Strangers. Danuta Reah

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СКАЧАТЬ feel the first touch of autumn. Summer was coming to an end. She looked across the water to the iron stanchions of the bridge. She could remember that grey day when they’d first walked along the river together.

      After a moment, he spoke. ‘I got a letter this morning. From McMaster…’

      The Canadian university where he hoped to join a research team. This was it. Their timeless summer was over. She opened her eyes wide and stared across the river. She couldn’t trust her voice. It was a moment before she could take in what he was saying.

      ‘…wanted someone with more experience in the field.’ He was watching the river as he spoke. ‘If this had happened three months ago, I’d have been gutted. Now–it’s almost a relief.’ He looked at her. ‘I just need to decide what to do next.’

      ‘You aren’t leaving…’ Roisin blinked fast to clear her vision that had blurred and distorted and felt the tears spill out and run down her face.

      ‘I’ll go, if you feel that badly about it,’ he said.

      She tried to laugh, and wiped her face with the back of her hand. ‘I’m sorry. I just…I’m sorry you didn’t get it.’

      ‘Don’t be. I’m not. I’ve had some more news. They want me to go back to the Gulf. They’ve been putting the pressure on for weeks and I’ve been giving it a lot of thought. The offer’s too good to turn down. Roisin, I’ll go, but only if you’ll come with me.’

      ‘Come with you?’

      ‘To Riyadh. I’ve been looking into it. You could work–they need qualified women to teach English at the university. They’ve been short staffed for months. With all the troubles, they’ve been losing more people than they can recruit. I’m in a strong position. I can dictate some terms. Oh, hell. We can sort this out later. Roisin, I love you. Will you marry me?’

      It was as simple as that. He produced a bottle of champagne from his bag and they sat on the parapet watching the river flow by, drinking champagne out of the bottle–he’d forgotten to bring glasses–planning their lives together.

      Not everyone was as pleased with the news as Joe and Roisin were. Her friends were cautious in their response. They barely knew Joe, and the word ‘rebound’, unspoken, hung over the congratulations.

      Her mother was more frank. ‘Saudi Arabia? Rosie–that’s so far away.’

      The anxiety in her voice pricked Roisin’s conscience. Maggie Gardner had greeted her plans to go to Warsaw with a resigned acceptance, but Saudi was an alien environment in her mother’s eyes, a veiled and dangerous place where Westerners could be–were–shot on the streets. ‘It’s only for a year,’ Roisin said.

      ‘And married. Rosie, you hardly know him.’

      ‘I’ve known him for three months.’ It didn’t sound long–it felt like longer. ‘I knew Michel for two years and it turned out I didn’t know him at all.’

      She heard her mother sigh. ‘I suppose you know what you’re doing,’ she said, in a tone that suggested she thought the opposite.

      Old George was the worst. ‘Him?’ Joe was still ‘the man who kicked Shadow’. George had never warmed to him. When she told him she was leaving, moving to the other side of the world, he said, ‘What you want to go out there for?’ Then he turned away so that she wouldn’t see his face, and shuffled back into his flat, Shadow looking back at her as the front door closed.

      The day before the wedding, while Joe was at work, she took out her photograph album, her collection of pictures that marked, for her, the major events of her life. There was a dim, unfocused picture of two strangers holding a toddler–her birth parents, unknown to her and long gone. There was her mother and father holding her up to the camera on the day the adoption became official. There were photographs of schoolfriends, youthful sporting triumphs, photos that marked private moments that meant something only to her. ‘Why have you got a photo of that dreadful boy?’ her mother had asked once when they looked at the album together. Because he was the first man I ever had sex with was what Roisin hadn’t said.

      And there were photos of her and Amy, one taken in the red-eye darkness of a rave, both of them high as kites on E’s or some similar chemical, and another, more sober, of the two of them sitting on the steps outside college, smoking.

      Amy. Her best friend through a large part of her adolescence. They had had an instant affinity that may have come from the fact that they both had disjunctures in their past. Amy’s parents had died when she was thirteen, and she had grown up in care. Like Roisin, she had lost a sister in the events that had taken away their families, and they had found something in each other that came close to filling that–in Roisin’s case–almost subliminal gap.

      And then Amy had gone, years ago now. Roisin sighed and closed the book.

      Snapshots.

      A wedding: a bright gold autumn morning, Joe, looking at her in the pale green dress she had bought for the day, smiling that private smile he gave her when they were together in a crowd.

      Her mother, half proud, half anxious as she watched the daughter she had had to fight so hard for say the words that were going to take her away: I do solemnly declare…

      Her friends, laughing and talking as they came out of the register office, falling silent before they shook hands with Joe and congratulated him.

      And the moment when they threw petals, so that she and Joe were caught in a shower of brilliant colours.

      And she remembered Joe, his face bright with laughter as he scooped her mother off the ground and kissed her. ‘Hi, Mum,’ he said. Her mother laughed with genuine delight, and the anxiety faded from her face for a moment.

      Then, two days later, they flew to Riyadh.

PART TWO

5

       Riyadh, October 2004

      Embassy of the United States of America

      Riyadh, Saudi Arabia WARDEN MESSAGE October 2004

      The recent terrorist attacks on Westerners appear to have involved extensive planning and preparation and were likely preceded by pre-attack surveillance. Be aware of your surroundings. Take note of vehicles and individuals that do not appear to belong to the area and report them immediately…

      The ad-Dirah market was in the heart of the old city, a covered souk with labyrinthine walkways, cool and shadowed after the relentless sun. The air smelled of sandalwood and spices and the stalls were piled high with goods that ranged from the commonplace to the exotic: translucent chunks of frankincense and reddish brown myrrh, brass coffee pots as tall as a child or small enough to fit in the palm of the hand, camel-hair shawls and scarves. Old men reclined on Persian carpets, smoking hookahs and drinking tea, enticing their customers in with gentle persuasion.

      Roisin, dizzy with jet lag, wondered if she was dreaming a Hollywood incarnation of an Arabian street market. She felt as if she had closed her eyes in London on a grey October morning, and opened them again to the opulence and glitter of the souk.

      She СКАЧАТЬ