The Hornbeam Tree (3 page)

‘I thought you weren’t allowed to wear eyeliner at school,’ she said.

‘That was my last school,’ Molly reminded her. ‘At this one you can wear what you like. Did you get the new
Heat
magazine?’

‘No, I don’t believe I did.’

Molly rolled her eyes and crunched noisily into an apple. ‘I asked you to,’ she said. ‘Oh my God, I’ve got to do this essay on communism,’ she suddenly gasped. ‘You’ve got to help me. It’s like, really boring, and so not anything to do with real life … Mum, are you listening?’

Katie blinked in surprise. ‘Do I look as though I’m not?’ she asked, having heard every word.

‘No, but you know what you’re like. You drift off and then I’ve got to say things all over again.’

‘You have to do an essay on communism,’ Katie told her. ‘Would you like to make a start now, or shall we …’

‘No way. I’ve got to go up and check my emails and get changed before I go out.’

‘Where are you going?’

‘Over to Kylie’s to do some homework. And please don’t start. I’m like, so not in the mood.’

Katie listened to her stomping up the stairs, and having no energy to protest she turned back to the table and sank down on to a chair. This distance that had crept between them wasn’t unusual, she knew that, most mothers experienced it with girls Molly’s age, but she could feel Molly’s loneliness as acutely as she could her own and knew that deep down inside Molly was as scared as she was. If only they could talk about what was happening, but during her treatment Katie simply hadn’t had the strength to, and since it had ended they’d both been in a fool’s paradise hoping it had all gone away now.

Letting go of a long, shaky sigh, she sat back down to continue her letter, knowing she had to make herself do it today. It would probably take a couple of weeks to get there, and though she didn’t imagine she was leaving home feet first just yet, time wasn’t exactly her friend now. She looked at her watch to check the date. September 7th, so the earliest Michelle might get here was the middle of the month. That was presuming, of course, she was willing to come, and after the coldness Katie had treated her to over the years,
Katie
would hardly be able to blame her if she weren’t.

Michelle’s lovely green eyes were sparkling with affection as she watched the arcane piece of theatre that was being staged for her benefit outside the mud-brick house she called home. It was at the junction of a dried up well, a food store and the Medecins Sans Frontiers clinic, where several patients were hanging out of glassless windows to watch and laugh and shout at the overenthusiastic performers. Next door to her was a row of doctors’ huts, and across the piazza, as they had grandiosely named this dusty patch of land with its puddles and weeds, was one of the camp’s eight precious bakeries.

Laughing as three skinny young children dressed in Tesco T-shirts and pyjama pants began singing a song that was making the others howl, she admired the two female performers who were swaying willow-like in the background, while Nazar, a roguishly handsome Hazaran who’d arrived six months ago with his wife and five sons, provided the music with an assortment of instruments he’d carved and strung himself. His wife was dead now, as were two of his sons, taken by dehydration during the cruel heat of the summer months. Nazar had mourned them, but now it was time to find a new wife. Michelle was hoping he’d choose Maryam, one of the dancers, who’d created this curious entertainment with him. Maryam was nineteen and had lost all three of her children, her husband and father during their escape from Afghanistan, and now devoted her
time
to taking care of the many orphans who were struggling to survive here in the camp of Shamshatu.

Having only a small grasp of Dari, the language they were using for the play, Michelle was mostly unable to understand what all the shouting and strange noises were about, but it hardly mattered. It was enough that a small crowd had wandered up from the endless sprawl of delapidated mud-brick houses and makeshift tents, and that for these few minutes at least, their world was one of merriment and laughter.

‘Will you be helping at the clinic tonight?’ a voice beside her asked. ‘Or will you be wishing to spend time with Tahira?’ It was one of the doctors, herself a refugee, who’d come to sit beside Michelle in the sand.

Michelle drew back the folds of her blue shawl to look at the sad-faced young medic, but she didn’t answer, merely let her eyes drift back to the lively group in front of her and on down through the main thoroughfare where oxen, camels, donkeys and goats mingled with proud, angry men in loosely tied lungees and shalwar kameez. Some brazenly carried rifles strapped to their shoulders, others touted carpets woven by children, while still others sat cross-legged on rush mats holding council and teaching young boys to pray.

