The Art of Unpacking Your Life

by Shireen Jilla

  Ben gave a slight smile of humble acknowledgement that didn’t risk exposing his teeth.

  Julian leaned forward politely to shake his hand. ‘Ben, great to meet you. Julian.’ His long white fingers were engulfed by Ben’s deep coal palm. ‘We can’t wait to learn from you.’

  ‘Ben understands English, but it is his third language. His first is Tswana and we speak in Afrikaans.’

  Sara jumped in. ‘You speak Afrikaans? Isn’t that rather un-PC?’

  ‘It’s still an important way of communicating, eh? Let’s go for a drive.’

  They hovered politely, clearly no one wanted to be the first to grab the front row of seats. Matt held Katherine’s hand, though she nimbly swung a lean leg up to the step above the wheel and into the front seat. Matt struggled to follow her, grunting heavily as he grabbed frantically at one of the vertical metal bars supporting the tarpaulin roof, before lurching into the seat behind the driver.

  ‘I haven’t seen my bag,’ Lizzie said anxiously. ‘It’s got my photo albums in it. They’re irreplaceable.’

  Gus touched her arm gently. ‘They’ll bring them on afterwards.’

  Cameras were removed, handbags placed on the floor. They shifted shoulders away from the sun. Ben sat on the metal tracker’s seat out on top of the bonnet. Gus reversed aggressively down into a ditch. The vehicle lurched, fell. Lizzie and Sara clutched at a bar, Connie thumped against Julian, who took her hand.

  ‘Aardvarks. Their holes are everywhere,’ Gus explained cheerfully. ‘The word is Afrikaans for earth pigs. Too right, eh?’

  Ben half-inclined his head towards Gus, speaking in low Afrikaans. Gus halted the vehicle abruptly enough for them to be thrown, yet again, towards their hot crossbars. ‘Look. There.’ He swung his arm out to the side. ‘A roan antelope. After eland, they are the second heaviest of our antelope.’

  A single animal with backward sweeping ridged horns moved lazily through the long sour grass, no more than a couple of metres from the vehicle, unperturbed by Gus’s driving. Strawberry blonde, it moved with the weight of a large animal, but the grace of a fawn.

  The group turned paparazzi, snapping away even when its haunches were barely visible behind a thorny bush.

  ‘Look at the size of its ears.’ Gus turned round to talk to them. His reddened tan was shiny in the light. ‘Great for detecting danger, eh?’

  He started the vehicle again, driving one handed and leaning round. ‘A roan female. Very rare. Great first spot.’

  Julian was smiling. He squeezed Connie’s hand.

  Gus grabbed his radio. ‘Gus to lodge, over.’ After a long pause. ‘Gus to lodge, over.’

  A sleepy voice like a faint echo drawled, ‘Abraham to Gus. Where are you?’

  ‘Approaching the lodge.’

  Connie saw the lodge two wide sweeps of road away. It was a collection of a half-dozen squat primitive buildings in the armpit of a sweeping mountain. Great swathes of this wilderness encircled and enveloped it. Orange stone buildings hid under grass-thatched roofs like Vietnamese farm girls under their conical hats. Connie grinned at the strangeness of their holiday accommodation.

  As the vehicle pulled up, a rotund black man in a gleaming white uniform, presumably Abraham, was positioned on a wooden path raised above the thick Namibian sands and grasses that weaved towards the lodge. He held out another plate of iced towels.

  ‘Welcome to Gae,’ he said with a broad smile.

  Chapter 2

  Sara hadn’t brought her camera to Africa. She hadn’t packed her own bags. She had left her cleaner instructions on the sweep of kitchen granite. She only agreed to come earlier this week, just a few hours after walking out of the Bailey on the last day of the trial of Joanne Sutton.

  Sara quickly concluded that the holiday was not what she expected. It was her own fault: she hadn’t even looked at the website. She hadn’t had time. Or the desire. She had been totally focused on the case. Connie, delighted that she could make it and sensitive to how exhausted she must be, had arranged it all.

  Sara regretted delegating her desperately needed holiday.

  ‘I feel deeply uncomfortable,’ murmured Julian. ‘The Guardian would have a field day.’

  ‘Too right. Christ, the blatant social inequality. How smug rich do you feel, Julian Emmerson?’

