‘I’m glad Cara and Norah have hooked up,’ said Colette. ‘Norah runs her computer club most weeknights. We don’t see her much—Abbi’s the homebody— but at least I can be sure she’s not getting into trouble now.’
‘Why, did she have a habit of getting into trouble?’
‘You’re kidding. We had her on Ritalin for years. We were both out at work and it got too tricky raising children without pharmaceutical help.’
Lea wasn’t sure about putting children on medication. It reminded her of Victorians dosing their babies with laudanum. She changed the subject. ‘So you’ve been here for a while?’
Colette helped herself to a miniscule sliver of cake. ‘Two years, nine months and counting. Ben’s on an open-ended contract.’
‘So you’ll stay after the opening.’
‘If everything goes well and the consortium decides to go ahead with the DWG project in Athens we may stay with them, depending on the girls’ schooling. I told Ben I won’t do Africa, no matter how much they promise to sort out their power supply. Things have been a little strained here since the bombs.’
‘There were bombs?’
‘Didn’t they tell you? Only a couple exploded, they were just low-level pipe-bombs, but no warning was given. Protest groups have to give warning call signs. One of the site foremen found them by the reservoir.’
‘Who do you think put them there?’
‘The cops arrested some Indian workers on the site. It’s convenient for everyone. They’re always upset about working conditions.’ She set down her cup and glanced back at Lastri, lowering her voice. ‘How are you getting along with your maid?’
‘I’m not used to this kind of thing,’ Lea admitted. ‘It feels weird having her around all the time. I don’t need any help running the place. It’s not like anything gets dirty.’
‘You say that now, but you’ll come to depend on her,’ said Colette. ‘You should be careful what you say when they’re in the room. I heard that some of them report back to the police. There’s a rule around here; what happens in the compound stays in the compound.’
‘Why? What’s likely to happen?’
‘A few months back, there was supposedly an attempt by Muslim extremists to radicalise the area, and security was tightened. I mean, we all heard about it but nobody saw anything first-hand. And the maids—suddenly half of them disappeared and were replaced. These new girls just turned up on Monday morning and nobody said a word. It’s like we weren’t supposed to have noticed. You hear some pretty odd things and never get to find out if they’re true.’
‘Milo was regaling me with his fund of horror stories yesterday.’
Colette sat back sharply. ‘Oh, we all talk too much, and a lot of it’s just gossip. Actually it’s kind of zen here, a blank slate you can write what you like on. Listen, did you get yourself a drinking licence?’
‘No, do I need one?’
‘Ex-pats need an alcohol licence to drink, even at home. The police don’t check, but you should get one just in case. Sometimes we do booze-runs to Sharjah and the cops wait to issue us with tickets on the way back.’
‘You mean they know what’s going on?’
‘Sure, it’s all just a big game to remind us that we’re only guests. Speaking of booze, I came over to tell you we’re throwing a welcome bash for you on Saturday. I hope the date’s okay? We’re using your arrival as an excuse for a party. If Ben can get off work he’ll fire up the barbecue. He likes to do it himself. A man is at his happiest when he’s poking a fire with a stick. Rachel and I will do the invitations, and the maids can handle the catering. You have to agree you’ll be there. It’ll be too hot if we leave it until next month.’
‘That’s great,’ said Lea, ‘We’d love to come.’
‘I’m sure we’re going to be good friends.’ Colette rose to leave. ‘People will want to tell you things. Don’t believe everything you hear. I have to get back. It’s cookery class this afternoon. I always look forward to it. Has anyone enrolled you in the Pastry Club?’
Chapter Eight
The Swim
C
ARA AND
N
ORAH
carried the blue plastic icebox between them. A tangerine slice of sun glowed muddily as it reached the lip of the sea.
‘Pollution,’ said Norah, pointing at the horizon. Although she was in a khaki vest and baggies, she still wore her woollen hat. ‘The rays are reaching us through thirty metre bands of shit from the tankers in the navigation channel. The water’s okay, though. Most of the beaches are fake but this one’s real.’
Norah had travelled a lot with her family, and nothing impressed her. ‘They’re building new beaches all along the coast,’ she told Cara. ‘A year ago everyone was broke. Now everyone’s spending like fucking maniacs.’
