The Way We Were (14 page)

Alice sat with her handbag on her lap, twisting the strap around her hands.

‘Thank you for coming, Mrs Gregory. I know that your family has suffered greatly in the last year and we’ve turned a blind eye to a number of misdemeanours in Jools’s case, but I’m afraid I can’t let this go.’

‘What exactly did she do?’ Alice asked.

Mrs Kennedy clasped her hands together. ‘She rang the school switchboard and said there was a bomb in the science lab.’

‘What?’ Alice was shocked. How could Jools do a thing like that?

‘Obviously we had to evacuate the building until we were able to establish that it was a hoax.’

‘Are you sure it was Jools?’

Mrs Kennedy pursed her lips. ‘Yes. We called the mobile number back and Jools answered.’

How could Jools be so stupid? ‘Did she say why she did it?’

‘Apparently she was trying to avoid doing a test.’

She must have been really desperate to get out of it. Alice felt sorry for her daughter and furious with her in equal measure. ‘She’s finding it difficult to keep up. I’m helping her as much as I can, but her father … well … he was better at it, more patient, than I am.’

‘Perhaps you should consider hiring a tutor to help,’
Mrs Kennedy suggested. ‘After all, the next two years are important.’

Alice nodded. ‘I was planning to do that. It’s just … I didn’t want to push her too much because she’s been so upset and I knew she’d hate having a teacher coming to the house to do extra work. I’ll sort it out this week. I should have done it before now. I just … It’s been …’

Mrs Kennedy reached over and patted Alice’s hand. ‘You’ve had a terrible shock. We understand. I just want the best for Jools and it’s time she had some extra tuition. She’s a bright, lively girl. She just needs her energy channelled in the right direction.’

Alice smiled. ‘That’s what Ben used to say. How’s Holly getting on?’

Mrs Kennedy smiled. ‘She’s a pleasure to have in the school. Such a serious and studious girl. As I mentioned to you earlier in the year, we have noticed that Holly has been a little withdrawn but her year head, Miss Long, assures me that she is doing very well in her work and has a nice little group of friends.’

Alice sighed and loosened her grip on the strap of her handbag. ‘That’s good to hear. I worry about them so much. I’m trying to make things as normal as possible.’

‘They are two lovely girls and you are doing an excellent job. I think the extra tuition will help Jools immeasurably and take some of the pressure from your shoulders. I’m sorry to have called you in, but it was a serious incident.’

Alice nodded. ‘I understand. Thank you. I promise it won’t happen again.’ She stood up and shook Mrs Kennedy’s hand. As she walked through the quiet school corridors, she saw classrooms full of children working. She peeped in at Holly’s class. Her daughter was writing, a frown of concentration on
her sweet face. Along the next corridor she saw Jools’s class. Jools was using her ruler to flick balls of paper at the girl in front of her.

Chalk and cheese, thought Alice. She’d have to have a serious talk with Jools after school. She dreaded it. Ben had been so much better at dealing with her. Alice always ended up saying the wrong thing or just losing her temper. But this was serious. Imagine calling the school to say there was a bomb! Mrs Kennedy could have excluded her. Alice was going to have to be firm. No more dancing around Jools’s feelings. This was unacceptable and she’d have to be punished.

Alice knew what would bother Jools most: confiscation of her phone. She knew her daughter would freak and make her life miserable, but she was going to do it. Enough was enough.

When Alice got home from work, Nora was taking a roast chicken out of the oven.

‘Perfect timing,’ Nora said, as she put the chicken on the island. ‘The girls are upstairs doing their homework.’

‘Thanks, Nora.’ Alice took off her coat. ‘I was called to the school today.’

‘Jools?’

Alice nodded, and filled her in on the ‘incident’. Nora threw back her head and laughed.

‘It’s not funny.’

‘You have to hand it to her, she’s original.’

‘She could have been kicked out of the school!’

