One Secret Summer (24 page)

‘Is it far away? Is it further than Margate?’

Both Anna and Niela laughed. They’d been on holiday to Margate at Easter and it was the furthest away from home Boris had
ever been. ‘Much further,’ Niela confirmed.

‘Will you come back?’ Boris asked, sounding momentarily anxious.

‘Of course I’ll come back. It’s only for a month.’

‘You’d better,’ Anna said grimly. ‘Don’t go and fall in love with some goat-herder and trade yourself in for a couple of camels.’

Niela had to laugh. ‘There aren’t any camels in Djibouti,’ she said. ‘And I can’t imagine there’ll be any goatherds in a Foreign
Legion camp, either.’

‘Well, I’m just saying. You’d better come back. Or we’ll come out there and get you. Won’t we, Boris?’

Boris nodded solemnly and placed a possessive hand on Niela’s arm. ‘Me and Batman,’ he said firmly. ‘We’re gonna come and
get you.’

Niela looked at him but couldn’t speak. There were times when she was reminded that although she’d lost almost everything
when she’d made the decision to flee, in the time that she’d been in London, she’d found more than she’d ever dared hope.

JOSH

Djibouti, November 1996

Josh Keeler gave the plank of wood one last thwack with the hammer and jumped down from the scaffolding with ease. He squinted
up at his handiwork. It wasn’t perfect, but it would do. ‘Yeah, it’ll hold,’ he said to the two young men who were standing
beside him, waiting for instructions. ‘For now, at least. Finish up that line, will you? We’ll get on to the roof later.’
They nodded and crouched down, lining up the planks.

He slid the hammer back into his tool belt and crossed the yard, rubbing the sweat and grime from his face. It was five o’clock
and the shadows were already lengthening their way out of shape. In another hour, the sky would throw up a spectacular display
of colour and hue and darkness would quickly descend. He looked back across the line of temporary shelters they’d been constructing
for the past month. With any luck, they’d be finished by the end of the week. Another thirty homes; another couple of hundred
desperate people in temporary shelter. He shook his head in angry disbelief, fishing in his pocket for a cigarette. He cupped
his hand around it and lit up, drawing the smoke down deep into his lungs. A couple of hundred people? Who were they kidding?
If the war didn’t ease up soon, they’d soon be taking in a thousand a day. He’d seen it all before. The trickle that turned
into a flood. They would pack ten, fifteen, twenty people into one of those houses – sod the recommendations from HQ. It was
always the same. Some junior intern in an office in New York typed up official-looking ‘recommendations and guidelines’ and
sent them off from his computer to base stations around the world. Neat, three- or four-page documents
with a variety of headings in a variety of fonts, which found their way to the camps and clearings where he and his men worked.
Words like ‘maximum occupancy’ and ‘minimum living standards’ would jump out at him from the noticeboards.
Refugees should … [wherever possible] … be decently housed
. The people Josh worked with had walked six hundred kilometres to reach a camp with the tattered remains of their families
and their possessions stuffed in plastic bags. What on earth could the words ‘maximum occupancy’ or ‘decently housed’ mean
to them? He was well aware that his disdain for the commands sent down to them from head office was dangerous. He’d wound
up in one fight too many in most of the places where he’d worked. Yemen, Congo, Cote d’Ivoire, the Balkans and now Djibouti.
It always started the same way. A visit from top brass to the delegation. A tour of the camp. A comment, a gesture, a rebuke.
The argument would begin, voices would be raised, things got out of hand … and then the aftermath. It was invariably a matter
of perspective as to whether he’d walked or been fired. He snorted. Even the word ‘delegation’ made it sound far less brutal,
less confrontational. The truth of the matter was that they worked in conditions that few people could tolerate. Forget the
heat, the dust, the snakes, the insects, the diseases … all of the stuff that HQ routinely described as ‘challenging’. That
wasn’t the challenge. Josh worked with people who had, in their own words, gone to hell and back. People who’d lost everything
– homes, loved ones, land, possessions … and then the other stuff, harder to bear. Dignity and hope. How did you work with
them?
That
was the real challenge, not the heat. The people they were sent out to help were not the passive, helplessly grateful refugees
of the TV and newspaper ads. More often than not they were aggressive, erratic, irrational – anything but passive and most
of the time not even remotely grateful. The bureaucrats in Geneva talked of alleviating their pain and sorrow. Josh wondered
if they’d lost their minds. How did you alleviate the pain of someone who’d watched his child die in front of him?
By erecting a tent? And telling him to limit the number of people who slept in it?

