The Road Between Us

by Nigel Farndale

  Niall hesitates again. ‘Yes.’

  ‘And was it paid?’

  ‘The British government cannot pay ransoms.’

  ‘Was it paid?’

  A beat. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Who paid it?’

  Another beat. ‘I did.’

  Edward’s eyes widen. ‘You did?’ He rubs his brow. ‘Why didn’t you say? How much was it?’

  ‘Three million dollars.’

  Edward stands up. Begins pacing. ‘Where did you get …?’

  ‘I found a way to channel it from our overseas development fund … There’s nothing on paper about it, but if it comes out I’ll take full responsibility.’

  Edward shakes his head. Cups the back of his neck with his hand. ‘Fuck!’ He shakes his head again. ‘I mean, I don’t know what to say, Niall. Thank you. You saved my life.’

  Niall gets to his feet. The two embrace.

  ‘Thank you,’ Edward repeats in a whisper, kissing Niall’s neck. ‘Thank you so much.’ When he sits down again he adds: ‘And thank you for levelling with me. It puts my mind at rest.’ He folds his arms and looks up at the ceiling. Hannah has turned the music off and is practising her guitar again, her bass this time. ‘She showed me a clip of herself playing in her band. They were pretty good. She holds her bass low, like Sid Vicious.’

  ‘Did you tell her you thought they were good?’

  ‘I don’t recall.’

  ‘Well, you should. She needs your approval.’ Niall looks away, his lower lip drawing back. He is thinking about how much he had enjoyed being a surrogate father to Hannah when Frejya was busy campaigning. She had become the child he and his wife Sally had been unable to have. ‘She’s grown up to be beautiful, hasn’t she? Smart too. And confident. You must be very proud.’

  ‘It didn’t exactly have a lot to do with me.’ Edward draws his fingers down his face until they are resting against his chin. ‘She reminds me too much of Frejya … And I can’t deal with it.’

  ‘Can’t or won’t?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean …’ Niall isn’t sure what he means. He has seen the way Edward sometimes looks at Hannah and it worries him in ways he can’t quite articulate, as if even to give a shape to his thoughts would be taboo.

  Edward sighs. His hands are shaking slightly. ‘I think I know what you mean. She’s like … like Frejya’s ghost haunting the house, this stranger impersonating my wife. It’s unbearable.’

  The tips of Niall’s fingers grow cold as he realizes what it is that bothers him about the way Edward’s eyes sometimes fix on his daughter: he used to look at his wife in the same way. The same fervent stare. He is sure Edward hasn’t realized this himself. Not yet. But now he finds himself wondering whether, when he does, it will be too late. ‘Actually, I don’t think they are all that similar,’ he lies.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘And even if she does look a bit like Frejya, it’s not her fault.’

  ‘Fault? What are you talking about?’

  ‘Perhaps being cooped up in the house together all day doesn’t help. Too many memories. Why don’t you get away somewhere? A long holiday.’

  ‘Now you mention it, I had a letter from someone offering me the use of his holiday home in Alsace. Acres of garden. Very private.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Some investment banker. His driver delivered the invitation by hand.’

  Niall shifts in his seat. ‘I’d say no to that one, if I were you. Too risky.’

  ‘Risky?’

  ‘He hasn’t been vetted. Besides, the FCO has lots of quiet retreats dotted around the world. Just tell me where you want to go and I’ll arrange something. Somewhere hot with palm trees and a pool.’

  ‘Thanks, I’ll think about it.’

  ‘You OK?’

  Edward is staring at his thumb as he rubs the handle of his walking stick. He looks as if he is about to cry.

  ‘Perhaps it would help if you wrote about what happened,’ Niall says. ‘It might be easier than talking about it. I’ve had a few calls from publishers and agents wanting to get in touch with you. A book about your time in captivity. There would be a sizeable advance in it, and they’ve offered to ghost it for you …’ There is a pinging noise and Niall holds up his hand in a ‘halt’ gesture before reaching into his pocket for his mobile. He looks at the screen then over his shoulder before texting a reply. ‘Sorry. What?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘A memoir. You always used to love writing.’

