Secrets from the Past

‘I want you to be honest with me, Harry. It’s important that you tell me the truth.’

‘Of course I will,’ he promised, and ordered two glasses of white wine from one of the genial waiters. Turning back to me, he went on, ‘It would be unfair if I lied to you, just to please you. Now wouldn’t it?’

‘Yes,’ I agreed.

He leaned back against the banquette and nodded approvingly. ‘You look good, Serena. Very good in fact. Never better.’

‘Work helps. I’ve been keeping myself busy with the book, and Jessica cheered me up. It was a lovely surprise when she showed up out of the blue.’

‘I’m sorry she couldn’t come tonight,’ he murmured. Harry loved Jessica and Cara as well as me.

‘She was disappointed not to see you, but she couldn’t cancel her meetings in London, and changing her ticket would have been difficult.’

‘I understood. And I told her this when we spoke on the phone.’

The wine arrived and we said cheers in unison as we touched glasses.

As I relaxed and sipped the cold wine, I studied Harry for a few seconds, thinking that he looked fit. He would be sixty-nine this year, yet appeared so much younger. There were not many lines on his face and he was tanned. He had a lean look about him, bright blue eyes and salt-and-pepper brown hair. Harry interrupted my thoughts when he said, ‘I ordered the mixed salad, the roasted peppers you’ve always loved, pasta pomodoro and lemon chicken. How does that sound?’

I laughed. ‘You’re just like Tommy; he always ordered far too much.’

‘Just taste a bit of everything. You can take the rest home if you want, to eat another day; it’ll sustain you while you’re writing,’ he suggested in his charming way.

‘Thank you, Harry, but no thanks. I have to be careful these days. I’m sitting at a desk a lot.’

‘Ah yes, the curse of all writers, Serena,’ he responded with a laugh.

Leaning across the table, I now said, ‘I’m trying to remember as much as possible about 1999, Harry. Jessica has given me some of her recollections. What about you? I know you and Dad were in Kosovo, weren’t you?’

He was holding his glass of wine, and he stared down into it for a moment or two. When he lifted his head and looked across at me, I saw the bright blue eyes had darkened, were suddenly filled with a hint of sorrow.

At last, he said quietly, ‘I remember the hell of that particular war. Tommy and I were there from March to June. It was tough, a lousy war. But then all wars are lousy. We were about to get out in May, but changed our minds. We stayed on. The ceasefire came in June, after the NATO and UN intervention, and we finally left. Your father went back to Nice. I came to New York. I’d wrenched my back, helping some desperate women push a broken-down truck, filled with wounded and dying children, to safety. I knew I had to get the best medical treatment, which is why I came back to Manhattan.’

‘Then you went again to Kosovo in September, didn’t you?’

‘Yes, we did. Your father thought we should cover the aftermath of the war, and I agreed. We went to Sarajevo as well. Later we flew to Nice for Thanksgiving, as I’m sure you remember.’

‘I do. During that period, did you hear anything about Mom being angry with me? Upset with me?’

‘Elizabeth was disturbed because you wanted to be a war photographer like us. So Tommy told me, anyway.’

‘That’s right, she was. Jessica reminded me on Saturday. And here’s the weird thing, Harry. I don’t recall this incident. That troubles me a lot.’

‘You more than likely wiped it out, because you didn’t want to remember. It was obviously painful … you were so close to your mother, and she adored you, Serena. She was obviously a bit panicked when she thought you were going to go off to the frontlines. Because of the danger to you. But Tommy reassured her, and she calmed down eventually.’

‘And let me go in the end.’

He gave me a faint smile. ‘You’d come of age. You could do what you wanted, and she knew that. Better to acquiesce than throw a fit. And we promised her we’d look after you. Make sure you were safe at all times. And I had to call her every day, as well as Tommy.’

Before I got a chance to respond, plates of delicious-looking food started to arrive, along with a bottle of white wine.

‘Come on, take some of the red peppers,’ Harry said, smiling encouragingly as he helped himself to the salad. I did as he suggested, and as we ate we chatted about other things, and in particular Global Images.

‘There’s something I need to talk to you about,’ Harry suddenly said. ‘Something important.’

His voice was normal but his expression had turned very serious and there was that worried look in his eyes – a look I knew. ‘What is it? Is there something wrong?’

‘Sort of …’ His voice trailed off, he took a sip of coffee, and stared into the distance for a moment.

‘Harry, please tell me. Tell me what’s wrong.’

He took hold of my hand, which was resting on the table, clasped it and gave me a penetrating look. ‘When you told me you wanted to write a biography about Tommy, do you remember what else you said?’

‘I said I wanted to write it because I needed to honour my father. Is that what you mean?’

‘Yeah I do. Now I want you to do something else to honour your father.’

‘What?’

‘Let me explain something first. Years ago your father came and got me out of Bosnia. He’d left before me, because Elizabeth was sick and she needed him. I’d stayed on, and then I just wouldn’t leave, even though I should have. He came and took me out … forced me to come out before—’

‘You want me to get somebody out of a war zone, a danger zone,’ I interrupted, my voice rising slightly. I stared at him intently, felt a chill running right through me as it suddenly hit me where this was leading. ‘You want me to go and get Zac. This is about Zac North, isn’t it, Harry?’ Before he even responded I knew it was.

He took a deep breath, squeezed my hand tighter. ‘It is. But I don’t need you to get him out of Afghanistan. He’s out—’

‘If he’s out, then he’s safe,’ I cut in again.

Harry nodded in agreement. ‘But he’s in very bad shape, Serena. On his last legs, strained, exhausted, anxiety-ridden. I sent Geoff Barnes in from Pakistan to get him out, and he did manage it. But Geoff says Zac’s in a deep depression; not well, in need of care. He thinks Zac is at an emotional low. As he put it, Zac’s a dead man walking.’

‘Where is Zac now?’ As the words left my mouth, I knew exactly where he was. I exclaimed, ‘He’s in the bolthole, isn’t he?’

Harry nodded, his eyes still clouded with worry.

I blew out air, shook my head. ‘I can’t go. I don’t want to go. Besides which, he’ll bang the door in my face the moment he sees me. We haven’t spoken for eleven months.’

‘He won’t do that, Serena. I promise you. It was Zac who asked for you. He said there was no one else who could do it, who could help him.’

‘He’s got a family on Long Island, Harry. And you know that. Parents, a sister, a brother.’

‘They can’t help him … he needs someone who’s been there, who knows about war, who’s suffered through it, lived through the sheer hell of it, seen the death, the blood, the devastation …’ His voice trailed off, and he sighed.

‘I can’t go. I just can’t,’ I said, my voice tearful, wobbling. ‘That row we had in Nice after Dad’s funeral was horrendous. He was so very violent, verbally. Angry. I’m sorry, Harry, but I still blame him. It was Zac’s fault we missed the plane from Kabul. And all because he wanted to get a few last pictures.’

‘I’m sorry, too, honey, I shouldn’t have even asked you to do it. That was very stupid on my part. You don’t need this right now.’ He took hold of my hand again. ‘I’ll think of something, talk it through with Geoff Barnes, come up with a solution.’

I nodded, bit my lip. ‘Let me think about it,’ I murmured against my better judgement. ‘Let me sleep on it.’

Harry was silent for a moment, staring at me. Then he said in a low voice, ‘No, honey, I don’t want you to go. It was wrong of me to suggest it, to load this responsibility on you. It’s my problem, and I’ll solve it.’