“Hi, Mum!” she said, trying to sound pleased. “You’re not really meant to kiss me,” she added, extricating herself. She remembered her mother’s mortifying habit of embracing her outside school, long after Olivia had grown to tower over her.
“Oh come on, darling, don’t be silly.” Emma stood gazing up at her as if she was an apparition, oblivious to Sean.
“This is Sean. We were working in the unit together,” said Olivia.
“How lovely!” said Emma, as if Olivia had said they’d met playing croquet.
“Lovely to meet you, too,” said Sean. “Bet you’re glad to have her home?”
“Oh yes, heaven!” said Emma her voice ringing out over the hubbub. Already the claustrophobia of home was taking hold. Nobody said anything for a second.
“Well,” said Sean, scooping up his rucksack, “guess I should go, I’ve a follow-on to catch.”
“Bye, then,” said Olivia. Their good-bye wasn’t meant to be like this. Why had her mother chosen now to appear?
“See you, O-livia. You have a very merry Christmas,” he said to them both.
“You too, Shane,” said her mother.
Olivia watched him walk away, head bobbing above the crowd with his endearing bouncy stride.
“Well, he seemed very nice,” said her mother. “Can I carry anything?”
She wondered for a second if her mother had guessed, but Emma was squinting to read the exit signs.
“Now, you have to get home quick as a flash, is that right? I’ve got snacks in the car—what about the loo, will you be OK?”
“Yes, I’m fine, Mum.” Her patter was as grating as it was touching.
“Don’t you need some proper shoes? It’s freezing outside.”
“We’re just walking to the car, aren’t we?”
“Good-oh.” She always said “Good-oh” when she was on edge.
Her mother’s VW Golf smelled of apple cores and Chanel No. 5, a queasy echo of childhood carsickness. Stuffy, artificial heat soon fogged up the windows until all she could see of the world outside was a waterlogged gray. The passenger seat was set for Phoebe (who still couldn’t drive), so that there was no leg room. Olivia sat, trying to balance the thermos of tea and Tupperware box of flapjacks that her mother had brought for her. “I just knew you’d be missing proper tea,” Emma said triumphantly, as they stopped at a red light. Olivia hadn’t the heart to tell her she’d been able to buy PG Tips at a little shop in Monrovia called the Hole in the Wall, which sold British imports like Marmite and HP Sauce and KitKats that bent in the African sun. Or that, after weeks of stew and soft drinks, she was craving salad and tap water. She looked sideways at her mother, who was wittering about how she intended to reread Nancy Mitford while they were in quarantine. She seemed unduly excited about the entire prospect. By the time they were on the motorway, her commentary dwindled, and Olivia leaned her temple against the cold window and closed her eyes to put Emma off talking. She knew she would never be able to convey what she had seen over the past weeks. Her mother seemed to take the hint, and they drove the rest of the way in silence.
As the roads got bumpier and twistier, some instinct told her that they were almost at Weyfield, and she half opened her eyes to see the yews and cobbled wall that circled the house. The car swung round through the gateposts and up the drive, and the sound of tires on gravel told her she was really back. One gate had come off its hinges and lay lamely against the gatepost—the whole thing overgrown with nettles and ivy. “Must sort out that gate,” said her mother. “It’s like Sleeping Beauty here! Did you have a nice snooze, sweetheart? You must be shattered. Now let me get Daddy to carry those bags, you run on in.” Olivia pushed open the front door, with its grinning lion knocker. It had been left ajar, as usual, because the latch always jammed. Still, the disregard for the environment grated. She wrenched the door firmly shut behind her and walked into the hall, where old Barbour jackets hung on one wall and an army of wellies flanked the skirting board. The Weyfield smell hit her—wood smoke, dusty carpets, and Lapsang souchong tea. She stood for a second, looking at the sepia photos of the 1953 flood, which hung below the cornice. They were the only pictures in the house she really liked, the rest being fussy Hartley portraits. After a moment Phoebe darted in. “You’re back! Yay!” she said. Her sister put out her arms in a careful, triangular hug so that she kept her feet and body as far from Olivia’s as possible. Whether it was fear of infection or the awkwardness that had dogged them since adolescence, Olivia wasn’t sure. “You’re so thin!” said Phoebe admiringly, though her eyes were dismayed—Olivia was meant to be the bigger sister.
