‘Yes.’ I wait for the caller to say more.
Please don’t let it be bad news, I say to myself. Please don’t let it be a call from a hospital. And please don’t let it be another woman. Let it be someone from the hospital instead. Is that such a terrible thing to think?
As I worry that my husband may have lost his life I still don’t want mine, ours, to be disrupted by anything else.
‘Who is it?’ I say, because the caller has gone quiet.
‘I just wondered if Abe was at home,’ she says, and then I know.
I know.
All the late nights. All the avoiding of searching questions. All of the things I tried not to confront, in case it was true.
I know now.
‘Who is it?’ I ask again, even though I don’t really want to know.
‘I’m a friend of Abe’s.’
I wonder if she’s rehearsed what she’s going to say because it all comes tumbling out.
‘A colleague, really. I just saw the news and I know he works nearby and he was due to call me about a project this evening. I’m sorry to disturb you but I just wanted to check that he was okay. Is he?’
I say nothing. I can’t quite believe the cheek of it. How dare she call here? How dare she validate her concern by calling me? She has no right to be worried about Abe. I’m worried about him and Tessa’s worried about him. We’re the people who should be worried about him. Not her.
I’m about to say some of this when I hear the keys turning in the door. ‘Please don’t call here ever again,’ I say, surprised by the coldness in my voice.
‘I’m sorry,’ she begins, and I delight in her pleading tone. ‘I just needed to know.’
And I shall not tell her, not now, not tonight. No doubt tomorrow Abe, who is now in the hallway, hanging up his coat, will let her know. But I’m going to have a sleepless night. She can bloody well have one too.
‘I don’t know who you are,’ I say, lowering my voice because I don’t want Abe to hear me. ‘But I do know why you’ve called and you have no right. Goodbye.’
I hang up as Abe comes into the room, looking ashen. I’m too relieved to be angry, too upset to be relieved, too confused to know what to say. I take in this apparition of the man I used to think I knew instinctively. ‘Who was that?’ he asks.
‘Tessa,’ I lie. ‘I was worried. What happened? Where have you been?’
‘There was a bomb,’ Abe says, and sits on the sofa at a right angle to me.
He looks stunned and a little dusty but he’s not injured and he’s not dead. I’m caught between relief and fury. ‘I know. I’ve seen the news. I’ve been calling the police and hospitals for the past two hours. I didn’t know where you were. I thought …’ I can’t say it. ‘Why didn’t you call me?’
‘I don’t know. I’m sorry.’
‘Why didn’t you come home?’
‘I just … I was on my way to the train and …’ He’s clearly distressed.
‘Where were you? What happened?’
‘We were told to evacuate the building, but I thought it was just a hoax.’
‘Go on.’
‘I had a call I needed to make.’
‘Who to?’
‘It was just work,’ he says, too quickly. ‘And I couldn’t get through but I tried a couple of times and then – I know you won’t believe me but …’
‘Try me.’
‘I forgot about the warning. It was almost six and the office was quiet but it just felt as if everyone had gone home. It’s often like that when I’m working late.’
‘And you’ve been doing a lot of that recently,’ I say, knowing now is not the time but unable to help myself.
‘I’m sorry, Ivy.’ He looks directly at me, for the first time since he came in. I can see fear in his eyes, real fear, and it scares me too.
‘Tell me what happened,’ I say.
‘I didn’t leave till just before seven. It was only when I did that I remembered the warning, because the place was deserted, and then it just suddenly …’ Abe struggles to find the right words. ‘It was like an earthquake. Everything shook and the ground opened and buildings began collapsing, and if I’d been a few moments earlier …’ He puts his head into his hands and I move to sit next to him.
I put my arm around his shoulders and he starts to cry. ‘It’s okay,’ I say. ‘It’s okay. You’re okay. You were lucky.’
He sits there crying, saying nothing.
Eventually I break the silence. ‘Why didn’t you come home? I’ve been worried sick. Where have you been?’
