Always you, p.1
Always You, page 1
About the Author
Caroline Khoury was born in Beirut to a Lebanese mother and Welsh father, and grew up in suburban London. She returned to the UK a few years ago after more than a decade in Hong Kong, Japan and America.
Caroline Khoury
* * *
ALWAYS YOU
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6: When we were eight
Chapter 7
Chapter 8: Now we are twenty-eight
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11: When we were thirteen
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14: Now we are twenty-eight
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17: When we were eighteen
Chapter 18: Now we are twenty-eight
Chapter 19: When we were twenty-one
Chapter 20
Chapter 21: Now we are twenty-eight
Chapter 22: When we were thirteen
Chapter 23: Now we are twenty-eight
Chapter 24
Chapter 25: When we were eighteen
Chapter 26: Now we are twenty-eight
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30: When we were twenty-one
Chapter 31: When we were twenty-four
Chapter 32: Now we are twenty-eight
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37: Now we are twenty-nine
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41: Nine months later
Chapter 42
Acknowledgements
To my girls – Miranda and Rose
Chapter 1
‘Fold, fold, roll.’
It was a mantra; a three-word instruction representing a sequence of finger movements. I had been doing it daily since I was thirteen.
Capital FM’s breakfast show hummed in the background from the radio on the window ledge as I mumbled the words under my breath.
Picking up another vine leaf from the blanched stack on the plate, I scooped up a measure of the mixture of rice and herbs and repeated the action. A plate of finished dolmádes – ready to be cooked – sat beside me on the kitchen table, a mug of coffee slowly losing heat next to it. My fingers were already prune-like beneath the latex food gloves.
I wiped sweat from my forehead with my arm and shifted on the chair. The kitchen lacked ventilation with only a small window above the sink – our neighbours’ side brick wall the only view – but today was extra sticky. An unexpected June heat wave had hit the West Midlands and the flat was unbearably hot and would be stifling by mid-afternoon once the vents from our deli downstairs began pumping out fumes that always filtered through to the rooms above.
The clock on the wall ticked closer to six, reminding me that I needed to pick up a bit of speed. Usually, I had plenty of time between the hours of five and eight to make sure the one hundred dolmádes were ready for the deli’s opening and for dropping off another one hundred at the office of our one and only corporate customer.
But today I needed to carve out an extra half hour for my day job at the Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery. In fact, it was crucial I got to the lab before my boss got in. I was so close to making that discovery, I could feel the expectation of resolving the puzzle tingling in my bones. The grooves in the pieces had to match. I knew they did. I had dreamed of them lining up for days. And if they did, this could be it; my chance to prove myself and to stand out as the best contender for promotion to curator. My interview was on Monday. While I didn’t have the experience of some of the other candidates, the lining up of two tiny metal plates to complete a Roman brooch found at the HS2 site near Solihull would definitely raise my status.
As I placed the final stuffed leaves into the casserole dish on the stove, I heard the shuffle of slippers along the hallway.
‘Ángelé mou,’ Dad sang out, stepping into the kitchen in his striped pyjamas. Even though I was twenty-eight, he still loved to call me his angel. My full name’s Angelina but it had been shortened to Lina as soon as I started primary school and was teased for sharing my name with an animated ballerina mouse.
‘Morning, Baba.’ I yawned, bending my neck backwards to relieve the locked-up tension from leaning forward for so long.
‘Why so early today?’ He took out a mug from the cupboard and filled it with coffee from the pot that was on the warming plate. It was the first thing I had made as soon as I woke up after swallowing a couple of tablets. The cramps this morning had been especially bad, but I was trying not to think of what that meant.
‘I need to get to the museum before eight. I have a lot of work to do.’
‘You will still be there at closing time?’
‘Of course,’ I said reassuringly, pulling off the food gloves. Dad never liked to close the deli on his own. It had always been like that, ever since the robbery seven years ago when a couple of youths had smashed up the place, one holding a knife to his throat, threatening to ‘do him in’ if he didn’t acquiesce and hand over the month’s takings. Since that day I had sworn I would never let him close alone.
I filled the casserole dish with a seasoned brew I had whipped up in a measuring jug – a secret recipe Mum had penned long ago.
‘Tonight is the reunion, yes?’ He nodded; his thick dark eyebrows raised.
Drops of boiling liquid splashed my hand and I winced before carefully placing the lid on the pot and turning on the gas.
I sucked my fingers hard before running them under the cold tap. ‘I am not sure I will go,’ I said, my teeth clenched – the pain throbbing at the tip of my middle finger.
‘I thought Nik will pick you up for it.’
‘I think I’m going to pass. I fancy an early night tonight.’ I let the cold water numb the digit for a couple of minutes.
The truth was Stockland Academy was the last place I wanted to go back to. It was our ten-year reunion. Ten years since Mr Collingwood – the head – wished us well for the future in his closing speech, handed out our yearbooks with various ‘most likely to …’ awards filling the pages and sent us on our way into the big wide world; most of us directionless and scared of what the future held once we left the confines of secondary school.
