In a Kingdom by the Sea

January and February have been grim. This is the first time in my working life that a myriad of things have gone wrong at the same time, threatening my reputation. The fact that I had no control over any of them has been unnerving.

One of my authors had a meltdown and wanted to withdraw her book just before publication. One of my translators, in the middle of a messy divorce, got so behind with an important Icelandic thriller he was working on that he missed a vital deadline with devastating consequences. To make matters worse, Emily’s mother died suddenly so she has been away for weeks.

Up to now, I have had a dependable little team and I feel shockingly let down. For an experienced translator not to admit, until the last minute, that he is way behind schedule is totally unprofessional. We all rely on each other. Life happens. If anyone is struggling to cope we can give practical support. Authors and publishers depend on us. We cannot afford stubborn pride. Publication dates are sacrosanct.

Thank goodness that Emily is back; her anger is at least distracting her from the grief of her mother’s death. Managing the office is her domain. I work upstairs and she is so efficient I rarely interfere.

After calling a meeting and stressing the importance of admitting any personal difficulties that might impact on deadlines, Emily and I decided to sack our charming but lazy intern. Having begged us for a job, he has proved averse to mundane tasks. We have caught him on his smartphone during working hours too many times.

As I run round the lake, I wonder if I have become less observant about the people who work with me. Was it male pride or depression that stopped Ayer, my translator, approaching me in time? Have I left too much to Emily? She is extremely competent but not always entirely empathetic to people’s domestic problems.

I had been looking forward to talking to Mike about everything when he came home in February. I thought he would sympathize and offer good advice. He is good at damage limitation, at narrowing down a problem and making it seem smaller. It is what he does for a living. Not this time. He arrived from Karachi irritable, dismissive and bored by my saga.

Despite being aware that I was in the middle of a crisis, he had gone ahead and made plans to go walking in the Malverns without consulting me. I had to tell him going anywhere was out of the question; I had apologetic meetings with publishers and alternative deadlines to set up.

Mike went off in a huff, sailing in Lymington with Jacob for two days, and came back monosyllabic and sullen.

‘I hoped you might have cheered him up a bit,’ I said when Jacob dropped him back home. Mike had gone upstairs to change out of wet trousers. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen him so bad-tempered.’

Jacob snorted. ‘Come on, Gabby, you’ve been married to him long enough. Mike can be impossible if things don’t go his way. In Dubai, we all used to keep out of his way when he was thwarted at work … He really can be a moody bastard sometimes.’

‘That’s why we let him work a long way from home,’ I joke, startled by Jacob’s honesty. ‘Has he told you his problem?’

‘Nope. Just cast a shadow over my sailing trip.’

‘I’m sorry, Jacob.’

Jacob drained his glass. ‘You’ve got nothing to be sorry about …’

He came over and pecked my cheek. ‘I’m off. Don’t take Mike’s behaviour with such good grace, Gabby. He’s bloody lucky to have you. Flora wouldn’t put up with it, or with me working away from home most of the time. Mike can’t expect your world to stop dead when he decides to take leave … I’ll call goodbye to him on my way out …’

He turned at the door. ‘If it’s any comfort, Mike has pissed me off this time too.’

I could hear Mike on his mobile phone, walking up and down on the landing. I wondered who he was talking to, because he was being very charming to whoever it was.

I poured myself a glass of wine and went and looked out of the French windows into the garden. I had been restless ever since returning from Pakistan. I looked at the tiny wild cyclamen under the magnolia tree and realized that I could not wait for Mike to go back to Karachi.

‘You do realize that this has been a total waste of my leave,’ Mike said, coming down the stairs, leaving his charm on the landing.

I did not answer. I try to avoid rows. It achieves nothing; it just brings out the worst. I had watched Maman, a master class in wasted emotion.

Mike got a beer out of the fridge. ‘Do you really think your little empire would have toppled if you had spent a couple of days away with me? I don’t ask much of you.’

I turned to look at him. ‘You ask quite a lot, actually. You just don’t recognize it. For the first time in my life, Mike, I don’t like you very much. In fact, I can’t wait for you to get on a plane back to Pakistan …’

Mike looked shocked as I turned and walked out of the room. I had never challenged him on his moods before, but I had had enough. It was the only time, apart from when my parents died, that I had ever needed his support.