  ‘That was poetry, and it wasn’t very good.’

  ‘But you used to talk about writing a book as well. Now’s your chance.’

  ‘I don’t know, Niall. There isn’t much to say. Nothing happened. It was eleven years of nothing happening.’ Edward raises his head stiffly. Stares at the ceiling. ‘Did I tell you the Daily Mail offered to buy me a new car in return for an exclusive interview?’

  Niall raises his eyebrows questioningly.

  ‘I said no.’ Edward takes a sip of wine.

  ‘You mentioned a video of Frejya …?’

  ‘It’s a DVD actually, but yes. Shall I put it on?’ He searches the shelf above the television, finds the disc he is looking for and feeds it into the player.

  III

  THE SCREEN IS FUZZY FOR A MOMENT THEN REPORTERS AND photographers can be seen gathered outside Edward’s house. They are checking their watches, talking into mobiles and stamping their feet against the cold as they form a semicircle around a microphone stand. Niall, looking slimmer and younger, emerges from the house first, followed by Frejya who is wearing sunglasses and, pinned to her lapel, one of the black ribbons that the Friends of Edward Northcote wear.

  ‘She lost weight,’ Edward says in an undertone. ‘She looks …’

  In the film Niall is now clearing his throat and tapping the microphone. ‘Mrs Northcote would like to read out a statement and then she will answer a few questions.’ He stands to one side as Frejya moves up to the microphone.

  ‘On the fifth anniversary of Ed’s abduction I appeal to his kidnappers to show mercy and compassion and end his, and our, ordeal,’ she begins, her voice faltering for a moment and then finding strength. ‘My family has suffered terrible uncertainty and distress over the past five years. We have worried about Ed every single minute of every single day. Please give us some indication that he is still alive.’

  There are traces of Norway in her intonation and lack of pauses. She looks directly into the lens of the camera before continuing. ‘I would like to thank all those who have stood with us during these most difficult of times. Without their support we would not have made it through these dark days. Thank you.’

  Niall steps forward again and says: ‘I would like to add that the British government remains firmly committed to finding Edward Northcote. Our latest initiative is the distribution of a hundred thousand leaflets around Kabul and Islamabad asking for information on his whereabouts. We continue to do everything we can to secure his safe release and we remain in close contact with his family. Now, if any of you have questions for Mrs Northcote …’ When no hands are raised he adds: ‘I’m afraid she won’t be able to do any one-to-ones afterwards.’ Four hands go up. ‘Yes?’

  ‘Dan Simpson, Sky News. If Edward has been kidnapped, how do you think he will be coping?’

  Frejya leans in close to the microphone. ‘I think if anyone can get through it, he can. He has a great memory for poems and films and books. And I think he can handle stress. He is fit. He used to run marathons.’

  ‘And how are you coping?’

  In the sitting room as they watch the footage, Niall looks across at Edward. He knows what the truthful answer to this question would have been, because Frejya had told him. She hadn’t been able to sleep properly for five years. She could not stand the sympathy in strangers’ eyes when she was stopped in the street. She couldn’t bear to be away from her phone in case it brought news. She felt exhausted and weepy most of the time and, ever
y now and then, when she realized she had forgotten what her husband’s voice sounded like, when she couldn’t even summon his face or find his smell in her memory, she had wanted to kill herself.

  ‘I’m fine,’ she says to the reporter. ‘Thank you. Though my friends say I should find a hobby to distract myself.’ She adds this with a quick yet withholding smile, giving the journalist permission to smile back. ‘But the trouble is, I can’t think of anything that does not remind me of him.’ When she sees the smiles drop, she shrugs. ‘What can I say? I just want him back.’

  ‘Janet Conroy, Radio 4. Do you think your publicity campaign has prolonged Edward’s captivity?’

  ‘I hope not,’ Frejya says. ‘If he is able to hear any news where he is being held, I think it will give him strength to know that he is not forgotten.’

