The Way We Were Page 5

  He climbed off his bike, removed his helmet, pulled out his key and took a deep breath.

  He could hear voices in the kitchen. Damn! Kevin was here. Ben didn’t want to say anything in front of Kevin because his brother-in-law always took Alice’s side. It bothered Ben that Alice discussed so much with him. He felt that some things were private, such as their marriage. But since Kevin had gone to work for Alice two years ago it was even worse because they saw each other every day and talked about everything. Ben knew Alice complained about him to Kevin when she was fed up. He really didn’t want to take on the two of them when he made his big announcement. But with only two days to departure, he couldn’t be picky about timing – better to get it over and done with.

  He squared his shoulders and opened the kitchen door. ‘Hello, everyone,’ he said, in an over-cheery voice.

  He bent down to kiss Jools and Holly’s cheeks and Alice’s lips. Then he went to shake Kevin’s hand. ‘Welcome back. I hope New York was good.’

  ‘It was fantastic, thanks. How are you?’

  ‘I’m good. Great, actually.’ Turning to Alice, he said, ‘Darling, John Lester has asked me to go to Eritrea for a few days.’

  Alice frowned. ‘Eritrea?’

  ‘Air-it-tray-on? Are you winding us up?’ Kevin said, as Jools giggled.

  ‘Eritrea is a country in Africa. It borders with Ethiopia,’ Holly said.

  ‘Thank you, Holly.’ Ben ruffled her hair as he watched Alice’s face.

  ‘Ethiopia!’ Alice’s voice was shrill. ‘Jesus, Ben.’

  ‘It’s fine. It’s not dangerous.’

  ‘The war with Ethiopia ended in 2000.’

  Everyone stared at Holly.

  ‘How in God’s name do you know that?’ Kevin wondered.

  ‘Because she eats books,’ Jools reminded him.

  ‘I don’t eat them, I read them. I read about it in the library when I finished my homework.’

  ‘How long are you going for?’ Kevin asked Ben.

  ‘Oh, just a few days, a week at the most. I’m operating on the minister of health. It’s fairly straightforward.’

  Alice stood up abruptly. ‘Ben, can I have a word in private, please? Kevin, can you make sure the girls finish their dinner.’

  ‘Uh-oh, someone’s in for a bollocking,’ Jools drawled, as Alice nudged Ben out of the kitchen and into the lounge.

  Alice closed the door and turned on Ben. ‘Is this some kind of a joke? Are you trying to wind me up? Eritrea, Ben? Seriously?’

  Ben knew it was vital that he remain calm and firm. ‘Alice, it’s perfectly safe. I’m flying in with John Lester’s registrar – he’s actually Irish. I’m going to operate – it’s a fairly straightforward tumour in the colon – and then I’ll stay for a couple of days to make sure the patient’s on the mend before I fly home.’

  ‘Eritrea is not safe. Anything could happen.’

  ‘Alice, you’d hardly heard of Eritrea before now, so how do you know it’s not safe?’

  ‘Because it’s beside bloody Ethiopia and, according to Holly, they had a war and what’s to say it won’t kick off again? Besides, Africa in general is not safe or stable. Anything could happen.’

  Ben put his hands on his wife’s shoulders. ‘Alice, calm down. Don’t make a big deal about nothing. It’s a simple operation and I’ll be back within the week.’

  Alice shrugged him off. ‘You’re not going.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You’re not going. You’re not allowed to put yourself at risk. You have a wife and two kids. You have responsibilities, Ben. You can’t just decide to head off to dangerous places whenever you feel like it.’

  Ben could feel anger creeping up from his stomach through his chest. ‘Alice, I am going to Eritrea. I am fully aware of my responsibilities and I take them very seriously, but you won’t stop me going on this trip.’

  ‘Yes, I will.’

  Ben gritted his teeth. ‘No, you are not. I need this. I need to do something different. It’s an opportunity to shake things up a bit.’

  ‘Why do you need to shake things up? What’s wrong with your life?’

  Ben paced up and down. ‘I’m a bit restless and this is a good opportunity to do something different. John told me he goes over and trains the surgeons there once a year. I’d like to do that with him in the future.’

  Alice frowned. ‘So you’re planning on going to Africa once a year now?’

