchline. He tells Stephen: ‘None of it makes a big enough difference. Not Andrew Ford, not Riot Act. This won’t turn anything around.’
‘Please. I need to try everything, every avenue. I should have said before. I’ve lost my job …’
‘I want you to leave now.’
‘… custody of my daughter. She’s called Lily. She’s eight. She …’
‘Stephen! Stop!’
And then there’s a knock on the door. The two men look at each other.
‘Hello?’ It’s a woman’s voice.
Satish gets up. ‘Stay there,’ he tells Stephen. He opens the door a crack.
At first, he struggles to recognise the woman waiting outside. Then he remembers: it’s Alice Roberts. He last saw her harried and pale, standing next to her daughter’s bed in borrowed scrubs. He’d had to tell her they were keeping Jess on the ward for longer, and watch as she tried to hold things together. But Jess has done well; she’s come with her mother now and is leaning against the opposite wall of the corridor, s
taring at her feet. She still looks a bit wan, but she’s on the mend. Her jeans have a chain hanging from the belt, and her T-shirt proclaims her a ‘Beastie Girl’.
‘Doctor Patel! I hope you don’t mind. We so wanted to see you,’ her mother says. She’s carrying a large bag, which she hefts onto her shoulder when she sees him. There’s a scarf hanging out of it, made of some kind of slippery material and as she bumps the bag higher, it starts slithering out.
‘Do we have an appointment? I wasn’t aware …’
She bends down to rescue the scarf. ‘Oh! No. We just decided to take our chances. Jess has been home for a few weeks now. She’s doing great, aren’t you?’ Jess nods sullenly. ‘Suraya’s looking after us and it’s all been fine. I just wanted to come and see you all, after our appointment today. We’re doing the rounds! ICU, Mike, everyone. I wanted to say …’ Here, her voice wobbles a bit.
Behind her, Jess tuts and sighs. ‘Not again, Mum. This is tragic.’
Mrs Roberts laughs, but the action seems to jump-start her weeping, and by the time she speaks again she’s crying in earnest. ‘Well, you can see she’s better, can’t you? I feel I have to say this – it’s terrible, when something like this happens. You think your child – I mean, you just want to protect them. And I was very scared.’ She looks at her daughter. ‘I’m sorry, but I was. You gave me a terrible fright. It’s an awful thing, but what I wanted to say …’
Satish is horrified. He needs to stem this somehow, but can’t, for the moment, find a way to do so. He sends quick glances up and down the corridor: no one coming. Mrs Roberts gushes on.
‘I wanted to say that you all made it bearable. You were kind and straight with me, and you got Jane Oshodi to look after me, and she was brilliant.
‘And what I wanted to say, if you don’t mind, I wanted to tell you what it’s like, when someone’s missing from a family like that, the whole family’s messed up. We just – we couldn’t go on together if something had happened to her. But we didn’t have to do that. We got her back. So I wanted to say, thank you. And we’ve made cards.’
She reaches this hiatus and opens her bag, sniffing; Satish can see a fat pile of envelopes inside. She flicks through them and retrieves one. But instead of holding it out to him she comes towards him with it. Behind her, Jess is looking at the floor again, and suddenly Mrs Roberts has her arms around Satish and she’s pinned him in a hug. He looks out over her head and doesn’t know what to do. He can feel his chest vibrating as she continues to talk.
‘You’re all brilliant, all of you. Bloody brilliant,’ she sniffs.
Unsure of the etiquette, Satish tentatively hugs her back. Spurred on, she squeezes him harder. This should be awful, worse than the talking; it’s uncontrolled, disempowering. It’s embarrassing. But under cover of having no choice – she became very emotional, I couldn’t get rid of her – he discovers to his surprise that it isn’t as unpleasant as it should be. He and Mike and the rest of them, they have changed this woman’s life. Maybe she has a right to this verbal arrhythmia.
‘You’re worth your weight in gold,’ she’s saying now. ‘I hope you know that. She’s here now because of you.’ He tilts his head against Alice’s, just a little, and hears Jess say, ‘Oh, God,’ and her mum draws back from him.
‘OK, now that’s three times I’ve made a fool of myself today,’ she says. ‘I’ll let you go.’
Satish makes an effort to steady himself. He knows he should say something. ‘It was lovely to see you both,’ he tells them. There’s a damp patch on his shirt.
Mrs Roberts says her goodbyes, a lengthy, garrulous process, and Satish is left alone in front of the closed door. He re-adjusts his shirt, tightens his tie. Stephen is waiting for him.
He’s sitting on the chair, but when Satish enters he stands up suddenly.
‘Just contact Ford. Please. I just want this chance. You’re wrong; it will make things better.’
Satish looks at Stephen, at his T-shirt referencing a rock concert of some twenty years past, at the leather thong on his wrist. He sees things he didn’t see the first time: the other man’s hair is receding, there’s a pale stripe across his bare ring finger. And there’s the troubling vision of his daughter, Lily; Satish doesn’t even know if she exists.