‘You come down here every evening?’ Cara asked.
‘Most nights, around sunset. A bunch of us from school, and some boys from the compound who go to the French college. They’re glad to get out of their school because of the cultural fucking imperative.’
‘What’s that?’
‘It’s financed by the French government, so they’re only allowed to speak French in class. Sometimes we have barbecues. The cops drive down to the shoreline and sit in their jeeps watching us, but they don’t do anything.’
‘What are they looking for? Drugs?’
Norah gave a mirthless laugh. ‘You’re in the wrong place if you’re looking to smoke dope. It happens, just not around here.’ She squinted back at the sun. Her face fell into a natural pout and her pencil-straight hair looked as if it had been dyed black, but this confrontational pose was mitigated by signs of wealth; a Breitling watch, a series of jewelled rings on a chain at her throat. Sudden movements brought out a cat-eyed wariness in her.
‘No dope?’ Cara repeated. ‘You know that for sure?’
‘The clubs in town, they got these pole dancers who put on private shows. Their bosses keep the girls half-starved and pay for their tits to be enlarged. The Chinese are crazy for big tits. That’s where all the drugs are, in the bars. You can get anything if you have enough money and the right connections. It’s sick.’ Cara was unsure whether Norah meant good-sick or bad-sick; she had heard no slang at school or in the compound, probably because there were so many nationalities using the common language of basic English.
Norah high-fived a couple of other kids joining them. ‘The cops are watching for booze,’ she explained. ‘The whole mixed-minors thing freaks them—come on.’ They padded over the hot sand and joined the rest of the group, who were stacking driftwood above the tideline. Half a dozen boys and girls from the school sat in a semi-circle, generic hip-hop playing on a music dock. Cara was surprised by their sombre mood.
‘Anyone got a brew?’ Norah asked. Someone popped the lid of a cooler and threw them one apiece.
‘We’re not allowed beer on the beach,’ said Lauren, a blandly pretty American blonde with a heart-shaped face and lip implants. Cara had seen her before, seated behind her parents in their silver Mercedes, queuing to get into the estate. ‘Dean keeps a second icebox buried in the sand.’
Dean caught the name-check and leaned forward, hand raised to Cara in greeting. He wore his curly brown hair in a ponytail knotted with coloured bands and beads. His wide smile invited complicity and revealed perfect bleached teeth.
‘But the cops could be a pain if they wanted to, couldn’t they?’ Cara asked.
‘They’re not serious,’ said Norah, ‘they just come around so that we’ll tell our parents we’ve seen them.’
‘Do you ever go into the desert?’
‘Sometimes,’ said Lauren. ‘My brother takes us, but he won’t roll his jeep or anything cool like that. He’s such a fun-suck. He sticks to the main highways. If you go off-road you have to let your tyres half-down to get traction in the sand, and he says it damages them if you do it too often.’
‘He doesn’t come to the beach?’ asked Cara.
‘No,’ said Norah. ‘Her bro hangs around the mall cruising for underage
poo-say
. They should get him chipped.’
‘We got plenty of other stuff to do,’ said Dean. ‘There’s a ski-slope at the Mall. The cinemas show English language movies but we don’t get the really gross horror movies. The censorship is fucked up. I’ve got some sites you can stream from. You’re London, right? We haven’t been back for two years. What’s it like now?’
‘Same as ever,’ said Cara, ‘cold and wet. There’s some good bands though.’
‘Bring some music down next time,’ said Norah. ‘If we like it, it goes on the playlist.’
‘Do you ever go out to the resort?’ asked Cara.
‘Dream World? No, the security guy there watches for us. There have been some really fucking weird accidents. One guy got a scaffolding pole through the top of his skull. Another one got killed when a stack of pallets slid over on him. The heat loosened the metal ties.’
‘Tell him about the ice-man,’ said Lauren.
