I close my eyes and think of home, of our house nestled into the hillside. I think of the four of us, picnicking on the beach all summer, brown and salt-glazed. I think of my school friends filling the house with laughter and, when I was at university, of the long lazy evenings spent sipping wine and talking politics on the balcony as the days faded, hot and lush and endless as summers always are in remembrance.
Somewhere in the garden a dove calls with a honeyed, sleepy sound. The happy childhood I thought I had fades like a mirage, swirls in the dying heat of a Karachi evening and disappears forever into the lie it was. There is the life I had before I opened Dominique’s letter and there is the life I am left with.
A childhood that was false and a happiness and security I had no right to, because it was built on my sister’s loss. Dominique let me keep my childhood. She never said a word against the Papa I adored.
I was forced to grieve in silence for the loss of her, in a house full of secrets and pervasive darkness. The terrible anger and desolation that filled every crack and crevice for months swirl back through time. I had been frightened of Maman’s fury, but I had been more frightened of Papa’s grief.
The house had shrunk to accommodate just the three of us. Dominique, with her irreverent quips, her noisy friends and sense of fun, had taken all the sunlight and laughter with her.
I feel light-headed, unbalanced. My tongue sticks to my dry mouth. This is a grotesque secret Dominique has kept to herself all these years. I want to reject her words. I want to scream, like Maman, Liar! I want to believe she is having a breakdown. I want to tear the letter into a thousand pieces. But I cannot, because everything my sister says rings true.
The sun dips behind the wall. Shadows fill the garden. Zakawi, the pool boy, bends to me. ‘Mem?’ he says gently. ‘It is dark out here. The mosquitoes, they will bite. You should go inside the hotel now, I think.’
I stare at him. What am I doing in this leafy garden thousands of miles from home? With a great effort of will I pull myself together. ‘You are right, Zakawi. I’ll go in now.’
‘I will ask Naseem to bring you tea. You would like tea in the Cinnamon Lounge or in your room, mem?’
‘In my room. Thank you, Zakawi.’
‘It is my pleasure, mem.’
I go upstairs in the lift. As I reach my room my mobile phone rings. Mike says, ‘I’ve got a meeting in the hotel tonight at eight. Is my khaki suit back from the laundry?’
‘Yes.’ I try to whisper, Mike, but he says, ‘Good. See you later.’ And is gone.
I sit on the end of my bed. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to think or how to feel. I want this to go away. I don’t want to believe that Papa was capable of rape or that Maman could betray her own flesh and blood.
How can I ever come to terms with this? I want to dismiss the letter as just more evidence of Dominique’s chaotic and dramatic life, but I can’t. It’s like the missing bits of a jigsaw I could never find as a child, suddenly turning up and fitting with an exactness of shape and pattern that makes a complete picture.
I shiver. What of my own betrayal? I let Dominique slip out of my life as the years went by. I colluded in the fallacy of her fecklessness. Grew up, grew away, lived my own safe, smug little life without her.
I wrap myself in a towelling robe. I cannot bear the burden of this secret alone. I want Mike to come home and be the friend and husband he once was.
Naseem knocks and I open the door to him. He has placed a cheese croissant on a crisp white napkin with my tea. Touched, I thank him. He refuses a tip and backs anxiously away.
The room is cold. I turn off the air-conditioner and carry my tea to the bedside table and crawl into bed. I lie on my side listening to the endless sirens outside, too numb to shift or turn. My poor Dominique.
The sun is a vast red globe falling over the city. Soon there will be sudden darkness for there is no dusk here. One minute there is daylight and then it is gone. The sun sets and the kites sweep low, diving for insects, gliding on currents of air, their huge wings ghostly shadows across the window.
In all these years I have never given my sister time or a small, safe space where she felt able to tell me the truth. She had to write me a letter. Is it possible that I never really wanted to know?
