Sara MacDonald - In a Kingdom by the Sea

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.

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.