In a Kingdom by the Sea

When we got home Maman was cross and said we smelt of fox poo. She didn’t think it was funny. Papa did, and he hosed us down with the freezing water from the garden hose.

Last May Day, you took me with you over the fields to Marazion Festival.

You held my hand as we ran. Your hair was flying out behind you in a great snaky wave and getting in my eyes. You were laughing as you pulled me along because we were late and your friends were waiting.

The Mount was lit up like fairyland. We could hear music coming from the causeway and the sun was falling into the sea.

There was a German family walking the other way, back to the campsite. They smiled and asked if they could take our photos. I was in jeans but you were in your favourite, faded, once-pink summer dress. The dress everyone smiled at you in; the dress Maman and Papa did not like you to wear. There was trouble later when they picked us up and saw that you were wearing that old dress.

Once, when we were in Penzance, a woman stopped us in the street. She had been staring at you from the other side of the road. She said she was a talent scout for a model agency. She tried to give Maman her card but Maman said she did not want it, that you were only thirteen years old. The woman looked amazed and said, ‘She is incredibly voluptuous for a thirteen year old.’

Neither of us knew what voluptuous meant but it made Maman furious and she was very rude to the woman in fast French and we both got the giggles.

One rainy day you pricked both our thumbs and pressed our blobs of blood together. You wanted us to be real sisters, not half-sisters, but you were always my real sister even before our blood was joined.

Dom, I don’t know what you did for Maman to send you away, but don’t worry. She will come and get you. She doesn’t mean it. She will want you home soon with Papa and me. There have always been four of us. You, me, Maman and Papa …

I wake on my own in the London house sobbing in the hours before dawn. The dream is visceral and still powerfully alive. I thought I had dealt with and buried all this long, long ago.

CHAPTER FIVE

London, 2009

It is a strange, uneasy summer in London. The war in Afghanistan dominates the news. The sight of huge RAF planes lumbering into Brize Norton carrying coffins and mutilated soldiers casts a pall everywhere.

Publishing is in a difficult place at the moment. Commissions are slow and Emily and I feel anxious. Book translations are harder to obtain and I have not been able to place any new foreign authors for months. It has taken me years to build up a good little bilingual team and I do not want to have to let anyone go.

Then, with serendipitous timing, Isabella Fournier, a bestselling French author I met last year at a Paris book launch, asks if I will take over the translation of her latest book. It is a bit of a coup and it has given us some clout. I relax, feeling sure that the year is going to improve.

For the first couple of months Mike and I manage to Skype each other regularly. He is living in a hotel near Karachi Airport but quite a distance from the city. Mike would never admit it to me but I think his first few weeks in Pakistan are proving daunting.

He cannot leave the hotel without security and for some reason it seems to be taking a long time for a driver to be vetted and a car allocated to him.

‘They were in such a hurry to get me out here, so you’d think they could sort out security before I arrived …’ he tells me irritably. ‘Everyone in the office is bending over backwards to make sure I have everything I need, but at the end of the day they all head home to the city and I am stuck out by the airport in this bloody awful airline hotel full of passing and inebriated cabin crew …’

The hotel is not bloody awful. Mike showed me round it on his iPad, but he obviously feels trapped and bored.

‘Surely there must be secure hotels in the city?’

‘Of course there are. They are just being overcautious with me. I’m the only European employee out here at the moment and it would be embarrassing for them if anything happened to me …’

Mike does not mention meeting up in Dubai as we planned, but by the middle of July he sounds more cheerful.

‘I’ve just been assigned a personal manager. His name’s Shahid Ali and he’s a really nice guy with a great sense of humour. He’s enlightening me on the cultural pitfalls of office politics. What’s more, he’s determined to find me a safe hotel in Karachi. Much more of this hotel room and I will be climbing the curtains …’

‘That’s great, Mike.’

‘The timing’s perfect. I’m experiencing my first taste of antipathy to a gora, a foreigner, running the Karachi office. There was bound to be some resentment and veiled hostility in certain quarters, so it’s good to have someone I can trust at my side …’

‘Are you worried about the hostility?’