Across the city there is a far-off bang and a pall of black smoke rises into the darkening sky.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Karachi, 2010
Mike is in the room bending over me. ‘Gabby, are you ill? Rana met me in the lobby as I came in. The staff are very concerned about you …’
He switches on the bedside light and I flinch away from it. Mike stares down at me. ‘You look terrible.’ He sits on the bed. ‘What on earth’s happened? Rana said you had a letter. Is that it in your hand?’
He pulls Dominique’s crushed letter away from me and smooths it out. ‘Your sister’s writing. Oh, God, not another disaster … Can I read it?’
I nod. Mike’s weight on the bed is comforting. He smells of sweat and of himself.
As he reads he draws in his breath. ‘Shit!’
He pushes the letter away from him and stares at me.
‘You don’t know it’s true, Gabby.’
‘I believe her.’ Dominique’s words are so raw and compelling that I can see that Mike believes them too.
‘It’s … shocking.’
‘Yes.’
‘But why bring this all up now? Why didn’t Dominique tell you years ago? Why put all this in a bloody letter?’
‘I don’t think she could tell me while my parents were alive.’
I think of the time we were together, the day she finished the wedding dress. She got near to telling me then.
Mike stands up. ‘I didn’t know anyone still used airmail paper … I notice she couldn’t resist a crack at me …’ He looks down at me, his face wretched. ‘If it’s true, it was an awful thing that happened to her, Gabby, but it’s cruel and utterly pointless to tell you now, after all these years …’
I shiver. I’m icy cold. Mike picks up the house phone.
‘You’re in shock. I’ll order some soup. I’ll run you a warm bath. If I had whisky or brandy I’d pour it down you …’ He stops and says awkwardly, ‘I’m sorry you had to read that letter on your own. You and your father were so close …’
I lie cradled in hot water letting it warm my bones.
‘Do you want to go to New York and see Dominique, Gabby? Shall I book you a flight?’
I shake my head. ‘No, Dominique is with her girls. I don’t want to see her, Mike. Not yet.’
Mike wraps me into a white hotel robe like a child and makes me drink the soup. He sits watching me, his face anxious. I have his undivided attention.
‘Haven’t you got a meeting tonight?’
‘It’s okay. I’ve sent a message. They can start without me. I want to make sure you’re settled into bed before I go down. Would it be an idea to take one of Shahid’s blue sleeping pills?’
In Pakistan it is possible to obtain drugs without prescription. Shahid gave me some of his magic blue pills when I first arrived and couldn’t sleep. I nod and take a pill and get back into bed. Mike sits on the edge.
‘I’m only downstairs. I’ve got my mobile. Ring if you need me …’ He picks up my hand. ‘Gabby, I wish I knew what to say to you. I’m finding the whole thing hard to believe … I loved and respected your father. He was so much a part of our summers in Cornwall, part of my growing up, too …’ He lets out his breath angrily. ‘I know it’s wrong and unfair but I’m angry with Dominique. She can’t have given a single thought to your feelings or the long-term consequences of this revelation.’
‘This is not about me, Mike. Dominique is possibly having a breakdown. Think what it must have cost her to write it all down, to relive it.’
‘Well, she managed to keep this secret from you for one hell of a long time to protect you, so I don’t understand why she suddenly has to tell you now?’
‘It’s all in the letter. My parents died. Aunt Laura died. Her girls left for America. I rarely gave her my time. Dominique became peripheral. All these things are enough to trigger the old pain of abandonment.’
I long for oblivion and it comes quickly. I clutch Mike’s fingers curled around mine as I fall into darkness.
I wake when I hear Mike coming back into the room. He stands hesitantly in the dark by the door.
‘I’m awake,’ I tell him. ‘You can turn the light on.’
‘I’ll make you some tea.’ Mike laughs. ‘Why are we whispering?’
When he brings the tea I can smell whisky on his breath.
‘Gabby, you’re strong. Somehow you will get through this … I’ll try to help you to …’
Mike stops. No one can help me to make the truth bearable. He gets into bed beside me in his boxer shorts. He looks weary and slightly drunk.