‘Well, she wasn’t. Lookit, Alice, the poor divil doesn’t know what she wants or where she’s going. All teenagers are a nightmare. My lot drove me wild and turned my hair grey.
And that poor child had her dad die in the middle of all those swirling hormones. It’s a wonder she isn’t stone mad.’

Alice sat down on a stool and rested her chin on her hands. ‘But she has to behave or she’ll land herself in big trouble.’

‘Go easy, Alice. She’s fragile, that one. She pretends to be all big and bold, but she’s a ball of mush. She misses Ben more than anyone. Holly’s stronger.’

Alice rubbed her eyes. She felt exhausted. She’d stopped taking the sleeping tablets because she was afraid of becoming addicted to them, but that meant she was back to fitful sleep and wakeful nights.

‘It’s not easy, Alice, I know. But you’ll be fine. What you need is a good ride.’

‘
What?
’ Alice’s head snapped up.

Nora swatted her with a tea towel. ‘Don’t look so shocked. I’m sixty, not ninety, and I know what a woman needs. You need to have a one-night stand with some handsome fella, no strings attached. It’ll do you the world of good, wake your body up.’

‘Jesus, Nora, I couldn’t even think of being with another man.’

‘Nonsense. Just drink a few glasses of vodka, close your eyes and get on with it. It’ll break the cycle.’

‘What cycle?’

‘The misery cycle.’

Alice felt herself flushing. ‘I couldn’t. I can’t even bear the thought of being with someone else. It feels wrong – as if I was being unfaithful or something.’

‘He’s dead, Alice. He hasn’t gone on a holiday. He’s not coming back. You need to start living. You’re a young woman – you need to get out there and start smiling at men instead of going about like a ghost.’

‘But it’s only been a year.’ Alice was shocked at Nora’s
advice. In one way it felt as if it was only yesterday that Ben was there, beside her. On the other hand, she sometimes felt as if she’d been on her own for ever.

‘It’s been fourteen months now and you need to have some fun and feel like a person again. You’ve spent the last year looking after those girls. Now it’s time to look after yourself. The first thing you need to do is go shopping. Your clothes are all falling off you. Get yourself some nice new outfits and put on some lipstick and go out and find yourself a strapping young lad to give you a night of passion. You don’t want it to dry up.’

‘Nora!’ Alice was not comfortable having this conversation.

‘I’m right and you know it. Now, I’d best be off before Himself runs off with the young one next door. I’ve seen him lusting at her over the hedge.’ Nora put on her coat and headed for the door. ‘Remember now, don’t be too hard on Jools.’

Alice was reeling from Nora’s pep talk, so she went to pour herself a glass of wine to calm down after an eventful and revealing day – Jools causing a bomb scare and Nora telling her to get laid by a stranger. As Alice drank her wine, her eye caught a picture of her and Ben at a fancy-dress party. They’d gone as Bacon and Eggs – Ben was the bacon and Alice was the fried egg. They looked utterly ridiculous and extremely happy.

Could she sleep with another man? It was so long since she’d had sex with anyone but Ben. She wasn’t even sure if she’d be any good at it. She and Ben had had their own rhythm. They knew each other’s bodies so well, so intimately. Alice didn’t even particularly like her body. Her boobs were saggy from her years of breast-feeding plus gravity; her stomach and thighs had stretch marks that looked like train tracks. Even if she wanted to have a one-night stand, she
wouldn’t be able to find anyone to have sex with. Could you hire someone? Maybe she could get sex lessons.

Her phone rang. It was Kevin.

‘Can women like me hire a man to have sex with?’

‘How many Xanax have you taken?’

‘Seriously, is there an escort service for sad women in their forties?’

‘Okay, you’re not slurring your words, you don’t sound out of it, what the hell is going on?’

‘Nora told me I needed to have sex.’

‘Go, Nora!’

‘I’m not going to. I can think of nothing worse. But is there a service for women like me?’

‘Honey, this is London. There’s something for everyone.’