Mike slept in the spare room and when I woke he had already left to catch his flight. I had a sick hole in my stomach that he had left on a bad note, that we had not even said goodbye. But I was relieved he had gone.

I stop now by the green oak to stretch my legs. We have not spoken since he got back to Karachi. He sent me a short message to tell me that he was off to Abu Dhabi for an exhibition for airline software and I politely acknowledged his email.

Luckily, I am so busy that I don’t have much time to think about Mike. Work life is improving. I have persuaded my panicky French author that her book is wonderful and a joy to translate. Kate and Hugh have convinced me that I have an excellent record and one hiccup isn’t going to send the whole publishing world scurrying for translators elsewhere. Best of all, Dominique is in London delivering her wedding dress, and she is going to spend the night with me. We will have the house all to ourselves. It does not often happen and I can’t wait.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

London, 2010

I stare down at a photo of Dominique’s completed wedding dress. It is stunning. Simple. No froth or flounce. Just a plain cream dress with petal-shaped sleeves and side panels containing hundreds of tiny shells sewn into the material.

‘I can’t quite believe I have done the final fitting and delivered it,’ Dominique says. ‘It’s been such a mammoth task.’

‘It must have been,’ I say, feeling emotional at my sister’s talent. ‘It’s breathtaking.’ I look down at the pretty smiling girl wearing Dominique’s creation. ‘She looks sublime in it. She must have been thrilled to bits.’

Dominique smiles. ‘Ellie was speechless. Her mother, Theresa, was not. She wanted her daughter floating down the aisle in yards of froth and tulle à la Princess Di. Then, one day, when I was doing a fitting, the poor girl burst into tears and told me all she wanted was a small wedding, in a simple dress, with close friends.

‘I promised her I’d make her a dress she loved, but one that was exotic enough to please her mother. It was all clandestine. Ellie came to Paris for secret fittings. I needed to cut the dress precisely so that it hung and moved with her. The panel of shells was a sudden inspiration …’

‘They must have taken weeks.’

‘They were a nightmare. There were six of us doing shifts in the end, wearing special white gloves and losing the will to live.’

‘What if the mother had ranted and raved and refused to pay for a dress she didn’t ask for?’

Dominique laughs. ‘I had Plan B, a frothy, emergency creation that I knew I could sell elsewhere, but when Ellie put the dress on Theresa just melted …’

I hug my sister. ‘I am so proud of you, Dom. You should be a wealthy woman with your talent.’

‘I do okay, Gabby. Compared to how life used to be I feel wealthy. I’m content as I am. I have loyal women working for me, I don’t want to expand and Theresa was so delighted she gave me a generous bonus on top of my fee in the end.’

‘Fantastic! So she should …! I’ve got a bottle of champagne somewhere …’

Dominique smiles at me, her old lovely smile. ‘No need to go overboard, darling.’

‘This is a celebration. How often do I get to see my sister like this? You hardly ever stay with me and it’s wonderful …’

Dominique stretches and sighs. ‘It’s perfect, darling, just what I need. Now, come on, your news. You said you had an awful February?’

I give her the story of author meltdown, Icelandic divorce and Emily’s bereavement.

‘Oh dear!’ she says. ‘Did you say Mike was back in February too?’

‘Yes, but it was impossible to take any time off. I had no Emily and I was bang in the middle of damage limitation. I’ve never had to let any publisher or agent down before and it’s especially mortifying when some of them are your friends …’

‘Poor you.’ Then she adds carefully, ‘Did Mike understand?’

‘No,’ I say before I can stop myself. I am still raw but I rein myself in. I can’t give Dominique an opening; it would make me feel guilty and disloyal. I pop the cork and fill our glasses. ‘To you, Dom!’

‘To a better month for you, Gabby! I’m sorry it’s been tough.’

The evening sun is sliding across the patio. I fill two bowls with crisps and nuts and we pull sweaters on and go and sit on the garden bench so Dominique can smoke. The magnolia tree is out and the faint musty scent of the waxy blooms wafts over.

I smile. In Cornwall the …

‘I miss the sea,’ Dominique says as if she can read my mind. ‘That blur of blue everywhere you turn …’

‘The hawthorn and gorse will be coming out now …’

Great frothy white bushes and low-lying yellow gorse shimmering over the cliffs and smelling of …

‘… marzipan filling the air and giving us constant hay fever …’ Dominique says and we both laugh.

