Catching the Sun

She looked up at me as if I didn’t get it. ‘But I don’t want to get used to it!’ she said. ‘I miss my school. I miss London. I miss Amber.’

‘There’s Skype,’ I said, knowing how feeble I must sound to my daughter. ‘There’s email.’

‘That’s not being friends!’ Keeva said. ‘Don’t talk rubbish!’

‘Hey,’ Tess said. ‘Don’t you dare talk to your father like that.’

‘It’s okay, it’s okay,’ I said, holding up my hands.

‘No, it’s not okay,’ Tess said. She pulled out a chair and sat next to Keeva, who ignored her. ‘Look at me,’ Tess said, and Keeva looked at her. ‘Listen to me,’ Tess said, and Keeva raised her chin, her mouth set in a tight, unhappy line. Tess put her face close. ‘We are here for your father’s job,’ she said. ‘I didn’t have a daddy or a mummy, okay?’

‘Tess,’ I said. ‘Come on.’

‘No, she needs to hear this.’

‘But I know about all this!’ Keeva said quickly, anxious to head her mother off. ‘You don’t need to tell me.’

She swallowed hard and there was a silent pause where we all took a breath. We rarely talked about this stuff and, when we did, somehow it was always more in anger than sadness. All families have places they never go. With us it was the childhood that Tess had spent in care. There was no reason to revisit all of that. We wanted it behind us. We wanted it in the past. But it was never really behind us and it was never really past.

Tess began to speak.

‘The earliest thing I can remember is living in a home that wasn’t a home,’ she said. ‘With lots of other children whose parents didn’t want them, or couldn’t take care of them, or who had to give them up. And then I was farmed to other people’s homes – fostering, they called it – and some of them were all right and some of them were not so good. Because there were bigger children who didn’t want me there, or because they enjoyed being mean, or because of the adults who were around.’

‘Tess, this is enough now, okay?’ Trying to catch her eye, trying to get her to stop. ‘She’s too young,’ I said.

Tess ignored me.

‘None of them were real homes,’ she said. ‘So you – you, Keeva – you’re lucky.’

Keeva had begun to cry.

‘I know, I know, I know.’

‘You have a home,’ Tess said, and the anger was leaving her now, but still she went on. ‘And in that home is your father and your mother and your brother. And that home is wherever they are, do you understand me?’

‘Yes. Yes. Yes.’

Keeva’s tears fell on the pages of the ignored book before her.

‘Good,’ Tess smiled. ‘Now come here and give me a hug.’

Then they were in each other’s arms and apologizing to each other and telling each other how much they were loved. And I thought – She is a fantastic mother. Although when the time came she could be far harder on them than I ever could, I knew that Tess found their tears unbearable.

As the girls embraced, Rory looked at me and raised his eyebrows, as if confirming that we did the right thing by letting them sort it out between themselves. I began to breathe again.

‘England is still there,’ Tess said, rocking Keeva in her arms, wiping her eyes with her fingers. ‘And when we go back to visit, Amber will still be your friend. But we are building a life here. Isn’t that right?’

Tess looked at me. Outside I could hear all the noises of the night, the diesel engine of a distant longtail, the insect drone of the bikes, and the wind in the casuarina trees, making them sound as if they were breathing. I realized that Tess was waiting for a reply.

‘That’s right,’ I said.

The fortune teller was wrong. The darkness wasn’t an inch away.

But it was coming.

7

When the wind was strong enough to move the tops of the trees, the red satellite dish on the roof of the home of Mr and Mrs Botan flapped like a broken door. Tess and I stood at the window of our bedroom, watching it through the insect net over the glass.

‘They’re old,’ Tess said. ‘Can’t you fix it for them?’

The red dish swung back and forth.

‘You know I can,’ I said, thinking of the tools I had seen at the back of the shed. There wasn’t much, but then I would not need very much.

‘It’s not just dangerous for them,’ Tess said. ‘It’s dangerous for us, too. It’s dangerous for the kids.’

The shed was still full of bottled water. I could not imagine that we would get through it in a lifetime. But at the back, on a paint-splattered little workbench, I found what I was looking for. A drill. A ratchet. Some silicon sealant. A few odd plugs. The drill was dusted with rust but when I plugged it in and turned it on it worked. Tess watched me from the door of the shed. Keeva and Rory came and stood either side of her. They were both holding a book called the Oxford Junior Atlas.

‘No ladder,’ I said.

‘I’ve seen a step ladder round the side of their place,’ Tess said. ‘Is that tall enough?’

‘That’ll do,’ I said.

From the top of the ladder I could see water damage in the bracket that held the arm of the dish. But the real problem was that whoever put the thing up in the first place had over-tightened the wall mount so that there was no give when the high winds came. Mr and Mrs Botan had joined Tess and the kids at the foot of the ladder. I looked down at the little crowd.

‘What cowboy put this up?’ I said, and Tess was the only one who smiled.

Even with my broken old tools it was a simple job. I removed the whole thing, then drilled four new holes for the wall mount, secured the bracket and fitted the arm that held the red satellite dish. I called down and told them to try their television. They all piled inside, my family and the Botans, but only the grown-ups came out. I could imagine my TV-starved children channel-surfing, the Oxford Junior Atlas forgotten on their laps. Tess gave me the thumbs up.

‘Looking good,’ she said.

Mr and Mrs Botan were talking quietly to each other when I came down the ladder and I guessed that they were wondering if they should try to pay me. The old man looked at me and I looked at him and he did not attempt to give me money. I was happy about that.

‘You know many things,’ he said.

‘I wasn’t always a driver,’ I said.

Despite the red satellite dish that now stood straight and tall on their roof, the Botans’ place felt like a classic Thai home to me, because every part of it felt like it was bathed in a light of soft honey-tinted brown.

Buddha images stared from alcoves and the top of black lacquer cabinets. There was a photo of the King on the wall. Six chairs stood in perfect alignment around a long, wooden dining table, as if waiting to have their photograph taken. Everything immaculate, exquisite and very clean.

Although it had exactly the same layout as our place, it felt like another way of living. It had none of the jumble and mess that you get with children growing up in your midst, the endless books, the forgotten items of clothing and the discarded toys – not that we had brought many of those. Snacks were important to Rory and Keeva. The last snack. The next snack. The snack that they wanted and the snack that they were allowed. There was no evidence that any kind of snacking ever took place in the Botans’ house.

But Mr and Mrs Botan were parents too.

Next to what looked like a small altar – more Buddhas, a few lit candles, and a solitary teacup – there was a silver-framed photograph of a large, prosperous-looking man in glasses standing next to his seated, tiny, very pretty wife with a solemn-looking little boy standing to attention between them.