  ‘I’m hoping to, yes. Africa or anywhere else where they need local surgeons to be trained.’

  ‘Why?’ Alice asked, her eyes filling.

  ‘Because I just feel … I need something else.’

  ‘Why aren’t we enough for you?’ Alice was crying now.

  Ben felt bad. He went over and put his arms around her. ‘You are, darling. You and the girls mean everything to me. This has nothing to do with you. I just feel the need to push myself a bit, shake things up work-wise.’

  Alice wiped the tears from her face with her hands. ‘I took a different path in my career so I could put our family first. I didn’t plan to end up being a GP. I wanted to specialize in oncology. But it’s what you do when you have kids. You give up certain goals to spend time with them. They’ll be gone at eighteen.’

  Ben sighed. ‘I’m not asking a lot, Alice. A week here or there helping others isn’t a big deal.’

  ‘I just don’t understand why you’re so restless. It’s freaking me out. We have everything we dreamt of. Why do you need more?’

  Ben looked at his lovely wife. She was right: they had a beautiful home, two healthy daughters and good careers, but it just wasn’t enough for him. He needed something else. He wanted more. Maybe he was selfish, but he couldn’t help how he felt. His life seemed mundane and monotonous. He needed this trip.

  ‘I can’t really explain it. Maybe it’s turning forty-five – I don’t know. But this opportunity has come at the right time. I’m excited about it. I haven’t felt that in a while.’

  Alice rolled her eyes. ‘I suppose a week in Eritrea is better than an affair.’

  ‘It’ll be totally safe. We’ll be very well cared for. After all, we’ll be operating on a senior government official.’

  ‘Make sure you don’t kill him.’ Alice walked back towards the kitchen.

  ‘I will.’

  ‘Oh, and Ben?’ Alice turned around. ‘You can leave your mid-life crisis in Eritrea. I want a happy husband after this trip.’

  Ben

  As Ben packed, Alice sat on the bed and watched him. ‘Call me every day. I’ll be worried.’

  ‘I will. Listen, why don’t we go on a trip when I get back? Christmas isn’t too far off. We could go somewhere nice. How about Paris? I know it’s your favourite place and we haven’t been for so long.’

  ‘That would be nice.’

  ‘Paris, here we come!’ Ben leant down to kiss her.

  ‘Why are you talking about Paris? OMG, you’re so gross. Stop kissing – it’s embarrassing. Old people should never kiss.’ Jools stood in the doorway, hands on hips, wearing her favourite bright pink tracksuit with ‘Babe’ emblazoned across the front in some kind of sparkly writing. It was appalling, but Kevin had bought it for her so Ben wasn’t allowed to criticize.

  No one was allowed to criticize Kevin, except Alice. Even when Kevin had got drunk and tried to shove his tongue down the throat of Clive Hetherington, a friend of Ben who was about as straight as it was possible to be, Ben hadn’t been permitted to say anything. Alice said that ‘poor Kevin’ was having a hard time meeting a nice man and he was upset and confused. He wasn’t confused: he was the horniest gay man Ben had ever met.

  Alice said Kevin’s ‘enthusiasm’ was because he’d grown up suppressing his gayness and only come out when he’d moved to London so he had a lot of years to catch up on. Ben pointed out, reasonably, that he could do all the catching up he wanted, just not with his heterosexual friends. Kevin was, as it were, barking up the wrong tree. Alice said he was u
nsympathetic and needed to be kinder to him. Ben said no more, but decided to keep his friends away from his brother-in-law in future.

  ‘I thought it would be nice for us to go on a family holiday. So when I get back from Eritrea, we’ll fix up a trip to Paris.’

  ‘I still can’t believe you’re missing my birthday,’ Jools said.

  Ben went over to his sulky-faced daughter. ‘I promise to make it up to you with a huge present.’

  ‘How huge?’

  ‘Hugely huge.’ Ben hugged his daughter. He felt brilliant. He couldn’t wait to get on the plane. Everything looked brighter this morning. He must have been suffering from mild depression: he felt light and full of energy.

  ‘Well, I’m amazing so I deserve a huge present. Besides, turning sixteen is a big deal. I can’t wait for my party next weekend.’

