Chris Cleave - Little Bee

“Two years.”

“Oh Bee. I had no idea how hellish they are. I was imagining, I don’t know, a sort of high-security hotel, I suppose. Is it true they keep it deliberately cold in there? Is it true you have to apply in writing if you just need a paracetamol?”

I smiled. “If you are planning to have a headache, you need to apply twenty-four hours in advance.”

Sarah sighed. “So it is true, then. Andrew highlighted this one passage that said, We find the humiliating procedures excessive. We do not see how anyone could abuse an excess of sanitary towels. Did you really have to apply for them too?”

I nodded. “They would only give them to us one at a time. You had to fill in a form.”

Sarah twisted her hands together on the top bar of the iron railings. “The thing is,” she said, “I think I know why Andrew highlighted that passage. I mean, people would skim-read the barred windows and the perimeter fence. But if you really wanted to bring it home, you’d show how a girl has to apply in writing for Kotex Ultra. Right?”

She stopped, and she looked down to where Lawrence and Charlie were laughing and kicking sand at each other. When she spoke again, her voice was quiet. “I think Andrew was planning a book,” she said. “That’s what I told Lawrence.”

I looked up at Sarah.

“That is why he was angry?”

Sarah nodded. “I said I thought maybe I should carry on Andrew’s work. You know, read through his notes. Find out a bit more about the detention centers. Maybe even, I don’t know, write the book myself.”

“You said all that to Lawrence?”

“That’s when he went ballistic.” Sarah sighed. “I think he’s jealous of Andrew.”

We stood and looked out over the river for a long time. A breeze had started to blow. It was not much, but enough to darken the smooth surface of the river. Now, I thought. I gripped my hands onto the railings and tried to make the courage of the city flow into my bones again.

“Sarah,” I said. “I want to tell you my feelings about Lawrence.”

She looked at me sharply.

“I know what you’re going to tell me. You’ll tell me he cares more about himself than he cares about me. You’ll tell me to watch out for him. And I’ll tell you that’s just what men are like, but you’re too young to know it yet, and so you and I will argue too, and then I really will be utterly miserable. So don’t say it, okay?”

I shook my head.

“Please, Sarah.”

“I don’t want to hear it. I’ve chosen Lawrence. I’m thirty-two, Bee. If I want to make a stable life for Charlie, I have to start sticking with my choices. I didn’t stick with Andrew, and now I know I should have. But now there’s Lawrence. And he isn’t perfect, you’re right. But I can’t just keep walking away.” Sarah took a deep and shaking breath. “At some point you just have to have to turn around and face your life head-on.”

She looked at me for a long time, and then she held on to me and we hugged each other tight.

“Oh Bee,” said Sarah.

We stood and held each other like that, and after we had been quiet for a long time Sarah stood up straight and swept back her hair.

“Go down and play with Charlie and Lawrence,” she said. “I have to make a phone call.”

I looked at Sarah and she smiled at me, and I walked back down the steps to the place Lawrence and Charlie were playing. They were picking up the small round stones from the edge of the mud and throwing them into the river. When I came close, Charlie carried on throwing stones and Lawrence turned to me.

“Did you talk her out of it?” he said.

“Out of what?”

“Her book. She had some idea she was going to finish a book Andrew was writing. Didn’t she tell you?”

“Yes. She told me. I did not talk her out of the book but I did not talk her out of you either.”

Lawrence grinned. “Good girl. See? We’re going to get along after all. Is she still upset? Why hasn’t she come down here with you?”

“She is making a phone call.”

“Fair enough.”

We stood there for a moment, looking at each other.

“You still think I’m a bastard, don’t you?”

I shrugged.

“I’m not,” said Lawrence. “I’ll even help you, if you help me.”

“What help do you need from me?”

“You could just go, Little Bee. Couldn’t you? Quietly and without fuss.”

“I already thought about that.”

“So what’s stopping you? Money? I can give you money.”

I looked down at my shoes and then I looked back up. “You will pay me to go away?”

“Don’t make it sound like that. It isn’t easy to get started in this country without money for food and rent. I don’t want to put you on the streets, that’s all.”

He was still holding a stone in his hand and I took it from between his fingers. It was warm and smooth and I turned it around and around in my hands, polishing it with the moisture in my palms.

I said, “What is your wife’s name?”

Lawrence looked at his hands. “Linda.”

“And your children?”

Lawrence did not look in my eyes.

“Sonia,” he said. “And Stephen. And Simon’s the, um, the baby.”

“Hmm.”

I weighed the stone and I turned it around and around between my fingers and then I dropped it on the sand.

“You should go back to them,” I said.

Lawrence looked at me then, and I felt a great sadness because there was nothing in his eyes. I looked away over the water. I looked and I saw the blue reflection of the sky. I stared for a long time now, because I understood that I was looking into the eyes of death again, and death was still not looking away and neither could I.

Then there was the barking of dogs. I jumped, and my eyes followed the sound and I felt relief, because I saw the dogs up on the walkway above us, and they were only fat yellow family dogs, out for a walk with their master. Then I saw Sarah, coming down the steps toward us. Her arms were hanging by her sides, and in one of her hands she held her mobile phone. She walked up to us, took a deep breath, and smiled.

“I called work,” she said. “I’ve got something to tell you both.”

She held out her hands to both of us, but then she hesitated. She looked all around the place where we were standing.

“Um, where’s Charlie?” she said.

She said it very quietly, then she said it again, louder, looking at us this time.

I looked all along the thin strip of sand. Children were still making their sand castles beside the river, although the level of the water was rising and the beach was getting narrower. None of the children was Charlie.

“Charlie?” Sarah shouted. “Charlie? Oh my god. CHARLIE!”

I spun around under the hot sun. We ran up and down. We called his name. We called again and again.

Charlie was gone.

“Oh my god!” said Sarah. “Someone’s taken him! Oh my god! CHARLIE!”

Horror filled me completely, so that I could not even move. While Sarah screamed for her child I widened my eyes into the blackness of the drainage tunnels in the embankment wall, and I stared into them. I looked for a long time. I saw that the night horrors of all our worlds had found one another, so that there was no telling where the one ended and the other began-whether the jungle grew out of the jeep or the jeep grew out of the jungle.

I HELD LITTLE BEE for a long time. Then I asked her: Will you go down and play with Charlie and Lawrence? I have to make a phone call.

After she walked down the stone steps, I held on to the iron railing of the embankment and I held on to my memories of Andrew and I held on to my mobile phone. The phone was shaking in my hand, showing five bars of signal. The reception was so strong in the center of London, one hardly needed the handset at all. The air positively crackled with connectivity, as if one might simply direct a thought at someone and be received loud and clear. My tummy lurched and I decided, Right, I’ll do it now, before I calm down and change my mind. I called the publisher and told him I didn’t want to edit his magazine anymore.