‘I can smell whisky.’
‘Asif inveigled me to go up to his room for a nightcap after the meeting. He had a bottle of whisky.’
‘Asif drinks alcohol?’ I ask, surprised. Asif, a colleague of Mike’s, struck me as rather pious.
‘Officially, of course he doesn’t drink, but he is away from home and that meeting would have driven anyone to drink.’
We eye each other in the way people do when a distance has sprung up over time and they are no longer quite sure how to cross that divide between intimacy and familiarity.
I surprise us both by asking the question I should have asked as soon as I arrived. ‘Mike, what’s happening to you? Are you having an affair?’
He tenses and I wait for him to tell me I’ve been imagining things but he does not. He shakes his head as if he would like to free himself from something alarming. I wait. After all these weeks I want the truth. It is about the only thing Mike can give me at the moment. If he lies now there is no hope for us. I can’t cope with any more lies.
He rakes his hair with his fingers as he does when he’s nervous.
‘The last thing I want to do is hurt you, Gabby, especially now. The truth is I don’t know what’s happening to me. It’s stupid; a little … aberration on my part, an attraction that took hold because you were thousands of miles away and it’s impossibly off-limits. I feel as if I’ve been sleepwalking. When I came back tonight and found you distraught and I read Dominique’s letter I woke up with a hell of a bang.’
I feel the blood draining away from my face. I asked for honesty and I’ve got it. I did not think it would be possible to feel more wretched, but it is.
‘Who is it?’
Mike puts the bedside light on. He sees my face and tears spring to his eyes. ‘Gabby, please don’t make more of this than there is. Believe me, it was nothing important. I could have lied and told you I was having problems at work and you would never have known, but I think you’ve had enough lies.’
I turn on my back. ‘Is this why you asked me to come out to Karachi, because you thought you were in danger of doing something stupid, something that might ruin your career?’
There is a second of silence that tells me everything.
‘No, of course not,’ Mike says. ‘I wanted you to be out here with me.’
‘But for your benefit, not mine. You’ve kept me at a distance like a punishment and when I’ve queried your behaviour, you’ve pretended it’s just work and I’m being unreasonable. How did I deserve that, Mike?’
Mike says miserably, ‘You didn’t. I had so many conflicting emotions when you arrived in Karachi. I felt shabby and angry with myself.’
‘Have you slept with …’
‘No! Of course I haven’t, Gabby.’
‘Presumably, only because she’s Muslim?’ I say bitterly.
‘Drink your tea,’ he says softly. ‘Please, don’t blow this up. Don’t make a stupid lapse on my part seem important, because it isn’t. Don’t let’s get distracted by trivia, Gabby, when the real issue here is how I help you cope with this revelation about your father and Dominique.’
Does Mike think that one crisis in my life will cancel out the other?
‘I can’t talk about it any more tonight.’
‘Okay. Let’s try to get some sleep and tackle it together in the morning.’
‘How can it be tackled?’ I say. ‘How can anyone make the unacceptable acceptable?’
Mike slides down the bed, exhausted. ‘I don’t know, darling.’ He opens his arms. ‘Come here, let me hug you, it’s about the only thing I can do …’
But he is asleep before I can move. I break another blue pill in half and take it with my cold tea.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Karachi, 2010
I wake in the grainy grey light of dawn. I hear my email bleep. Mike is asleep beside me and I get out of the bed carefully to avoid waking him.
There’s an email from Dominique waiting in my inbox.
My dearest Gabby, I am in NY with my girls. I am worrying about you.
I love you, D x
D, Shocked. Distressed. I love you, too.
I close my laptop.
There is a sharp half-moon like a melon slice. On the road beyond the trees and half-built blocks of flats the traffic moves, sparse and thin, but fast. A brightly painted bus flashes by like an exotic toy. A shadowy figure in a white dhoti flits across the road; a motorized rickshaw crosses the junction. A beige dog slinks along the pavement under the trees.
