Chris Cleave - Little Bee

So we went into the next room and we switched on the television. We looked at the pictures without the sound. It was the BBC morning news, and they were showing pictures of the prime minister making a speech. Charlie put his head on one side to watch. The ears of his Batman hood flopped over.

He said, “That is the Joker, isn’t it?”

“No Charlie. That is the prime minister.”

“Is he a goody or a baddy?”

I thought to myself.

“Half the people think he is a goody and the other half think he is a baddy.”

Charlie giggled. “That’s silly,” he said.

“That is democracy,” I said. “If you did not have it, you would want it.”

We sat and watched the prime minister’s lips moving.

“What’s he saying?” said Charlie.

“He is saying that he will make ice-cream snow.”

Charlie spun round to look at me. “WHEN?” he said.

“About three o’clock in the afternoon, if the weather is cool enough. He is also saying that young people who are running away from trouble in other countries will be allowed to stay in this country so long as they work hard and do not make any fuss.”

Charlie nodded. “I think the prime minisser is a goody.”

“Because he will be kind to refugees?”

Charlie shook his head. “Because of the ice-cream snow,” he said.

There was a laugh from the door. I turned around and Lawrence was there. He was wearing a bathrobe, and he stood there in his bare feet. I do not know how long he had been listening to us.

“Well,” he said, “we know how to buy that boy’s vote.”

I looked at the floor. I was embarrassed that Lawrence had been standing there.

“Oh don’t be shy,” he said. “You’re great with Charlie. Come and have some breakfast.”

“Okay,” I said. “Batman, do you want some breakfast?”

Charlie stared at Lawrence and then he shook his head, so I switched through the TV channels until we found the one that Charlie liked, and then I went into the kitchen.

“Sarah’s sleeping,” said Lawrence. “I suppose she needs the rest. Tea or coffee?”

“Tea, thank you.”

Lawrence boiled the kettle and he made tea for both of us. He put my tea down on the table in front of me, carefully, and he turned the handle of the mug toward my hand. He sat down on the other side of the table, and smiled. The sun was lighting up the kitchen. It was thick yellow-a warm light, but not a show-off light. It did not want the glory for the illumination of the room. It made each object look as if it was glowing with a light from deep inside itself. Lawrence, the table with its clean blue cotton tablecloth, his orange tea mug and my yellow one-all of it glowing from within. The light made me feel very cheerful. I thought to myself, that is a good trick.

But Lawrence was serious. “Look,” he said, “I think you and I need to make a plan for your welfare. I’m going to be very clear about this. I think you should go to the local police and report yourself. I don’t think it’s right for you to expose Sarah to the stress of harboring you.”

I smiled. I thought about Sarah harboring me, as if I was a boat.

Lawrence said, “This isn’t funny.”

“But no one is looking for me. Why should I go to the police?”

“I don’t think it’s right, your being here. I don’t think it’s good for Sarah at the moment.”

I blew on my tea. The steam from it rose up into the still air of the kitchen, and it glowed. “Do you think you are good for Sarah at the moment, Lawrence?”

“Yes. Yes I do.”

“She is a good person. She saved my life.”

Lawrence smiled. “I know Sarah very well,” he said. “She told me the whole story.”

“So you must believe I am only staying here to help her.”

“I’m not convinced you’re the kind of help she needs.”

“I am the kind of help that will look after her child like he was my own brother. I am the kind of help that will clean her house and wash her clothes and sing to her when she is sad. What kind of help are you, Lawrence? Maybe you are the kind of help that only arrives when it wants sexual intercourse.”

Lawrence smiled again. “I’m not going to take offense at that,” he said. “You’re one of those women who has a funny idea about men.”

“I am one of those women who has seen men do things that are not funny.”

“Oh please. This is Europe. We’re a little more house-trained over here.”

“Different from us, you think?”

“If you must put it that way.”

I nodded.

“A wolf must be a wolf and a dog must be a dog.”

“Is that what they say in your country?”

I smiled.

Lawrence frowned. “I don’t get you,” he said. “If you understood how serious your situation is, I don’t think you’d smile.”

I shrugged.

“If I could not smile, I think my situation would be even more serious.”

We drank tea and he watched me and I watched him. He had green eyes, green as the eyes of the girl in the yellow sari on the day they let us out of the detention center. He watched me without blinking.

“What will you do?” I said. “What will you do if I do not go to the police?”

“Will I turn you in myself, you mean?”

I nodded. Lawrence tapped his fingers on the sides of his tea mug.

“I’ll do what’s best for Sarah,” he said.

The fear raced right through me, right into my belly. I watched Lawrence’s fingers tapping. His skin was white as a seabird’s egg, and fragile like it too. He held his hands around his mug of tea. He had long, smooth fingers and they were curled around the orange china mug as if it was a baby animal that might do something foolish if it was allowed to escape.

“You are frightening me, Lawrence.”

“I’m reacting to the situation, that’s all. That’s what Andrew didn’t do. He was like a stuck record. He stuck to his principles and he let this thing with you overwhelm him and Sarah. That’s why he lost her.”

I shook my head. “Don’t you have principles too?”

Lawrence sat forward in his chair.

“My principle is that I love Sarah. You can’t imagine what she means to me. Apart from her, my life is utterly mundane. I’ll do anything to keep Sarah. Anything, do you understand?”

“You are worried I will take Sarah away from you. That is why you do not want me here. It is nothing to do with what is good for her.”

“I’m worried Sarah’s going to do something silly to try to help you. Change her focus, change her life more than she needs to right at this moment.”

“And you are worried she will forget all about you in her new life.”

“Yes, all right, yes. But you can’t imagine what would happen to me if I lost Sarah. I’d fall apart. I’d hit the bottle. Bam. It’d be the end of me. That terrifies me, even if you think it sounds pathetic.”

I took a sip of tea. I tasted it very carefully. I shook my head. “It is not pathetic. In my world death will come chasing. In your world it will start whispering in your ear to destroy yourself. I know this because it started whispering to me when I was in the detention center. Death is death, all of us are scared of it.”

Lawrence turned his tea mug around and around in his hands.

“Is it really death that you’re running from? I mean, honestly? A lot of the people who come here, they’re after a comfortable life.”

“If they deport me to Nigeria, I will be arrested. If they find out who I am, and what I have seen, then the politicians will find a way to have me killed. Or if I am lucky, they will put me in prison. A lot of people who have seen what the oil companies do, they go to prison for a long time. Bad things happen in a Nigerian prison. If people ever get out, they do not feel like talking.”