The Endless Beach Read online

  * * *

  Meanwhile, five hundred miles south, in Liverpool, Colleen McNulty looked sadly at her packed lunch and wondered if there was any way to find out what was going on today. But she only sent out the letters, after all. She was only a clerk. As soon as Ken was out of the room, disappearing for an overlong toilet break as he did every day at around 10 A.M. (it was, she sometimes mused, all the unpleasant bits of marriage without any of the nice parts), she reached down into her bag and double-checked the two little parcels—a stuffed bear and a fluffy dog she’d been unable to resist. She knew the boys were older, possibly too old for stuffed toys, but she couldn’t think of anything else children might like. They were simply addressed to the doctor’s office in Mure—no signature, just a little note saying, “From a well-wisher.” She’d be in big trouble in the office if she was suspected of interacting with any of the unit’s clientele in any way. She would slip out at lunchtime and go to the post office and hope that, in some tiny way, it might help, just a little.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  The interview room was exactly as Saif had predicted. Two women were there waiting for him.

  “Now,” said the obviously senior caseworker. She was slightly taller and thinner and better-dressed than other people, though not in a way you could necessarily put your finger on straightaway. She had high cheekbones and her hair was a short flat top, and Saif was impressed and a little intimidated all at once. “I’m Neda Okonjo. Would you like to speak in English or Arabic?”

  “English is fine,” said Saif. He had gotten so used to living his life in English, it felt like speaking Arabic again would be a challenge. Arabic was his old life; English was his new. Here, in this anonymous bunker somewhere on the outskirts of the huge gray city of Glasgow . . . Here they were about to collide. “Can I see them, please?”

  “I’m sorry,” said Neda. “You understand we have to . . .”

  She introduced the other woman, who was a doctor, and who took the swab. He obediently opened his mouth as she scraped around. He had sent a blood sample already; this was just to check that he was the same person the sample had come from.

  “You realize it’s just a formality.”

  “Of course. And then I can see them . . .”

  The two women exchanged a glance.

  “We need to fully debrief you.”

  “Of course . . . Are they . . . are they all right?”

  “Be right back,” said the doctor, and Saif and Neda sat in pained silence, Saif staring into space, Neda tapping on her phone. Presently the doctor returned, and nodded gently at Neda.

  “Good,” said Neda, leaning forward.

  “Can I see them?”

  Neda pushed the full notes across the table. Saif read them incredibly quickly, his heart racing. It was hard reading.

  “You should know. When we found them . . .”

  “My wife . . . ?”

  “I am so sorry. We simply don’t know.”

  “She would never have abandoned them.”

  “I realize that. The area they were found in . . . It was basically shredded. A bombsite. Anyone who could have fled had fled.”

  “She would never have left them!” He scanned all the papers again. She wasn’t mentioned at all.

  “Please, Dr. Hassan. Sir. Please keep calm. I’m not insinuating that for a second.” She frowned. “You didn’t have anyone you wanted to bring with you?”

  Saif shook his head, terrified suddenly that if he showed displeasure or anger she would somehow prevent him from reuniting with his boys. “I apologize.”

  Neda nodded and went on. “They were living with a group of other children . . . effectively feral . . . Some deserting soldiers helped them with food, found them things to eat, but there wasn’t much.”

  Saif shut his eyes.

  “Ash . . . Ash, we believe, broke his foot at some point and it wasn’t reset properly. We’ll be looking into doing the procedure here before you leave.”

  Tears immediately sprang to Saif’s eyes at the idea of his baby hurt, limping, getting around on his wounded leg with no mum and no dad.

  “I realize this is upsetting,” went on Neda. “And Ibrahim. We have reason to believe he spent a lot of time with the soldiers. There’s psychological help available—not as much as I’d like, I’m afraid. Austerity. But we will be here for you, as much as we can.”

  Saif nodded, but he wasn’t really listening. He needed to have his arms around them immediately. “Can I . . . can I see them now, please?” he asked as calmly as he could.

