The Quality of Silence (14 page)

She needed to be realistic. It was just a matter of time till someone noticed and reported her. The police would arrest her for stealing the rig or the load or for driving without the right licence, or for whatever other laws she’d broken and she was sure she was breaking many. She just couldn’t let that happen. Not until she reached Matt. Then the police could arrest her, imprison her, do whatever they liked; once she got to him.

They’d become engaged almost two years after his first proposal. The day before, she’d been staying with him in his flat by the river, which his parents had helped him buy. They were practical, sensible, middle-class solicitors and Yasmin thought they were great, but had teased Matt,

‘So you were found under a mulberry bush too?’

‘It was a bumper year for mulberry bushes.’

That Saturday morning, they’d walked along the leafy pavements – no graffiti on the walls, no police signs up appealing for witnesses, the only intrusive noise the flight path to Heathrow.

They’d bought lunch in the deli and were walking towards the newsagent for the papers when a car, the wrong kind of car, cheap, dented, careened down the narrow road; sirens caterwauling behind it. The car mounted the pavement, coming towards Yasmin, and Matt pushed her out of the way, his body between her and the car. A lamp post had taken most of the impact and Matt was lucky to escape with a broken shoulder and cracked ribs.

The next day, she found the much-travelled ring in his jacket pocket, which smelled of mints and cigarettes and oddly of biros, and put it on.

Everyone assumed that Matt’s heroic act was the reason for his ring on her finger, like Albert taking the bullet for Victoria and winning a place for his desk next to hers.

That first year of marriage, she’d gone with him on his first filming assignment and he’d come with her to observatories and shared her enthusiasm and tried hard to understand her doctorate. Living together in the riverside flat was a time of late nights with Matt and friends and making love and early mornings working and a new job and then she’d become pregnant and it had felt as if life was expanding to its edges. During that time together, Yasmin felt their love for one another becoming larger and denser; a metal ball at the core of the earth, she’d imagined, four thousand miles beneath the pavements and beaches and marshes they walked on, anchoring her.

And she’d no longer been weightless with loneliness.

Chapter 9

For the first few miles, adrenaline and sheer bold-faced nerve and a kind of spirit of adventure had kept Yasmin going but, as she drove further north, the vastness of the arctic wilderness became more intimidating, their isolation more disturbing. She had to manoeuvre this huge vehicle for another three hundred miles over the ice.

She went around a tight bend and headlights – sudden and dazzling in the blackness – glared into her eyes. A truck was heading straight towards them on the single lane. On the right hand side of the road was a sheer drop. She heard Ruby make some kind of sound, like a scream. There was a sharp scrape, metal on metal, and the rig juddered, but somehow the truck passed them. Her heartbeats were furiously fast. Next to her Ruby had vomited.

The truck driver came on the CB, his voice tight with anger.

‘Who the fuck are you? Why didn’t you give your fuckin’ position on the road? That’s what the goddam CB is for.’

Yasmin had heard Adeeb give his position on the CB, but hadn’t thought to do the same. She shut down the CB.

‘I’m sorry, sweetheart. We’ll pull in as soon as we can and get you changed.’

I thought this ginormous truck was going to hit us and I was sick and now it’s smelly in here. I open the window just a tiny bit and the freezing-cold air dashes in like wasps. There’s a big space on the side of the road. Mum pulls into it and puts the light on in our cab so we can see each other properly. She gets my case, which is on Mr Azizi’s bed above where we sit.

‘I’m really sorry,’ she says. ‘That was all my fault. Let’s get you changed.’

The heater is puffing out warm air. I keep my under layers on because they’re OK, but I’m going to put on a new all-in-one arctic fleece, which Dad calls a ‘woolly bear’. It’s lucky Mum thought to bring a spare woolly bear. She always thinks about things like that.

‘If you want to use the porta-potty now’s the time,’ Mum says.

And even though it’s just Mum it’s kind of embarrassing. She’s putting on ski-trousers and her parka over her other layers.

‘I think we should ask the police to get Dad,’ I say, because if the ginormous truck had crashed into us Daddy wouldn’t have anyone coming to get him.

I didn’t say anything about the police finding him before because I thought if Mum went to find Dad, he’d see how much she loves him, because I know that she does, but he might not know that because she’s been so cross with him.

But we can still tell him she tried to. It’s not her fault Mr Azizi got ill so we had to ask the police. And Dad will still know that she loves him.

Mum’s never driven a truck like this, I know she’s super-clever but I think it’s a really hard thing to do.

‘We can’t ask the police to get Dad,’ Mum says.

‘But they’ll be quicker, they might have a helicopter or a plane and—’

‘They think that Daddy died in the fire.’

Outside it’s black. All black. Like somebody’s putting a black plastic bag over my face.

‘The police are wrong, Ruby.’

I want Dad to hug me and chat to me and read me a story and tell me one day I’ll have loads of friends because they’ll get to know me.

‘Life is a little bit like a ship and sometimes it feels like you’re sailing solo, but you’re not because I’m with you. And so is Mum. And one day you’ll have a full crew of friends and a family of your own. You’ll be an ocean liner, like the
Queen Mary
.’

But I just want Dad.

‘Dad isn’t dead,’ Mum signs and I sign ‘Dad isn’t dead!’ at the same time. The sign for ‘dead’ is pointing your fingers out like they’re a gun, and it’s like we’re firing at each other.

I’m crying now. Trying not to. It wasn’t true, what I said about signing at the same time, she did it a little tiny bit before me.

‘We will get to him won’t we, Mum?’

* * *

Yasmin saw Ruby’s terror of losing her father naked in her face and in the way she hunched into herself.