‘I told you I might be late tonight,’ he says.
How can he? Not now. Not after what’s happened. ‘I don’t want to talk about that now.’ I bite back my anger. ‘I want to talk about what happened this evening. I want to know where you’ve been and what on earth was going through your mind that you didn’t think to call me and put me out of my misery. What was going on, Abe? Where did you go? What have you been doing for the past five hours?’
‘Walking,’ he says.
‘Walking? Where?’
‘I ran at first,’ he says. ‘When it happened, I ran. I had to get away.’
‘Yes?’
‘I’d been so close.’ He looks at me again. ‘I can’t describe it, Ivy. It was like a warning. It was as if someone was trying to tell me, “You could lose it all”. Life is so tenuous.’
Jesus, does he think I don’t know that?
‘I needed to get my head around it. I know it doesn’t make sense but I just couldn’t talk to you. Not just you. Not to anyone. A few people asked if I was okay. I don’t know what I must have looked like. I just had to keep walking. I didn’t even know where I was. I was just walking and thinking and then … I was here.’
‘You walked all the way home?’
We live in Hither Green, a good eight miles from Canary Wharf. ‘You walked all the way home?’
‘Yes,’ he says. ‘It hurt. The realization that life is so … That it can be snatched away. It really hurt. I thought if I kept moving the pain would go. It was only when I turned into our street that I realized I was home.’
‘And now that you’re here?’ I stare at him so that I’m sure he understands what I mean, even if I don’t say it. ‘Are you home? Are you back with me and the kids?’
He looks away. And I know that he knows that I know. He knows what I’m asking. ‘I’m so sorry, Ivy,’ he says. ‘I just –’
‘Don’t,’ I interrupt. ‘Please don’t say anything. I don’t want to know, not now, maybe not ever, not after this. I just need to know that you’re back. The rest we’ll deal with later.’
‘Yes,’ he says. Tears are streaming down his face, streaking it through all the dust. ‘Yes,’ he repeats. ‘I don’t deserve you, Ivy, but I’m back.’
I start to fuss with practical details. ‘You’re cold and exhausted. You’re probably still in shock. And you’re covered with dust.’
He glances down at his clothes, as if noticing for the first time.
‘I’m going to run you a bath.’ I get up, go upstairs and turn the taps on. I leave them running and come down again. ‘I must call Tessa,’ I say. I’d forgotten.
‘I thought …’ Abe says, and stops, realizing. ‘Yes.’
I make the call. It’s quick. She’s relieved, tearful, but she understands I cannot talk now. Neither can her little brother. ‘I’ll phone you again in the morning,’ I say to her.
‘Let’s go up,’ I say to Abe.
He climbs the stairs obediently, and stands, like a child, in the bathroom, while I test the temperature of the water. He undresses and climbs into the bath. I sit on the edge and soap his back. I look at the paleness of his skin and the scattering of hairs on his shoulders, at the mole, which I was worried about but has been checked. I run my soapy hands over all of these landmarks on his body, the body I know every inch of and love. I can’t bear to think what I start to think as I look at him. And then my own tears start to flow silently. I’m no
t sure Abe notices them. He doesn’t say anything but stops my hand, holds it to his shoulder.
‘I’m going to bed,’ I say, after a while. ‘You won’t be long, will you?’
‘No,’ he says, and even before I’m out of the door, I hear the water sloshing as he gets out of the bath.
I look in on Minnie and Charlie, sleeping, utterly oblivious to the world, and I know I’ll do everything in my power to keep it that way.
Abe gets into bed next to me. He lies there still, not touching, and then he says quietly, but not so quiet I cannot hear, ‘I’m so sorry. I never meant to put you through any of this.’
I don’t react as I thought I might. I don’t want to lie without touching. I don’t want to turn my back on him or push him away. ‘Hold me,’ I say.
Abe turns and puts his arms around me, and the warmth of his body, the familiar smell of it, the softness of his breath against my face, I cannot lose that. Nothing is going to take that away from me. Not yet. Not now.