Michelle had been here since the start of the bombing in Afghanistan. Though she carried out many tasks, her chief role was to drum up as much publicity as she could for the camp, generally by bringing in the world’s press so they could write about what was happening here. Plenty came, it
was
always debatable how many listened or cared.

Nazar began to play his
sarinda
. Michelle watched his elegant fingers and felt the beauty of the music stirring a place deep in her heart. He’d been teaching Tom to play the instrument during Tom’s frequent visits to the camp, and the memory of the two of them sitting together, both dressed in turbans and appearing as ethnic as each other, made her feel strangely sad today.

As though reading her thoughts Qadira, the young doctor, said, ‘Did you manage to reach Tom? Does he know you are leaving?’

Michelle nodded. ‘He’s in Lahore. I’ll go there before I fly to London.’

Qadira was resigned to partings, but it was plain she wouldn’t find this one easy. ‘I am very sorry about your sister,’ she said softly. ‘May Allah be gracious … Oh my, what is happening now?’

The sound of gunshots ringing out over the camp brought everyone to a stop. Angry voices could be heard coming from the direction of the mosque, then someone running and shouting Qadira’s name.

‘You stay,’ she told Michelle as she got up. ‘Tahira is here. She will be very sad to see you go.’

Not as sad as I will
, Michelle was thinking, as she held out her arms to the scrawny, motherless girl whom she’d allowed herself to become far too attached to. She was probably thirteen, but small enough to be nine, and bright enough to learn considerably more English than Michelle had Dari. She helped in the clinic, made tea and ricecakes for the visitors Michelle brought in and secretly taught a handful of younger girls how to read and write.
Her
ambition was to go to a university in America and become a journalist like Tom. She loved Tom above anyone else, possibly even Michelle.

As she sank into Michelle’s embrace Michelle smiled and kissed her forehead. If it was possible to be more beautiful than this child, both in face and spirit, she was at a loss to know how.

‘
Khwandi. Khurdza
.’ Tahira said. ‘Sister. Niece.’

‘That’s right,’ Michelle told her, tracing the folds of her shawl around her face.

‘
Dzem?
Go?’

Michelle nodded. ‘Tomorrow.
Sabaa
,’ she said.

Tahira gazed at her with wide, melancholy eyes. ‘I come?’ she said.

‘I wish you could,’ Michelle whispered.

‘Emails?’

‘Yes, we’ll send emails,’ Michelle assured her. ‘And you.’

‘We all send,’ Tahira said, meaning all the children she taught in a small room at the back of the clinic. ‘Dr Qadari and Mr Henri help. Tom go?’

Michelle swallowed and looked out towards the distant mountains, barely visible now in the dwindling light. ‘No, Tom’s staying here,’ she said.

Tahira broke rapidly into her own language, using a dialect Michelle didn’t understand, though she knew, because they’d had this conversation before, that Tahira was telling her she would take care of Tom, and maybe one day become his wife. Since many of the girls here were married to men thirty, forty even fifty years older than they were, Tahira’s suggestion, at least in her world, wasn’t quite so outlandish, though the fact that Tom was
American
would certainly make it unacceptable in the eyes of her elders.

A few hours later, after the fun was over and most had lain down to sleep, Michelle sat on a rush mat outside her single-room dwelling, listening to the many different sounds of the camp, inhaling the malodorous stench of heat and raw sewage that she often forgot to notice now, and tried to imagine how she was going to adapt to being back in England after being away so long. Eleven years in total, though not all had been spent here, for she’d been in Sarajevo for two years which was where she’d first met Tom; then they gone to Rio where they’d worked in the
favelas
and plotted to expose a government backed death squad. It was after that terrifying ordeal, which had culminated in her son, Robbie, being kidnapped, that Robbie had gone to live with his father in LA. Not a day went by that she didn’t ache for him, never a week passed without them speaking at least once on the phone.

Now she and Tom were in Pakistan, a country they both loved and feared. As Westerners it was far too dangerous for them to be here, but somehow time had gone on and they were still alive and it had never seemed quite the right time to go.