Dean drew them in with his smile. ‘Okay, there’s this beach out at the end of the resort where they’re building this exclusive restaurant? You can only reach it across the sand, but it gets too hot to walk on, so they installed pipes under the ground to cool it down. They didn’t want people to complain about burning their feet, so they filled the pipes with some kind of coolant like liquid nitrogen. There was a leak, so they sent one of the Indian workers down to fix it and he had to lay on the ground to uncover it, but it turned out his buddies hadn’t shut the pressure off properly. The pipe exploded and froze him to death on the sand, right in the middle of the day. His lungs turned to ice. When they came to take his body away, it was still frozen solid. Amazing, huh?’
‘What happened?’ asked Cara.
‘What do you mean what happened? They shipped the corpse back to India and charged his wife for the freight.’ Dean checked his watch, some kind of neon Japanese model. ‘I have to go home soon. Let’s swim.’
The group waded out into the warm water together. Cara wasn’t used to swimming with boys, and felt self-conscious about her body. Most of them took athletic practice and worked out. Nobody seemed to be paying any attention, though, and after a while she grew more comfortable. She was a strong swimmer, and led the way into deeper, cooler water. Speedboats droned past, and a red acrobatic plane was performing stunt-rolls, corkscrewing down through the bare blue sky, a lone participant in a dogfight.
Looking down between her feet she could see all the way to the bottom, where small black fish darted over the rippled sand.
‘Sometimes they swim over you,’ said Dean, floating alongside her. He tipped his head back and allowed his body to rise, the water gently lapping his broad chest. ‘I like it out here. You don’t have to think about anything, just hang in space, like you’re floating in the clouds. Sometimes the mist blurs the horizon line and you can’t tell which way up you are, if you’re in the sky or the sea. You might be looking down at the earth from the distant future. Like you’re in another life.’
Cara watched as his tanned form floated slowly past her. He was so close that she could smell the coconut oil on his sun-warmed skin. The lotion sheened his body in a golden carapace. Droplets shone on his chest like diamonds. He drifted and shone like some polished component of a luxury yacht, then sank beneath the surface of the glassine ocean, still gleaming, swimming slowly around her, encircling her. She could tell he was smiling, even underwater. He watched her for a long moment, then turned with a flick of his leg, sinking deeper, a lapidary merman returning home.
Back on the shore, behind the open space of the beach, two policemen sat silent and motionless in their blue and white jeep watching the teenagers, the setting sun reflected in their mirror shades.
Chapter Nine
The Underpass
T
HE LAST OF
the boxes had arrived from Chiswick and their contents had been set around the house, but most of the pieces looked out of place, as if an effort had been made to reassemble their home from a poorly remembered dream.
Disappointed, Lea drove back from Spinneys supermarket with several days’ supply of groceries. There could be no distractions next week; she was determined to find freelance work. She had bought a sombre high-necked suit in grey silk, and two light jackets that covered her skin. The outfits felt cooler than her London summer clothes. Catching sight of herself in the car mirror, with her dark hair tied back and large sunglasses, it seemed that she offered up the perfect image of Arabic modesty.
It was, unsurprisingly, another beautiful day.
The road to the compound curved from Highway A6 in an architectural arabesque, passing between several dusty single-storey buildings, the remains of an old village that had been cleared for the route. The last few stores were still open for business—stacks of beach chairs and blue plastic laundry baskets framed their doorways—but no customers could reach them through the tangle of on-ramps and roadworks.
Clearly, some locals were missing out on the property bonanza. Lea was so busy studying the shabby row of stores that she missed her turn-off. Suddenly nothing looked familiar. The Renault’s sat-nav sounded confused, telling her to turn left where there was no left turn, so she looked out for signs.
‘Turn around at the first available opportunity,’ said the sat-nav. She could see the compound wavering in the distance, a low mushroom-coloured wall studded with date palms, but could not find a way to get to it.
The traffic faded away, funnelling from the sculpted steel towers of the financial district toward the coastal districts. Taking the first slip road that presented itself she watched as the manicured verges broke up, to be replaced by rubble-strewn sandlots and stony ground littered with abandoned appliances.
At first she thought she had reached the city dump, but ahead was another compound. This one had no security walls or statuesque palms. The eight rows of utilitarian blocks were arranged like army barracks. Most were fitted with narrow, rudimentary windows. A pair of sentry boxes guarded the only way in, and she was forced to brake.