  The pounding heat made Sara desperate, trapped by her own instincts. She wasn’t going to be the one to impose their white wealthy Western authority on the laid-back smiling Abraham. Lizzie slumped down on the path; Alan sat fanning her; Connie more effectively used her brochure. It took Katherine’s New York chutzpah to get them moving. ‘Really, I do need to lie down, Abraham. Could we go to our rooms please?’

  As the others followed Abraham down another exposed path, Sara made a beeline for the nearest conical building. Inside, the open plan sitting room was cosy with cream sofas and cushions and photo books about the Kalahari stacked by a stone fireplace. A spiral staircase led up to a balcony, which was filled with museum-style cabinets. Above, the thatched roof was un-ornamented. The combination of primitive materials and European sophistication reminded Sara of a ski chalet.

  Sara’s eyes were drawn back outside. She moved on to a veranda sheltered by a flat roof. Out beyond the comfort of circular wicker chairs, the terrace and the swimming pool, white butterflies moved rapidly between the sour grass and wild yellow flowers; countless impala grazed; miniature beige birds dipped their toes into the pool, where the lone swimmer was a vast black beetle backstroking in ever more frantic circles.

  Sara was exhausted. Her body started to ache as if she was getting flu. Since the trial ended, she hadn’t been able to shake off the tension that cracked through her temples.

  ‘It’s unreal, isn’t it?’ Connie was at her elbow, her eyes shining with excitement. ‘I feel proud that my grandfather built it. It’s crazy I’ve never been here before.’

  ‘Amazing.’ Sara squeezed her arm. ‘How did he end up here of all places?’

  ‘I have no idea. My mother wasn’t a keen traveller – his story doesn’t interest her. I’m hoping to find out. There’s a small library of Kalahari artefacts in the gallery upstairs.’

  Connie led her across the swimming pool deck down another wooden path towards three more conical houses. She opened the first heavy wooden door that scraped the stone floor before revealing an elegant sitting room. They looked straight back out to the Kalahari through the sliding glass doors that took up all of the back wall. There was no getting away from it.

  Sara felt the tingle of air conditioning. Thank God.

  ‘Girls, hello.’ Lizzie had tipped the entire contents of her two bags upside down, straight on to the floor. ‘Can you believe it? We’re sharing a house again, Sara. It’s like being back at Bristol.’

  Sara had always found Lizzie’s disorganisation trying. After everything she had gone through, she needed a relaxing holiday. There was nothing relaxing about this chaos. They might as well be camping.

  ‘I had forgotten that you’re such a slob, Lizzie Gibson.’ Sara instantly regretted her tone. After all, this was Lizzie. She was one of her oldest friends.

  ‘I know, I have put on three stone. I have a middle-aged spread already. God knows what’s going to happen when I hit the menopause.’

  ‘Lizzie, don’t be silly,’ Connie immediately answered, which made Sara smile. Ever-protective Connie.

  ‘Do you remember how skinny I was at university? I was as thin as Connie.’

  Sara couldn’t remember. Unlike Lizzie, she didn’t look back. Whereas Lizzie was always talking about the past – what they looked like, what they said, where they went – Sara had a powerful but short-term memory.

  Lizzie couldn’t afford this trip, Sara was certain of it. Sara imagined that Julian and Connie had paid for Lizzie’s whole holiday. They were extremely generous, though their act was bound to make Lizzie envy them more.

  ‘You’re lucky to have lots of clothes,’ moaned Lizzie, surfing through
hers to unzip Sara’s Mulberry holdalls and coo over the contents.

  Sara stared at Lizzie’s mountain of crunched clothes. ‘Volume isn’t your problem, Lizzie.’

  Lizzie looked up. ‘Mine are old. You will recognise every single one.’ She lifted up a once-white linen shirt, cropped short for her eighties midriff. ‘I loved it when we were living in Harley Place. You must remember?’

  How could Lizzie possibly think that Sara recognised her clothes? She was artless sometimes. It was, perversely, what Sara most adored about her. These days, who did she ever meet who was like Lizzie?

  Connie darted in. ‘Didn’t you buy it in that charity shop in the centre of Clifton? The one run by that crazy punk with green spiky hair and the black poodle?’

  Connie was brilliant at life’s details, particularly other people’s life details. Sara had missed her without realising it.

  ‘Yes! It was twenty pence. Do you remember? Can you believe that?’

