by Sam Bourne
‘OK, Brett and Kathy, I’ve made a decision. These sessions have become useless. They’re a waste of time, yours and mine. We’re going to end it here.’ Maggie snapped shut the file on her lap.
The two people on the couch opposite suddenly turned their attention away from each other and stared at her. She could feel their eyes on her, but she ignored them, busying herself with her papers instead.
‘You don’t need to worry about the paperwork. I’ll get all that to the Virginia authorities tomorrow. You’ve both got lawyers, haven’t you? Course you have. Well, they’ll take it from here.’ She stood up, as if to usher them out.
Brett seemed fixed to the spot; Kathy’s mouth hung wide open. At last, Brett forced himself to speak. ‘You can’t, you can’t do this.’
‘Do what, exactly?’ Maggie had her back to him, as she put the file back on the shelf behind her.
‘You can’t just abandon us!’
Now Kathy joined in. ‘We need you, Maggie. There is no way we can get through this without you.’
‘Oh, don’t you worry about that. The lawyers will get it sorted.’ Maggie kept moving around the room, avoiding eye contact. Outside she heard the buzzer go again, and the sound of another person or people moving in and out of the apartment. What was going on?
‘They’ll kill us,’ said Brett. ‘They’ll take all our money and make this whole thing even more of a nightmare than it already is!’
This was working.
‘Look,’ he said. ‘We’ll sort this out, we promise. Don’t we, Kathy?’
‘We do.’
‘OK? We’re promising. We’ll get this done. Right here.’
‘I think it’s too late for that. We set aside a period of time to resolve everything-’
‘Oh, please don’t say that, Maggie.’ It was Kathy, now imploring. ‘There’s not such a lot of work to do here. You heard those red lines. We’re not so far apart.’
Maggie turned around. ‘I’ll give you ten minutes.’
In fact it took fifteen. But when they left Maggie’s office and walked into the sunshine of a Washington September morning, Kathy and Brett George had resolved to share the costs of child support proportionate to their income, Brett paying more because he earned more, Kathy’s financial contribution shrinking to zero if she gave up paid work to look after the kids. From now on, he would pay his way even if she carried on working, though she would have a genuine incentive to stay home. The children would live in their own house with their mother, except for alternate weekends and whenever either the kids or their father fancied seeing each other. The rule would be no hard and fast rules. Before they left they hugged Maggie and, to their surprise as much as hers, each other.
Maggie fell into a chair, allowing herself a small smile of satisfaction. Was this how she would make up for what she had done more than a year ago? Bit by bit, one couple at a time, reducing the amount of pain in the world? The thought was comforting for a moment or two-until she contemplated how long it would take. To balance all the lives lost because of her and that damned, damned mistake, she would be here, in this room, for all eternity. And still it wouldn’t be enough.
She looked at her watch. She should be getting on. Edward would be waiting for her outside, ready to hit the full range of Washington’s domestic retail outlets in a bid to equip their not-quite-marital home.
She opened the door to a surprise. Flicking through one of Maggie’s back numbers of Vogue, in the tiny area that served as Maggie’s waiting room, was a man who oozed Washington. Like Edward, he had the full DC garb: button-down shirt, blue blazer, loafers, even now, on a Sunday. Maggie didn’t recognize him, which didn’t mean she hadn’t met him. One of the troubles with these Washington men: they all looked the same.
‘Hello? Do you have an appointment?’
‘I don’t. It’s kind of an emergency. It won’t take long.’
An emergency? What the hell was this? She headed down the corridor, opening the door onto the kitchen. There she saw Edward, signing on one of those electronic devices held out by a man wearing delivery overalls.
‘Edward, what’s going on?’
He seemed to pale. ‘Ah, honey. I can explain. They just had to go. They were taking up too much space, they messed up the whole place. So I’ve done it. They’ve gone.’
‘What on earth are you talking about?’
