Coming Home. Annabel Kantaria

the toilets, I’d hesitated then ducked in at the last minute. Although there wasn’t a lot of point in me trying to comb my wild hair—any contact between it and a brush generally earned me the nickname ‘Basil Brush’—I’d dampened my fingers and smoothed down the sides as best I could before heading to the hall. Mum would have never forgiven me for having messy hair in the school photo.

      The queue wound away from the main stage, the children waiting patiently on the floor in twos and threes. But I was alone. Something wasn’t right.

      Mrs Hopkins, the headmistress, had bustled towards me, her face creased with concern. ‘Evie, dear,’ she’d said, putting her hand on my arm. ‘Your class photo’s not till this afternoon.’ I stopped as it dawned on me what I’d done. ‘Let me take you back to your classroom,’ she’d said, gently taking my hand.

      Three months after my brother died, I’d turned up for the sibling photos. A week later, I’d been referred to Miss Dawson.

       ‘There was only that one time at school,’ I told Miss Dawson. ‘And sometimes first thing in the morning when I wake up I forget for a minute and then it all comes back. That’s when I miss him the most.’

       CHAPTER 16

      Upstairs in my room, I sat at the desk at which I’d revised for my GSCEs and A levels and opened my old address book—somehow, in the rush to pack, I’d remembered to bring it with me. Mum had got me thinking about my old school friends and I wondered who, aside from Luca, was still around. My best friend from school certainly wasn’t—she’d met an Australian guy at university, married him and disappeared off to Australia as soon as she’d graduated. I’d been out to visit her once and she’d stopped off in Dubai for a couple of days, too—it was the type of friendship we could just pick up, no matter how many years went by.

      My favourite person in the world lived in Warwick. Clem was the reason I’d moved to Dubai in the first place. Since we’d met on the Student Union dance floor doing our Gloria Gaynors to ‘I Will Survive’ at the Monday night disco, we’d been inseparable throughout university.

      ‘Promise me we won’t get sucked into corporate life,’ she’d said as we’d studied in her room for our third-year finals, the threat of real life hanging over us like a guillotine. ‘Let’s travel together, see the world.’

      ‘How?’ I’d asked. ‘We don’t have enough money for the launderette. How are we going to fly around the world?’

      ‘Easy. We get jobs that pay us to travel: we’ll be cabin crew or ski chalet girls. We’ll get jobs in a bar in Mykonos and party like Tom Cruise in Cocktail.’

      Huddled in duvets in digs lashed by the relentless rain of the Midlands, she’d dreamed up our plans for a life in the sun; I’d dreamed of a life away from the ruins of my family.

      But things hadn’t worked out quite as planned. One night, when we’d both been unemployed for several months, we were sitting in a London wine bar making our Happy Hour drinks last as long as we could when Clem had dropped the bombshell.

      ‘So,’ she’d said, and I’d known at once it was bad news. Her energy was off-kilter and she’d been preoccupied all night. ‘There’s something I have to tell you.’

      I’d stared at the nicks in the wooden table, wishing I could stop time right there, for I guessed what was coming. I arranged my face, made it smiley, before I looked up at her.

      ‘I’ve got a job in Dubai,’ she’d said. She was trying to break it to me gently but the luminosity of her face gave her away; she’d tried not to smile but I could tell she was fizzing with excitement. ‘I’m going to be a PR executive.’

      I’d opened my mouth, but words wouldn’t form.

      ‘Evie, I have to go. It ticks all the boxes. Sun, sand, a good salary, an accommodation allowance—it’s even tax-free.’

      I’d bobbed my head like a nodding dog. Of course she had to go. At last the words came out right, but the light had gone out of me. I’d wanted more than anything to be going with her. She’d booked her one-way ticket, and I’d gone reluctantly back to job-hunting in London.

      But, despite being unemployed, I hadn’t had time to feel lonely. While I’d been away studying, Mum had retreated from everyday life until she’d virtually become a recluse. She lived in a world she perceived to be fraught with danger. Once I was back from university, and with Dad away so much for work, I took the full brunt of this paranoia. I could understand Mum’s fear of me crossing the road; I could understand why she didn’t want me to own a bike. But everything else?

      And now the fear was no longer just for me: it was for herself, too. Mum had let friendships lapse and she rarely went out—when she did, it was a small trip to the closest supermarket to buy groceries. Heaven help if anyone told her about Ocado. She was becoming a hermit and I worried about her. I knew that if I lived nearby it was a small jump till she became totally dependent on me. But we were both too young for that. Instead, I came up with a two-pronged plan of attack.

      Part one: I was going to persuade Mum to take a job—it wouldn’t only get her out of the house and force her to interact with people, but it would, I hoped, help her get her confidence back. After she was established in a job I hoped she’d enjoy, I’d move on to part two: I was going to follow Clem to Dubai and force Mum to stand on her own two feet. This latter part of the plan I had no problem with—if necessary I’d scrape together enough money for a ticket, fly out on a tourist visa and look for a job while I was out there. Clem’s Facebook updates showed me tantalising slices of life in Dubai and I yearned to be in the sunshine with her.

      The former part of the plan, though, was more tricky. Aside from a secretarial job at the university where she’d met Dad, Mum had never really had a career. Working wasn’t in her mindset and Dad earned enough that there wasn’t really any financial pressure to motivate her.

      I’d trawled through the local job ads, looked at cards stuck in newsagent windows and even went to the Job Centre once, but nothing I suggested took Mum’s fancy, even the job as assistant in the flower shop, which I’d thought would really appeal to her.

      ‘Oh, good God, no,’ she’d said, as if I’d suggested she retrain as an astronaut. ‘Have you any idea how cold it gets in that shop in winter? With those stone floors and all that water about? Oh no, darling, that’s not for me.’

      Eventually, though, I’d secured her an interview at Woodside Hospital, to work as an admin assistant. Mum hadn’t been able to come up with an excuse not to go and that, as they say, was that. The job—keeping charge of a busy consultant—had, ultimately, been the making of her and, a couple of months later, I was on the plane to Dubai. Clem and I had proceeded to paint Dubai not just red but scarlet, indigo, magenta and fuschia.

      For two single girls living together in a city that never sleeps, the phrase ‘burn the candle at both ends’ could never have been more appropriate. But then, at a ‘fondue and a bottle of white’ night, we’d got chatting to Patrick and James, a couple of well-spoken guys who’d seemed a snip above the usual Dubai blokes.

      We’d double-dated them for a while, then flat-swapped—me moving into James’s palatial villa, and Patrick moving in with Clem. Finally, a year later and thinking ourselves ever so very clever, we’d all got engaged and thrown a huge party in the lush gardens of The One&Only Royal Mirage Hotel.

      But that’s where the similarities ended. While Clem and Patrick had got married, moved back to Warwick and had twins, James and I had staggered towards our bitter break-up—infidelity’s not a trait I look for in a husband. Clem was now the mistress of a quaint tea shop selling coffee, tea and cake to tourists up to see Warwick Castle while Patrick ran a successful pub. I knew Clem would be busy with the twins, but I sent her an SMS anyway.

      That done, I logged onto Facebook