‘No, I expected it. I just have to keep my wits about me. Sometimes, it’s all smoke and mirrors. I suspect that I’m only being shown what people want me to see. Pakistan is a very secretive society, so Shahid is an absolute godsend.’

‘I thought you said you weren’t going to be the only European out there?’

‘I was told there was going to be a Canadian director based in Karachi with me. But he’s actually a Pakistani Canadian called Adeeb Syad and he’s a bit of a mystery. He’s hardly ever seen in the Karachi office. People joke that he’s secretly retired without telling anyone. Shahid’s convinced he has been bought off for turning a blind eye somewhere along the line, taking back-handers for keeping out of the way …’

‘That sounds serious. Can you prove it?’

‘Not yet, but I gather he got Shahid transferred to Lahore when he got a bit too close for comfort. Shahid feels as strongly as I do about corruption. There are so many little scams that have been going on for years. People with authority have been steadily bleeding the airline and I’m not going to tolerate it. I’ve made that clear. No one in the office has any illusions about my intentions. I will stamp it out …’

‘Oh dear, Mike, you’re going to make enemies.’

‘It goes with the job, I’m afraid. That’s why I’m paid well and that’s why it’s good to have someone I can trust working with me. It’s going to make a big difference …’

I can hear Mike’s relief.

‘Any regrets? Wish you had taken an easier job?’

‘No. You know me, Gabby, I thrive on a challenge …’

As the summer slides by I idly Google flights to Dubai and run them past Mike, but he cannot commit to any dates so nothing is fixed. Will and Matteo are home for the summer and I work on Isabella Fournier’s book from home so that I can see something of them. They drift in and out of the house then disappear. Will goes off sailing in Scotland. Matt takes off on a cheap package holiday with friends to Spain.

London is humid and claustrophobic. Battling to work through thousands of tourists is no fun. I begin to run out of energy covering for editors off on summer holidays with their families.

I yearn for Cornwall and the beach. I dream of plunging into sharp, foamy surf; of being battered and reinvigorated by waves. I long for a cool wind straight from the sea to sting me alive.

I want to stand by the back door of our house and look up at the night sky clear of pollution and watch a scatter of stars fall. I want to get on the train to Penzance and have Maman and Papa waiting there at the end of the line. As time passes I miss them more and more. Sometimes, I cannot believe they are both gone.

I ring Dominique to ask if she feels like a long weekend in Cornwall. She says she is much too busy with the London wedding dress to take time off. She sounds tired and unaccustomedly distant.

Mike emails to tell me that at last he has been given a car and a Pashtun driver called Noor. I print out the email and read it on the little bench in my sunny garden.

It’s fantastic to be independent at last! Life’s a whole different ball game!

Noor drives me to meet Shahid at the Shalimar Hotel, which is in the middle of Karachi. This is the hotel where we hold a lot of PAA conferences. It is also the hotel that most of the diplomats, journalists and NGOs use for passing through Karachi. It has good service, wonderful food and there is a private swimming pool in a shady garden. The entrance is heavily guarded so it’s considered one of the most safe and secure hotels in Karachi. The manager is a charismatic Malaysian Chinese called Charlie Wang. He has a secret cache of wine in his apartment that he generously likes to share … Hope you are having a great weekend …

I think of Mike heading off to the lights and smells of an unknown city, the heat fading from the pavements, the smell of enticing food wafting on the night air with all the excitement of exploring somewhere new.

A breeze moves the leaves of the small red acer on the lawn. They are reflected in the windows of the house, like delicate hands waving. Loneliness swoops like a sudden murmuration of starlings filling the sky.

Behind me, my house lies empty. How do I cope with just being me all over again when I longed for an us? I had the illusion that this summer would mark a change, that Mike would finally be around, that the four of us would take a holiday together and then Mike and I would move on to a new phase in our lives.

I shiver in the night air as I face the truth. I am still here in the same place I have always been. Mike has moved on to the next phase of his life. Will and Matteo have their own lives. I am no longer central to their world nor will I ever be again. Mike, after a lifetime of working abroad, still chooses to live and work away from home and away from me.