‘When I’m homesick I walk the coastal path. I can remember every stile, kissing gate and muddy path from our house to Priest’s Cove …’ I tell her.

‘Forbidden Beach. That’s where I go.’

‘I wonder if the secret path down through the hawthorn tunnel is still there?’

‘Do you remember the tiny shells brought in by storms we sometimes found in the rock pools?’

‘Is that what gave you the idea for the wedding dress?’

‘Perhaps. Subconsciously. When I need inspiration I go back to the sea in my head. It gives me the illusion of space and freedom. At night a city is never still. Nothing stops. Do you remember that particular silence? Sitting in a field in an absence of anything but birdsong and the swoosh of the sea?’

‘I remember,’ I say and hear the sadness in my voice. ‘How small silence made you feel. I remember that beautiful fox as big as a Labrador and the buzzards weaving and diving over the cliffs …’

I remember the seals off the rocks and the spine-tingling howl a mother seal sometimes makes when they lose their young. I don’t say this, I can’t say this, for the howl is banging around inside me for the things Dominique and I seem never to be able to talk about. Even though Maman and Papa are dead we never address the elephant in the room: the catastrophic end of our idyllic childhood together.

The sun slides behind buildings leaving charcoal and pink clouds. We are in shadow. We shiver, pick up the glasses and bowls and go inside.

‘Mushroom omelette?’

‘Lovely.’

As Dominique prepares the salad for me I glance at her face. Her dark hair is pulled back in a ponytail revealing an intent expression I know well. She wants to tell me something. It is a long time since we have been together like this, without Mike, without our children.

I slide two fluffy omelettes onto plates and Dominique pours more champagne.

‘Let’s finish the bottle? It is Sunday tomorrow.’

‘Dominique?’ I ask, suddenly. ‘You wanted to go to Cornwall last year. Shall we plan a trip back together? Maybe see what the new owner has done to our house?’

‘No, Gabby.’ Dominique shakes her head. ‘The moment has gone, darling. I’m planning a trip to New York to see the girls in June.’

‘Oh. That’s wonderful,’ I say, deflated. ‘Are they both okay?’

Aimee, Dominique’s eldest, is a paediatrician and expecting her first child with her American husband. Cecile is living with a musician in Manhattan and doing a PhD in something obscure.

Their Turkish father walked out on Dominique when she produced a second girl. Despite the rackety, uncertain lifestyle Dominique used to live, the three of them are very close.

‘Are you staying with Aimee?’ I ask.

‘I’m staying with Cecile for the first week. She’s taking me on a surprise holiday. Then I am going to Aimee. I’d like to be there when she gives birth, but we’ll see. I don’t want to outstay my welcome.’

I smile. ‘I can’t believe you’re going to be a granny! Seeing the girls is just what you need after the Marathon Dress.’

Dominique puts her fork down and stares at me. ‘Actually, Gabby, I’m … I’m …’

I catch a sudden bleakness in her eyes. ‘Dom? What is it? Tell me. I know something’s worrying you …’

She hesitates. I hold my breath. Tell me. But my sister closes her eyes, sighs and changes her mind.

‘Pff! I’m getting maudlin. It’s the champagne …’ She smiles at me. ‘At least, I can promise the girls I will be a better grandmother than I was a mother. I have so many regrets for what I put them through.’

‘Look how they have both turned out. You can’t have got it all wrong. You know they love you to bits.’

‘They seem to, don’t they?’ She holds her glass up and meets my eyes. ‘Don’t let’s delve into my past and spoil our evening together. It’s been lovely, Gabby.’

The moment has passed, as it always does. ‘It has been lovely.’ We clink glasses. ‘We must try to do this more often …’

Dominique laughs and glances over my shoulder. ‘Oh! I just saw a fat little piggy fly by …’

In the morning Dominique and I are both hungover. I drive her to Gatwick to catch her plane back to Paris. As we say goodbye I realize how much weight she has lost. She was wearing a loose dress last night so it was hard to see. She looks smaller and frailer this morning, and I feel a stab of fear.

‘You’re losing weight, Dominique. Are you ill? Is that what you were trying to tell me?’

