Together by Christmas

by Karen Swan

  For several long seconds, they stood there, eyes locked, feeling the energy flow between them. Then she stood on tiptoe and kissed him again, once, twice, feeling his lips respond, his barriers weakening, chivalry collapsing . . . His hands gripped her arms, pinning her to him as the kiss became deeper and more involved and she felt that rush of freedom and abandon come into her body, as it always did when she could lose herself like this.

  They pulled apart, his eyes burning with a heat that had been on a gentle simmer since their first meeting. It took the breath from her now. ‘So you’re saying it’s this or nothing?’ he asked, both of them breathless. ‘You want me to just fuck you and then leave?’

  ‘If you wouldn’t mind,’ she smiled, pressing herself to him again, eyes hooded with desire.

  He looked back at her, emotions raging behind his eyes, his hands still on her arms, before he carefully stepped her back, out of his orbit. ‘. . . Then I’ll go.’

  She gave an astonished laugh. ‘What?’ He had to be joking, of course, but when he didn’t smile back . . . ‘Sam? What’s the problem? We both want this, don’t we? We’re consenting adults.’

  He stepped away from her again, as though establishing a safety zone. ‘This wasn’t what I came over for.’

  ‘What are you . . .? Of course it was!’ she scoffed, disbelief turning into panic now. Humiliation. Anger. ‘Okay, fine, I get you may have expected a little more . . . conversation. Perhaps some food. But what’s the point in delaying? We both knew where tonight was going to end up.’

  ‘No. I was hoping for more than that.’

  ‘More than . . .?’ She was confused. What was more than a night of no-strings passion?

  He stared at her for a moment, an entire monologue left unsaid in the air as words were tried and discarded in his head. ‘Goodnight, Lee.’

  ‘This is ridiculous!’ she cried as he walked over to the kitchen table and retrieved his phone. ‘Sam, you’re not seriously—’

  But he slipped from the room without looking back, his feet heavy but quick on the stairs, the click of the front door telling her he was deadly serious.

  He had gone.

  Chapter Seven

  Lee stood on the street, staring up at the door. It had taken her by surprise. Of all the doors she might have expected him to have, this was not what she would have chosen. It was a super gloss blackish-green. It was panelled. It was double-width with bronze mask-head knockers. It was pristine.

  He had never been pristine in his life.

  She wasn’t quite sure what she was doing here. She certainly hadn’t consciously made the left turn onto Prinsengracht on her way to the studio; she hadn’t dropped Jasper at nursery with the intention of coming on here. And yet here she was. Outside his door. His home. A home he had left. A home she had had the address for, for five years, and never once visited before today.

  This was ridiculous. She needed to get out of here before someone saw her. He wasn’t even in there. What was she doing here?

  ‘Lee?’

  She turned, startled at the sound of her name. ‘Oh shit,’ she hissed to herself, not moving her lips, as Gisele drew nearer, pedalling in easy loops, her long light-brown hair tied in a loose plait, her cheeks stung pink by the breathtaking cold. She had freckles and milky skin, a face that echoed with smiles, coltish legs emphasized by clumpy Balenciaga boots.

  ‘I thought it was you!’

  Gisele stared at her uncertainly for a moment, then jumped off the bike and they air-kissed like the old friends they weren’t. Lee felt mannish and oversized as her hands folded over the bony nub of Gisele’s shoulders; everything about her was delicate.

  ‘Gisele, how funny, I was just about to knock.’ Lee smiled awkwardly at the lie. Had Gisele seen her standing there, staring up at the door like a crazy woman, as she’d glided the length of the straight long street? She could hardly have missed her. ‘I just . . . I just heard about Cunningham.’

  Gisele started at the unfamiliar sound of her husband being called by his last name, but then her smile froze on her pretty face and an unassailable sadness flooded her eyes. ‘Yes, he’s . . . he’s gone to . . .’ The words trailed off, seemingly unsayable, as her shoulders heaved once, twice, and she struggled to hold back tears that Lee could see were ever-present. ‘. . . I’m sorry. Would you like to come in?’