In the house the phone rings. It is Kate.

‘Hugh says he will take us out to supper if you’re free. We’re both suffering from summer in the city blues. We never see the girls, they are off doing exciting things in the country with friends who have horses and jolly parents who are obviously much more fun than us. We’ve just cracked open a bottle of wine while we contemplate the meaning of life …’

I laugh. ‘I’m ordering a taxi now.’

I am glad when September comes and everyone is back from their holidays and the office gets back to normal. Will and Matt head back to Scotland, fit and brown. They have so much luggage I drive them to the station.

‘Thanks for the lift, Mum. Don’t be lonely. Not long until Christmas and then you’ll see Dad.’

‘You can practise light packing for Oman, Maman. By the time we get home you will have perfected the art …’ Matteo says, patronizingly.

I raise my eyebrow at his carpet of luggage. ‘I don’t think it’s me who needs to perfect the art of travelling light, Matteo …’

They hug me and are gone in a blur of rucksacks and loudspeakers, disappearing into the busy crowds, moving swiftly back into their own worlds.

I head for the office through the choked traffic. It is Emily’s birthday and we are all taking her out for lunch. As I pass the park I see the leaves on the sycamores are beginning to turn. The air is cooler, the shops are filling up with autumn clothes and the sun now sets beyond the garden. Summer is nearly over.

CHAPTER SIX

Cornwall, 1966

From the moment we moved into Loveday’s house Dominique and I forgot Redruth. We slipped off our lives there as easily as discarding a coat we had outgrown. We moved in time for the summer holidays and my parents were so busy working on our new home that we were allowed to run wild.

Papa brought us small knapsacks. Maman made sandwiches and a drink and off we set each day, mini explorers with a new world to discover.

Dominique was only ten that first summer but she had inbuilt common sense. She was fiercely protective of me and my parents trusted her. In a few years beauty and hormones would turn her into a bit of a wild child but I remember our first years there as near to idyllic.

There were strict rules. We had to know the tide times each day. We were never to go into the sea without an adult and there were unnegotiable boundaries beyond which we must not roam.

The village was full of summer people down in the holiday cottages by the harbour. Within weeks of moving in we were suddenly part of a little gang. There was a doctor’s family with identical twin boys, Benjamin and Tristan. They were Dominique’s age but wild and undisciplined. Their parents seemed to have given up trying to control them, but Dominique, somehow, managed to harness their energy and imagination. If they broke gang rules they were out.

The twins were in awe of Dominique and the three of them instigated most of our adventures. They made maps of our kingdom from Nearly Cave to Poo Tunnel. From Forbidden Beach out to the rugged cliffs and down to Priest’s Cove where the Pirate Boats came in with plunder.

After a while Maman and Papa let us roam a little further, as long as Dominique and the older children were with us. Papa would drop us off in his truck at Priest’s Cove to play soldiers and pirates on Smuggler’s Bridge. Later, Maman would walk along the coastal path to meet us with Mr Rowe’s old collie, Mabel.

None of us ever fell off the edge of a cliff or drowned. Nothing dire happened apart from us occasionally getting tired and quarrelsome. I was the youngest and wilted first at the miles the older children covered. Often Maman made me go home with her and I was secretly grateful. I am sure keeping up helped with my running when I was older. I learned stamina. I learned that if you whined or dragged your feet you got left behind.

Of course, it wasn’t a Mary Poppins life. Papa liked the pub a bit too much. Maman was possessive and jealous of other women. They had spectacular rows. Sometimes, Dominique and I would cover our ears and run out into the wild garden.

I would get upset but Dominique just laughed and shrugged.

‘Pff! It’s only Papa flirting or Maman thinking he is. They will make up.’ And they always did. We would return home to find Maman flushed and happy in a mysteriously embarrassing way. Papa would wink at us as he self-consciously helped Maman prepare our tea.

‘Guilty!’ Dominique would whisper.

‘Of what?’ I would whisper back.

Dominique would lean behind her hand. ‘Flirting with Miss Hicks. He’s mending her roof. Maman accused him of fancying her.’

‘Is fancying the same as flirting?’