‘Pff!’ She raises her eyebrows in amusement. ‘I’m not ill. You’ve just got used to me being fat …’

‘I don’t like you being this thin …’

‘I will be fat again after I have been to America …’ She touches my cheek. ‘Don’t worry, darling, I’m afraid I’ve got to the age when a hangover is not a good look …’

I hug her. ‘Have a wonderful holiday with the girls …’

Dominique holds me away from her. ‘Gabby, you have too much work and not enough play in your life at the moment. Grab some excitement for yourself while you’re young enough to enjoy it. Your husband certainly seems to …’

And with that cryptic remark she is gone, threading through the crowds.

As I drive past a sign for Paddington Station I experience the old, nostalgic pull for Cornwall. I have an irrational urge to leave everything behind and jump on the Cornish Riviera to Penzance. Except, of course, there will be no one waiting for me at the other end.

It lies, the landscape of my childhood, rooted behind my eyelids. Iridescent blue skies; foaming peacock seas against floating hills of white hawthorn; hedgerows crammed with tiny wild flowers. Silver-winged terns rising from cabbage fields with the precision of a Red Arrows acrobatic team. Vicious winds hitting the house head on, creeping through every crack. All embedded into my being; an internal map of home, waiting for me to revisit, not empty rooms, but happy ghosts before the fall.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

London, 2010

I wake in the night with a start. Someone is in the house. I lie motionless with my heart hammering. My mobile is in the kitchen.

I can hear someone moving about downstairs. For a second I wonder if I am in the middle of a nightmare. But the light on the landing shines in an arc through the doorway. I am awake and this is real.

Someone once told me that if you ever hear someone in your house you should stay in bed and pretend you are asleep. You’ll lose possessions but you won’t be raped. I need to be upright. I leap out of bed in one movement, open the wardrobe and take out Mike’s old cricket bat.

I stop and listen. Silence. I go to the door and look out onto the landing. I can hear someone in the kitchen. I grip the bat, and, to give myself courage, I start to yell as I run downstairs, ‘Get out! Get out of my house!’

I reach the bottom of the stairs and raise the bat. The kitchen light snaps on and Mike calls out, ‘It’s me, Gabby! It’s okay! It’s me!’

His startled face appears in the doorway and he looks even more unnerved as he sees me wielding his cricket bat. Then he begins to laugh.

I am furious. ‘What the hell are you doing creeping about in the dark? I was scared to death. Why didn’t you call out? Why didn’t you let me know you were coming? You stupid, stupid, irresponsible … idiot. You should have let me know … you …’

I throw the bat on the kitchen floor and burst into tears of rage and relief.

Mike looks stricken and rushes towards me and puts his arms around me. ‘Gabby, sorry, sorry. I didn’t mean to frighten you. I sent you a text to say I would be arriving in the middle of the night and I’d try not to wake you. I should have put the lights on and called out. Come on … it’s all right … I just gave you a terrible fright …’

I can’t stop shaking and Mike runs upstairs, gets my dressing gown and folds me into it, then sits me down at the kitchen table.

‘I’m going to make you a hot chocolate.’ He opens the fridge door and takes out the milk. Finds a pan. Bewildered, I wrap my arms around myself.

‘What on earth are you doing home?’

Mike turns from the stove. ‘I was in Dubai for a meeting. At the airport I saw there was a flight straight to Heathrow. I decided to jump on it and come home for forty-eight hours instead of catching the flight back to Karachi …’

He measures the milk into the pan and gets the hot chocolate out of the cupboard. His movements are slow and deliberate. There is tenseness in his shoulders. He is conscious of me watching him as the milk heats.

‘Why?’ I ask.

Mike pours the milk into the two mugs, stirs the hot chocolate round and round and brings it to the table. ‘This will warm you up.’

He sits opposite me. ‘You know why. It’s the first time in our whole married life that you haven’t emailed or phoned me when I’ve flown away. You always want to know that I’ve arrived safely. Not this time.’

I place my hands round my mug.

‘I’m home, to say I’m sorry for being crass and selfish and for taking you for granted … as well as being a pompous arse …’

I smile despite myself.

‘I’ve been wretched, Gabby. I don’t know what got into me. I know I crossed a boundary. You’ve never given me the silent treatment before.’