  ‘In his press conference, the French hostage Dominique Chapelle said he never saw Edward or heard whether or not he was alive. Is that what he told you in private?’

  Frejya nods.

  Someone at the back shouts: ‘Speak up!’

  ‘Yes,’ Frejya says.

  ‘He also said in his press conference that he didn’t give up hope because he knew the French government would do anything to get him out.’

  Niall steps forward to the microphone. ‘And now every terrorist in the Middle East knows, too, that the French government will do anything to get their citizens out. Anything. Pay any price. Compromise any principle. The British government prefers to take a more moral line. No deals with terrorists, plain and simple.’

  ‘Peter Bligh, Washington Post: Has a ransom been demanded for Mr Northcote and has the Foreign Office refused to pay it?’

  ‘Tireless efforts have been made to determine Edward’s whereabouts and to establish whether or not he has been taken hostage,’ Niall says. ‘Rest assured, we will do everything in our power to secure his release, as and when we are contacted by his kidnappers. Any other questions?’

  ‘You haven’t answered my question,’ the man from the Washington Post says.

  ‘Our position is that we do not pay ransoms and we do not facilitate concessions to hostage-takers,’ Niall says.

  ‘Have you advised the family not to pay a ransom?’ the reporter presses.

  ‘All I can say is that we have been in close contact throughout.’

  ‘Martin Cullen, the Irish Independent. Five years have passed without proof that Edward is alive. Why do you think he is?’

  Frejya hesitates before answering. ‘Because I feel it in my heart.’

  Niall makes a chopping mime across his neck. Seeing that Frejya is blinking back tears, he leads her back indoors. Questions are shouted at her retreating back.

  As he sits in his own house now, in front of his own television, Edward takes rapid, shallow breaths. ‘Dammit, Niall!’ he shouts suddenly, slamming the chessboard with the flat of his hand. ‘Why did you have to declare me dead? Why? You took away her hope!’

  Niall gets to his feet. ‘I’m sorry, Northy,’ he whispers, ‘I’m really, really sorry.’

  At the door, he turns back to see his friend crouched on the floor shielding his eyes with a hand. His mouth is open wide in a soundless howl.

  IV

  Four months after Edward’s release

  WHENEVER HANNAH GOOGLES HER FATHER’S NAME, HUNDREDS OF links to websites appear, and they are rarely the same ones from day to day. But the three images that come up first are always alike, the ones that all the papers continue to use whenever the subject of Edward Northcote is in the ether.

  The first shows him on the gurney being transferred to the helicopter ambulance, his gaunt features barely discernible under a tangle of hair and beard. The second was taken when he was in hospital in a room darkened by closed curtains. A tabloid reporter had impersonated a hospital orderly to gain access to him and the resulting photograph showed Edward raising his hand to protect his eyes against the flash. The Press Complaints Commission had censured the papers that used this image, but no legal action had been taken.

  The next photograph of him to appear, several weeks later, had been taken on a mobile by a passing member of the public. It showed him being carried up the steps of his house by Hannah. That one had revived interest in the story, partly because it signalled to Fleet Street that Edward had finally returned home.

  After this last one was taken there was a small encampment outside the house. As well as vans with darkened windows and a TV film unit with a satellite dish, there had been a semi-permanent huddle of reporters and photographers with long lenses and tripods. From time to time, film lights would go on, illuminating a man with a microphone talking into a camera. Occasionally one would knock at the door and shout through the letterbox: ‘How did you feel when you heard your wife was dead?’ Inside, the phone would ring at regular intervals, only to go straight through to the answering machine. Edward had effectively become a prisoner again.

  The press assumed that the curtains were drawn permanently to avoid the long lenses, but the truth was that sunlight was still painful for him. Either way, it had the desired effect. After a few days, the press ranks were reduced to a couple of freelancers. The papers more or less lost interest, having become distracted by the latest infidelity of a golf champion and the grounding of flights because of volcanic clouds emanating from the Norwegian island of Jan Mayen.

  And now Edward has gone out on his own for the first time since returning from hospital. Hannah is not sure where – nearby, walking distance – but the important thing is that he is out, and she is preparing a meal for when he gets back: her mother’s version of bidos, a traditional Norwegian stew.