‘Yes,’ Yasmin said to her. ‘We will get to Daddy. And I will be much more careful and use the CB.’

She put on her goggles then pulled her big arctic mittens over her glove liners and went out, hurriedly shutting the door to keep Ruby warm.

How could she have been so bloody stupid, so reckless? She’d put Ruby in unnecessary danger. From now on, she would keep the CB on and use it and follow what Adeeb had done to the letter.

Mum’s gone to throw away my smelly clothes and I’m emailing Dad.

To: [email protected]

Subject: EMAIL US!

From: [email protected]

Dear Dad,

Please please email us. Just anything. So we know you’re ok. OK. Mum and me are coming to get you in a lorry.

Love you megatonnes

Puggle

Yasmin had left the headlights on, which lit up this rudimentary car park, bizarre in the snowy wilderness. She saw a sign, the arctic circle. It must be a parking place for tourists in summertime, though she doubted even then that there were many visitors. She hadn’t thought about space for many years, but it was impossible not to here, at this famous circle of latitude around the globe; they were entering the very top of the planet.

She put Ruby’s vomit-stained clothes in the bin; her fault for terrifying her. Ruby’s vulnerability stripped Yasmin raw and she remembered when Ruby had been born how helpless she’d seemed; how terrified Yasmin was that she couldn’t look after her properly; that she was entirely inadequate; more fearful still when they said her baby was deaf.

A memory played out in front of her, vivid in the darkness. She hadn’t thought of it for a decade, but it was as if it had happened only minutes ago. She’d had this sense before that time was not linear, but bending back on itself, with current emotions finding a twin of themselves in the past.

Late at night in their bedroom, feeding two-week-old Ruby; her hair soft as thistledown; her body still a comma not yet stretched out. Matt was asleep in bed a few feet away. She’d pulled back the curtains and looked out of the window. The stars were dim through the light pollution above the city and she’d strained to see them. Suddenly, her grief for her mother was felt again so sharply that she’d juddered, causing Ruby to startle, her tiny arms and legs flinging out like a starfish.

She held the weight of Ruby’s body against her, watched miniature fingers curling and uncurling around her thumb, wrapped her dressing gown around both of them as long ago anguish scythed its way back into her present and she was powerless against it.

In the winter darkness and sub-zero cold at the Arctic Circle, she remembered the soft wool of her dressing gown, the drop of milk on Ruby’s chin as her head tipped back in sleep, the rhythmic sound of Matt’s breathing and how she had felt like she was floating far away from everything that was good and secure, unmoored and adrift, and Matt could no longer tether her to happiness and safety.

I touch Mum’s parka and it’s like touching ice cubes.

‘OK?’ she asks and I nod, but I don’t feel OK because Dad hasn’t emailed back.

‘My brave girl,’ Mum says to me. Then she takes off her mittens and liners and puts her hand across and gives my hand a little squeeze. It’s like her fingers saying something really nice to me without turning it into words. Normally, it makes me feel a bit better. Even when horrible things are happening at school, like people faking talking to see if I know that they’re not really talking, Mum picks me up from school and on the way home she holds my hand and it makes me feel better. Not totally better, but just OK, like we’re going home now so I don’t need to think about it for a bit.

I can feel the little dent of her rings in my palm.

‘We will get to Daddy, won’t we?’ I say. Mum looks at me, really properly, and she sees what I’m feeling inside, and she says, ‘Yes. We will get to Daddy.’

Yasmin put on the CB and steeled herself to start driving again into the blackness. She pulled out of the Arctic Circle car park, heading north.

‘Can I check your email, Mum?’ Ruby asked. ‘In case Dad’s emailed you.’

‘He won’t have done, sweetie.’

‘But he’ll probably have borrowed someone’s laptop. And he lets all his friends use his terminal so it’ll have the right software. And he’ll definitely have his terminal.’

‘I checked my emails before we set off.’

While they’d waited for Adeeb’s truck to be ready, she’d looked through her inbox but of course none of the emails were from Matt. She’d moved the whole lot into the junk folder
.
She hadn’t realised before how much time she wasted on things that were basically junk.

‘But that was hours ago, Mum. Please?’

‘It won’t do any good.’

‘Please?’

‘OK.’

Because Ruby would only believe there was no email when she saw for herself there was
no email.

They were at the top of a steep incline; she didn’t know how far it went down because it was too dark to see the bottom. She started the icy descent, wanting to inch her way down, using the brake all the time, but she needed to get up enough speed so they’d make it up the opposite side and not slide backwards. Going backwards out of control would be more dangerous.

As she drove down the steep incline, forcing herself to go faster than felt safe, she remembered catching Matt once, watching her as she ironed napkins, the irritation and sadness on his face, before he abruptly turned away; because he thought these domestic chores were absurd and unnecessary, not understanding that it wasn’t about ironing, washing up, two types of vegetables; it was about creating order and stability, that security was built on tiny details like a striped ironed napkin.

To start with he’d teased her about her new Martha Stewart meets Mrs Tiggy-Winkle kick; this new domestic goddess camouflage; then he’d become serious and concerned. He’d offered to take care of Ruby himself so she could return to her job as a research fellow in astrophysics, but Yasmin wanted to take care of Ruby herself and no longer looked at the stars.

He’d suggested once that it was because Ruby was deaf and that she was trying to compensate in some way. But that hadn’t been true at all and she was angry he could think that.

She heard their arguments woven into the darkness, a mass of small scale disagreements, separated with silences.

She’d been cross so much of the time and often about small things. Looking back at herself, she thought that her crossness was like a shapeless overcoat, covering lonelines
s
, and it wasn’t the old loneliness she’d felt after her mother died, or even an adult version of it, but something different and more punishing.