‘Nice men, not seedy, smelly, nasty, rotten men.’

‘You don’t need to go to an escort service. Believe me, this is a big city. There are plenty of very nice, hot, fragrant, fit men.’

‘Nora said I should go for a younger man with no strings attached.’

‘Nora’s a dark horse.’

‘How do you meet someone like that?’

‘Tinder.’

‘What’s Tinder?’

‘Alice, seriously, get with the program.’

‘What is it?’ Alice repeated. She was beginning to realize how clueless she was about everything.

‘It’s an app for matchmaking.’

‘How does it work?’

‘You sign up, then other users can check out your Facebook profile so they can see what you look like and how old you are. The app will pair up potential candidates who are
most likely to be a good match, based on where you are and if you have mutual friends or common interests.’

‘That’s it? You see a photo and their age – which they can lie about – and then you meet them? It sounds mad and probably dangerous.’

‘There are some downsides. I hooked up with a guy recently. In his headshot he looked very handsome, but when I met him he was tiny and really fat.’

‘Never mind short and fat, what if he’s a psychopath?’

Kevin sighed. ‘I use it all the time and I’ve never had any problem.’

‘I don’t understand how you can be in a relationship that isn’t monogamous. How can it not cause problems? I would have been insanely jealous if Ben had been with another woman.’

‘I’m not into monogamy and nor is Axel. It works for us.’

‘Do you think Jools is on the Tinder?’

‘God, Alice, please don’t call it “the Tinder”. You sound so old.’

‘Okay, Tinder then.’

‘No, she isn’t. I checked. She’s too young. It’s aimed at eighteen and over. I’d say Nora might be, though, the dirty old thing.’

‘Nora can barely use her ancient Nokia mobile phone. I doubt somehow she’s meeting up with strangers on Tinder.’

‘I dunno. After the advice she gave you, she just might be.’

‘Anyway, it’s not something I need to know about.’

‘Maybe not now, but in time you’ll come around to it. We all have needs.’

‘Time! Time heals all wounds. In time I’ll feel better. All time does is crawl slowly by and remind me of how shit
everything is and how bad a parent I am.’ Alice opened the fridge and poured herself another glass of wine.

‘I forgot – you had that meeting. Go on, what did Mrs Kennedy say about Jools?’

Alice drank deeply. ‘Your niece made a hoax bomb-scare call to get out of doing a test.’

Kevin hooted down the phone. ‘Genius.’

‘Why does everyone think this is funny? Nora laughed too. It’s very serious, Kevin. Mrs Kennedy wasn’t remotely amused.’

‘Give Jools a break. She was obviously terrified about failing the test. I know how that feels. I remember faking chickenpox before a history exam.’

Alice had a flashback to Kevin lying in bed with white make-up all over his face and spots painted on with red marker. She laughed. ‘I’d forgotten that. You looked ridiculous. You could smell the stuff from a mile away.’

‘I was desperate. But Mum let me off. She pretended she bought the story and she allowed me to stay at home. I knew she knew I was faking and she knew I knew she knew, but she still let me off.’

‘So what are you saying? I should let this thing with Jools go? The whole school was evacuated until they figured out that it was Jools’s mobile. Which they did by just ringing the number, by the way. No fear of our Jools becoming a criminal mastermind. That’s something, at least.’

Kevin laughed. ‘I’m saying you shouldn’t go in there all fired up and start giving out. Talk to her, let her tell you why she did it. She’s just a confused teenager who’s lost the most important person in her life.’

‘Jesus, Kevin, I have feelings, you know.’

‘Oh, come on, she loves you too, but we both know that Ben was her hero.’

I’ve lost the most important person in my life too, Alice wanted to shout. But no one was listening.

‘Okay. Well, I’d better go up to her.’

‘Good luck – and if you need me to pop over later, I can.’

‘Thanks.’

Alice downed the rest of her wine and went upstairs to talk to Jools.