  Neda and the doctor looked at each other. They passed over several pieces of paper, all of which he signed.

  “Follow me,” said Neda.

  * * *

  The second room, down a long corridor, had windows in it, and, Saif noticed through the window in the door, toys of all kinds. His heart felt like it would stop. He wanted to go to the bathroom, was slightly afraid he was going to be sick. Kindly, the doctor put her hand on his arm.

  “It will be fine,” she said softly. “It might take a while, but it will be all right.”

  But Saif, blinded by the tears in his eyes, could hardly hear her as he blundered through the door, then stood there, trembling, blinking in the natural light, in the middle of the low-ceilinged room. Two thin boys, barely taller than the last time he had seen them nearly two years before, turned round, their huge eyes wide in pinched faces, both in terrible need of a haircut, and Ibrahim shouted loudly, and Ash whispered, tentatively and wonderingly . . .

  “Abba?”

  Chapter Thirty

  Saif held his breath. Ibrahim had, after the first time saying his father’s name, been silent. He had retreated to the corner table of toys, where he had been banging pegs into a wooden board with a toy hammer—a game far too tiny for a boy of ten, although he looked younger.

  Ash, however, who was six now, wouldn’t let his father go. He had shrieked and raced toward him and clambered onto his lap and refused to budge. The last time Saif had seen him, he had been a round-faced babyish angel of a boy, only just four, still with the folds of the baby he had been on his knees and elbows.

  Now he was so thin it was heartbreaking; his eyes were huge in his face, his cheekbones hollow, and his legs and arms like sticks. When Saif picked him up, he weighed about as much as the well-fed Mure four-year-olds he treated in his office. He frowned and looked at Neda, who glanced at her notes.

  “They’re both on high-calorie meal drinks as well as food,” she said. She read down farther and smiled. “Apparently neither of them like them.”

  Saif buried his head in Ash’s shoulder, so he couldn’t see him cry. “I’m so sorry,” he whispered in English so Ash wouldn’t understand him. The child replied, “Abba’s back!” in Arabic, as if he’d been away for a day.

  Ibrahim’s head shot up at his father speaking this strange language, and his brow furrowed in a way that reminded Saif painfully of his mother. He indicated for him to come closer, and said, “Come here, my darling boy,” in Arabic. But Ibrahim still regarded him warily.

  “Don’t worry,” said Neda quietly. “This is all totally normal.”

  “Stop talking the way they talk,” Ibrahim hissed quickly at Saif.

  “My darling,” said Saif. He walked over and knelt down beside his boy. He put his arm around him. Ibrahim flinched at his touch, and he backed away.

  “That is how we are going to speak from now on. It is not so difficult. You’re very clever. You learned some already at school, remember?”

  Ibrahim blinked. Of course, thought Saif. He hadn’t been in school for so long. He thought of the report again. Hiding out with resistance soldiers. What he had seen . . . He couldn’t bear it.

  “Have the people who speak English not been kind to you?” he asked. Ibrahim shrugged.

  “They brought you home to me,” said Saif.

  “This isn’t home.”

  “No,” said Saif. “But you’ll like where we’re going.�
��

  “Going home to Mama,” muttered Ash, his face still buried in his father’s neck, even though Saif’s beard tickled him. Saif closed his eyes.

  “I keep telling him,” said Ibrahim, his face still cross. “Mama is gone. Everyone is gone. Everything is gone.”

  He hit the block in the children’s game very hard with the hammer. Silence fell in the room.

  Neda stepped forward. “There are new homes,” she said. “You will have a new home now. Tell them what it’s like.”

  “Well,” started Saif. “It is very windy. It’s fresh and blowy and sometimes you get blown right across the street.”

  He could see Ash looking up at him, interested.

  “And it is very old, and there are lots of green hills and . . . boats . . . and sheep and . . . Oh, you will like it, I’m sure. Lots of dogs!”