‘Josh!’ Someone called out to him. He turned. It was Bo Johanssen. His boss. He stopped and waited as Bo walked up to him
as quickly as the heat would allow. ‘Hey, how’s it going, man?’ Bo had an easy, affable air about him that hid a ferocious
temper and an almost messianic devotion to the task at hand.

Josh shrugged. ‘OK. We’ll have the second row finished by the end of the week.’

‘Good, good,’ Bo said hurriedly with the distracted air of someone who had something else to say. He hesitated. ‘Look, Josh
… I’m not going to beat around the bush. Meissler’s just rung from Geneva. They … well, let’s just say they didn’t appreciate
what went down last week. The guy filed an official complaint. I know, I know … you were provoked.’ He raised his hands in
admission. ‘But Jesus, Josh … he was the head of the fucking delegation! The order’s come through. You’re to take a fortnight’s
leave. Go home. Go to London. Chill out for a couple of weeks and then come back. Oh, by the way, the ICR’s found an interpreter
for you … a Somali woman. She’s very good, apparently. She’ll be here a couple of days after you get back.’

Josh made a small, dismissive movement with his hand and tossed his cigarette to the ground. ‘No way. No fucking way. I’m
not going anywhere. There’s work to be done here.’

‘Josh … be reasonable. You punched the guy in the face – what did you expect? I’m not asking you to go and sit at home for
six months. Hell, I don’t care where you go. But you’ve got to get out of here. You need a break.’

‘I don’t
want
a break. I’m fine. I’ll go when we finish the first phase.’

‘I’m not
asking
you, Josh. This isn’t a request.’

DIANA

London, November 1996

Diana Pryce pulled smartly into the driveway and brought her little sports car to a halt. She glanced at the clock on the
dashboard – it was just after five. Her perfectly shaped eyebrows lifted in mild surprise. She couldn’t remember the last
time she’d been home before six. She picked up the grocery bag from the passenger seat, locked the car and pushed open the
garden gate. Harvey, her husband, wasn’t yet home. Some complication in his last case of the day – his secretary had rung
just before she left the office to tell her he’d be late. She opened the front door, slung her briefcase and jacket on the
table in the hallway and plucked out the letter that was sticking out of her handbag. She walked downstairs to the kitchen.
The housekeeper had gone home already, but a beautifully rich, fragrant fish stew was simmering in the oven and the table
had already been set. Rafe was coming for dinner. There was something he wanted to tell her, he’d said when he phoned her
in chambers. He’d just come back from New York. From the excitement in his voice, Diana guessed there was more to share than
his holiday snaps. A strange tremor ran through her as she put the letter she’d been carrying around all day on the table
and walked across the kitchen to the sink. She filled the kettle, looking out through the enormous sliding doors to the garden
beyond. The lawn, a brilliant green sweep of carefully cut grass, fell away down to the oak trees at the bottom of the garden,
now turning pale gold and red in preparation for winter. She loved the garden. It amused Harvey greatly – she who couldn’t
tell one end of a bulb from the other! Where had it come from, this sudden love of plants?