  ‘I’m so sorry, Jools, it looks like I’ll miss that too.’

  Jools rolled her eyes. ‘I’m actually glad you’re away for it. I’m having my seven best friends for a sleepover and I don’t need you coming in and checking up on us every five minutes and saying really embarrassing things, like “One Direction rock.” ’

  Ben grinned at her. At almost sixteen, Jools had already decided he was an embarrassment. It seemed like only yesterday when she’d climb onto his lap and ask him to read her stories.

  ‘Don’t be rude to your father or there’ll be no sleepover and no Paris.’ Alice’s arms were crossed and she was pacing.

  ‘Relax, Mum, you don’t have to jump down my throat. I know you’re worried about Dad going to Erimea or whatever it’s called, but it’ll be fine. You always make a big deal about everything.’

  ‘Don’t speak to me –’

  Ben raised his hands. ‘Ladies, can you please not argue? I have to go and I’d like to leave a peaceful house behind.’

  ‘Fat chance,’ Jools huffed. ‘I wish I had a mother who wasn’t always on my back. Charlotte’s mum lets her have a Twitter account because she’s normal, unlike you!’

  ‘I told you, I had a young girl in my surgery who was traumatized because she was receiving such vile threats on Twitter. There are bad men out there who prey on young girls like you,’ Alice said.

  ‘What do the bad men look like?’ Holly had come into the room, eyes wide.

  ‘Well, that’s the whole point – you can’t see them. They hide behind the anonymity of the computer so you don’t know what they look like,’ Alice explained.

  ‘Oh, for goodness’ sake, Mum, I know how to deal with dickheads.’

  ‘Mind your language,’ Alice barked.

  ‘Fine, but I want a Twitter account. All my friends have them.’

  ‘You’re not getting one. And –’

  ‘Sorry to interrupt,’ Ben shouted, to be heard. ‘I have to go now.’ He bent to kiss Jools.

  Then he gave Holly a bear hug – thankfully, she still allowed him to hug her.

  ‘If you go for five days, you’ll be gone for a hundred and twenty hours, or if it’s six days, it’ll be a hundred and forty-four hours,’ Holly announced.

  ‘You are a wonder.’ Ben smiled at her.

  ‘Daddy, I Googled Eritrea.’ Holly pulled a piece of paper out of her pocket. Reading from it, she told them, ‘The official languages are Tigrinya, English and Arabic. It has a population of six point one three million. A UN report estimated that about seventy per cent of Eritreans cannot meet their food needs on their own.’

  Ben knew he had to stop her or she’d keep reading and he’d miss his flight. ‘I’ll take that and read it on the plane. Thank you, Holly.’ He stuffed the paper into his suitcase.

  ‘You’re such a dork, seriously!’ Jools said.

  Holly shrugged. ‘I was just helping Daddy to have information.’

  ‘I really have to go. Be good for your mother.’

  ‘If she lets me on Twitter, I’ll be incredibly good.’ Jools wasn’t going to let this go. She could be exhaustingly tenacious when she wanted something, a trait she’d inherited from her mother, although Ben wasn’t about to mention that now.

  ‘Drop it, Jools, it’s not happening,’ Alice warned.

  Ben leant over to give Alice a kiss. He murmured in her ear, ‘Maybe we should let her have an account if all of her friends do. We can keep an eye on it.’

  Jools’s bionic ears picked it up. ‘Yes! You see? Even Daddy agrees with me.’

  Alice’s eyes flashed. ‘Thanks a lot, Ben. Bloody typical! You always give in to her. You never back me up. I’m sick of it. Why don’t you just stay in bloody Eritrea?’

  Alice stormed out of the room. Ben sighed, headed for the front door and on to the airport.

  Her final words were to haunt them both.

  Holly

  Daddy has been away for fifty hours. He will be back in ninety hours unless he stays for an extra day. If he does, he’ll be back in 114 hours.

  Daddy didn’t phone yesterday. He promised to phone every day. Mummy tried to phone him last night and again this morning. But he didn’t call back.

  Mummy said the Wi-Fi is obviously really bad. But how was he able to call on Wednesday? He sounded really happy when I talked to him then. He said Asmara, the capital of Eritrea, is beautiful and the people are really nice. He was being looked after very well – he and the other doctor, Declan, were taken to a nice restaurant by the minister’s friends and ate yummy food.