When we meet someone randomly, we want to believe that Fate intervened. We cannot allow that the randomness of the universe makes it quite possible that we might never have met the person we fall in love with. But does Fate intervene or are we simply destined to love someone? Anyone? No one in particular?
When I met Abe I was running away. I wanted to be on my own. Or, rather, I wanted to get accustomed to the idea that I might end up on my own. I was resistant to the idea of another relationship. My job description even forbade it.
I was getting bored of my job with Alex, even though the travel company he’d set up was flourishing, and I’d got used to the sword of Damocles that hung over my family. I felt restless and I wanted to get away. I’d been seeing someone for a couple of years. A guy called Chris. I’d met him through work. He’d designed the company’s new logo. The relationship, too, had reached a point where it had plateaued and we either needed to move it up a gear or leave it. Chris was fun to be with but he didn’t take anything particularly seriously, not even Mum’s illness and its implications.
‘It’s a long way off,’ he’d said, when I’d told him it could also affect me.
I suspected he wasn’t planning on sticking around for that long way off. So I applied for a job abroad, with another company, similar to the one Alex had set up. ‘I could find you something somewhere else,’ he’d said. ‘You don’t have to leave the company. Just hang on a bit and we’ll find something at the start of the next season.’
‘I’d love to carry on working for you, Alex, but I need a change and this job’s come up.’
I told Chris and he knew that if I took it we would split up. He encouraged me. ‘Even if you only do it for a year or two, you’ll have a great time and you’ll have something else to put on your CV. If you stay in your current job any longer you’ll go mad.’
The job was as a tour guide in Morocco. If I wasn’t destined to settle down and marry, and I didn’t seem to be, I wanted to see some more of the world. Abe was in the fourth group I was to take into the Atlas Mountains that season. He arrived with a friend. They had just finished training as architects and were having a break before they began new jobs.
I don’t know if I believe in love at first sight, but as soon as I saw him at the airport, I knew there was something more than just attraction. He felt at once both new and familiar.
‘Are you Abe McFadden?’ I asked, looking at the list of clients’ names. I didn’t need to hear his answer. I knew.
‘Yes, and this is Tim Hollings.’
I ticked their names off on my list and motioned them towards the rest of the waiting group. ‘We’re just waiting for a couple of others to come through.’
‘You didn’t tell us your name,’ Abe said, touching my arm.
‘Ivy,’ I said, distracted by the arrival of two more people. ‘You must be Judith and Helen?’
I ushered them all out of the arrivals hall and into the minibus, aware that Abe McFadden was walking behind me, aware that even though he was saying something to one of the others, about this being the first time he’d travelled outside Europe, that he wasn’t really giving them his full attention: it was on me.
So I wasn’t surprised, after we’d loaded all of the bags into the back of the van and everyone began piling in, that Abe held back until almost all the seats had been filled and there were only two left.
‘After you,’ he said, before sliding into the seat next to me. ‘How long have you been here, Ivy?’
It was the start of something.
We were accompanied on the trip by a small team of muleteers, who led animals laden with luggage and camping equipment. They moved ahead of the group, setting up camp for the night before we arrived there.
On the fourth night, I’d decided to wash. The camping was basic, no toilets or washing facilities. I found it easier than I might have supposed to spend a week without washing. It made the shower, when we returned to the riad in Marrakesh, all the more luxurious and the trip to the hammam to be scrubbed clean of ingrained dirt a real treat.
I enjoyed the freedom of not having to worry what I looked or smelt like. Brushing my teeth, putting on sun-cream and tying up my hair was all the attention I paid to myself. But Abe’s presence had made me self-conscious, especially as he’d been making an effort, despite it all.
His shirts changed regularly, and when I fell into step with him, as I tried to with all of the clients over the course of the walking day, I’d never noticed anything other than a sweet, slightly musky smell that I presumed was his.
