Desiring Cairo

‘Sometimes bad things happen to us even if we’re good,’ I said. ‘What’s making you feel bad? Do you know?’

‘It’s too difficult to explain,’ she said. Her lower lip was sticking out, just a tiny bit. The tears stayed in her eyes. Full and curved. Their shape echoed the shape of her cheeks.

‘Well what’s it about? Just tell me the subject. You don’t have to explain it all.’

‘I don’t want to,’ she said.

‘Why not?’

‘I want you to know already,’ she whispered.

And of course I did know. There was only one thing about her that I’d ever claimed not to know, that I’d ever claimed not to understand. Or rather – that I’d ever known was there, but not talked about, not shared, not dealt with. There was such closeness between us that I knew if she would choose an orange or an apple, if she wanted a bath or not, what story she wanted at night out of twenty to pick from. I always knew which hand she’d hidden the coin in. I knew every damn thing about her, and I knew this.

‘OK,’ I said. ‘I’ll find him.’

When she looked up at me I swear her eyes were twice the size they had been. She grinned like a maniac.

‘You do know! You do know!’ she yelled.

‘I know what you want, darling. I don’t know where he is or when we can find him …’

‘But you know I want him!’

That was all she needed. God, she was happy. I felt so small that I hadn’t admitted I knew it all along. To myself, quite apart from her. Going to bed that night she was telling herself a story. ‘Well a daddy might be in the zoo, but only if he had other children, because he wouldn’t go to the zoo if he didn’t have a child with him, so a lost daddy wouldn’t go there, unless he was a zookeeper MUMMY! IS MY DADDY A ZOOKEEPER?’

‘Not that I know of.’

‘It’s quite funny you not knowing things,’ she said, with an echo of Harry. I kissed her and we did the rituals: ‘I love you up to the moon and back again’; ‘I love you too, now shut up and go to sleep’; ‘Will you scratch my back?’ ‘No I won’t.’ ‘But it was worth a try, wasn’t it Mummy?’ ‘Yes now shut up and go to sleep’; and then I went and rang Harry.

Because frankly, out of the choice I had, he was the best.

He was out. I didn’t leave a message. Anyway then Brigid and Caitlin and the boys appeared bearing sleeping bags, and Lily got out of bed, and the lilos had to be blown up and the whole thing turned into a hoopla of considerable proportions. Around ten I gave up and left them to it, and went to watch the news. It was all about the dead princess and her boyfriend. (‘It was her own fault,’ said Lily. ‘She was a mummy. Why didn’t she have her seat-belt on?’)

Halfway through Hakim came in and said: ‘He’s no good that man. No good for Egypt. Rich as ten thousand men. And he did not look after your princess. In Egypt they say your government killed them because they hate Islam and want no Muslim man in your royal family. I say bollocks.’ At the same time as I was amused by his finding so soon the grosser end of our lovely language, and pronouncing it like the young bull he so reminded me of, I could see the sincerity of his distaste.

SEVEN (#ulink_91c8be11-139f-5770-8943-4cea8f8d6fc7)

Brighton (#ulink_91c8be11-139f-5770-8943-4cea8f8d6fc7)

The next day, Saturday, there were two letters. One contained a razor blade, the other a poem.

Distracting is the foliage of my pasture

The mouth of my girl is a lotus bud

Her breasts are mandrake apples

Her arms are vines

Her eyes are fixed like berries

Her brow a snare of willow

And I the wild goose!

My beak snips her hair for bait,

As worms for bait in the trap.

I knew this poem. Not that it’s famous, out of its field. It’s from an ancient papyrus. It’s, I don’t know, three thousand years old. I didn’t like it – I’d never liked it. Hair as worms, bait in a trap. Ugly. Violent. Fixed berries, vines, snares. It speaks to me of desire and resentment – a bad combination.

And a razor blade.

How very unpleasant.

Each one gave me a cold shudder. I didn’t know, actually, which was nastier.

I burnt the poem and broke the blade in half with a pair of pliers, then wrapped it in cotton wool, soaked the package in baby oil and threw it in the rubbish, which I then took out on to the balcony and dropped – plop! – into the wheelie bin seven storeys below. I’m pretty ritualistic on occasion.