“PPE in thirty-degree heat will do that,” she said.
“PPE?”
“Personal Protective Equipment. The hazard suits.”
“Oh right! Like Bikram?”
“Bikram?” said Andrew, appearing behind Phoebe.
“Hot yoga, Daddy,” said Phoebe. “The room’s boiling, so you sweat loads and lose loads of weight. That’s why Olivia’s so skinny.”
“Sounds ghastly,” he said, striding toward Olivia, gripping her shoulders and making “mwah” noises into the air, inches from either cheek.
“Probably not as ghastly as a Haag treatment center,” said Olivia.
“Quite,” said Andrew. “Now, where’s your luggage?” He looked at her legs, and for a moment she waited for him to make a wry comment about her trousers. She had bought them with Sean for Africana Friday, a weekly Liberian ritual where everyone dressed in joyous, printed textiles—even when the Haag crisis was at its height. But he just took a coat from the wall, swearing as he wrestled with the door and strode out.
It was disorienting to be back in the big, cluttered kitchen, the shelves groaning with pink lusterware and eighties Emma Bridgewater, alongside newer additions like the Dualit toaster (a tiny victory for her father, after lengthy debates about the merits of toast under the grill versus a toaster). Cocoa lay asleep under the table. Olivia had an odd feeling that only he could ever understand the weeks she had spent in Liberia.
“Cokey!” she said, crouching to tickle his chin and hear his Darth Vader purr.
“Careful!” said Phoebe.
“It’s OK. Haag isn’t spread by tickling.”
“But he’s twenty. He’s, like, a feline centenarian. He might have a doddery immune system.”
Olivia bit back the snap rising in her throat: “Who’s got a degree in infectious diseases?” and forced herself to say: “He’s tough, aren’t you, Cocoa?” Why was it easier to talk to a cat than her sister?
“Now, cup of tea?” said her mother, bustling in.
“I’m fine thanks, I had that one in the car.”
“Coffee? Might help with the jet lag? I always find it’s better to just stay up and try to get back on track.”
“Liberia is almost on the same meridian as Britain, I think you’ll find,” said Andrew.
“Golly, yes, silly me,” said her mother. “Now I’m doing roast beef for lunch, is that still all right? Two thirty-ish?”
“Great!” said Olivia. “I’m going to go and have a shower.”
“OK, darling, you’re in the Shell Bathroom. I’ve put out shampoo and towels and everything.” She said “shell bathroom” in the special loud, deliberate voice she used for foreigners.
Olivia was already in the doorway, so she kept moving to avoid saying: “It’s safe to share a bathroom with me.” How, after overseeing a Haag treatment center, could staying at Weyfield make her feel fourteen again? Why couldn’t she be the adult she was at work, with her family?
Her limbs felt leaden as she walked up the oak stairs and over the threadbare, olive-green carpet in the corridor—probably unchanged since those pictures of the flood. She turned left into her bedroom, which her mother called the Willow Room, as if they were in a period drama. Across the landing, she
could see Phoebe’s much bigger room, which they used to share. It had been redone at Phoebe’s insistence a few years ago, and now had to be referred to as the Gray Room. The huge bed was piled with slate-colored throws and wreathed in fairy lights, the floorboards painted white. Olivia realized she had forgotten to say anything about her sister being engaged.
Her own room seemed to have been prepared for a guest. A sherry glass of hellebores sat on the dressing table, and by the bed was a carafe of water and stack of paperbacks. On top was a book called Love Nina. Phoebe and Emma had been obsessed with it a few years ago, and she had disappointed them by not reading it. They had kept pointing out that it was set in 1980s Camden, as if this was a mark in its favor. Why would she want to revisit her own blinkered childhood? Olivia liked books she could escape into, fantasies and thrillers. She looked at her reflection—never easy at Weyfield, where every mirror was spotted with age, like an overripe banana. Phoebe was right, she had got skinny. Too thin, in fact. Watching her undress last night, Sean had said she was wasting away. The medic in her knew he was right—her periods had stopped last month, just as they had when she’d lost fifteen pounds during finals. But she had secretly enjoyed the novelty of feeling fragile. Which was stupid, she knew. Why had she succumbed to some ideal of daintiness—of Phoebe-ness—when she had long ago made peace with being tall and strong? Anyway, she’d be back to normal within weeks, if Emma kept feeding her like a foie gras goose.