‘Those boxes which you’ve had sitting in the study for nearly a year. You said you would unpack them, but you never did. So this kind gentleman has loaded them onto his truck and now they’re going to the trash.’
Maggie looked at the man in overalls, who stared at his feet. Now she understood what had happened. But she could not believe it. She stormed past Edward, flung open the door to the study and, sure enough, the space in the corner was now empty, the carpet on which those two cartons had once sat more compacted, a different shade from the rest. She flew back to the kitchen.
‘You bastard! Those boxes had my, my…letters and photographs and, and…whole fucking life and you just THREW THEM OUT?’
Maggie rushed to the front door. But, doubtless sensing trouble, the trash guy had made his getaway. Swearing, she pressed the lift button again and again. ‘Come on, come on,’ she muttered, tensing her jaw. When the lift came, she willed it down faster. As soon as it arrived on the ground floor and the door opened a crack, she squeezed through it, running through the main doors of the building and out onto the street. She looked left and right and left again before she saw it, a green truck pulling out. She ran hard to catch up, coming within a few yards. She was waving wildly, like someone flagging down traffic after a road accident. But it was too late. The van picked up speed and vanished. All she had was half a phone number and what she thought was the name: National Removals.
She rushed back upstairs, frantically grabbing the telephone, her fingers trembling over the buttons. She called directory information, asking for a number. They found it and offered to put her through. Three rings, then four, then five. A recorded message: We’re sorry, but all our offices are closed on Sunday. Our regular opening hours are Monday to Friday…If she waited till tomorrow it would be too late: they would have destroyed the boxes and everything they contained.
She went back into the kitchen to find Edward standing, defiant. She began quietly. ‘You just threw them out.’
‘You’re damn right I threw them out. They made this place look like a student shithole. All that junk, all that sentimental crap. You need to drop it, Maggie. You need to move on.’
‘But, but…’ Maggie wasn’t looking at him. She was looking at the ground, trying to digest what had just happened. Not just the letters from her parents, the photographs from Ireland, but the notes she had taken during crucial negotiations, private, scribbled memos from rebel leaders and UN officials. Those boxes contained her life’s work. And now they were in a dumpster.
‘I did it for you, Maggie. That world is not your world any more. It’s moved on without you. You’ve got to do the same. You need to adjust to your life now, as it is. Our life.’
So that’s why he had been so keen to get her locked away in the consulting room this morning. And she thought he just wanted her to get a punctual start to the day. She had even thanked him! The truth was that he just wanted the garbage men in and out before she had a chance to stop them. For the first time, she met his gaze. Quietly, as if unable to believe her own words, she said, ‘You want to destroy who I am.’
He looked back at her blankly, before finally nodding towards the other end of the apartment. In a voice that was ice cold, he said, ‘I think someone’s waiting for you.’
She almost staggered out of the room, unable to absorb what had happened. How could he have done such a thing, without her permission, without even talking to her? Did he really hate the Maggie Costello he had once known so much that he wanted to erase every last trace of her, replacing her with someone, different, bland and subservient?
She stood in the lan
ding that served as the waiting area, her head spinning. The man in blue was still there, now turning the pages of Atlantic Monthly.
‘Bad time? I’m sorry.’
‘No, no,’ Maggie said, barely out loud. On auto-pilot, she added. ‘Is your wife coming?’
He made a curious smirk. ‘She should be along soon.’
Maggie gestured him into the consulting room. ‘You said it was some kind of emergency.’ She was struggling to remember his case, to remember if he was one of the handful of clients she said could contact her out of hours.
‘Yes. My problem is that I’m finding it hard to adjust.’
‘To what?’
‘To life here. Normality.’
‘Where were you before?’
‘I was all over. Travelling from one screwed-up place to another. Always meant to be doing good, always trying to make the world a better place and all that bullshit.’
‘Are you a doctor?’
‘You could say that. I try to save lives.’
Maggie could feel her muscles tensing. ‘And now you’re finding it hard to adjust to being back home.’