Dominique considered. ‘I think it is one step worse. It’s okay though, it’s what grown-ups do. They get married, then they like other people and have rows.’

‘But … Papa still loves Maman?’

‘Of course he does, Rabbit. Look at them, all lovey-dovey …’

Dominique would roll her eyes and put a finger down her throat and pretend to be sick.

My sister was the font of all knowledge and my lodestar. When she went to secondary school I would wait for her at the bus stop every afternoon.

One day, she did not get off the school bus as usual. A girl in Dominique’s class told me that my sister had got off a stop early so she could walk home with her friends.

I was stricken by the sudden realization that Dominique was too kind to tell me that she wanted to spend more time with her friends, less with me.

I took off for the beach, mortified, and sat for the rest of the afternoon finding flat pebbles to skim, determined not to cry. Papa spotted me driving home in his truck. He came and sat beside me as I skimmed the stones into the waves. I did not say anything but somehow Papa knew.

‘Dominique needs a bit of space sometimes, sweetheart …’

From then on Papa tried to come home early on the days Maman was giving French lessons or privately tutoring. He took me body-boarding. He bought a double canoe and we towed it off to the estuary. I would do my homework or read a book while he fished.

Dominique had discovered the Jubilee Pool in Penzance. Everyone went there in the summer. Papa would drop me off after school to join her and her friends. That was where I met Morwenna, my first best friend.

She lived in a cottage the other side of the point by the harbour. Her father was a fisherman and her house always smelt of fish. Like Maman, her mother was always working too. In the Co-op, in the chippie and she cleaned holiday cottages.

Morwenna also had an elder sister, called Ada. Ada was not kind or pretty like Dominique. She had the disturbing, hard little face of an adult. A girl who grimly believed she had been cheated of something everyone else had. She had cause, I think, because her tired mother expected a lot of her.

Ada loathed Dominique with a passion that was unnerving. She had a vicious tongue and she lied about people. She liked to make trouble for Dominique both with Maman and at school. I always believed that Ada had something to do with Maman sending Dominique away, but I could never prove it.

The winters of my childhood could seem endless. There were days and days of damp sea mist that descended like a dark cloak to the very doors and windows. It made the trees into eerie, shapeless monsters. It suffocated sound, gave us headaches and made us irritable. Then there were the biting easterly winds that hit the house head on with a vicious intensity that made the windows and doors rattle.

Maman was always cold. Papa was constantly fixing windows and plugging gaps under doors. Winters meant being claustrophobically closed in together. If the weather stopped Papa working outside he would get frustrated and march about the house at weekends snapping at everyone.

Maman would happily bake if she was kept inside, but Papa would pace up and down driving her mad. Dominique, bored, would thump up and down the stairs unable to keep still. I could curl up and read but Dominique never could.

Maman and I would wait for the explosion as Papa and Dominique got on each other’s nerves. Papa would tell Dominique to do something constructive like tidy her room or get on with some homework. Dominique would snap straight back with a rude, ‘Why don’t you do something constructive like helping Maman with the housework for a change …?’

Woomph! Like lighting touchpaper, Maman, Papa and Dominique would all jump up and down shouting and waving their arms. I would pick up my book and fly to my room for peace.

Then, slowly, spring would start to emerge. Translucent leaves on the trees would begin to unfurl. The daffodil fields in the valleys would turn from tight green buds to a blaze of yellow. The hedgerows came alive with hundreds of wild flowers.

I would look out of my window and see Maman feeding the chickens in the orchard. I would see Papa and Dominique bent together painting the bottom of his upturned boat. Behind them lay a sea, no longer rough and sullen, but turning from winter navy to a translucent greeny-blue.

Those days seem halcyon now. I was too young to know how transient happiness is. I knew nothing of fear or jealousy or the reach of the past. I could never have dreamt that the four of us – Maman, Papa, Dominique and me – could ever be ripped apart.

CHAPTER SEVEN

London, November 2009

Emily comes up the stairs to my office with a coffee and some contracts to sign. She has been restless and preoccupied lately and I suspect that someone has approached her with a job offer. She’s my right hand and I don’t want to lose her.