Andrew
THE KITCHEN, WEYFIELD HALL, 1:30 P.M.
• • •
The three of them stood near the AGA range for a moment, after Olivia had gone upstairs. Emma looked slightly deflated. “Very tired,” she said, half to herself.
Phoebe slipped onto the bench by the long farmhouse table. Her ethereal face, uplit by her laptop, looked rather eerie. “George thinks Audette’s for the engagement party,” she said.
“Oh yes, gorgeous!” said Emma. “I’ll just see if she wants a hot water bottle,” she added, moving toward the door.
“She’s fine, Emma,” said Andrew, more curtly than he’d meant to. His wife used to flap this way when he came back from Lebanon, bombarding him with snacks and hot drinks, and discreet inquiries after his digestion. It was her way of coping, he knew. One of the only good things to come from quitting foreign correspondence had been an end to Emma’s stifling concern. Even so, carrying Olivia’s rucksack into the house, he’d felt a tug of nostalgia, and something like envy.
“Who’s the publicist there?” said Phoebe.
He knew this was Phoebe’s way of asking him to get Audette’s, an overhyped Mayfair restaurant, for free. “At Audette’s? I believe it’s one of the unfortunately named Natasha Beard’s. But I gave them two stars, so I don’t imagine she’ll be wild about hosting your shindig.”
“Uuuurgh.” Phoebe slumped forward, so that her little chin sat on the table, and looked up at him. Her eyes were like flowers.
“I’ll see what I can do,” he said, walking across the dim passage to the smoking room, his unofficial study.
Bloody George. It still rankled that he had proposed to Phoebe without Andrew’s permission. Emma joked that it wasn’t like Andrew to be so bourgeois (which, he felt, was true), but it implied a lack of deference. Still, Phoebe mustn’t know their misgivings. It might drive her away. Andrew should know—Emma’s parents had never approved of him, and their hostility had only added a certain frisson to proceedings. But that had been rather different. Sir Robert and Lady Hartley weren’t objecting to Andrew per se—though they’d have preferred Emma to marry a toff. It was Andrew’s scoop on Bunty Hartley in 1978 that had been the problem. Emma’s uncle Bunty was a Tory MP, outed by Andrew for his connection to a dodgy arms deal in Iraq. The story had been published long before Andrew met Emma—there was nothing he could do to unwrite it, and no way the Hartleys would forget the name of “that dreadful hack” who had shamed Bunty. Always, at Weyfield, he felt their froideur afresh. Not least because one of Emma’s ancestors seemed to be glaring at him from a gold frame at every turn. Thank God Emma’s parents had died before Andrew became a food critic. That would have been the last word in nouveau, in their eyes.
Andrew sat at the bureau in the smoking room, its innards bunged up with yellowing postcards and bent photos and inexplicable magazine cuttings. The garden outside looked bleakly soggy, walls punctuated by naked pear trees. He tapped out an e-mail to Natasha Beard and immediately got her out-of-office. That would satisfy Phoebe. He attempted the cryptic crossword, but Emma’s voice kept fluting through from the kitchen, over her CD of dirge-like carols, making it impossible to think. He laid the draft dodger along the door to dull the noise. It looked about two centuries old. Why did Emma keep these things? He read The Economist and found himself hugely irritated by a glowing review of a book by a man he’d been at Magdalen with. Finally, he pulled an envelope out of his wallet—the letter he had received eighteen months ago. He read it again, despite knowing it by heart.
