In a Kingdom by the Sea

As we’ve been talking the restaurant has been slowly filling up. Beautifully dressed women float past greeting each other. Young men follow in a wake of perfume. There is noise and laughter and a sudden buzz of excitement in the small courtyard garden.

‘Pakistanis, they love to party,’ Birjees says, taking a keen interest in what everyone is wearing.

‘I can see that!’

She laughs. ‘Oh, Gabriella, I hope you will come back to Karachi. Shahid and I would love to show you many beautiful places in our city …’

She leans forward with sudden intensity. ‘Then you can explain to people in England that in Pakistan it is not all violent extremists but happy, family people who shop and party and create music and art and beauty, just like everyone else …’

How must it feel to live in a country that is so often depicted negatively? How must it feel to long for your country to be defined by the warmth of its people and the beauty of its landscape, not by violence?

I look out at the courtyard blazing with lights and flowers. The air echoes with the rise and fall of excited voices. The evening is pervaded by the simple delight of people happy to be together despite the unrest in their city. Simple joys are so easy to underestimate.

‘Inshallah,’ Birjees says softly, ‘you will come back to Karachi, Gabriella.’

‘Inshallah,’ I reply. ‘I hope so.’

At midnight Mike and I toast the New Year in with a last half glass of wine back at the Shalimar.

‘I think this is one of the nicest New Year’s Eve we’ve had for a long time,’ I tell him.

‘It’s certainly the most abstemious New Year we’ve had for a long time,’ Mike replies as both our phones bleep with Happy New Year texts from our sons.

‘That’s probably ten quid each,’ Mike grumbles.

‘I suppose it’s just as well there isn’t another bottle of wine,’ I say, wistfully. ‘Or I’d be flying home tomorrow with a hangover.’

‘It’s been fun, hasn’t it?’

‘It has. I love Birjees and Shahid. I’m so glad you have them as friends.’

‘They loved you, Gabby. I think they’re already planning your next visit …’ He smiles. ‘We’ll have to juggle round our various work commitments to try to make it happen, won’t we?’

He picks the wine glasses up to take them to the kitchen.

‘Actually, I’m back in London sometime in February for a meeting at Canada House. I’m planning to take a week’s leave. Let’s go somewhere. I’ll send you the dates. Hopefully you can take a few days off. After that, I’ve no idea when I’ll get a break. I’ve got endless conferences in the UAE …’

I smile to myself. It amuses me; Mike’s assumption that his business commitments are sacrosanct while mine can be dropped whenever he gets home. It is partly my fault because I nearly always accommodated him.

In the night I hear Mike’s phone bleep. Then bleep again. After a minute he gets out of bed and pads across to his desk to look at it. When he does not come back to bed I push myself up on my elbow to see where he is.

He is standing very still by the window looking down on the city. I can’t make out his expression but I notice the stress in his shoulders. He looks so alone. I would like to go and place my arms around his waist, lean my head on his back. But I don’t. Mike can be emotionally unpredictable. One minute you think you are close to him, the next he will gently shut a door in your face. I learnt early in my marriage not to be hurt. In a way I understood. I shy away from too much emotion. I never wanted the sort of exhausting marriage my parents had. I used to wonder if my father felt suffocated by Maman’s love and that was why he sloped off to the pub so much.

Mike turns from the window to his desk, picks his phone up and begins to text. After a second he makes an angry noise in the back of his throat and throws the phone down and comes back to bed.

He sees that I am awake. ‘Sorry, did my phone wake you? I should have turned the bloody thing off.’

I smile. ‘You know you never can.’

‘Come here. I’m going to miss you.’