I take my coffee and wait until she is sitting down. ‘Rumour has it that someone is trying to entice you away from us, Em. You would let me know if you are thinking of leaving us?’

‘Honestly!’ Emily says quickly, looking embarrassed. ‘Of course I’d tell you, Gabby. Adrian Lang put out feelers, that’s all. They are looking for someone to head their foreign rights department …’

‘He’s a good agent. You’d be your own boss. It must be tempting.’

‘Well, it is.’ She grins at me. ‘But you must know they can’t match my current salary. I know they approached you last year …’

‘They did and I refused but I’m a lot older than you, I don’t want to amalgamate agencies or do two jobs. I’m not surprised that Adrian’s approached you. You have wonderful organizational skills, Emily, as well as being an extremely competent translator. I’m aware that you could do my job more efficiently without me than I could do it without you …’

I smile. ‘It would be natural if you felt fidgety, but I’m afraid I’m not ready to retire for a while, so I would quite understand if you wanted to take off to be your own boss …’

I’ve been lucky to have Emily for so long and it wouldn’t be fair to hold her back. She looks at me earnestly.

‘Gabby, of course I was flattered to be approached but if I was seriously considering Adrian’s offer I would have come and told you. It was just nice to leave it on the table and pretend to myself I was thinking about it …’

She shuffles the papers she is holding into a neat pile. ‘I don’t want to leave. Why would I? We have a perfect working relationship. You give me a free rein and you’re a good friend. I couldn’t replace that. Yes, I might be efficient at organizing things and running an office, but you’re the one who can instantly spot talent amid the dross. You’re the one who can translate an author into another language yet instinctively keep their true voice. It’s a hell of a skill. That’s why you’re so respected and why I’m still learning from you all the time …’ Emily grins. ‘So, I’ll sit it out and wait until you are too doddery to do the job, then I’ll jump you …’

‘Thank you, Emily.’ I laugh, touched. ‘Come on, I’ll sign these contracts, then I’ll take you out to lunch to celebrate you not leaving.’

‘Done!’ she says.

Christmas is looming and the boys are home. We are all excited and rush about getting small presents we can carry to Oman. I have supper with Kate and Hugh before I leave.

Hugh pecks my cheek. ‘Gosh, you look glowing and happy.’

Kate peers at me. ‘You do. It’s good to see. I thought you were a little down the last time I saw you.’

‘A lot has happened in the last two weeks …’ I grin at them both. ‘After Christmas in Oman with the boys Mike wants me to fly back to Karachi with him for New Year.’

They both look appalled. ‘Is it safe?’ Hugh asks.

‘It is deemed safe unless there is trouble or the situation deteriorates. I have been officially sanctioned by the airline.’

‘It’s a bit sudden, isn’t it? You didn’t mention anything at Laura’s launch,’ Kate says, handing me a glass of wine.

‘I didn’t know then. Mike made friends with the Malaysian manager of the Shalimar Hotel in Karachi. Charlie had an old apartment waiting for a refurbish and he offered it to Mike for a reasonable rent. Mike jumped at it. He moved in straight away. He’d been living out near the airport so he’s thrilled to be in Karachi and he wants me to see where he’s living.’

‘Are Will and Matt going with you?’

‘No, they don’t have visas. Mike applied for mine when he took the job. It’s not possible to roam freely around Karachi sightseeing and more dangerous if you are young and male. Anyway, it’s only a flying visit and after a week with us the boys will be raring to get back to London for New Year with their friends.’

‘How exciting,’ Hugh says. ‘Oman and Karachi. Some people have all the luck …’

‘Wow, what an exotic Christmas and New Year you’re going to have, Gabby,’ Kate says.

I laugh. ‘Mike gleefully announced that the British Deputy High Commission has already earmarked him as a dinner guest. You know what Mike is like.’

‘We do.’ Hugh grins.

We go and sit at the large scrubbed table where I have had so many suppers.

‘Don’t you ever feel jealous of Mike’s glamorous lifestyle?’ Kate asks suddenly. ‘He’s always living another entirely separate life.’