  Lee wanted nothing of the sort but it was clear she couldn’t let the poor woman cry on her own doorstep. ‘. . . Sure. Thanks.’

  Gisele rolled her bike up the narrow ramp beside the steps and slid her key into the lock of the pristine door. Lee followed her into the smart hallway that was the opposite of her own. Dusty, creaky floorboards had been replaced with smart stone flags, a huge Christmas tree was already set up at the far end by the whorl at the bottom of the spiral staircase. And on the walls were beautifully framed images that sucked the air from the space and punched her in the guts. Her images. Tripoli. Gaza. Kabul . . . Moments captured from each. They were printed in black and white but she had personally lived through them in full colour, and it was that full palette in which she saw them now.

  Gisele walked past unseeingly and took off her coat as Lee followed, dragging her gaze over each picture and hearing the whistling bullets, rumbling tanks and booming explosions which had accompanied those very moments that now hung in perfect monochromatic stillness and silence. In peace. Did Cunningham just breeze past them too – surely familiarity bred blindness – or did they take him straight back to those places, those moments?

  Like her own house, the main living areas were on the first floor and they climbed the stairs to the kitchen. It was high-ceilinged and bright, an expensive mélange of pale grey-veined marble surfaces and white bespoke cabinets where everything was hidden behind smooth, push-release doors. Cunningham must hate it, Lee thought to herself; he was a fan of a sturdy doorknob. ‘When you need a door to open, you just need it to damn well open; I don’t want to have to hunt the damn thing down,’ he’d said once as they’d tried to find the concealed fridge in an apartment the Post had rented for them during an assignment in Tel Aviv.

  ‘Coffee?’ Gisele had recovered enough of her composure to force a smile again.

  ‘Love one, thanks,’ Lee replied, her gaze falling inevitably to the tight drum of Gisele’s stomach. She was carrying high and in front. Lee couldn’t remember what that signified. Boy? Girl? One of the two, anyway. ‘Congratulations, by the way! I heard the news. You must be so thrilled.’

  Gisele looked down at her cylindrical belly, as though still surprised it was there. ‘Yes. Thank you, we are.’

  We are. There was something territorial in the phrase.

  ‘So, how are you feeling? ’Cause you’re looking great.’ Lee gave a grimace at the forced jollity in her tone, well able to imagine the look Cunningham would have been shooting her, were he here. But he wasn’t, of course. He was 2,500 miles away.

  ‘You’re sweet to say that,’ Gisele smiled, glancing back at her as she popped a pod in the coffee machine. ‘But I’m like a water balloon. By the end of the day, my feet and ankles are like—’ She blew out her cheeks, trying to indicate grotesque oedema but only managing to look cute, like a kid holding their breath driving through a tunnel. ‘And then I’m getting restless legs at night. Sometimes I have to get up and just pace and pace. Which I suppose is easier in some respects, now Harry’s not here. He’s not a great sleeper at the best of times and I would worry about disturbing him—’

  ‘Yeah,’ Lee smiled politely, remembering how he had once fallen asleep standing up in the queue for a meal at a US military base in Raqqa.

  ‘—other hand, I’m up in the night and all on my own, so . . .’ She gave a tiny, vulnerable shrug.

  ‘Right, right,’ Lee nodded, only half hearing her. She was looking for a sign of him, her former friend, something in his own house that would remind her of his presence. But everything was so neat and tidy and white and pristine. There was almost no sign that he lived
here – no jumper dropped on the bench in the window, no packet of B&H on the worktop, no whiff of cordite in the sofas, no muddy combat boots by the door – only a picture of him on the wall, so very different to the ones downstairs. It was of the two of them, him and Gisele, their cheeks pressed together, the wind blowing against them, eyes slitted and mouths spread in breathless laughter. They were on a beach somewhere, the sort that had never hosted a mass evacuation. She sank into a high bar stool, gazing at his image, drinking it in – his now fully grey hair, which suited him better than when it had been brown, perma-tanned skin, deep-set eyes that saw everything and missed nothing.

  Almost nothing.

  ‘Uh . . . so how far along are you now?’ she asked, suddenly realizing Gisele had stopped talking and was pouring a froth of hot milk into her coffee. It was too late to say she liked it black.