  Both the boys stiffened. Saif immediately realized what a mistake he’d made. They knew about the border crossings, when the soldiers would appear, their snarling beasts sniffing vans and lorries, looking for stowaways: looking for problems. He realized suddenly how much he’d changed and even relaxed. The island felt so safe, so much a haven for him, that dogs no longer scared him, and he couldn’t even remember how this had come about. He thought of Lorna’s daft dog, Milou, who rushed up to him every morning when they were on the shore at the same time. He had definitely helped. Then he remembered that Lorna wasn’t his friend anymore and that God knew what was round the island by now. Then he thought, bitterly, none of this mattered. All that mattered now was in this room.

  * * *

  Mrs. Cook peered in to where Lorna was, once again, working late.

  “Don’t stay too late!” she said. Lorna looked up. She’d just received an official confirmation from the refugee resettlement council. It wasn’t a secret anymore: the boys were on the school roll. She showed it without comment to Mrs. Cook, who’d have Ibrahim in her class.

  Sadie Cook read it slowly, then took off her glasses. “You knew about this?”

  At least someone knew she could keep a secret, Lorna thought. She nodded.

  “Good God. I mean, this is going to be huge . . . Can they speak English?”

  “Those Galbraith children can’t speak English!” pointed out Lorna.

  “Good God, yes,” said Sadie. “They’d have to go some to be worse than that lot of ferals.”

  “Well,” said Lorna. “Quite.”

  Sadie looked at the paper. “And the mother?”

  Lorna shook her head. “No news.”

  “Christ. It’s awful. Just awful.” Even so, a slightly mischievous twitch played around her mouth. “Oh my goodness, that poor man isn’t going to know what hit him.”

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Over the next several days in Glasgow, there were numerous psychological evaluations, the beginnings of some English lessons, and many, many forms to fill in and go over.

  Neda was patient and useful throughout, and the doctor, whose name Saif never learned, was on hand to make sure the boys had their vaccinations and to build up red books for them—the British medical history they would need throughout their lives—as well as testing them for everything possible. They were malnourished, obviously: small for their age and underweight. They had internal parasites from eating God knows what, and lice, and Ash had his foot reset under a local anesthetic. While he clung to his father the entire time, he was so heartbreakingly quiet and brave Saif couldn’t bear to think of what else he’d had to endure.

  But apart from that, they were fine; there was no lasting damage, on the surface at least. Saif’s graver nightmares, of lost limbs and head injuries, were not coming true.

  Psychologically, things were quite different. Ash had not left Saif alone. Neda had counseled that it might not be a good idea to let him sleep in the same bed, but he had howled so piteously—and in the hotel room too—that Saif had given in, and the hot restless figure had tossed and turned next to him all night. It was like carrying about a small koala bear. Ibrahim, on the other hand, was distant and cold; not overtly aggressive, but sullen and wary. He point-blank refused to look at the English storybooks or repeat basic words. He would not touch his father, and he endured the vaccinations and endless blood tests with a stoic look on his face and a refusal to be comforted. Ash started to go the other way. It was as if he’d learned, belatedly, that if he cried he’d be rewarded with some attention or a sweet, which Saif was also very unsure about. But it must have been so long since he’d had any attention at all.

  At the end of the first week, Neda somehow sourced a DVD of Freej, let one of the other charity workers babysit, and took Saif out for coffee in a little Lebanese restaurant she knew in Glasgow.

  “How are you doing?” she asked.

  Saif shook his head and answered honestly. “I haven’t slept. I’m . . . It’s . . . I mean . . . I thought it would be like getting my boys back. These . . . They’ve changed so much.”

  Neda nodded. “Don’t worry,” she said gently. “It will just take time. But it will take time. It won’t happen fast. But kids . . . they have a lot of resilience. They’ve been through a lot. Routine, good food, fresh air . . . Plenty of that, and they’ll start to heal. They need to be out of this center, stop being poked and prodded by grown-ups. They need to be around other kids.”

  “But Ibrahim . . .”

  “It’s very common.” She smiled. “If it helps, I’ve got a twelve-year-old, and he’s like that all the time.”

