For most of the short walk home it’s like old times and Layla and Jamal argue about whose plan has worked best.
“Lette Le-Hyphen found out I was on Facebook.”
“Yes, but through my message to Gigi.”
Inside her building, Layla reaches for the stairwell light. The moment it’s illuminated, they hear a sound further up the stairs. Instinct has him taking her hand.
“Stay here,” he whispers.
“Who’s there?” Layla calls out.
A young blonde looks down at them from the stair rail. Layla leads him up to her flat, where the woman, dressed in a suit, stands holding a plastic Marks & Spencer bag. Layla lets go of his hand.
“Some of the things you left behind,” the woman says, holding out the bag. “Toiletries and stuff from the ladies’ room.”
When Layla takes the bag she seems surprised by the weight of it. The two exchange a look Jamal can’t read before the woman heads down the stairs.
“You shouldn’t have lasted this long typing,” Layla calls out after her. “You’re better than being the next Vera. That’s what I meant back then. So next time someone gives you advice, listen to them.”
There’s no response and Layla clutches the bag to her.
“What was all that about?” he asks, his heart sinking because he understands now. The reason she was in her room crying. The carton on her bed.
She doesn’t respond. Jamal takes the keys from her and wordlessly opens the door.
Inside he sits at the piano, tinkering. Layla disappears into her bedroom and when she returns she seems composed. She comes to sit on the bench beside him and tries to remember the beginning of “Für Elise.” He takes her hand and guides her through it. When they were younger he’d be rough, jabbing her fingers against the keys. Tonight he lets his linger over hers. He plays the opening strands of Clapton’s “Layla.” He used to play it to her back when life made sense. Back when Layla Bayat could have had him on his knees begging for the rest of his life.
“Any requests?” he asks.
She looks at him and then suddenly laughs. “No way. Are you the piano man at that bar?”
Playing the piano and playing football. They were the two things that held his life together in Calais.
“Just on weekends. All my mother’s nagging paid off in a strange way.”
“Whereas my mother brings up the waste of money every time we have a family get-together.”
“Your mother was too tough on you,” he says quietly. “I could easily hate her for that, but then she went and nursed my mother while she died, didn’t she?” He concentrates on the keys because he can’t bear thinking of Aziza Sarraf dying without her family.
“They were a strange pair, our mothers,” she murmurs.
And then their eyes lock and he realizes they’ve both avoided that for the past twenty-four hours, with one of them looking away just in time. But not now.
She reaches across and touches the scar above his eye, a souvenir from Belmarsh. And the rest is inevitable. Has been from the moment he stood outside her door waiting for her to come home. One minute they’re at the piano, the next they’re in the bedroom, hardly making it to the bed. And all through the night a harmony of cries and skin against skin cutting through the stillness. Beyond exhaustion but they can’t stop. She’s crying real tears. He’s crying himself. Because what Ortley has given them is a tease. A glimpse of what could have been. In Calais it’s easier to pretend he isn’t sick at heart for home. For Layla. She doesn’t just remind him of who he was back then, but of who he wanted to be. Thought he would be. If he was a selfish man he’d beg her to cross the Channel with him, but he knows it would be a fake life for her. She’s been second-best all her life, had told him that often enough. He can’t stomach being responsible for her having a second-best future.
35
The shakes of the previous day had made way for a full-blown migraine. It pounded Bish’s brain every step he took. He knew he wouldn’t make it to the end of the day without succumbing to a drink, and between now and that moment there was Holloway.
First the brisk, forced cheerfulness at the visitors’ center. Then the ever-hostile Gray and his colleagues. And then, for the prize, Noor LeBrac, who looked far from impressed when she was finally delivered to the room and buzzed in.
“You gave my brother a two-day visa but I can’t see him again?” she said before she had even sat down.
Bish wanted to believe that antagonism would give way to thanks after Jamal Sarraf’s visit. Not when it came to this woman.
“The reason he’s in London is to find Violette and Eddie,” he said. “Not to have a daily reunion with you.”
“Yet you’re the only adult who’s spoken to her for two weeks. The fool who found out nothing.”