  On the board already, heaped into tidy piles, are chopped carrots, garlic, celery and rosemary. She takes a sip from a bottle of lager as she checks the recipe written in her mother’s hand and, without looking, simultaneously points the remote to turn Lana Del Rey up louder on the sound dock.

  The onions come next and, once she has peeled off the outer skin of one and sliced it in half, tears quickly follow – onion tears and not, for once, tears for her parents. This is something to savour, she thinks, something from which she must derive strength. Her pale eyebrows pointing down, she nods her determination not to cry in front of her father again, however frustrated she might feel, however desperate she has become for his attention and acceptance.

  She chops up a chilli next, drizzles olive oil in the casserole dish and tips in the cubes of venison she has coated in flour. It is supposed to be reindeer, but the butcher assured her that this farmed deer from Wiltshire will taste the same. They sizzle and, as she stirs, she rubs her eyes and then runs cursing to the sink. Here she splashes her face with water. Stares at her hands. They are shaking.

  Taking the stairs at a jog, she heads for the bathroom and looks in the mirror. Her eyes are red now. Fuck. She opens the medicine chest and feels around for her eyedrops. Before applying them, she takes out her contact lenses and flicks them into the wastebasket. Now she heads to her bedroom for her glasses. Once she has put them on, she returns to the bathroom and stares at her reflection.

  Growing up, Hannah was often told how like her mother she looked. Apparently children rarely look like a cross between both parents, because one set of chromosomes always dominates – they don’t simply merge – and as she studies her face now she sees nothing of her father in her features.

  But she knows she is only a pale imitation of her mother. The set of her mouth is similar but her eyes do not have the same upsweep at the outer corners nor are her cheekbones as defined. Frejya had been unambiguously beautiful. From her teens onwards, she had once confided to Hannah, people had told her that she should be a model, a suggestion she had always laughed off. But then, when she was nineteen and studying languages at university, she was approached by an agency and, as much out of politeness as ambition, found herself modelling clothes for a catalogue.

  Certainly her mother had had none of Hannah’s little imperfections: the hint of a l
ist in her left eye, the skin-coloured mole on her jawline, the slight gaps between her too prominent teeth – teeth that make her top lip bulge out and emphasize the weakness of her chin. Her mother had been slimmer: no cellulite, no fluid retention around the ankles, no suggestion of a double chin at certain unflattering angles.

  And in truth it wasn’t just the surface beauty for which she envied her mother. Hannah also wishes she possessed her passion and single-mindedness, as exhibited by her dedication to the cause of getting her husband back …

  She checks the time. Fuck, fuck, fuck. The venison. She jogs back downstairs and takes the pan off the stove. The chunks are on the cusp of burning, but are probably OK. She piles the vegetables in the dish and then pours in the stock and half a pint of red wine. After stirring for a few minutes she pops the lid on and checks the time again. Perfect.

  She prepares the starter next, another traditional Norwegian dish – gravat laks and kaviar, salmon marinated in sugar, salt, brandy and dill, with sugar-cured and smoked cod roe cream – but as she is putting them on a plate she finds herself doubting that her father will like them. He seems to find rich food repulsive, preferring bread, anything without much taste.

  Although he has been out of the house with her, this is his first time on his own, and she has had to cajole him into it. Now she worries that he will have lost track of time, an inability to read his watch being another of his peculiarities. Should she drive down the road to check he is OK? She feels anxious now that he is out of her sight, as if he is the child and she the parent. This reversal of their roles has happened so insidiously neither has acknowledged it. But Hannah has bought him a nightlight, so that he doesn’t have to wake up in the dark – the dark he seems to be afraid of.

  Sometimes when he has night terrors she will come through to his room and cool his brow with a compress, a damp flannel chilled in the fridge. Because he seems afraid of the silence, too, she will sometimes lie down on the floor beside him and whisper. She knows that what she says matters less than that he hears a human voice. Sometimes she even sings him lullabies. It calms him.