The cold water suddenly spilled over her hand, bringing her back to her task. She turned off the tap and plugged the kettle
in. Her movements were slow and thoughtful, though her state of
mind was anything but. She eyed the letter on the table as she waited for the kettle to boil. Five minutes later, she sat
down at the table, a cup of tea at her side, and picked it up. She slid a finger underneath the sealed flap and pulled the
wafer-thin pages out. Josh’s handwriting leapt at her.
Sometimes at night you can hear the shells landing across the mountains, so close you think they’re landing here, in the camp.
In the morning, the refugees walk across the desert, some of them carrying their dead. The stench is unbelievable. London
seems very far away.
She put the letter down again and looked out across the garden. Josh was in Djibouti, somewhere close to the Horn of Africa.
She’d had to look it up when he told her where he was going. She’d long since lost track of the places he’d been. Gaza. Goma.
Srebrenica. Sarajevo – a list of the world’s most troubled spots. Wars, famines, conflicts, camps … wherever there was trouble.
Neither she nor Harvey understood it. Josh was a brilliant architect; everyone said so. His tutors, fellow students, strangers
… everyone. He could have worked anywhere, done anything. After graduation he’d turned down every single one of the jobs he’d
been offered at some of London’s top firms and had gone to work for the Red Cross instead. Diana was baffled. After five years’
worth of training he’d gone off to be little more than a volunteer? He didn’t need a degree in architecture for
that
. It wasn’t so much that she thought the work he did was valueless; on the contrary, when he’d signed up to work in Bosnia
that first summer, she’d been proud of him. It was something to drop into a dinner party conversation – yes, their youngest
had gone out to Bosnia for the summer. Quite courageous of him, really.
Of course, he’s always had a social conscience, even as a little boy. Always sticking up for the underdog
. But after Bosnia he didn’t come back. After Bosnia he went to Myanmar, and to some godforsaken camp on the edge of nowhere.
He sent pictures of fluttering sheets of plastic, tin roofs held down by stones and old car tyres.
This
was where he lived? In bed at night she passed the pictures silently to Harvey. He put them down without comment. She put
a hand over her mouth to stop herself from crying out loud.
This
was
what they’d brought him up to do? She had never understood what propelled her youngest child – and, though she would never
dare say it out loud, her brightest – to leave the comforts they’d provided (the beautiful home, the private schools, the
hobbies, sports, holidays at the farmhouse in Mougins and elsewhere, the promise of a glittering career that both hers and
Harvey’s contacts would surely have secured even if his talents alone couldn’t) and head out to places that weren’t to be
found on any map save those that chronicled tragedy. ‘You’re an architect, not a fucking saint!’ she’d hurled at him in the
middle of an argument on one of the rare occasions he’d come home. Harvey had stepped in that time and pulled her away.

‘You’re his mother,’ he told her, gripping her upper arm. ‘You can’t allow yourself to talk to him like that.’ He was right.
She let him lead her away, in tears. Josh frightened her, that was the truth. There was something in him that she feared,
because she feared it also in herself.

The front door slammed shut suddenly, bringing her back to the present. Harvey was home. She folded the letter quickly and
stowed it away in her bag. She would show it to him later. For now, Rafe was coming over and it wouldn’t do to spoil Harvey’s
pleasure in that. He was immensely proud of Rafe, as was she … but there were times when she wondered about the eldest two.
Rafe, desperate to prove himself every bit as brilliant a surgeon as his father, and Aaron, the solicitor-turning-barrister,
struggling to fill her shoes. Only last week she’d had to put in a call to Gerald Starkey, one of the senior partners at Bernard,
Bennison & Partners and an old university friend of hers … Aaron wanted to do his second six with them … wasn’t there something
Gerald could do? Of course there was. ‘Leave it to me, Diana. Only too happy to help.’ Easy as that. Aaron would start with
them after Christmas. She’d never had to so much as lift a finger for Josh, ever. As much as she worried about the choices
he’d made, there was respect for them too. Josh would never have accepted help – from her, from Harvey, from anyone. His fierce
determination to do things
his
way and no one
else’s caused them pain … but there was no denying, it also made her proud.

‘Darling … you’re home already?’ Harvey appeared in the doorway. She looked up, a smile on her face.

‘I know … couldn’t believe it myself.’ She got up and walked towards him, turning her face up towards him to be kissed. She
leaned into his reassuringly solid frame, allowing herself the momentary pleasure of being held. His arms went around her;
the faint chemical smell of the operating theatre still clung to his clothes, a scent that was at once foreign and yet familiar
to her.

‘When’s Rafe coming?’ he asked against her hair.

‘At eight. Everything’s ready.’

‘Any idea what he wants to talk to us about?’

Diana sighed. ‘No, he didn’t say. But I think I can guess.’

Harvey gave a chuckle. She felt the vibrations deep in his chest. ‘Ah. A woman. Someone he’s met recently.’

‘Mmm. In New York, I think.’

‘Well … at least he tells us, I suppose. We always know what’s going on with those two.’