P.O. Box 07-2416
Riad El Solh
Beirut
1107 2100
June 20, 2015
Andrew Birch
The World Magazine
Bedford Sq
London
WC1B 3HG
Dear Andrew,
It has been many years, but I hope you remember meeting me, Leila Deeba, in Beirut. I am writing to tell you that after we met, I discovered I was pregnant with your baby. He was born December 26, 1980. I chose to have him adopted, as I felt unable to raise a child alone. I would like to sincerely apologize for not having informed you. I was young and afraid, and my career, at that time, was my obsession. Beirut was a dangerous place for a child. I thought it would be easier for you if you didn’t know.
But I am writing to you now, Andrew, because I am sick. I have a terminal disease. I have accepted that I will probably die without meeting my son. For many years I hoped he would try to find me, but he has not. I never had any other children.
If, some day, he contacts you, please tell him that not a day passed when I didn’t think of him. My dying wish is that he has been happy. Please believe this letter, for his sake. You will know him if you see him. He was beautiful. I named him Iskandar.
Yours,
Leila
I wish you well, and I hope that life has been good to you.
Andrew thought back to when he had received the letter, in June last year. It had been lurking in a Jiffy bag of post, forwarded to Gloucester Terrace by an intern at The World. Initially, Andrew had doubted its authenticity. The skeptic in him wondered if it was a hoax, or the start of a dismal plea for money. Even if this was the Leila Deeba he remembered, the stunning Télé Liban presenter with whom he had had a one-night fling, how could she be sure the baby was his? The voice sounded distinctly melodramatic, possibly unstable. And the handwriting was all over the place. The woman might well be delusional.
And so he had decided, with very little deliberation, to say nothing about the letter to Emma. It would only open a whole vat of worms. The thing was, he and Emma had already been together when Andrew had shagged Leila. Admittedly, he had only been taking Emma out for three months. And, at the time, their romance had been a secret, because of the Uncle Bunty awkwardness. Even so, allowing himself to be seduced by Leila Deeba was wrong. So when Leila’s uncorroborated letter arrived, years later, it had seemed pointless to show his wife. It would just upset her. She would wonder, if he couldn’t keep his hands off other women then, what else he’d been up to. The truth was, nothing. Meeting Emma at the airport after his night with Leila was torture. Emma had been holding a banner that read “A Hero Returns.” Even worse were the ensuing weeks when she had nursed his injured leg (he always thought of his shrapnel wound as punishment from Allah). Afterward, he knew that he never wanted to feel that heinous again. Within a year he’d proposed.
But now
that Jesse’s e-mail had proved Leila’s letter true, Andrew wished he had shown it to Emma when it had arrived. By saying nothing for eighteen months, he’d dug himself into quicksand. He opened his draft reply to Jesse. It was a week since the man had written. Andrew had to say something. So far, he had:
Dear Jesse,
Thank you for your e-mail. While it would be a pleasure to meet you, I am afraid December is not a good time, as my family and I are presently in quarantine. My daughter Olivia has been treating Haag victims in Liberia and we have been instructed to avoid contact with anyone but immediate family.
He sighed. He couldn’t really say “immediate family” to Jesse. That was crass. Besides, the draft implied that in normal circumstances Jesse would be welcomed with open arms. He stood up and stared at one of the porcelain spaniels on the mantelpiece, and his own face in the mirror. He suddenly looked about eighty. Then, to clear his mind, he played a long game of online scrabble.
“Lu-unch!” trilled Emma. He would try again after a drink, he decided.
Emma
THE DINING ROOM, WEYFIELD HALL, 2:30 P.M.
• • •
Emma was determined that Olivia’s first meal at home should be perfect. Ordering a special cut of topside, baking the crumble (Olivia’s childhood favorite), and prepping everything so that it could be on the table within ninety minutes of her arrival had been a good distraction from the lump. The horrid thing was, it wasn’t just “the lump” anymore. But after this meal, she could start planning Christmas Eve supper and Christmas dinner. Then, in the days between Christmas and New Year, Emma had decided they would all tackle the attics. And then quarantine would be over, and she could tell everyone. If she pressed her left arm against her body, she could just feel the little nodule, tucked away, in secret. Nicola had made her promise to call if she felt low, which was sweet. But having both daughters home had given Emma a boost. Besides, she knew that if she stopped to think, panic would catch her in its undertow and sweep her away.
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