  He said Declan is really funny. He’s Irish, like Mummy. Daddy said he’s a bit high-spirited, but in a good way.

  Daddy told us that he and Declan were going to visit a little clinic outside Asmara on Friday because the doctors over there need help learning how to do operations. Daddy is very kind. He likes to help people.

  Daddy said Declan knew one of the Eritrean doctors in the clinic because he went there before, with John Lester. Daddy said he was looking forward to teaching them.

  Mummy’s face went a bit red when he said that, but she didn’t get angry with him. I think she felt bad for shouting at him before he left.

  But now he hasn’t rung for thirty-eight hours and I know Mummy’s worried. She keeps trying to call his phone and the hotel he’s staying in, but there’s no answer.

  When I asked if she wanted me to make her toast because she hadn’t had any breakfast, she shook her head. Her eyes went all watery and she looked like she was about to cry. It made my stomach hurt.

  Mummy used to cry sometimes because she was sad about Granny and Grandpa. But now she really doesn’t cry much at all. I can only remember her crying twice recently – once when Daddy shouted at her for being too hard on Jools. He said, ‘You’re making her feel like she’s not good enough. It’s cruel.’

  Mummy locked herself in the bathroom and cried really hard when Daddy said that. I could hear her because the bathroom is next door to my bedroom.

  The other time she cried was on Christmas Day last year when Granddad Harold said that Uncle Kevin was an embarrassment to the family. That time she was angry-crying. She shouted at Granddad and said that Kevin was her only family and he was never to be rude about him again.

  I heard her arguing with Daddy later that night when Granddad had gone home. She said Granddad was ‘out of order’. Daddy said that he shouldn’t have said it but that Kevin was ‘too much’ sometimes.

  Mummy said that Kevin was just sad because he was on his own and Christmas is lonely and that he had drunk too much wine and been a bit silly, but there was no need for Granddad to be so rude.

  Daddy said that standing on the chair and singing ‘On My Own’ at the top of his voice and crying while we were all still eating was ‘over the top’.

  Mummy said it was a song that related to how he felt and that he was allowed to do whatever he wanted when he was in her house.

  Daddy said in a cross voice that it was ‘our house’ and that Granddad had been ‘mortified’ by Kevin, especially as Granddad’s sister, Prudence, had been there to see it all.

  Mummy said that Daddy’s family were
all ‘stuffed shirts’ and they should relax a bit and that it was better for Kevin to ‘let it out’ and not ‘keep it in’.

  I thought about what ‘it’ was for ages and I think she meant sadness.

  I hate it when Mummy and Daddy fight because it makes me afraid that they’ll get a divorce, like Laura’s parents. She is super-sad because her parents live in different houses now. She said her Mummy has sad eyes all the time.

  I asked her if they had loads of fights. Laura said her parents used to fight all the time and then they stopped and that was worse because they never really spoke to each other again.

  I was glad to hear that because Mummy and Daddy don’t have loads of arguments. They only fight a little bit and it’s nearly always about Jools.

  I love Jools because she’s my sister, but she can be really mean sometimes. When I help her with her homework, she never really thanks me. She says I owe her because I got all the brains and it’s not fair. But I think she’s lucky because she’s so beautiful. She looks like Selena Gomez but I’d never tell her that because her head would get too big.

  Even though she pretends she doesn’t know she’s pretty, Jools is ALWAYS looking at herself in the mirror and taking selfies.

  I hope Daddy calls soon. I think I’ll make Mummy toast. It might cheer her up.

  Alice

  Alice had felt bad for shouting at Ben before he left. She’d been glad when he called, but they hadn’t had a chance to talk alone because the girls were there and insisted that he be put on loudspeaker. Alice barely got a word in. When he mentioned going to a clinic outside the city, she had felt her chest tighten. Why the hell did he want to go wandering about in a strange place?

  Damn Declan whoever-he-was and John bloody Lester and their sodding do-gooder trips. Alice didn’t want Ben going anywhere but the hotel and the hospital where he was operating on the minister. She’d already lost her parents – she didn’t need to lose her husband too.