She’d be with Tom tomorrow night, at a friend’s house in Lahore, where she kept most of her belongings and where she would stay before flying on to London. There had been no suggestion of him coming with her, nor would there be, for England, America, the whole pampered West, was of no interest to him. His heart was here, unclaimed by a woman, wholly dominated by a land.

‘Katie,’ she murmured softly, as her thoughts
turned
to her sister and her eyes rose to the black, starry sky, ‘I know you think I’ll let you down, but you’re wrong. I will come, but it doesn’t mean I won’t find it hard to leave here, because I will.’

‘You’re Molly Kiernan, aren’t you?’

Molly looked up at the pretty, freckle-faced girl who’d come to intrude upon her private space at the edge of the woods.

‘Your mum’s Katie Kiernan, who writes in the paper,’ the girl continued. ‘My mum reads her all the time.’

Molly was perched on a stile, her school bag dangling off one post, her mobile in her hand with a half-composed message to her mum saying she was still at Kylie’s. She’d never been inside Kylie Green’s house, didn’t even know where she lived, nor did she want to, because she was just a slapper who Molly totally couldn’t stand.

‘I’ve seen you sitting here lots of times,’ the girl told her. ‘I live over there.’ She turned and pointed to the lumbering old farmhouse whose roof and bedroom windows were visible over the hedgerows at the far end of the next field. ‘My name’s Allison,’ she added, turning back.

Molly already knew that, because she’d seen her a couple of times before, around the village, or in Chippenham with her friends from the private school. Molly used to go to private school too, in London, but when they’d moved here her mum couldn’t afford to send her to one again, so she was at the comprehensive in Chippenham now. She hated it, because everyone hated her. They called her a stuck-up bitch who thought she was better
than
everyone just because she talked posh, had a mother who was like, so not famous, and had gone to some snooty school before getting dumped on them there.

Allison released her long red hair from a scrunchy, then tied it back again. ‘Why do you come and sit here all on your own?’ she asked.

Molly shrugged and looked down at the stream that was flowing beneath the bridge Allison was standing on. No way was she going to tell her, because it was no-one else’s business, and anyway, it was embarrassing.

‘I mean, like, it’s a really cool place,’ Allison said. ‘You know, like pretty and that … Don’t you have any friends?’

Molly’s face tightened, her eyes stayed on the water.

‘I could be your friend,’ Allison offered. ‘I can introduce you to Cecily and Donna too. They go to my school, and they’re like, really cool, and we’ve got this like, amazing thing we do … It’s kind of secret, so I can’t tell you about it, unless you’re part of our group.’

Molly’s eyes wandered along the banks to where the stream rounded a bend.

‘You don’t say much, do you?’ Allison remarked. ‘I didn’t think you’d be shy.’

‘I’m not,’ Molly told her. ‘I was just thinking, that’s all.’

Allison shrugged and checked the belt on her really low-cut jeans, that were the same as the ones Molly had, but better. She even had a ring in her belly button and loads of make-up, and a totally cool crop top.

‘My mum doesn’t write in the paper any more,’ Molly said.

Allison’s eyes widened. ‘Why not?’

‘She just doesn’t. Actually, there are a lot of things she doesn’t do any more. She’s been like, sick and that, and …’ Her eyes went down again.

‘Is she better now?’ Allison asked.

Molly nodded shortly.

‘So what other kinds of things doesn’t she do?’ Allison wanted to know.

Molly didn’t answer, because no way was she going to make herself look stupid by telling Allison how her mum didn’t come and walk in the woods with her any more and think up things to put in their dream box. It was all just stupid stuff anyway, because no way was she, Molly, ever going to be a famous singer, or a supermodel, or go out with Justin Timberlake. Nor was her mum ever going to be a pole dancer, or go tiger-spotting in India, or do some dumb waltz in Vienna.

‘I can’t stand my mother,’ Allison confided. ‘She’s like, so embarrassing. Even my dad doesn’t want to be with her, so he stays in London most of the time. She’s always drunk, like all day, and makes herself look really stupid with my brother’s friends. Oh my God, you should see her … Toby, that’s my brother, he hates bringing anyone home because of what she might say or do. He goes to a boarding school in Devon, but he comes home sometimes at weekends, and in the week if they’ve just got like, study groups and things. He’ll be eighteen in November, the same week as I’m fifteen. How old are you?’