And they both pretended that it was simply a matter of time.
‘Oh my goodness,’ said Saif suddenly, astounded anew. ‘The boys! The boys are here! My boys! My boys! My boys …’
‘I am,’ said the unemotional Mrs McNulty, ‘very, very pleased for you, Dr Hassan.’
And she made herself put the phone down on his overenthusiastic thanks, as there was a team briefing at 11 a.m. and she had to redo her make-up because she was chairing the estates sub-committee.
‘Good luck to you,’ she said quietly.
Five hundred miles north-north-east, a tall, slender man with a neatly trimmed beard jumped up and punched the air, shouting so loud a flock of magpies took off into the nearby field, up across the scarecrows and into the clouded sky.
Chapter Thirteen
Lorna continued on down the harbour, enjoying a bit of sun on her lunch break even as work was piling up back at school, relishing just a tiny break from the sticky clatter of tiny hands, however fond of them she was.
She headed back to the farmhouse to pick up some of the leftover marking she’d forgotten. Unusually, someone was waiting for her there; she heard the shout before she made it up the track.
‘LOREN-AH!’
She blinked. She knew immediately it was of course Saif.
‘Lorenah …!’ Saif stopped short when he realised she was right there. He hadn’t even known what he was doing. Jeannie was away on her lunch break; he had had to get out, do something before he burst.
The email had come through but the details had swum in front of his eyes. Lorna was the obvious solution. He’d run fleetly through the town to worried looks from passers-by who assumed there was a medical emergency in progress, but he noticed none of it.
The chickens pecked noisily around his feet as he stood there, panting. Lorna lifted her eyebrows. In his agitation, his tie was loose around his neck, his top buttons undone. She looked away quickly from the smooth skin beneath it. He was out of breath, and wild around the eyes, and in his hand he was waving something frantically.
‘Where were you?’
‘At school, of course! What is it? What’s the matter? It’s just a whale!’
Saif shook his head. ‘Read this! Read this! Um … Please. Please to read it. Thank you.’
He proffered it. Lorna squinted at him. ‘You can read English perfectly,’ she said reprovingly.
‘I need … I need to be sure,’ panted Saif.
Only the noise of the birds in the trees and the chickens crooning and looking for their breakfast broke the surrounding silence. Lorna looked down.
It was an official email. From the Home Office. Lorna checked the stub of the sender address first. There were so many scams around these days; she got emails from fake iTunes accounts practically every day. But it was legit.
Then she read down slowly, aware of Saif’s agonised trembling a metre away from her. Then, to check, she read it again.
‘Do you need to sit down?’ Lorna said, keeping her voice very calm in order to be understood by someone in a highly strung emotional state, something she was well trained in.
Saif nodded, feeling as if the blood were rushing to his head, as if he were somehow outside his body just for a second. He staggered over to the wooden bench outside the farmyard door. Lorna went straight inside the house and brought out two glasses of water. Saif hadn’t moved. She handed him the water and he took it without thanking her, just staring straight ahead.
‘Yes,’ said Lorna simply and softly into the clear air. Saif’s gaze was still rigid. ‘Yes,’ she said again. She grew worried about him; his face was completely frozen. Then she realised, a millisecond too late, that he was trying with every fibre of his being not to cry. ‘Your boys are here. They’re coming home. Um … Here … They’re coming here.’
She jumped up.
‘I’ll go and make some tea,’ she said, and vanished back into the house.
Then she stood over the kitchen sink and, very quietly, sobbed her heart out.
Chapter Fourteen
After a little while, Lorna emerged from the farmhouse, able to speak again, carrying two fresh cups of tea. She’d boiled the kettle three times over to give them both time to gather themselves.
The sun had burned off nearly all the fog now and it had a fair chance of being a lovely afternoon – for the next half-hour at least, which was as far ahead as anyone could forecast on Mure.
‘Ibrahim,’ said Saif. ‘Ash.’
‘Your boys,’ said Lorna, warmth in her voice.
He nodded. Then looked down at his hands. ‘Amena …’
Amena, Lorna knew, was his wife. There was no mention of her in the letter. ‘No news. That doesn’t mean … it doesn’t mean there isn’t hope,’ said Lorna softly.
Saif shook his head. ‘She would never have left the boys,’ he said fiercely. ‘Never.’
‘Maybe she had no choice. Maybe they were … taken,’ said Lorna.
It was bad enough tormenting herself with what Saif had endured to reach safety. What had happened to those he had left behind was even worse; what had happened to two children, no older than her own pupils, beyond imagination.
Saif glanced down. ‘It doesn’t say anything.’
‘Well, they’ll need to check … There’s an official process. Look, you have to go to Glasgow for a blood test,’ she pointed out.
‘I don’t need a blood test to know my sons,’ growled Saif.
‘I know,’ said Lorna. ‘But probably best to go along with it, don’t you think?’
‘Authorities,’ sighed Saif. He took the paper back from her, his hands still trembling, then folded it very carefully and precisely, once, twice, and tucked it into an old battered wallet he carried in his back pocket. Lorna privately predicted, correctly, that he would carry it there for the rest of his life.
Flora was restocking the cheese counter with a rather sensational marbled cheese Fintan had concocted when a sixth sense caused her to look up. Lorna and Saif were approaching. They both looked … She couldn’t tell. She thought, not for the first time, how natural they looked together, like they were meant to be seen side by side. They just fitted somehow. Flora reminded herself that Saif was married and that it was none of her business anyway, and tried to look busy.
Just outside the shop, Saif stopped.
‘What?’ said Lorna.
Saif shook his head. ‘I don’t …’ He looked at Lorna. ‘Please, don’t tell … Don’t tell anyone.’
‘I think they’re going to find out when two children arrive who look exactly like you,’ pointed out Lorna.
‘I … I realise that.’
Saif looked down. For the first time since he’d arrived, nine months before, he’d begun to feel a part of the community; no one, any longer, stared at him when he shopped in the village, or took much notice of him down on the beach in all weathers. No longer did the old ladies insist on waiting an extra hour to see the ‘other doctor’ rather than deal with someone foreign with an accent. Now he was just Dr Saif (most people had simply given up the Hassan), as much a part of Mure as anyone else.
The idea of voluntarily going back to the whispers behind hands, the stares in the bakery, the speculation, because of his boys … It would come, of course. But until then, perhaps he could enjoy being normal, just for a little longer.
Also, he did not want to share it. It was treasure: impossible, dusted gold that he wanted to clasp, to hold inside, to deal with the immeasurable astonishment of how this might come to be. It was close to overwhelming.
Lorna blinked. ‘Okay.’
‘Can you keep it to yourself?’
‘Of course.’
And she truly meant it when she said it, and Flora watched as they swerved and, after all, didn’t come in. She thought it was peculiar but, caught in dreams of New York, promptly forgot all about it until the day she was due to leave.
Chapter Fifteen