Ben was dreaming about Alice. He was walking towards her, arms outstretched, but just as he got close, she turned to dust and vanished.

‘Ben! Ben!’ Someone was shaking him.

Ben’s eyes snapped open. It was Yonas. ‘You come, you come now.’

Beside him, Declan sat up. ‘What’s going on?’

‘My wife, she sick. Baby coming.’ Yonas looked wild-eyed with worry. He unlocked the chains with shaking hands.

Ben stood up and put his hand on Yonas’s shoulder. ‘It’s okay, we’ll help her.’

Yonas ushered the two men into the operating theatre where his wife, Segen, was hunched on a chair.

Ben and Declan brought her over to the table. She whimpered as she rolled onto her back. Ben examined her abdomen. He couldn’t feel the baby moving or hear a foetal heartbeat with his stethoscope.

‘Damn, we’re going to have to do a C-section.’

‘Do we have enough anaesthetic?’ Declan asked.

‘Awate brought some yesterday. Apparently they raided the clinic in Asmara again.’

‘Are they planning another attack?’ Declan asked.

Ben nodded. ‘He wanted to stock up because he knows there’ll be lots of injuries.’

‘What the hell is wrong with them?’ Declan fumed. ‘It’s a shitty piece of barren land and they’re causing mayhem over it.’

‘It’s not about the land. It’s about ownership and rights.’

‘I’m Irish, Ben. I grew up with people bombing each other over rights. I just don’t think this crappy land is worth it. Awate’d be better off packing up and taking his clan to a decent place where they could run a little farm, or down to Asmara and open a business or something. This is bullshit. We’re stuck here because of a stupid, pointless fight. We’ll never get away.’

Segen groaned, and Yonas barked at them, ‘You help!’

While Declan administered the anaesthetic, Ben tried to explain that they had to do a Caesarean. Yonas didn’t understand, but he placed a hand on Ben’s arm. ‘You good man, Ben. You good doctor.’

Ben asked Yonas to stand outside, which he reluctantly agreed to do. Before he left, he kissed his wife and tried to soothe her fears. He stood outside, his back to the tent, praying.

As soon as Segen was unconscious, Ben performed an internal examination. ‘Her cervix is only partially dilated, and look.’ He held up his bloodied glove. ‘We need to get this baby out now. I’m pretty sure there’s an anterior tear.’ He picked up the scalpel.

‘There’s no time for neat incisions, hurry,’ Declan urged.

Ben cut Segen’s abdomen in a vertical midline incision below the umbilicus. Time was their enemy. The pregnant uterus bulged forward into the wound.

They could see free blood in the abdomen. The baby was under Ben’s hands. He reached in and lifted it out. It was covered with a slippery mess of blood and meconium. He
handed it to Declan, who wiped the baby’s face and the inside of his mouth with a towel while Ben clamped and cut the umbilical cord.

‘Shit, I think he’s inhaled the meconium. It’s like bloody tar.’ Declan bent down, placed his mouth over the baby’s and started breathing very gently into it. He pulled back. Nothing.

He did it again and this time the baby’s chest rose. ‘Yes!’ He punched the air with his fist.

Ben grinned and turned back to Segen. ‘I have to deliver the placenta or she’ll bleed out.’

Thankfully, the placenta came away easily. ‘Christ.’ Ben cursed under his breath as dark blood filled the abdomen. He wiped sweat from his brow with the top of his sleeve.

‘Bad?’ Declan asked.

‘It’s like a bloody dam. We have to save her,’ Ben said. ‘Yonas is a decent man – he treats us with respect.’

While Declan worked on the baby, Ben packed Segen’s abdomen with swabs to stem the bleeding. ‘I need your help, mate.’

‘Just give me another minute to stabilize this little fella’s breathing and I’ll be over to you.’

Two minutes later, Yonas came back in, concerned for his wife. The soldier gasped when he saw all the blood. Trying to distract him from Segen, Declan called him over to the corner to see his son.

