One Day in May - Catherine Alliott [35]
Funny how the mind works: left alone, to my own devices, sitting in the flat, going to the window periodically to press my forehead against the glass, I wondered idly if I could have my job back. If that was why he was ringing. If Letty could… if Letty could what, Hattie? Below, on the pavement a skateboarder skidded into the gutter. Understand? Forgive? How was that little scenario going to play out then, hm? Or – or maybe I could work somewhere else in the Commons? So I could be near him. The skateboarder got up and brushed himself down. Because, what was so terrifying, what was making me hyperventilate, was the thought of never seeing Dominic again. Which unless I was there, in the Commons, I wouldn’t. Panic rose within me. The idea grew, from a little seed. Yes, I could work in another department. Defence, perhaps. A friend, Rebecca, worked there, for that nice woman Fiona Snell. Perhaps in a few months’ time, when the dust had settled, I could go back? Reapply, when it had all blown over? After all, I’d been on a career ladder. I couldn’t just abandon that, could I?
I left the flat at lunchtime, as was now my routine, when I knew the first edition of the Standard came out, leaving Tanja, our help, in the flat. When I came back, she was putting her coat on, getting ready to go.
‘A man called, for to deliver a letter,’ she told me in her broken English.
‘Oh?’ The world stopped on its axis. Swayed. ‘Who?’
‘Yes, tall man. Nice face. He no say who.’
My heart kicked in. ‘And the letter?’
‘On your bed. I put it.’
I rushed down the hall, throwing the Standard on a chair. I heard Tanja open the front door, and close it behind her. An envelope was indeed on my pillow. I opened it with trembling hands. Darling, please come back? It’s you I love? Somehow we’ll work something out?
I spread open the thick creamy sheet. It was from Hal. Two words.
‘You whore.’
9
Split airport was as sterile and formulaic as any other European terminus, but there the similarity ended. As we emerged from Customs, the concourse was heaving: noisy, hot and impossibly airless. Fear and panic were tangible: on the faces of the women in headscarves clutching children by their wrists, in the voices of the men, shooting up an arm and shouting for them to follow, in the old and bewildered, darting frightened eyes, struggling under the weight of precious bundles. Nearly everyone was leaving, or trying to leave. Unlike us. We were going against the tide, skirting the main clot of traffic, keeping to the walls, bumping against armed guards with cold rifles and stony faces as we kept the UN passes around our necks firmly to the fore.
My father had rung some contacts, reluctantly, when Kit had said yes, I could come out as an aid volunteer. But only packing food parcels. And only on the coast, where it was safe. But yes, he could cut through the red tape, such as it was. It was chaos; they just needed help. Nevertheless, papers of some kind were required and Dad, sensing something had happened to me, that I really needed this, had used his press connections. He’d also quietened his distraught wife, who was beside herself at the thought of two of her children in a war zone, and, together with a photographer from the Independent, I’d flown out.
‘Will you be all right?’ Paul, my photographer friend, shouted to me as, alarmingly, we began to get separated in the crush. He headed towards a man in sunglasses waving his name on a card. I panicked. No, was my overwhelming reaction, no I won’t, and I attempted to follow him through the teaming mêlée. But