Authors: Kate Pullinger
“
Inshallah
,” Yacub said.
Farhan laughed.
The sun was high now. Most of the other workers had given up waiting for the bus and gone back indoors.
That was December. By April 2010, it had been four months since they were last paid. And in the camp, the water and electricity had been turned off in February.
7
Michael was in New York for meetings at the headquarters of his firm. Because of the downturn, these business trips had become rare over the past two years, so Michael was pleased to be in the city. He liked New York, and he missed coming over regularly. He’d flown in on Wednesday, been in meetings Thursday and Friday, at company dinners every night, so it wasn’t until he turned on the television in his hotel room on Saturday morning—oh, the pleasure of watching CNN in a hotel bedroom—that he saw the pictures of the ash cloud and watched the stories about people stranded around the world, unable to get home. It took him a while to realize that he was one of those people.
He had planned a day of shopping and wandering around the city before flying home to London that evening. He called the office assistant and asked her what she could do about rebooking his flight. “The ash will clear,” he said, “the planes will be flying again by tonight.” The girl laughed, and he was taken aback. Even so, he decided to proceed with his morning as though everything was normal. He always bought jeans when he was in New York, even though he never wore them at home, but his idea of himself as a jeans-wearer persisted. He had a shelf in his closet where he kept them neatly folded, in chronological
order, from oldest to newest, and, coincidentally, from smallest to largest.
Jack had discovered the jeans recently. “Jesus, Dad,” he said, “what’s that about?”
Michael looked at the pile and felt a bit ridiculous. “That’s your inheritance, Son. Right there. Worth a fortune on eBay. Vintage.”
“Fuck,” he said now, not quite under his breath, when he realized his waist had expanded again. He was standing in the change room in his boxers and socks, shivering slightly. He asked the shop assistant to fetch him a larger size. Then his phone rang.
“There are no flights,” said the girl. “I managed to get through—the airspace shutdown shows no signs of lifting. They do not advise going to the airport.”
“Oh,” said Michael.
“I also phoned your hotel. I’m afraid you’ll have to check out, Mr. Smith. They’re fully booked.”
“Damn,” said Michael.
“I’ve called a few other hotels in the city, but they’re all full too. I’ll keep trying, but Mr. Evans has said that if we have no luck, I’m to send a car to take you to his place in Westchester this afternoon.”
Michael looked at the floor of the change room. Someone knocked and handed him a larger pair of jeans. The idea of spending even a single evening in the company of his American counterpart, Jeff Evans, in his Westchester home made Michael want to die. Spending social time with other actuaries was not his idea of fun.
“That’s kind of Jeff,” Michael said. “Please thank him for me.” Michael paused. He stared at the wall of the change room. Where to go? What to do? Canada, he thought. Marina. “I’ll go to Toronto. I’ve got a friend there.”
“Oh yeah,” said the young woman—Michael had no idea of her name—“I always forget you’re Canadian.”
He’d wait it out in Toronto. He’d go stay with Marina. His oldest friend, Marina. “Yes,” he said. “I’ll be fine. I’ll take the train. Or a bus. Or I’ll drive.” The idea of flying anywhere was no longer appealing.
“Would you like me to look into that for you?”
“Okay,” said Michael. “Thanks.” He put his BlackBerry into the pocket of his jacket and put on the enormous jeans. They fit perfectly. As he stood in line to pay, a message came through on his phone with a new itinerary: the assistant had booked a train to Buffalo that afternoon, a hotel in Buffalo that night, and the train through to Toronto the following morning.
Michael was going home to Canada. He’d lived abroad for so long that the word alone—“Canada”—was enough to tip him into a warm pool of nostalgia. Canada. And Marina.
8
Emily’s job as a television researcher kept her busy. The reality show market was as rapacious as always, and she had a knack for finding and persuading people to be filmed. She worked freelance, so she had to hustle for contracts, but she did all right. She was working on a new programme about the fattest people in Britain; it had renewed her enthusiasm for cycling. Her dad had alternated between being thrilled by her success in what he saw as the high-pressure cutthroat world of factual television, and working hard to stifle his disapproval of the content she worked on. “Freak show,” was his line. Part of her thought he was right, but it was a job, and she was good at it. She went back to work the day after her dad’s funeral. Several of her colleagues were stranded abroad, so her boss needed her to come in.