‘Home! That’s a joke. I don’t know what home is any more. I’m not from DC; I haven’t lived in my hometown for nearly twenty years. Always on the road, on planes, in hotel rooms, sleeping in dumps.’
‘But that’s not why you’re finding it hard to adjust.’
‘No. It’s the adrenaline I miss, I guess. The drama. Sounds terrible, doesn’t it?’
‘Go on.’ Maggie was remembering everything that was in those boxes. A handwritten letter of thanks she had received from the British prime minister, following the talks over Kosovo. A treasured photo with the man she had loved through her mid-twenties.
‘Before, everything I did seemed to matter so much. The stakes were high. Now nothing even comes close. It’s all so banal.’
Maggie stared hard at the man. The words were coming out of him but his eyes were flat and cold. She began to feel uneasy at his presence here. ‘Can you say more about the work you were doing?’
‘I started with an aid organization in Africa, working with people there during a particularly vicious civil war. Somehow-it was a fluke really-I ended up being one of the few people who could talk to both sides. The UN started using me as a go-between. And I got results.’
Maggie shivered. Her mind was racing, wondering whether she should call for Edward, though that was truly the last thing she wanted to do.
‘Eventually I became known as a sort of un-official diplomat, a professional mediator. The US government hired me for a peace process that had stalled. And one thing led to another. Eventually they were sending me around the world, to peace talks that had hit the buffers. They called me “the Closer”. I was the one who could close the deal.’
Could she make a run for it? But something told her not even to glance at the door: she did not want to provoke this man. ‘Then what happened?’ Her voice betrayed nothing: years of practice.
‘I was the best in my field. Sent everywhere. Belgrade, Baghdad. Back to Africa.’
Maggie swallowed hard.
‘And then I made a mistake.’
‘Where?’
‘In Africa.’
Maggie’s voice stayed low, even as she said, ‘Who the hell are you?’
‘I think you know who I am.’
‘No, I don’t. So tell me, who are you and what are you playing at? Tell me now or I’ll call the police.’
‘You know who I am, Maggie. You know very well. I’m you.’
CHAPTER THREE
W ASHINGTON , S UNDAY , 10.43 AM
It wasn’t a surprise. She had known that much the moment he had mentioned Africa and the UN. He had been telling her own life story back to her, pretending it was his own. It was a nasty little trick.
Still, that wasn’t why she had grown agitated: she was used to dealing with creeps. This man seemed to know everything about her. Including her-what had he called it?-‘mistake’.
‘I’m not here to taunt you.’
‘But you’re not here for bloody divorce mediation either, are you?’
‘There’s no wife for me to divorce. I’m like you used to be. Married to the job.’
‘And what job is that exactly?’
‘I work for the same people you used to work for. The United States government. My name is Judd Bonham.’ He extended a hand.
Maggie ignored it, heading slowly backwards towards her chair. She was reeling. First Edward and the boxes and now this. Initially, she had him down as some psycho stalker, a jilted husband who blamed her for his divorce. It wouldn’t be too difficult to Google her whole life story, then trick his way in to scare her, to freak her out. But she had read him wrong. He was here on official business. But what on earth could it be? She hadn’t done anything for the Agency or State Department since…then. That had been well over a year ago and she had cut all her ties instantly. Not a phone call, not a letter. Nothing. If she had had it her way, she wouldn’t even be living in bloody America. She couldn’t have gone back to Ireland, couldn’t face that; but she had thought about following Liz to London. Instead she had ended up in sodding Washington, inside the belly of the beast. To be with Edward.
‘Gotta hand it to you though. You haven’t lost your touch.’
She looked up at him.
‘You’re still good. The old jet-on-the-runway trick. Engines revving up, ready to fly any moment. Love it.’
‘What?’