Angelina Georgiades. Most likely to … be travelling the world. That was what my award had been. I had laughed hollowly when I opened the email invite I received last week with a PDF file of the yearbook attached. Apparently at eighteen I was confident that it would be easy to take a gap year after finishing my archaeology degree at Birmingham University instead of getting a job. I had come close to fulfilling that wish, but my life had taken an unexpected turn at twenty-one. Ten years had now passed since the school gates shut behind me and not once had I stepped foot on a plane.
I kissed Dad on the cheek. ‘I’ve set the timer, Baba. The dolmádes will be ready in an hour. I’ve already made the order for Mr Markos. You’ll be OK to take the rest downstairs today?’
‘Of course, I’ll be fine.’ He patted his chest, like he always did when I asked him if he was OK. It was a reassuring gesture and one I knew he did to appease me and stop my fussing.
‘See you at six.’ He smiled and blew me a kiss.
On my way out later, I noticed the lights of the deli were still off but knew Dad would be down any minute to set up for the breakfast run – our usual gaggle of regulars keen to pick up their polystyrene containers filled with a mezze of Greek Cypriot delights and a black coffee. My museum lanyard hung around my neck and my backpack was weighed down with two large boxes of dolmádes ready to be dropped at Markos Insurance – a mile from the museum.
My daily fifteen-minute walk along Slade Road to Gravelly Hill station always took me past my old school – the 1970s concrete building set on an acre of grounds housing over twelve hundred students. But today I found myself turning the corner before I crossed at the lights even though I knew I would have to rush once I got to Birmingham Central to deliver the food and get to work in good time.
Thoughts of the reunion had made me think of him. Ash.
I stood outside his house – the side gate that was always unlocked now replaced by a ten-foot black door with a padlock; the sand-coloured pebble-dash render replaced with smooth grey stucco.
Ash’s semi-detached house – my refuge growing up. But he no longer lived there, nor did his family.
Would he be at the reunion? I shook my head and walked on by. Of course he wouldn’t. He lived in Mumbai now and swore he would never return to Birmingham. And who would blame him? I was the last person he would ever want to see again.
Chapter 2
My fingers twisted the dial to zoom in further. One more time. It had to be this piece.
Please, please. Line up.
Two solid hours I had been hunched over the microscope, left eye scrunched up, peering into the lens with my other.
‘Nope.’ I sighed and carefully lifted the bronze specimen from the glass dish with a pair of tweezers, placing it back into the plastic bag.
‘Oh, Lina,’ Greer said, her American accent elongating the ‘ee’ sound in my name. ‘Here, try this one.’ She handed me the sample labelled 364. Her box braids framed her face that was full of hope, her nose ring catching the glare of the fluorescent lamp next to the microscope.
I checked the number against the list on my laptop. ‘Already have. It’s no use. We’re not going to find the right grooves.’
Greer laid a reassuring hand on my shoulder. ‘Here, drink this.’ She passed over a tall paper cup with the museum’s logo branded on it.
I peeled off my blue plastic gloves, wiped my sweaty hands on my apron and let the heat of the beverage unfurl my tense fingers. I brought the coffee to my lips and blew steam away. It was a dark roast with two sugars. I might as well have an intravenous drip pumping it through my bloodstream – this was already my third cup this morning.
My shoulders dropped. ‘It’s no use, Greer. I have tried every single piece three times. And I’ve got a stack load of documenting to do today. I won’t get another chance before the interview on Monday.’
She gave me a nudge and theatrically pulled out another pair of plastic gloves. I slipped off the stool and let her take over.
‘I gotta hunch,’ she said, unearthing specimen 276 from the collection and placing it on the lens. You had to love her for her unfailing sense of optimism.
‘Well?’ I asked eagerly, before noticing her shoulders drop as well.
‘It was worth a shot.’ Her bottom lip protruded, and she disposed of the gloves.
I sank onto the stool next to her and stared at my laptop showing a 3D design of what the Roman brooch might look like.
‘Don’t worry, Lina. I still think you’re the best candidate. No one knows the museum better than you. You’re one of the longest-serving members of the team.’
‘With no real experience out on the field.’
‘That’s not your fault. You put in enough hours here. And the school tours love you. Your ratings are sky high.’
‘Thanks to you.’
‘Ugh, Lina. Drop this self-deprecating British bullshit. You’re great at the assistant job. You’ll be a shoo-in for the next level.’ She bumped my shoulder with hers. ‘And you smell better than Mr McCrusty who should’ve retired centuries ago.’
A message pinged in my inbox. A cursory glance showed it was an email reminding me about the reunion tonight. Greer grabbed her screen glasses and leaned in. She never gave me any personal space. It had taken a while to get used to that. ‘American brashness’ she had once called it when I saw her reading my texts over my shoulder. It was the same brashness that had got her the six-month placement at the museum. She was in her penultimate year at UCLA and would soon be heading back to California to complete her studies. She had beaten a list of over a hundred undergraduates to get this coveted placement. I was getting too used to having her around, though. She brought a lightness to my life that had been missing for years. Or maybe it was that I had missed female company. I dreaded her leaving and wondered when I would see her again once she left.
‘A reunion, huh? You going?’