He thinks about the prosecution of ancient wickedness, about how often it has failed. Stephen could be Pinochet, rising from his wheelchair on the tarmac. Let him.
‘All right,’ says Satish.
‘What?’
‘I’ll do it. I’ll email Ford. I’ll tell him you were there. After that, you can take your chances.’
‘Oh, God,’ says Stephen. ‘Thanks.’ Even as he’s talking he’s moving past Satish, getting out while the going’s good. He almost makes it to the door, then looks back.
‘No harm done, yeah?’ he says.
‘What?’
‘Back then. We were just kids, all as bad as each other, yeah? We straight now?’
No: harm done, thinks Satish.
He does it before he’s even aware of what he’s doing. He makes a fist with his right hand, thumb outside, to protect it. Stephen opens his mouth. Satish studies his face briefly, locating his jaw, his eye, his nose, and he pulls his arm back and swings it, with all his adult strength, and he hammers it against Stephen, who stumbles against the door, and Satish likes the feel of it and the sound of it and it does seem the appropriate thing to do so he does it again: once, twice, and then finally he feels satisfied.
Chapter 33
Satish is waiting for her when she comes into the bedroom. He’s sitting on the bed, the blackmail notes in his hand. She sees him and her face goes still.
‘Oh, Papa.’ She starts to cry: instantly, no segue.
‘Close the door, Asha.’
She closes the door.
He waits and lets her cry some more. She’s still got her rucksack on and as she bends forward to weep, it shifts sideways.
‘Take off your bag. Sit down.’ He’s set up a chair opposite him. He thinks, if she’s sitting next to him on the bed, this will be harder. It’s in his muscle memory: to reach out for her, to give her a cuddle and kiss the top of her head.
‘Why did you do it, Asha?’
‘How did you know?’
He waits.
‘Do the photograph, or I’ll tell your secret,’ he reads. ‘I mean it. I will tell about the medicine. Do the photograph.’
She cries, wordless.
‘Do you know what that’s called? It’s called blackmail. You know that, don’t you? If you were an adult, the police would arrest you for it. Did you know that?’
‘No!’ She wipes her nose with the back of her sleeve. He sees the cuff frayed where she’s been chewing at it: they always tell her off for that.
‘Asha, I don’t know where to start. What was going through your head?’
‘You wouldn’t do the photograph.’
‘But—’
‘You just wouldn’t. I knew you had a secret.’
‘How? I mean, what made you think …?’
‘You were really cross with Mum when she had your bag.’
He wants to stay in control. He keeps it measured. ‘She had my bag – my briefcase?’
‘Yeah. You stopped her. You hurt her.’
It was that Saturday afternoon, weeks ago. He thinks about the way Asha would have seen it, what she’d have heard. He knows what he saw: Maya’s face, bobbing behind those stupid pads he had to hold up. He remembers wanting to be elsewhere. Asha was on the stairs, chatting to them. She grew bored and went up to the landing, he recalls, but she’d have heard everything. Asha, deep in her beanbag, reading her book. Putting it down to listen when things got interesting. She’d have had a half-view of them downstairs, all legs and arms, glimpsed in between the bannisters. Asha seeing him lose it, her dad pounding away at all his ghosts. And later: Asha sneaking into the garage, looking through his briefcase, finding his bottle, his spoon.
‘What did you
think you’d found?’
She shrugs. ‘A secret. I thought maybe you were, like, drugging yourself, or you’d stolen it.’
Maybe it’s the shrug, the carelessness of it, but he feels a rise of anger.
‘And did you not think,’ he asks her. ‘Did you not think that if this was a secret, if it was as serious as that, that it would be really dangerous to blackmail me about it?’
‘Dangerous? Why?’
‘Because, Asha, you could hurt me!’
‘I get told on all the time. Every day! But I’m not the only naughty one, am I? Why does nobody search your bag?’
No, absolutely, he wants to say. We’re all at it. He wants to feel righteous indignation, but he can’t. He can’t claim the moral high ground; she’s asking all the right questions. And he remembers the limits of her world: she knows nothing of disgrace, of professional ruin. She never imagines they might lose each other. She knows what it is to have a cigarette found in your bag and be grounded for two weeks. Maybe she thought she’d be grounding him.
But there’s something he still doesn’t understand. He asks her: ‘Why did you care so much about the photograph?’
‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘Tell me.’
‘OK, then,’ she says. Her hands make fists in her lap and she looks straight at him. ‘I hate it that you’re sad all the time.’
‘I’m sad …?’
‘See? There’s no point telling you. You’ll just say I’m wrong.’
‘Go on.’
‘You’re, like, sad and grumpy all the time.’
‘That’s not true, Asha. It isn’t.’
He’s found somewhere else to look, but she ducks across, moving her face in front of him. ‘It is, Papa.’
‘That’s a different discussion. Why did you care about the photograph? What’s the point of making me do it?’
‘I know you think Mum’s wrong, but I bet she isn’t. She said you’d be famous if you did the photograph. You would! I found out about it. Look!’ She gets up and rifles through the mess on her desk, displacing other mess as she does so.
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