The Hornbeam Tree Read online

  ‘Hello, you daft old thing,’ Katie smiled, scooping her up for a spot of fussing. ‘Did you miss me? Eh? Is that what all this is about?’

  Trotty’s answer was to lick with more feeling, before scurrying off to find her ball.

  Katie watered the flowers, threw the ball and felt the sun beating down on her head. How long before Molly was due to come home? Another hour? Maybe two or three if she decided to go to her friend’s. Molly didn’t always communicate her plans these days, she was either too busy to remember, or too angry to share. It wasn’t always like that though, because there were still plenty of days when Katie was the best mum in all the world, as opposed to she-who-must-be-disobeyed-and-never-seen-out-with.

  The kitchen was cool and shady, thanks to the thick stone walls. It was surprisingly large for a small cottage, with two overhead beams, a big china sink, terracotta floor and a staircase in one corner that led up to the three bedrooms above. The pantry was beneath the stairs, the door to the sitting room was next to it, and a deep sill window looked out over the pond, lane and cowfield. At the centre was a table with four chairs, which was where, once she’d made a cup of tea, she was going to sit down to write to Michelle.

  As she put the kettle on she wondered what she was going to say. It was a letter she’d tried not to think about over the past few months, but it was here now, needing to be written. Considering the rift that had grown up between them, the petty jealousies, which in truth were mainly hers, and the pride that made it hard for her to ask for anything, particularly from her beautiful and gifted younger sister, nothing about this letter would be easy.

  ‘Dear Michelle, God and I are having a difference of opinion over my lifespan and currently he’s winning, so please can you come back to England to take care of Molly?’

  She guessed she’d have to be a little more tactful, and detailed, than that. After all, it could prove quite a blow to Michelle to learn that her only sibling wasn’t going to be around for much longer. She liked to think Michelle would care, though she wouldn’t blame her if she didn’t. She’d explain that the hysterectomy, chemotherapy and radiotherapy hadn’t zapped all those dreaded diseased cells sufficiently to prevent more popping up in the liver, which had also had a good blast, but somehow the message wasn’t getting through. They were marvellously comfortable where they were, thank you very much, and no way was anyone or anything going to budge them. Which all added up to Dr Simon being very, very sorry but there was no more they could do.

  ‘Dear Michelle, I’m sorry I haven’t been in touch for a while, but I hope you’re well. Your last letter was from Pakistan, so I’m presuming that’s where you still are, as you normally let us know when you move on. I hope your work in the Afghan refugee camps isn’t too harrowing, though I’m sure it must be. You’re very brave, the way you take on other people’s troubles and try to help them, so I wonder if you could take mine on now. I wish I could say it will only be until I detach from this mortal coil, which shouldn’t be too long, though they won’t give me an exact time, but I’m afraid Molly is going to be in need of someone to take care of her after, and as you’re her only relative …’

  She wouldn’t write that either, but she imagined it would be something along those lines, polite, to the point, and careful not to revisit any past resentments or fall into any kind of emotional blackmail. She wondered where Michelle was right now, this minute, and what she was doing. She’d have no idea that her world was about to be rocked too, and from a quarter she probably least expected. Was she going to mind? That was a patently stupid question, because of course she’d mind. Michelle was extremely dedicated to her way of life.

  There was a time, she was thinking, when Michelle would have done almost anything for them to be as close as when they were growing up, but though Katie had loved Michelle, as they’d become adults and begun finding their own ways in the world, Katie, to her shame, had rarely dealt well with how charmed Michelle’s life had seemed in comparison to hers. Not that she, Katie, hadn’t done well, because she had, she’d just never quite been able to overcome a feeling of resentment towards Michelle that was, in truth, much more rooted in admiration than in envy. She’d never let Michelle know that, though – she didn’t even admit it to herself if she could help it. Better not to think about Michelle, and just get on with her own life.

  She was still sitting at the table, tea gone cold and surrounded by pages of scrunched-up paper, when she heard Molly’s voice outside, calling to Trotty. Quickly she scooped everything into a drawer and went to busy herself with the few dishes in the sink. Everything must seem normal. Life was tootling along happily, nothing was about to change – except the major treatments had stopped, making a difference to where Molly went after school, because now she could come home instead of going to Judy’s or wherever else she’d been taking herself off to lately.

  ‘I’ve got about a hundred hours of bloody homework,’ Molly grumbled as she bumped in through the door with Trotty in one arm and her school bag over the other. ‘And if you start getting on at me about anything now I’m going to go ballistic, because I’ve had like a really bad day and I hate that bloody school. It stinks. Everyone in it’s a moron and no way am I staying on to do sixth form there. What have we got to eat?’

  ‘Yes, I’m fine thank you, darling,’ Katie replied cheerily. ‘How nice of you to ask. Would you like a sandwich? I can stuff it with your attitude and see how you’d like to swallow it.’ It wasn’t what she wanted to say, but it was how they spoke to each other these days, and right now she wanted everything to stay the same.

  Molly’s green eyes flashed with hostility. ‘You are just like, sooo not funny,’ she told her.

  Katie grinned. She knew there was a chance Molly might too, because her mood could swing from stroppy to sunny in the blink of an eye. Alas, it seemed today the pendulum was stuck, because she fired off one of her filthier looks, put down Trotty and tugged open the fridge door.

  Katie watched her, feeling too many emotions to deal with at once, so she opted for love, then immediately dropped it, because it came all cluttered up with a need to embrace and gush. Molly would think she’d lost the plot completely if she suddenly clasped her to her bosom now and began spouting Mummy-talk as though Molly were four rather than fourteen. So she settled for a more normal maternal scrutiny of Molly’s appearance, which was far too grown-up for Katie’s liking, with all her make-up and unfastened buttons. It would be hard to reveal much more of the ample young breasts that were being hoisted together by a couple of sturdy underwires without popping them out altogether, she reflected. The skirt was shockingly short too, and Katie would lay money she only had a thong underneath. Katie had to admit, though, had she ever been blessed with buttocks and legs like Molly’s her mother would never have been able to get her hemlines down either. They were Michelle’s buttocks and legs. She had Michelle’s eyes too, moss green, slanted at the corners and utterly bewitching. Katie hoped Molly was nowhere near realizing yet how devastating they were. The rest of her was much more like Katie, or how Katie used to be, a full, peachy mouth, creamy skin with permanently reddened cheeks, delicately carved jawline and spiky raven hair. Actually, the hair colour was her father’s, but that was about all she’d inherited from him, though she’d probably be able to tot up a few hefty debts and several embarrassments when he finally decided to depart this particular dimension.

  ‘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 lo
ok 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.