I shook my head and scrolled through my other emails.
‘Why not?’ She pressed her finger on my touchscreen, opening up the attachment. ‘Is this your class?’
‘Yup.’
‘Ooh, fun. Shove over.’ She scraped her stool across the linoleum floor and brought it flush next to mine, taking control of the mouse. ‘Let’s see if I can find you.’ She zoomed in on the picture and dragged it left and right. ‘Jeez, it’s like Where’s Waldo? You all look the same in those dark colours.’
Although Stockland Academy was a state school, it modelled itself on being like some of the private ones in the area and encouraged its sixth formers to come smartly dressed each morning and wear only black, grey or the mottled green colour of the younger kids’ uniform. Some girls tried to flout the rules, as evidenced by the splashes of hot pink and lime green on the photograph.
‘Found you!’ she said triumphantly. ‘Those are major bangs you got. So … who did you hook up with from this lot?’
‘Greer!’ I put my finger to my closed lips. We weren’t the only ones in the lab room today and our boss – Mr McCrumb, or McCrusty as Greer called him – could come in at any moment. Awkward coughs and shuffling of seats filled the room from the rest of the archaeology team and I cowered. ‘Keep your voice down,’ I whispered.
‘I don’t care. I’m outta here in a few weeks and I can’t wait. God, I miss the ocean. Birmingham is so land-locked.’
I couldn’t be more jealous of Greer though I knew it was silly to be. I had a good life here, my expenses were low, and I was saving for … well I had no idea at this point what for, but everything would be different once I got the promotion from assistant curator to curator. My boss had an exciting career, moving from museum to museum, all round the country, sometimes even abroad. The only thing I hadn’t figured out was how to tell Dad that there might be times I wouldn’t be around to help. Maybe with an uplift in pay we could afford to hire a part-time worker for the deli on the odd occasion I was away. But I would reassure him that I would never move out; that it would always be me and him. Forever.
‘OK, so who did you …’ She put her hand by her mouth to whisper ‘… fool around with?’
‘No one.’ A flush crept into my neck and my skin would soon be all blotchy – an affliction I had had since I was a teenager whenever I was nervous or had told a fib.
‘Your eyes are all shifty. You definitely got down and dirty with someone. Let me guess.’
I did my best to keep a poker face. ‘I didn’t have sex with anyone from my year,’ I said, holding my hand over my throat to hide the blemishes.
‘You’re such a spoilsport. How about that guy, the one you spend every weekend with? The one who knows how good-looking he is, whose shirts are tighter than an eighteenth-century corset.’
‘You mean Nik?’ I said, pointing at the guy sitting in the front row. Nikolas Markos. Most likely to … be driving a Lamborghini, living in a mansion and modelling for Hugo Boss.
‘Yeah, the one you have a “relationship” with.’ She did quotation marks with her fingers. ‘Or wait, your “friend with benefits”, isn’t that what you call him?’
The truth was I didn’t know what to call me and Nik.
‘Woah, he’s a cutey.’ I sat up with interest to see where she had zoomed in on. ‘Who’s that?’
That was Ash Patel. My best friend. Correction. He was my best friend. ‘Yeah, he and I were good mates once. But he won’t be there. After he went to study maths at Cambridge, he went to work at a bank in London before relocating to Mumbai.’
‘Hmm. Smart and loaded. You missed out there.’
‘You’re so shallow, you know that, right?’
My phone vibrated on the counter and Nik’s name flashed up. Before I could reach for it, Greer had grabbed it and answered.
‘Hey, Nik,’ she drawled. ‘Nah, she’s right here. I am trying to persuade her she has to go to the reunion.’ She nodded. ‘I know, right? That’s what I told her. Ah huh. Yeah.’
I shot her a ‘can I have the phone now’ look but she dismissed my request with a flick of her hand.
‘OK, great,’ she said with a broad smile. ‘I’ll tell her.’ She hung up and put the mobile back on the counter before zoning in on my screen and inspecting the faces of my classmates some more.
‘Well?’
‘Well, what?’ she said with a coquettish smirk.
‘What did Nik say and why didn’t he want to speak to me?’
‘He said he’ll pick you up at your flat at seven.’
‘Let me call him back. I’m not going,’ I said, reaching for my phone. She swatted my hand away. ‘Ow.’ I scowled. She really was being difficult, acting more like a toddler than someone only six years my junior.
‘Why on earth don’t you want to go?’ she said.
I rubbed my hand. ‘Because … oh you wouldn’t understand.’
She twisted on the stool to face me. ‘I might.’
‘Because …’
It wasn’t just any old reunion. It was a dance. And I made a promise to myself years ago that I was never ever going to dance again.
Chapter 3
‘Where am I?’ I said, slowly opening my eyes.
A sunset hovered on the horizon – the sky polluted and murky. My feet scrunched the wet sand between my toes. Thick, humid air invaded my nostrils, seeped with the smell of incense and cardamom. Lurid green trousers billowed around my legs and a scarlet cropped top decorated with gold brocade peeked from beneath a silk maroon sash that hung from one shoulder and draped over my chest. My black hair fell in ringlets over my shoulder to one side.