‘I’ve never needed you more than I did the week you were home but you could not have been less interested. That hurt, Mike.’

He grimaces. ‘I had this plan, a desperate need, to take you to a lovely hotel and spend a couple of days walking in the country with you. Karachi can be claustrophobic. I behaved like a disappointed, spoilt brat when I realized it wasn’t going to happen …’

‘Because it’s always about you, Mike. You’re so used to me dropping everything to fit in with you.’

‘It’s true,’ Mike says. ‘I’ve realized that.’

‘Why didn’t you try to explain how you felt instead of getting angry?’

‘I wasn’t in an explaining mood, was I?’

‘No, you weren’t.’

‘I’ve flown a long way to apologize, Gabby.’

‘Yes. That does amaze me. The trouble is you didn’t just hurt me, Mike, you made me see how little importance you put on my life and work. My business is something I’ve built up and treasured while you spent years away. I’ve always thought you were proud of what I did, but last week I realized that it was an illusion. You see my work as a convenient hobby to keep me busy while you’re pursuing your career and something to be dropped when you come home. You were casually dismissing my life’s work by not caring if it failed …’

Mike stares at me. ‘Can you really believe I don’t value your life and all you’ve achieved? How can you think that? Of course I’m proud of you …’ He turns away. ‘Would I fly back to apologize to you if I did not value you? I know I can be difficult and I don’t often say it, but I do love you and the boys …’ He hesitates. ‘Gabby, you said the other week that you didn’t like me very much. That shook me. I don’t like the person I’m in danger of becoming. We need to find a way to spend more time together.’

He smiles at me. ‘I’ve got a little proposition to make … but it’s late and we’re both exhausted. Let’s finish this conversation in the morning.’

‘Well, I’m not going to sleep now, am I?’ I say. But, somehow I do.

In the morning Mike makes coffee and toast and brings it up to bed on the big wooden tray. Unnerved, I sit up against the pillows. ‘Proposition?’

‘I realize the timing is far from brilliant, especially with the problems you’ve been having at work. It might also seem selfish and self-serving, so, all I’m asking is that you think about it when I go back to Karachi tomorrow …’

‘For goodness’ sake, Mike, tell me.’

‘Charlie has offered me a newly renovated apartment in the Shalimar. How about coming out and living with me in Karachi? There’s good Internet access. You could work from an apartment in Pakistan, couldn’t you, like you do from home? There are regular flights between Karachi and London. You could fly home for meetings or to see the boys anytime you wanted. I don’t want to be on my own in Karachi any more, Gabby.’

I stare at him, startled. Mike takes a swig of coffee. His long hands with their scattering of dark hairs move nervously. I have never seen him strung out like this.

‘Is it such a preposterous and unrealistic idea, Gabby? Please say something.’

I am thinking. A deep excitement is stirring inside me, but so is a vague sense of unease. This is so sudden a change. Mike is Mike. Instinct tells me something else might be powering all this emotion.

‘What’s brought all this on, Mike? Why now?’

‘Life,’ he says, meeting my eyes. ‘Middle-age; the sudden consciousness of time passing; a difficult job in a country where I have to watch everything I say …’ He smiles. ‘And I can’t run off my frustrations in a park. I don’t want the sort of rift we had to become a gulf because we’re living apart. I’ve just been offered a lovely apartment and I’d like to share it with you …’

A blackbird is singing out in the garden, a beautiful sound that gives Mike’s honesty a touching resonance. These words will not have come easily and I recognize not just the love behind them, but the vulnerability, in both of us.

Until Mike spoke I had not realized how tired I am of the predictability of the life I have. The thought of going on and on in exactly the same way until I retire makes me limp with ennui. I do not know why this has slyly crept up on me, but it has.

Mike has never been so open with me. He has never asked me to share his life. Never faltered in self-confidence or wearied of living and working on his own.

‘Have you thought this through, Mike? You’ve always preferred not to have me with you when you are working so you can concentrate on the job.’

‘I’m always going to put in the hours, Gabby. I’m always going to get tired and crabby. The point is, you would not be on holiday, you would have your own work, your own routine …’ He smiles. ‘I saw how you were at New Year with Birjees and Shahid. You are eminently capable of making friends and having a little life of your own in Pakistan …’