“Luke? Chapter eight? That’s me,” I said, then added: “It’s not what you believe, bro. It’s what you do.”
I stood to go before I knew I’d made the decision and Adrian followed. He took my hand as we walked back to the billet, I remember that. The following morning, we got a message that UN lawyers had been in touch with head office and we were to return immediately. Tickets were transferred to the embassy. So we flew back to London.
Shortly afterwards, I married Ade. It seemed like the right thing to do at the time. It can’t have been the common cause with the lorry, because I started to tell everyone that I’d acted alone and I rather preferred that narrative. I told him that was the story we were going with, that he’d left keys in the truck, I’d started it and he’d tried to stop me. Somewhere up the road he’d jumped from the cab and made his way to Khartoum to raise the alarm. Now I think about it, one of the reasons for marrying that we discussed was that it would mean that he wouldn’t be required to give evidence against me, so he wouldn’t have to perjure himself under oath.
Sarah didn’t like the idea at all. It was the first and last proper row we ever had. I was round at her place in Hackney – by now quite smart – and we’d drunk nearly two bottles of Chilean white while she cooked a paella.
“Why would you do that?” she said. Note the conditional.
“Why wouldn’t I do that?”
“Because he doesn’t need anyone.”
“I don’t need him.”
“Then why are you marrying him?”
“Why are you hanging out with a mopey Russian gangster?”
“Don’t be ridiculous. I’m not marrying Sergei.”
“You might as well. He’s lost one missus. What’s the point of wringing out his damp hankies if you’re not going to get the money?”
“Is that what you think, Nat?” She’d turned from the hotplates, holding a spatula and I noticed suddenly there were tears in her eyes.
“Just being honest. We do what we have to.”
“That’s foul. I work for Sergei because of what he can do for peace in Palestine. You and Ade are great aidies. Doesn’t mean any of us have to marry each other. Even if we want to and I don’t.”
“I’m marrying Adrian. You marry the Mob. You tell me which one if us is selling out.”
We ate rice and prawns and chorizo, but something had changed in the room. I didn’t see much of Sarah socially for a long while after that.
Some repatriated aid workers complain of the genteel ordinariness of life back at home, like returning war veterans, and for me I suppose it was the boredom, an endless drone of days that made me want to shout in defiance at the death rattle that passed for human exchange.
And then the business of the stolen truck took over. The newspapers had made me out to be some sort of renegade heroine, the Joan of Arc of international aid. A crinkly pop star had backed me: “This heroic young woman should be given a bleedin’ medal not a bollocking.” I wanted to get away from all that again, abroad, and I suppose part of me wanted to prove to the UN I could still do a proper job, not just make headlines with potty stunts.
There was also a cold little knot of sadness lodged in my chest, just behind my sternum. I can point to it and I recognise it now, the kind you see the truly desperate fold little fists against and collapse into, with a small rising whine rather than a sob. I managed to resist that, but I was bloody unhappy – no, I was bloody and unhappy. I can see that now. And it was because I knew then that nothing was bloody good enough and never could be. I started to endure and prevail, but it wasn’t living, I was making a decent enough job of the face I presented to the world, a brassy kind of armour that affected that I was battle-hardened, dry of wit and soul, had seen it all and was willing to sit through the repeats.
Most of all, I realise now, I was already bored with Adrian, with his silent strength and quiet faith, which together provided his placid conviction that the world could be changed and that, one day, we’d all trade fairly and everyone would be fed.
But I married him after we came back from Sudan that last time. Other than the legal implications of the lorry affair, he was my lot, a kind of matching option, in the way that you would choose a rug to go with a chair. Another couple, looking in, might have said we had much in common, a backstory full of oddball anecdotes that might have been told in one of those regular slots in a weekend colour supplement. But the truth was that he was my dreary base into which to fasten my hidden despair and I was his release from a buttoned-up little treasure trove of dreams.
We married in his childhood church, a whitewashed hall of a place in south London, where chairs make scraping noises like recurrent coughs. Sarah said she was out of the country and maybe she was. It was a settled but soulless place, miles of Edwardian terraced houses where no one knows their neighbour. Though people live decades in such places, they don’t dwell there, far less abide. The minister – and registrar – had a beard of course and smelt of patchouli oil. There was a band of Ade’s mates, with a bassist who swung the neck of his guitar like an exercise machine. I lifted my skirts and did a little jig after the acclamations and our small congregation clapped, both in time and celebration.
And for a moment there I confess I was happy, because if you look