Emily knew her father wasn’t her birth father, she’d always known she was adopted. Her adoptive mother died when she was two years old, and she and her dad had been on their own since then. She’d wondered about her birth parents and from time to time had considered doing something to find them, but she’d always been secretly appalled by other people’s birth-parent-quest tales, proud of her and her adoptive father’s self-sufficiency. One of her
first-ever jobs was on a show about birth siblings who’d grown up apart and who’d fallen in love with each other without knowing they were related—huge ratings hit. Her father had been dismayed by the programme, but it enabled her to raise the subject of whether she should look for her own birth parent.
“Well,” he’d said, “you’d have to go to social services and start the paperwork, I guess.”
“There will be records, won’t there?”
“Yes,” he said. “You’re allowed to request them—I believe the authorities will help you get in touch, if that’s what you want.” He cleared his throat and shifted in his seat. “You can probably do all that online these days.”
“You don’t want me to do this?” she asked.
He grimaced.
“Daddy,” she said—she hadn’t called him Daddy for a long time. She put her arms around him. He breathed into her hair.
That night, when she got home, she’d put “how to find your birth parents” into the search engine and clicked around the websites that came up. There were official forms to fill in. She opened one and began to input her details; she’d have to start from scratch—her father probably had her original birth certificate, but she didn’t want to ask him for it. She got halfway through the form and stopped. Starting the process would lead somewhere. There would be an outcome. There would be consequences. Her birth parents, whoever they were, wherever they were, would be told she was looking for them. They would
respond—either by denying her request or by agreeing to it. She had lived her twenty-four years of life without them. If she clicked on Send, that would change.
She closed the browser.
When she told her almost-boyfriend, Harvinder, that her father had died, he burst into tears over the phone. He cycled straight over to see her, though she had asked him not to, and when she opened the door, he burst into tears once again. She couldn’t hide her annoyance; she stuck both her hands into the pouch of her hoodie and shuffled into the kitchen, leaving him to follow. She stood by the counter, clutching her cup of tea.
“He was so sweet, your dad,” Harv said.
“Sweet” made him sound like an old man. He was not an old man. “He thought you were a plonker,” Emily said. “He thought I was too good for you. He used to call you a Hoxton Hipster Manqué.”
Harv laughed. “That’s so sweet, though, can’t you see? All good dads think that about their daughters’ boyfriends.”
“You’re not really my boyfriend, Harv, are you.” When Emily thought back to this conversation later, she blamed her cold, hard frankness on her father’s death. “You like having a ‘girlfriend,’ ” she said, “but really, you’re gay.”
Harv looked at her, shook his head and gave a small shrug, as though he’d been accused of this many times. “You’re not yourself,” he said. “You can say whatever you
want to me. I’m here for you.” He teared up once again. “You’re an orphan now, Em.”
She put her tea down on the counter. An orphan. This hadn’t occurred to her. An only child, both parents gone. Her throat tightened. She didn’t want to cry in front of Harv. What was the use of an almost-boyfriend if you couldn’t cry on his shoulder? “Thanks for coming round, Harv. That’ll be all, though,” she said.
“I’m going to go get us something to eat. You shouldn’t be on your own. I’ll be back in half an hour.”
“No,” she said. “Time to go. Don’t come back.”
He looked at her sharply, hearing the tone in her voice. “Tomorrow, then?”
She shook her head. “No. We’re done here.” She left the kitchen and opened the front door of the flat.
He followed her. “You’re not yourself. I’ll call you.”
She shook her head, no, and didn’t speak.