  ‘Yes I can,’ Sara murmured. ‘Really Lizzie, I need to get you to a personal shopper the moment we are back.’

  Connie shot her a warning eyebrow. ‘Sara, come and see the shower.’

  She led her through to a mercifully modern bathroom into a cylindrical brick courtyard with a high curved wall. In the far corner was an outdoor shower with a hole in the brick through which Sara spotted another impala.

  ‘Look! They’ve created a window – you can look out at the Kalahari while you shower.’

  Sara couldn’t think of anything less appealing. She wanted to escape from the outdoorsyness of it all. She rarely went outside in London. The Jade Sutton case, from brief to the end of the trial, had taken six months. She had cabbed in and out of Chambers. It was one of her few extravagances, which she defended to her mother: in a cab she could work, take calls and sort out her admin.

  Connie and Lizzie’s incessant chatter moved back inside. Sara stood in the sliver of shade taking stock. This place made her feel intensely uncomfortable. She was drawn back to the last time she felt in limbo: after her bar exams she took a year off to study French law in Grenoble. It was a twelve-hour journey from Calais to Grenoble. The coach was zinging with sweat and stale food by the time it lurched nauseatingly round and round up into the mountains. She weakly stepped out into a town that assaulted her with its foreign voices, shops and architecture. She was insecure. Of course, things changed. Grenoble and its small town elegance became her home. She met Jean Philippe: wise, intelligent with an airy beamed apartment up a narrow cobbled street. He was her gynaecologist. He made a pass while he was examining her.

  ‘Outrageous. Do take care,’ Connie shouted indignantly over Lou’s colic-ridden screams. Sara spent a handful of her limited cash calling Connie for a debrief. It was profoundly irritating to be competing with a newborn for her attention.

  Jean Philippe’s parents were at right angles to Sara’s mother. They were artists, whose wooden chalet-style house was wedged on the side of the mountain outside a picturesque hamlet, ten kilometres outside Grenoble. They lived as full and chaotic a life as her mother lived a quiet, industrious one. Every Sunday, Sara and Jean Philippe would join his three siblings, their children, neighbours and friends for a massive Sunday lunch. Before the end of her university year, Jean Philippe asked her to marry him.

  Sara was in love. She didn’t hesitate. She hadn’t slogged at a shit school, watched her mother suffer extra night shifts at the airport, to give it up for the first bloke who turned up. She left on the next coach back home to Manchester.

  She never looked back, precociously taking silk at thirty-seven, and then every barrister’s dream: ‘the life-enhancing brief’. The Jade Sutton case: complicated, high-profile, impossible. Every silk worth their salt wanted it.

  Sara was drawn inevitably back to Joanne Sutton’s mercury stare. She had to pull herself together. There was nothing she could do about it now. She sighed again. She only thought about Jean Philippe when she was shattered and stressed.

  She hadn’t fallen in love since. So what? There was something fundamentally wrong with the men she dated. Too talkative, too vain, too stupid, too nasal, too egotistical. Christ, she didn’t need to be with anyone. She didn’t have time.

  Sara gave herself a slight shake. Look at Connie’s life. Practically a teen bride and four demanding kids. No one had four children any more. Connie had a people-carrier-load of children to compensate for Julian’s antics, Sara was sure of it. Not that she ever discussed it with Connie. It was an unspoken agreement: Julian’s affairs were out of bounds.

  Sara escaped back into the bedroom, where Lizzie’s debris was the only sign of her. She reminded herself she had come on this trip for Connie. She would feel better after a sleep. She slipped under the delicate pear-shaped mosquito net, lay on top of the sheet, reached beside the bed for the British Airways eye mask and ear plugs in her handbag, and lay down fully clothed flat on her back. The bed was comfortable, if a little narrow. These days, she only slept in a single bed when she went home to Manchester.

  Sara gave way to sleep.

  Chapter 3

  Connie was first back at the bar. She hadn’t been able to lie down. Every detail was heightened as if she were wearing 3-D glasses. It was so exciting. Recently, Connie’s life felt empty. Of course, it was busy and absorbing until her baby Hector started secondary school last September. Every morning at seven thirty, Hector disappeared with the older three. Connie was left behind, marooned in his early childhood, only knowing the answers to primary school questions that were no longer relevant. After school, Lou’s long-standing boyfriend Rolo took sulky ownership of their open-plan kitchen. Connie lurked upstairs, lost and lonely.