The schoolyard opposite the hotel lies waiting for the laughter of small girls encased in smart shalwar kameez and fluttering little dupattas. As the sun begins to rise, the Catholic church turns a pale gold. Its congregation has dwindled to a few faithful. Attending St Anthony’s Church regularly is now a security risk.
The soldiers guarding the hotel entrance below me pace at the barricade, shift the guns slung across their shoulders. They are bored, waiting for morning, for their first cigarette.
This long night is passing. Soon street children will stretch and wake on the pavements of the city. Organized gangs will bully them out into the roadside and markets to beg. The cripples and transvestites will tout for money at the junctions and traffic lights. The roar of vehicles driving at break-neck speed sounding their horns will blur all other sounds. The hawkers will lay out their flyblown fruit in the poorest parts of town. The market vendors will display their myriad colours and rolls of materials. The tailors will begin to stitch endless designs of shalwar kameez for middle-class Pakistanis and foreigners like me.
The city, just after dawn, lies waiting like a muffled heartbeat. Yet in the garden of the hotel below me small birds are calling and scuttling in the undergrowth in a peaceful, quite different world.
I turn from the window and look at the sleeping man in the bed. Stare at the familiarity of my husband’s brown arms above the sheets, his thick wrist with the heavy watch.
I used to think we were solid, Mike and I. I felt secure in the strength of our marriage. I believed there was something enduring and resolute between us that transcended distance or differences. I thought we were an inviolate unit, a family. How childlike, how naïve, how … feeble, that certainty now seems. Everyone changes. Circumstances alter, feelings falter between one heartbeat and the next. Nothing is ever quite what it seems. Human beings move on, despite love and because of love.
I turn away from the bed and look again at the sleeping city coming alive. The heat is already beating the dry earth flat and hard. The trees look freshly green silhouetted against the buildings. Dark palms and pale translucent leaves against a cloudless sky. Karachi.
I never imagined that this city would become a background to a life that is unfurling like a jerky foreign film played against a white wall.
Desire for the forbidden is consuming and powerful. It occurs to me as I watch a new day begin that I might be losing everything in my life at the same time. The people in it abruptly changing and unreal so that I have no way of guessing at an ending or understanding how I live with the truth.
Karachi, 2010
When I wake again it is eight thirty. Mike is on the phone. I had forgotten that he’s flying to Islamabad on the early evening flight. I can hear him attempting to get me an extra seat on the flight with him.
I sit up quickly. ‘Mike, I want to stay here in Karachi.’
Mike puts the phone down. His hair is standing up in spikes.
‘I can’t leave you on your own here, Gabby, not after what’s happened.’
‘Yes you can. I’d rather stay here than be carted to Islamabad like baggage. It’s not as if I’ll see anything of you.’
‘You could at least walk in the Margalla Hills, if I found you security or someone to go with you.’
The phone rings and Mike snatches it up. ‘Thank you very much.’
He smiles at me as he replaces the receiver. ‘Okay, if you don’t want to come to Islamabad, there is a spare seat on the evening flight to London.’
I fight panic. ‘I know you’re trying to help, Mike, but I don’t want to come with you or fly to London. Can you imagine me confiding in Kate or Emily? They met my father. They know Dominique. I don’t want the boys ever to know. I need to stay here, in the apartment, in a hotel I know with my own things around me …’ I am on the edge of tears. ‘I feel safe and anonymous, here. I need time on my own to get my head around this …’ And everything else that is happening to me.
Mike stares at me. ‘Oh, God, Gabby, I wish the conference was not this week. Leaving you here feels all wrong.’
I’m tempted to say that I’ve been pretty much on my own since I arrived. But I don’t.
‘I won’t be on my own. Birjees is just down the road in Clifton. Massima will be back from Lahore soon. I have Afia and Raif’s telephone number. Liz, from the American Embassy, comes to swim occasionally … I do have people around me.’
Mike looks at me doubtfully but I sense his relief. ‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes, Mike. I want to stay here.’
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