9
That night, Harriet got back from work late once again. At lunch she had sat outside with her sandwich, looking up into the blue sky. Cloudless days were unusual in London and, while the ash cloud covered Europe, these lovely clear days were spooky. She’d read the reports and looked at the satellite photos, and knew that, bizarrely, the ash cloud wasn’t visible in London, but even so, if she stared hard enough, would she be able to see the air up high limned with tiny shards of ice? Was the ash cloud actually visible from anywhere other than outer space? As she walked down the street from the train station, the night sky was silent; who would have predicted that the most compelling result of the end of aviation would be the silence? It was both alarming and soothing. Harriet couldn’t decide whether it was idyllic or apocalyptic. This is what it must have felt like in the past, before the twentieth century really got going, when the sky was full of weather and stars, weather and stars only.
When she opened the front door, the house was silent too. Jack’s bedroom door was firmly shut, no music emanating; he must be asleep already. Michael was stuck in New York. Harriet still hadn’t managed to speak to him, but she wasn’t worried. She knew that his company would
take care of him and he’d get home, eventually. The house was hers and hers alone, and while tonight she thought this was a blissful novelty, it was also a glimpse of what it might be like in a few years’ time after Jack left home. She didn’t like the idea of an empty house. Maybe she and Michael should have had more children. The idea that we build new families through our networks of friends hadn’t really worked out; we are on our own, mostly. And she hadn’t seen her own parents in years.
She made herself a cup of herbal tea and drank it in the bath with the radio on, volume on low. Then she got into bed and turned on her tablet.
It had first occurred to Harriet to look for Emily online a few years ago. She had been in the kitchen, trying to get Jack off the games console so they could eat, when it came to her—boom: Emily was probably on Facebook.
Wherever she was, she must be on Facebook—unless she’d been kidnapped and taken to North Korea. Everyone was on Facebook, or at least everyone Emily’s age. Harriet could follow her. Harriet could be her “friend.”
She abandoned trying to get Jack to come to the dinner table. She turned on her computer, opened up her account and put in Emily’s name. A whole host of people with the same name appeared on her screen. She’d have to work through them and figure out which was the right girl. She’d have to open a new account, one that made her look young and groovy, someone Emily could friend without thinking about it much: “Crazeeharree.” By the next day Harriet had not only found Emily but the friend
request had been successful. As simple as that. We’re “friends,” Harriet thought. Her hands were shaking. Jack had his headphones on but, even so, Harriet turned up the volume on the radio. She opened the door to the little room at the back of the kitchen, where they stored all their useless and unwanted stuff, went inside, closed the door and screamed. Then she went back into the kitchen, turned the radio down and resumed cooking.
Later that night, once she was sure Jack was asleep, Harriet returned to her computer. She took her time navigating to Emily’s page, like she was opening a door to spy on someone in the next room, trying to prevent the hinges from creaking. She clicked on the link and stopped, afraid to click any further, as though Emily would be able to tell that she was there. She made sure her chat facility was turned off and proceeded to move around Emily’s pages stealthily. Friends. Info. Her favourite things. It was all there.
It was a shock to see her. Harriet had not seen her—not a single photograph, and of course not in the flesh either—since all those years ago. Here she was, a grown woman, with long, silky dark brown hair and fashionable spectacles and a fondness for scoop-neck T-shirts, chunky necklaces and bracelets. Here she was, in a parade of photographs, with her friends, two girls, three girls, four girls and five boys, crammed together, smiling wildly, holding bottles of beer, in hats, in bikini tops, in bars, in fancy dress on outings, dozens and dozens of digital images, as though Emily’s life was an endless party, documented,
posted, reposted, tagged, commented on, shared, liked. Harriet stared at the photographs, hoping for clues about Emily, beyond the information posted on her pages. Who was she?
And now, in bed with her tablet at the end of a long day, Harriet watched her, like a ghost stalker, a quiet, persistent presence, hovering in the ether. She’d been following her online for several years, but she still didn’t really know what Emily was like. Emily’s friends had posted multiple new messages on her page, and Harriet realized with a shock that Emily’s adoptive father had recently died. She flicked back and forth between the posts. She could send her a message. It would be easy, here, by herself in front of the computer. “Hey Emily,” she could post, “it’s me.” She’d thought about doing this many times, but the story she had to tell was too complex, too convoluted and confusing. She’d never told the story, not to Michael, not to Jack. Only the people who were present at that time knew what had happened, and she’d lost touch with everyone.