  ‘Thirty-two weeks.’

  ‘Wow. Pretty far, then.’

  ‘Yes. She’s viable now, which is something. I’ve been so worried about every little ache and pain.’

  Lee swallowed. She? ‘You know you’re having a girl?’

  ‘That’s what they said.’ Gisele nodded. ‘I was just happy to make out the head.’ She smiled happily and Lee forced one back. Cunningham was going to have a daughter.

  ‘We kept the pregnancy a secret for as long as we could. There’ve been a few complications, shall we say. Not to mention—’ She shot Lee a look. ‘Well, it’s taken Harry a while to get his head around it.’ She handed over the coffee. ‘When I first met Harry, he told me he didn’t want kids.’

  Lee nodded. ‘Yeah, right, I thought—’ But she couldn’t finish the sentence, the words drifting from her like a candle blown out by stray winds.

  ‘He was upfront about it from the start. When things started getting serious between us, he told me to find someone else, a younger guy who would give me a family. He was adamant that with his job, it just wouldn’t be fair – well, as you know, of course,’ she said, remembering to whom she was talking. ‘I mean, you know better than anyone what it is he goes through out there.’

  ‘Mmm.’ Lee forced herself to drink some of the milky coffee, refusing to remember.

  ‘But then when he came back from Tehran, I don’t know, he seemed different. The injury really shook him. I think he finally came face to face with his own mortality. He talked about walking away from it all, committing properly to our life together here.’ She shrugged. ‘So we started trying.’ She bit her lip. ‘I think we both just assumed it would happen immediately, but when it didn’t . . .’ She gave a wry smile. ‘Typical Harry, never taking “no” for an answer. It seemed to make him want the baby even more. He became desperate to be a father.’

  Lee felt her smile become more strained. This was way more information than she needed. Or wanted. ‘So then . . . why Syria?’

  Gisele looked up at her through her long eyelashes again, but this time, there was no amusement in her eyes. Just a veil of tears. Her pretty face crumpled a little, and Lee understood why Cunningham would have denied her nothing. She was exquisite. ‘I was hoping you could tell me.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘You know him better than anyone. You’re his best friend. You know what that world’s like and the risks he’ll face.’

  Lee stared back at her. ‘Gisele, Cunningham and I . . . we’ve barely seen each other. In years. We’re not . . . close any more. I had no idea he was going back.’ This couldn’t be a surprise to her, surely? What had Cunningham told her about them, about why she’d cut him off?

  Gisele sighed unhappily. ‘Neither did I. He only told me the morning he went.’

  Lee was shocked. Had Cunningham really just dumped the news he was leaving for a war zone on his heavily pregnant wife, the morning he went?

  Gisele must have seen the look on her face because she added, ‘I don’t think he wanted me to worry any longer than was necessary.’

  ‘Did he say why he was going?’

  ‘Just that he had something he needed to do before the baby was born.’

  ‘Like what?’

  Gisele shrugged helplessly. Hopelessly. ‘He wouldn’t say.’

  Lee felt her heart race. Something he needed to do? Not an assignment. Not an exclusive. Something he needed to do?

  She realized Gisele was waiting for her to say something, to offer some crumbs of comfort. She cleared her throat. ‘He’ll be back, Gisele, don’t worry about that. Cunningham knows the risks; he won’t do anything stupid. Not now. You’re his world, he won’t leave you and the baby alone.’ But even as she said it, Lee knew her words were hollow. He wasn’t fighting fit; he was lame still. Compromised.

  ‘So then, why did he go? Why now, when the baby’s almost here?’

  Lee’s mouth opened but for a moment nothing came out. What could she say? ‘I don’t know. Perhaps he felt this was his last chance to do the only thing he’s ever known? Because everything will change once the baby’s here. It always does.’

  It certainly had for her. She had known she couldn’t be a mother and expose herself to that life. Jasper had no one in the world but her; she had a responsibility to keep herself safe, for his sake.

