Louisa Young - Tree of Pearls

The plan was, she and Sa’id were going to make up. I left them all in Egypt, and that seemed to be the next step. But by then I was out of the picture. Out out out. No Angeline in that family. I had just exposed them to all the mayhem with which Eddie is so generous, and then jumped ship. Though it’s true Hakim had managed to find Eddie on his own, and make his own mayhem.

But I could call Sarah. I supposed she would be back in Brighton. And I could call Madame Amina, the aunt, Abu Sa’id’s sister-in-law. Abu Sa’id is the father. It’s a village custom – you’re called after your first-born. His actual name is Ismail. He’s not particularly a village man but he prefers simplicity; he stayed in Luxor while the boys went to school in Cairo, spending time with Madame Amina, and becoming cosmopolitan.

If the police have been round they might, of course, be angry with me about it.

‘Left the country,’ Harry was saying, slowly. ‘Where’s he gone?’

Harry knows I was in love with Sa’id. Harry told me I was a life-avoiding coward for leaving him. Harry told me I’d been a life-avoiding coward ever since I came so near alongside death with Janie. Harry thought I should get a grip. Harry was right.

‘Athens, apparently,’ I said.

‘You haven’t heard from him?’ he asked.

‘Not since I left Luxor,’ I said. Not since he wrapped me in his big white scarf at dusk on the dusty landing stage on the west bank of the Nile, and didn’t try to stop me going.

I’d rung when the news came through of the massacre at the Temple of Hatshepsut. Only weeks before we’d looked down on it by moonlight when we snuck out at night on to the flank of the great sphinx-shaped desert mountain behind his village. Sixty-two people killed, practically on his doorstep. Sarah had said he looked like death. (He doesn’t look like death. He looks like life.) But that’s all I knew.

Harry put his hand across and lifted my chin. I’m always amazed by how far he can reach. ‘Eddie won’t come to Britain. He can’t …’

‘He can do any mad thing he likes …’ I said, but Harry cut in.

‘He can’t. Immigration or customs would have him in two seconds. François du Berry is a man with a very circumscribed life. Are you scared?’

‘No. I just want to get on with my life.’

‘What do you want to do about Sa’id?’

‘Just know he’s ok.’ I had brought trouble to their family. Remember when Hakim had first arrived in London, out of the blue, claiming that he was bringing trouble to my family. Little did he know. I was ashamed to ring them. Would they curse me and throw down the telephone?

I left him. Why unleave him now?

‘Would you like me to find out?’ Harry said at last. ‘If you don’t want to be involved … what with everything. I could see what’s happening for you. Even if I’m out of favour. I mean – as far as I knew it wasn’t an active case anyway. But there we go – let me see what I can see. Shall I?’

‘So you spend your days looking for my lover and your nights looking after my child?’ I asked with a smile.

‘Our child,’ he said. ‘And ex-lover.’

Uncomfortable phrases – but absolutely the shape of my world. Absolutely. I laid my head on the table, and after a while the mists of Egypt retreated from my mind. I got out the vodka, and proved my strength against Eddie by turning resolutely to my life and asking Harry if he thought we needed to make any plans or decisions or anything about Lily. And how it was going to be. He said no. ‘Let it roll,’ he said. ‘We’re doing all right, aren’t we? Am I behaving? And we can tell each other anything we don’t like.’

‘Do me a favour,’ I said.

‘What?’

‘Tell us what you do like as well.’

He grinned.

‘No, I’m serious. It’s a root of good childcare. Love and reward their goodness, and pay as little attention as possible to badness. And make sure they know that you love them however bad they might be. You have to tell them. They’re always thinking that everything is their fault, because they think they’re the centre of the world. So you have to reassure them a lot, and …’

He was looking at me.

‘It’s important,’ I said. ‘I’m not going to tell you how to do it, I promise you, but there are a couple of things …’

‘I know,’ he said. ‘I like you telling me. And I’ll tell you if I don’t.’

It made me happy. Thinking about Lily and her family life. Happy, in the heart of what matters.

‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Umm – Lily’s invited me for Christmas.’ He paused. ‘She says you’re going to cook a turkey.’

It’s a logical development. It’s bound to happen. It’s cool.

‘We go to Mum and Dad’s usually,’ I said. ‘Oh. Would you …’

‘I probably should,’ he said. ‘I mean, if you …’

‘Of course,’ I said. ‘Of course.’

‘OK then,’ he said.

‘Right,’ I said.

We smiled at each other. Family Christmas. Crikey.

‘I hate Christmas,’ he said, musingly.

‘I remember,’ I said.

Soon after, he left, and as he left he kissed me unlingeringly on the mouth, which seemed to me to be both firm and ambiguous, an interesting combination. For a moment I wondered what he meant by it, then shook off the thought. It was too brief to touch me but … But nothing.

For the next week or so I behaved completely normally. Lily and I opened the doors of our advent calendar each morning, and at the weekend we went to the market and bought a tiny Christmas tree, which she covered with hairclips and doll’s clothes; while she was at school I copyedited most of an Iranian carpet magazine, which included re-translating someone else’s translation (from Farsi into nonsense) into decent English, hurrying to get it done before the school holidays. I got so involved with to-and-fro clarificatory telephone conversations with the translator that I forgot to screen my calls. And that is how on Friday afternoon I found myself answering the phone to Chrissie Bates.

‘Don’t hang up,’ she said. ‘Please. Please don’t. Please do this for me – oh lord. I’m not calling to ask you for anything. I just want to say something to you. Oh!’ And then she hung up on me.

Well, I didn’t like it one bit. Her previous phone calls had been … unpleasant, to say the least. So had the razorblade in the post, and the screaming heebie-jeebies when she had burst into my bathroom that time. Admittedly even now it was a little hard to work out which of the unsolicited letters and calls and acts of aggression had been from her and which from Eddie, but overall my view of Chrissie was that she was a nasty little thing who had been married to an even nastier one. Either way I didn’t want her around. Plus … there was the minor item that she had at one stage seemed very pissed off that Eddie was trying to give me so much money, and I had rung her and left a message saying she could have the bloody stuff, and stick it up her arse for all I cared, or words to that effect.