  She had their housekeeper, Sally, who had lived with them for a decade since Leo was seven. Connie spent more time with Sally than anyone else, even the children and Julian. Only Sally was party to the intimate details of Connie’s life. She had been her best friend. Sometimes, when Connie was feeling low, she felt that Sally was the only close friend she had left.

  Initially Connie imagined Sally, a trained nanny, would move on, but she stayed. They shared domesticity, trivia about the house, the children’s timetables, endless meals, shopping, organising and sorting.

  Over the years, Connie and Julian talked about Sally’s desperate desire for her own child and the notable absence of any boyfriend. When Sally announced she was pregnant without revealing the name of the father, Connie was hurt. By Sally’s standards of passivity, it was a shock. What’s more, she hadn’t confided in Connie. Who was the man? A one-night stand? A sperm donor? A friend?

  Sally made it clear the subject was off limits. It seemed that there was a boundary between Sally’s ‘work’ and her personal life that Connie didn’t previously know existed. Sally was the only person she confided in about Julian’s affairs. Her pregnancy made Connie realise that Sally didn’t share any intimate details with her. The intimacy that Connie felt they had shared was an illusion; it turned out that they never had been really close.

  Connie glanced self-consciously in the large mirror behind the bar. She allowed herself a couple of date balls from the bowl. As she popped the third into her mouth, Luke appeared. His lime-green T-shirt and running shorts were soaked with sweat.

  ‘We are leaving shortly, Luke,’ she was anxious the group would never be ready in time.

  ‘I’ll have a quick shower and be ready in fifteen,’ Luke swiftly drained two glasses of water without looking at her.

  ‘When did you start exercising?’ It was a stupid question, which she instantly regretted. It wasn’t what she wanted to ask him.

  He dabbed his neck with the towel coiled around it and smiled optimistically. ‘It’s a great way to get some control of my life, Connie.’

  Luke hadn’t explained to her what had happened to his marriage. With their history, Connie had no right to ask.

  Luke continued, brightening to his subject: ‘I’m working towards an Iron Man in September,’ he added confidenti
ally. ‘All I’m aiming to do is complete this one.’

  How like Luke. Big confidences about work and sport, but not about the important things.

  ‘It’s all change, all change, Connie,’ he added, as if trying to convince himself.

  Connie couldn’t think of an appropriate reply that wouldn’t be too personal. Luke left the bar to get changed. She glanced at his retreating back and wondered if he ever thought of their past.

  Connie lived with Luke in Harley Place for two years. Every morning, he made her breakfast in bed, climbing three flights of stairs to bring her coffee, eggs and toast on the metal tray he had bought for the purpose from IKEA. They shared the largest bedroom in the house. They were both immaculate and minimal. Luke was practical. He built ceiling-to-floor wardrobes and bookshelves along one whole wall, painting them and the walls dove grey. They each had half of the vast wardrobe. Luke merged their books and ordered them alphabetically. They had an old desk each in front of the two long sash windows. They were both reading history and always worked together. If one of them finished first, the other would read on Connie’s grandmother’s purple velvet chaise longue. It wasn’t only their degree they shared. They were physically alike – long and lean – and sexually at one. When she made love to Luke, Connie used to feel as if she was in a movie. Sara loved to describe them as: ‘Siamese twins, joined at the groin.’

  The obvious next move after Bristol was for them to get a flat together, before getting married. However, they were both reserved. Neither of them ever said they loved the other. It was not a deliberate or manipulative move, rather a reticence they both shared. Yet their unexpressed emotion created a big question about what was going to happen next. They drifted through the summer term. Connie, who loved stability, became nervous because their domestic bubble was about to pop – the others were going their separate ways – Luke and Connie couldn’t stay on at Harley Place. Luke was determined to set up an Internet business, which would mean he would need go home to save money. It was a mad idea, which Connie couldn’t understand. The Internet was only in its infancy at the time, who knew what impact it was going to have on society. Connie worried that was an excuse for not getting a proper job. Well, her father said as much. Connie was inclined to believe him, though she didn’t say anything to Luke. Their relationship had been straightforward. Suddenly, it was complicated in a practical sense, and neither of them were experienced enough to untangle or, crucially, prepared to take the initiative. They both waited for the other to move them forward.