  ‘But he’s spent thirty years putting his neck on the line. He told me he’d quit and that he’d turned his back on that world, that all he wanted now was to be a father. So why go back to it? This makes no sense.’ She stared straight at Lee. ‘I need someone to explain it to me. Someone who understands.’

  Lee stared back into her coffee. It was an almost impossible thing to explain. There were lots of stock answers she could give – that he was driven by a need to show unspeakable truths, reveal genocides hidden behind government propaganda, to bring justice to people robbed of liberty, human rights and basic dignity? For all the journalists out there, faces down in the dirt every day, those were certainly the motivations that had propelled them to pick up their cameras and voice recorders and run onto military planes in the first place. But there was a darker truth too. How could she explain that somehow you felt most alive when you were surrounded by death? That you felt the intensity of life pulse through your veins when the ground shook beneath your feet? It was selfish. Reckless. Vainglorious. Cunningham had been doing this for too long to be able to settle in a picture-postcard city, pushing a pram along a canal. She knew it now, just like she had always known it, but how could she tell that to his doll-like wife, the one who thought she’d tamed him?

  ‘What he does out there . . .’ She faltered. ‘It’s more than running through rubble, interviewing casualties and witnesses. It’s not just been his life’s work, it’s been his life’s purpose. He knows a new chapter is coming; he’s got a baby on the way, he’s got you. But I guess he must have felt he just had to . . . do a farewell lap. Goodbye to all that, you know?’

  Gisele nodded, trying to believe, to understand, but Lee could read her easily – she felt inadequate, not enough. She hadn’t been enough to stop him from going, in the end.

  ‘Have you heard from him since he went?’ Lee sipped the frothy coffee again. It was like drinking foam.

  ‘Saturday night. He’d landed and checked into the hotel.’

  Hotel? Lee felt her antennae twitch. There were precious few hotels in Syria any more. She cleared her throat. ‘Where is he exactly?’ The question was casual but she felt her body stiffen, an automatic bracing of her muscles.

  ‘Palmyra.’

  She closed her eyes for a moment. ‘Right.’

  ‘Do you know it? Is that bad?’

  Lee forced a smile. ‘No worse than anywhere else. If I had to choose between a package holiday there, streaking down the Gaza Strip or a night out in Magaluf? Tough call, they’re all strong choices.’

  Gisele gave a frozen smile, not quite getting her humour. Then again, not many did. ‘I know he was sorry to miss you before he went. He said he was going to drop by your house.’

  Lee felt a twist in her guts. ‘Oh. I must have missed him. It would have been
—’ The lie died in her mouth. She had left him standing on her doorstep, and not for the first time. ‘Did he say when he’d be back?’

  Another shake of the head. ‘Not specifically, but before the baby comes, definitely. He said it would depend on who he could find.’

  Who he could find. Lee mulled on the words. Was he gathering material for a story after all? Was he finally going to write the memoir that publishing company in New York had been pushing him for? It would be a big-money deal, as she recalled.

  ‘If he rings again, I’ll tell him you were here,’ Gisele said. ‘It would mean a lot to him to know that you came over. He really misses you.’

  Lee heard the plea – and accusation – in her words. She had finished her coffee (thank God). ‘I should get going,’ Lee said, pushing back her stool and standing up. ‘I didn’t mean to take up your time. I just wanted to . . .’ Why had she come here? She still didn’t know. Having coffee with Cunningham’s perfect wife had not be high on her to-do list.’ . . . check you were okay. I know it’s often hardest on those who are left behind.’

  ‘Thanks, Lee,’ Gisele said, looking surprised, and Lee wondered what Cunningham had told his wife about her – how he had explained their estrangement and yet called her his best friend.

  They walked down the stairs again, Lee buttoning up her coat. The high pressure that had stalled over the country for the past week was showing no signs of moving and the clear skies meant biting temperatures.

  ‘You know, if you don’t mind me saying – you’re different to how I thought you’d be.’ Gisele stopped behind her.

  ‘Oh? How did you think I’d be?’ Lee asked, turning back to her on the doorstep.

  Gisele shrugged. ‘Tough? Scary? Harry always says you’re the bravest person he’s ever met – man or woman.’