‘It’s a boy.’ Declan smiled. ‘He was having trouble breathing, but he’s okay now. Keep an eye on him and let me know if anything changes. I need to help Ben with Segen.’ Declan handed the infant to his father, who cradled him in his arms.

‘She is okay?’ Yonas asked, looking over to where his wife lay, blocked by Ben.

‘We’re doing everything we can.’ Declan patted him on the back and urged him to focus on his son.

‘I need you,’ Ben called to Declan, who rushed over.

While Declan swabbed the blood from Segen’s abdomen, Ben whispered that they had to do a hysterectomy.

‘Are you going to do a subtotal one?’

Ben nodded. ‘I have no choice. We have to save her.’

‘Do it and I’ll close her up,’ Declan said.

Ben frowned in concentration as he began the surgery. When it was finally over, Declan checked Segen’s pulse for the umpteenth time. ‘It’s still very weak,’ he whispered.

Ben handed him a hand pump. Declan placed it over her face and began to squeeze the bag rhythmically, willing her to live.

Ben raised her feet into the air to help blood-flow, then hooked her up with intravenous fluids that contained vital antibiotics. Finally he went to check on the baby. His pulse was still very weak, but he was alive and breathing by himself. ‘Congratulations, Dad!’ he said to Yonas, who couldn’t stop smiling at his son.

Yonas looked at Segen and his face clouded.

‘She’s okay,’ Ben said. ‘She’s still very weak, but we’re doing everything we can. Bring the baby to her.’

Yonas followed Ben to where Segen was now lying. They had moved her to a mattress in the ‘recovery room’. Declan was kneeling beside her, taking her pulse.

Yonas lay down beside his sleeping wife and placed the baby on her chest. The baby gurgled and began to breathe in rhythm with his mother. Yonas whispered to Segen and stroked her thin, drawn face.

Ben and Declan stayed with them all night, taking it in turns to check on Segen and the baby while Yonas slept beside them, protecting them.

As the sun rose, the two men stepped out for a cigarette.

‘We could take Yonas’s gun and go,’ Declan said.

‘It’s wedged under his arm – he’d wake up. Besides, how would we get past the two soldiers standing right over there?’ Ben pointed to the guards at the entrance to the camp.

‘We could threaten them with Yonas’s gun.’

‘They’d shoot us.’

‘Not if we shot them first.’

‘That would wake everyone up and they’d all shoot us.’

‘Fuck you, Ben, you always think of reasons for us to fail.’ Declan threw his cigarette on the dusty ground and stamped on it.

Ben rounded on him. ‘I just don’t want to bloody die, okay? My need to survive is stronger. I will get out of here, but not in a body bag. I want to see my kids again. I fucked up by coming to this bloody country in the first place. I’m not going to get myself killed. I’m going to go home and be a good father, a good husband and a good man. A better man. A much better man.’ His voice cracked.

Declan’s face softened. ‘You are a good man. If it wasn’t for you, I’d have been shot at least six times.’

‘Well, there’s no bloody way I could stick this on my own. We’ll get out of here, Declan, but we have to be patient. We can’t just run for it. We have no idea where we are, and even if we made it to the nearest village, they’d hand us straight back to Awate. Everyone’s terrified of him.’

Ben reached his arms around his back to stretch it out. He was stiff and sore from sitting up all night with the patients. ‘We’ll never get out of here without someone local helping us or persuading Awate to let us go. We have to keep developing relationships and try to persuade them that holding us here is cruel and inhumane.’

‘Awate’s a heartless prick. All he cares about is his stupid
patch of land. Maybe Yonas would help us now that we’ve saved his wife and kid,’ Declan suggested.

‘He’s Awate’s cousin, so I doubt it. Mind you, he’s by far the most decent of the soldiers, and if Segen and the baby don’t develop an infection and recover well, he’ll owe us. We should work on that.’

‘Let’s get in there and show him how dedicated we are,’ Declan said, turning to go back into the tent.