Colleen McNulty, of Liverpool, England, did not talk about her job. It made people act weirdly towards her, either overly empathetic or massively racist – and both were, she didn’t really like to admit, quite equally tiresome.
‘I’m a civil servant,’ she would say coolly, in a way that discouraged further conversation. Her grown daughter (she’d been divorced for a long time) was always interested, but otherwise the line between interest and prurience was hard to navigate sometimes, and she certainly had no interest talking to those who’d never known a day’s hardship in their entire lives but thought that desperate people should be allowed to drown in the Mediterranean Sea for want of a little humanity.
She was equally dispassionate in the office, a featureless building on a forgettable industrial estate with only the tiniest of Home Office logos on the signage. She carried out the wishes of the government of the day, that was all. It wasn’t her fault or her responsibility; she did it or she didn’t. This wasn’t cruel: there was simply no other way to deal with it without being overwhelmed – in the same way battlefield doctors kept up a black sense of humour. You had to distance yourself, otherwise it became unbearable. You couldn’t get involved in individual people’s stories – individual families – because then you couldn’t do your job, couldn’t function, and that was useful to precisely nobody.
If you had to deal with her, you might have thought her rude, curt and unfeeling. In fact, Colleen McNulty thought being efficient was the very best way to get through her day, and to please the God she fervently believed in.
As she took off her large, practical anorak that morning, hung it on the back of the door where it always went, checked that no one had touched ‘her’ mug and murmured good morning to her opposite number, Ken Foley, with whom she’d shared an office for six years and had never had a personal conversation, she expected little as she powered up the computer and looked down to see what the day would bring. It would be numbers on a page, that was all, boxes on a spreadsheet: not people but problems to be organised and sorted out and arranged until she left promptly at 5.30 to heat up her M&S pasta sauce carefully at home and watch YouTube videos about crafting.
She glanced at the header of the first email. And for the first time in six years, Ken Foley heard the very upright Mrs McNulty let out a tiny gasp.
‘Colleen?’ he said, daring to use her first name.
‘Excuse me,’ said Colleen at once, recovering her composure.
Every Friday, regular as clockwork … You could set your watch by it, month after month, every week, the English growing more confident – even the accent coming in, the doctor she’d placed miles and miles away, up on that tiny island, asked if she had any news. She didn’t get involved, ever, with her clients.
But he had always been so polite. Never ranted or raged like some family members (and indeed, of course, who could blame them?). Never accused her of being unfeeling or being responsible for the government’s policies. Never beseeched or begged. Simply asked politely, his gentle voice calm, with only the slightest quiver betraying the desperate angst behind the question. And every week she reassured him that if they had any news, they would contact him immediately, of course, and he would apologise and say that he knew that, of course, but just in case, and she would politely shut him down. But she didn’t mind him calling – she never did.
She took a peek at the email again, but she knew the boys’ names off by heart. One of them, she noticed, had just had a birthday.
Colleen made it a rule never to look into circumstances – it was prurient, and not her job.
Today she found herself making an exception. Found in a military hospital. Sheltered in a school by what looked like a clutch of rebels and some leftover nuns, of all things. No mother, but the brothers together. Alive.
Colleen McNulty, who never displayed emotion over the exceptionally hard task she did day in, day out – well … She swallowed hard.
She wanted to enjoy this call – to savour it. She really, truly did. She glanced over at Ken and did a most uncharacteristic thing.
‘I would like to make a private phone call,’ she announced pointedly. ‘Would you mind?’ And she indicated the door.
Ken was delighted to go down to the little kitchen area and announce to all and sundry that the buttoned-up and silent Mrs McNulty was almost certainly in the throes of some tumultuous affair, probably with Lawrence the stock boy.
Chapter Twelve
The woman in the surgery was crying. Saif handed over the box of tissues he kept for when this happened, which was regularly, although not normally for this reason.
‘I was just so sure,’ she was saying. It was Mrs Baillie, who had four enormous dogs currently all baying their heads off outside the surgery. Mrs Baillie herself was a tiny woman. If he had had to put money on why Mrs Baillie would have to visit a doctor, he would have suggested that one of the dogs had fallen on her. He hoped she remembered to feed them on time.
‘I was just so sure it was a tumour,’ she said again.
Saif nodded. ‘That is why we tell you not to look up things on the internet,’ he said.
She sobbed again, repeating her grateful thanks. ‘I can’t believe what you’ve done for me,’ she said again. ‘I just can’t believe it.’
‘It was my pleasure,’ said Saif, standing up. Lancing boils wasn’t his favourite part of the job, but this level of gratitude was both unusual and pleasant.
‘I’ll make sure to drop you in a wee cake!’ Mrs Baillie smiled up at him through her tears as she got up to go. Saif privately wondered how much dog hair would get into a cake mix in Mrs Baillie’s house but smiled politely and stood up as she went to exit. His phone rang, and he frowned. He had at least one more patient before lunch, and he wanted to check back on little Seerie Campbell’s whooping cough. He pressed the intercom.
‘Jeannie, I’m not done,’ he said to his receptionist.
‘I know,’ she said apologetically. ‘Sorry. It’s the Home Office.’
Saif sat back down. They rang from time to time to check on his paperwork. It was routine, nothing to get excited about. Although he couldn’t help it; he always, always did.
The voice was calm on the phone. ‘Dr Hassan?’
He recognised the voice; it wasn’t his London caseworker.
It was Mrs McNulty at the Complex Casework Directorate.
He found his eyes straying to the blood pressure sleeve on his desk. He wouldn’t, he found himself thinking ridiculously, want to try that at the moment. ‘Hel- … hello,’ he stuttered.
‘This is Mrs McNulty.’
‘I know who you are.’
His heart was racing, incredulous.
‘I believe I have some good news for you.’
Saif’s breath caught in his throat.
‘We have managed to locate two children we believe may be your sons.’
There was a long pause. Saif could hear his own heartbeat. He felt slightly disconnected, slightly out of body; as if this were happening to someone else.
‘Ibrahim?’ he said, realising that he had not said the name out loud in so long. Whenever he had spoken to her, he had always said ‘my family’.
‘Ibrahim Saif Hassan, date of birth twenty-fifth of July 2007?’ said Mrs McNulty.
‘Yes!’ Saif found himself shouting. ‘YES!’
Outside, Jeannie glanced up from her notes, but the remaining patient hadn’t turned up, so she carried on tidying up morning surgery.
‘Ash Mohammed Hassan, date of birth twenty-ninth of March 2012?’
Saif found himself simply saying thank you over and over again. Oddly, he sounded not entirely unlike Mrs Baillie. But he was babbling, and he realised he had to say something.
Mrs McNulty smiled to herself and let it play out.
‘I’m going to email you through all the details, Dr Hassan. The nearest centre is in Glasgow. They’ll be taken there … there are various protocols …’
Saif couldn’t hear any of this.
‘And …’ he said when he’d managed to wrest back control of his breathing. ‘And of my wife?’
‘There is no news,’ said Colleen. ‘Yet.’
‘Yet,’ said Saif. ‘Yes, of course. Yet.’