  Saif smiled. “It does actually.” He played with the sugar bowl. “I wish Amena were here.”

  “You’ve heard nothing your end?”

  Saif shook his head. “Ibrahim must have been the last to see her . . . I mean, I haven’t heard from my cousins, or anyone . . .”

  Neda looked at him, so full of pain. “You have no family left at all?”

  Saif shrugged. Yes, he did, but they were fighters, and he never mentioned this to the authorities. “Not really,” he said quietly.

  Neda changed the subject. “So you’re going to be a single dad?”

  He smiled. “Yes, I suppose . . . There’s a lady who helps out who said she’ll babysit while I’m at the office, and they’ll be at school and . . . It is a lot to take in.”

  Neda glanced at her watch. “Well,” she said. “Don’t forget to enjoy it.”

  And Saif hadn’t the faintest idea what she meant.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Tentatively Saif took the boys out, shops on Mure that didn’t sell bagpipes or whisky being rather thin on the ground. He fitted them out with big fleeces and raincoats, which were comically large, and treated them to a burger, which turned out to be a terrible idea. Ibrahim remembered drinking cola with a group of soldiers and turned terrified, and Ash wouldn’t let Saif put him down even to pick up the order, and everyone looked at them and someone tutted, and Ash started screaming, and in the end Saif just left everything behind and scurried back to the refugee center, his heart beating wildly, convinced that he wasn’t up to it, that he couldn’t possibly deal with the two traumatized little lads.

  But Neda was perfectly stark about it: either he took responsibility for his boys or they would have to go into foster care, or, even worse, back. (This wasn’t remotely true, but she was cross with Saif for being so scared of taking up his responsibilities and was trying to scare him straight.)

  “I’ll be up to visit very soon. Any questions, night or day, you ring me. Except for night, if you love me at all.”

  And she smiled to show she forgave him for the disastrous outing.

  “Look,” she said finally. “You’ll be fine. All over the world, mothers do this every day. Fathers do it every day. You’ll be fine.”

  And Saif, with a finally sleeping Ash clinging to his arms, hoped she was right.

  * * *

  Meanwhile, he’d called Jeannie, the receptionist at the practice. And, realizing it was ridiculous not admitting who he was coming back with, and how it would b
e, he explained the situation and confessed everything.

  Jeannie’s shocked silence made him realize, with a start, that the news wasn’t around the entire village at all. He’d just assumed Lorna and Flora would have told the world between them. Realizing they had not humbled him.

  “Ah,” he said. Then added, “Can you explain to everyone?”

  “Of course!” said Jeannie, who would, Saif knew, be delighted to be the bearer of gossip, knowing, as she did, more about the health and medical history of every single person on Mure than anyone else and unable to breathe a word of it. “Don’t worry. I’ll tell them not to bother you. Hang on, does the school know?”

  “Of course,” said Saif. “They’re enrolled, ready to go.”

  “And what about childcare?”

  “Well, I’m their father.”

  “Yes, but you’ll be working . . . You know school finishes before work, don’t you? And you’ll be on call still.”

  Saif blinked. Why hadn’t he thought of all this before?

  He knew why. Because until he’d held them in his arms, he couldn’t let himself believe that they were real.

  “Could you . . . ?”

  He could hear the smile in Jeannie’s voice.

  “Let me ask around. Mrs. Laird will have some hours for you. She’s very fond of you, you know. There’ll be plenty of help. Oh, Saif, this is wonderful. Such wonderful news. Lorna must be delighted.”

  “Why?” said Saif instantly.

  “Well, you know . . . to fill up the school, of course!”

  “Oh yes, of course.”

  “How are things?” said Jeannie, changing the subject. “I can’t imagine. You must . . . Oh, you must be so happy.”

  Saif glanced around their little room at the cheap hotel. Ibrahim was in the corner, furiously playing a war game on the iPad Saif had thought at the time would be a good thing to buy him and was already deeply regretting. Ash was sitting staring at nothing, his arm tight around Saif’s ankles, twisting a lock of his hair around his finger over and over again.