As we lie in the dark, Mike says, ‘It’s silly, but now you’ve been here, in this apartment, in my bed, in Karachi, you’ll feel much nearer to me when you’ve gone …’

I wonder, for a second, if he is trying to convince himself. Then, I think about him standing alone in the window of a foreign city. Something he has done most of his life. I roll towards him. ‘I always miss you,’ I say.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN (#ulink_9c3209c0-6faf-5a3d-8c4a-0b492317440c)

London, March 2010

I’ve started running again. Running makes me feel more in control. It is a cold dark morning but the leaves will soon unfurl and the world will turn slowly green. I take the path round the lake and my spirit starts to lift. I find my stride and relax into a rhythm. The leaden sky begins to lighten and I think about the day ahead.

January and February have been grim. This is the first time in my working life that a myriad of things have gone wrong at the same time, threatening my reputation. The fact that I had no control over any of them has been unnerving.

One of my authors had a meltdown and wanted to withdraw her book just before publication. One of my translators, in the middle of a messy divorce, got so behind with an important Icelandic thriller he was working on that he missed a vital deadline with devastating consequences. To make matters worse, Emily’s mother died suddenly so she has been away for weeks.

Up to now, I have had a dependable little team and I feel shockingly let down. For an experienced translator not to admit, until the last minute, that he is way behind schedule is totally unprofessional. We all rely on each other. Life happens. If anyone is struggling to cope we can give practical support. Authors and publishers depend on us. We cannot afford stubborn pride. Publication dates are sacrosanct.

Thank goodness that Emily is back; her anger is at least distracting her from the grief of her mother’s death. Managing the office is her domain. I work upstairs and she is so efficient I rarely interfere.

After calling a meeting and stressing the importance of admitting any personal difficulties that might impact on deadlines, Emily and I decided to sack our charming but lazy intern. Having begged us for a job, he has proved averse to mundane tasks. We have caught him on his smartphone during working hours too many times.

As I run round the lake, I wonder if I have become less observant about the people who work with me. Was it male pride or depression that stopped Ayer, my translator, approaching me in time? Have I left too much to Emily? She is extremely competent but not always entirely empathetic to people’s domestic problems.

I had been looking forward to talking to Mike about everything when he came home in February. I thought he would sympathize and offer good advice. He is good at damage limitation, at narrowing down a problem and making it seem smaller. It is what he does for a living. Not this time. He arrived from Karachi irritable, dismissive and bored by my saga.

Despite being aware that I was in the middle of a crisis, he had gone ahead and made plans to go walking in the Malverns without consulting me. I had to tell him going anywhere was out of the question; I had apologetic meetings with publishers and alternative deadlines to set up.

Mike went off in a huff, sailing in Lymington with Jacob for two days, and came back monosyllabic and sullen.

‘I hoped you might have cheered him up a bit,’ I said when Jacob dropped him back home. Mike had gone upstairs to change out of wet trousers. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen him so bad-tempered.’

Jacob snorted. ‘Come on, Gabby, you’ve been married to him long enough. Mike can be impossible if things don’t go his way. In Dubai, we all used to keep out of his way when he was thwarted at work … He really can be a moody bastard sometimes.’

‘That’s why we let him work a long way from home,’ I joke, startled by Jacob’s honesty. ‘Has he told you his problem?’

‘Nope. Just cast a shadow over my sailing trip.’

‘I’m sorry, Jacob.’

Jacob drained his glass. ‘You’ve got nothing to be sorry about …’

He came over and pecked my cheek. ‘I’m off. Don’t take Mike’s behaviour with such good grace, Gabby. He’s bloody lucky to have you. Flora wouldn’t put up with it, or with me working away from home most of the time. Mike can’t expect your world to stop dead when he decides to take leave … I’ll call goodbye to him on my way out …’

He turned at the door. ‘If it’s any comfort, Mike has pissed me off this time too.’

I could hear Mike on his mobile phone, walking up and down on the landing. I wondered who he was talking to, because he was being very charming to whoever it was.

I poured myself a glass of wine and went and looked out of the French windows into the garden. I had been restless ever since returning from Pakistan. I looked at the tiny wild cyclamen under the magnolia tree and realized that I could not wait for Mike to go back to Karachi.