‘Your last appointment, Kathy and Brett. Threatening to walk out on the parties: they should teach that at negotiator school. Didn’t Clinton do it at Camp David? Get the chopper all fired up, blades spinning. The mediator says he-or she-will walk and the parties get scared. Realize how much they need you and how much they need the talks. They suddenly see that any deal they’d make outside the room would be worse. And it brings them together, both sides desperate to keep the talks going. You mediation guys call it a “shared project”, don’t you? Something like that. Even unites them against a common enemy: you. Genius.’
‘You were listening.’
‘It’s the training, what can I say?’
‘You arsehole.’
‘I like how you say that. Ahhhrse-hole. Sounds sexy in your accent.’
‘Get out.’
‘Though I see you don’t really do sexy so much these days. No more of the hair-tumbling-down-in-front-of-the-eyes routine. Is that Edward’s influence?’
‘Go.’
‘Oh, I’ll go. But first I have a little proposal to make.’
Maggie stared at him.
‘Don’t worry, not that kind of proposal. Not that I couldn’t be tempted, should you ever get tired of Edward-’
‘I’m going to call the police.’ She reached for the phone.
‘No you’re not. And we both know why.’
That stopped her; she put the phone down. He knew about her ‘mistake’. And he would tell. The Washington Post, some blog, it didn’t matter. The true reason for her exile, currently known only to a few diplomatic insiders, would become public. What was left of her reputation would be ruined.
‘What do you want?’ Almost a whisper.
‘We want you to come out of retirement.’
‘No.’
‘Come on, first rule of any negotiation: you have to listen.’
‘I am not having a negotiation with you. I want you to piss off.’
‘The people I work for tend not to take no for an answer.’
‘And who is it you work for exactly? “The United States government” is a bit vague.’
‘Let’s say this has come from as close to the top as you can get in this town. You have a reputation, you know. Miss Costello.’
‘Well,’ you can tell them I’m flattered. But the answer is no.
‘You’re not even curious?’
‘No, I am not. I don’t do that work any more. I work here now. I mediate between husbands and wives. And I don’t
take emergency cases. Which means you have about one minute to get up and leave.’
‘I won’t insult your intelligence, Maggie. You read the papers. You know what’s happening in Jerusalem. We’re this close to a deal.’ He held his thumb and forefinger half an inch apart. ‘We’ve never been so close before.’
Maggie ignored him.
‘And you also know what happened yesterday. An attack on the Israeli Prime Minister. Or what looked like an attack. Israeli security ended up killing some internal critic of the peace process. Could screw the whole thing.’
‘The answer’s no.’
‘The powers that be have decided that this is too important an opportunity to be lost. They need you to go in there and do your thing. Work your magic. Come on, you’ve still got it. I could hear that just now. And this is something that really matters. Middle East peace, for Christ’s sake. How could you pass that up? This is the World Series of peacemaking!’
‘I don’t play baseball.’
‘No. OK.’ He was talking more quietly now and in a different tone. She recognized it for what it was, a change in tactics. ‘What I mean is, you’re a mediator. It’s your calling. It’s what you were born to do. You’re good at it and you love doing it. This is the chance to return to the work you love. At the highest possible level.’
She thought of the pictures she had seen on TV that morning, and the feeling she had had, but not admitted, even to herself. Envy. She had envied the men and women sitting at the head of the negotiating table in Jerusalem, the people charged with that weightiest and most thrilling of tasks, brokering peace. She had pictured them the instant she saw the news item. Like fishermen, reeling in a rare and prized specimen, they would be exerting both enormous strength and great gentleness. Pulling with all their might one moment, then backing off, letting out some more line the next. Knowing when the rod could bend, and knowing what would make it break. It was skilled, demanding work. But it was also the most exhilarating activity she had ever known.
Bonham read her face. ‘You must miss it. You wouldn’t be human if you didn’t. I mean counselling couples is valuable, no question. But the stakes are never as high, are they? You’re never going to feel the thrill you did at Dayton or Geneva. Not here. Are you?’