It was easier for men to take themselves away from the camp and find a bit of river in which they could strip down to the waist, but not all bothered. They tended to fall into two camps: those who, like me, embraced letting things go, and the others who, like Abe, still found a way to shave and keep up appearances. The latter group tended to be more polite, more sensitive to the locals we encountered, more keen to engage with our guides. Abe was all of those things. It did not surprise me that he found a place to wash each day. I found myself slightly embarrassed that I did not.
So I took myself off to where I knew from previous trips there was a bend in the river and a bank from which there was easy access to the shallows, far enough from the local village to avoid the embarrassment of anyone catching sight of a Western woman trying to wash. I had a towel, a cup and a small bottle of shampoo, borrowed from one of the other women. I took off my shirt and knelt on a rock by the side of the river, from which I could dunk my head and face in the freezing water to let it and the shampoo wash away some of the accumulated grime.
It’s surprising, when you’re not dressing up or wearing makeup, what a difference clean hair makes. By the time I’d finished, dressed and begun walking back to the camp in the late-afternoon sun, I felt as if I’d spent a day being pampered in a spa.
I encountered Abe near the fork in the river, sitting on a rock. ‘Hi.’
‘You look nice,’ he said.
‘Clean. It’s amazing the difference it makes!’ I wondered if he realized my wash was for his benefit.
‘You never have your hair down usually.’
‘It’s usually too dirty.’
‘Do you want to sit?’ He shifted a little on his rock. ‘I was watching the colour of the rocks change as the sun goes down. It’s incredible.’
I perched next to him. ‘I often do that. It’s like one of those sound and light shows.’
‘But without the sound,’ Abe said. ‘It’s so peaceful out here. It makes me feel calm.’
‘You are.’ His calmness was one of the things I liked about him.
‘Not always,’ he said. ‘I was pretty stressed before coming out. It’s partly why I came. I needed to get away from … from things.’
‘I suppose …’ I didn’t really know what to say.
‘Just pressure of work and life. I’ve had quite a lot of decisions to make lately. It’s great not having to make any here. You tell everyone what to do!’
&nbs
p; ‘It’s hard work. I’m really stressed having to decide what to do with you every day.’
Abe laughed. We both knew the timetable for each day was always the same and required very little decision-making. I had to worry about what should happen if someone became ill, or the group dynamics were strained, which they often were, or if someone couldn’t manage all the walking. But this group was a good one. No one seemed to have brought any of their problems with them. Everyone got on with it.
‘I’m sure it’s not always easy,’ Abe said.
‘Every group throws up different things,’ I said, looking at him.
‘And what has this one thrown up?’ he said, returning my gaze.
‘I think we both know that,’ I said, surprised by my directness.
‘Yes,’ he said, still holding my gaze as if by doing so he was making absolutely sure I understood what was being said. ‘It’s taken me a bit by surprise.’
‘Me too,’ I said. ‘Like you, I came out here to get away from things.’
‘And do you mind?’ he asked. ‘My being here?’
‘No. The opposite.’
That was when he reached out and took my hand.
‘You find things where you least expect to find them,’ he said, before looking back at the rocks, which were now glowing purple in the dusk. ‘The stars here are so bright.’ He stroked my hand as he spoke. ‘They make you feel so small and insignificant.’
‘We are.’
‘Tiny particles on a pale blue dot,’ Abe said. ‘Being tossed about at random.’
‘Maybe not everything is totally random.’ I looked at him and he kissed me.
I had a few more washes.
‘You’re very clean and shiny this week, Miss Ivy.’ Abdul had noticed the change. ‘And happy.’
‘I’m always happy here.’
That was true. There was something about the landscape and the people, the locals we met, as well as Abdul and his team: they were always courteous, hard-working and smiling. Every evening, when they’d cooked and served our dinner, they would sit a little way from the fire. Initially, I encouraged them to join the rest of the party but Abdul insisted they worked for us and therefore could not. But he would himself from time to time. ‘A different happy,’ he said, a little too knowingly.
Ivy and Abe Page 16
