Despite the Falling Snow (43 page)

“Thank you,” Lauren tells her, and she smiles.

The courtyard feels surprisingly familiar and comforting. He had assumed that the many weeks that he has been away, and the violent emotional storms that he has been through would have made his old offices and the business that he is preparing to sell seem alien and unimportant to him. Alexander pauses and looks up at the glass and steel structures that rise up from the paved slabs, up at the windows that used to be his, the boardroom from which he did so much of his work. A glance at his watch propels him forward, to his meeting with Melissa, and he strides into the building and up to the banks of elevators.

“Glad you could make it,” Melissa says, when he knocks on the open door of the boardroom, and she takes the hand that he holds out, but also leans to kiss him on the cheek.

“It’s good to be back,” he says, without thinking. It is an automatic, unconsidered reply, but he finds to his surprise, that it is suddenly true. The hum of conversations and computers, the relaxed air of the staff – he has missed all this, at least a little, and it is good, after all, to be out of the house and thinking of something else.

His afternoon passes quickly, for Melissa has piled up an agenda for him that leaves no room for more than a snatched cup of coffee along the way. But the progress they make is good, and to his relief, he comes to the end of the day with the realisation that he has not thought about Katya for much of the time.

“What’s next?” he asks Melissa, as they leave another meeting.

“Nothing. Home time,” she replies.

He smiles. “And tell me, have you ever gone home at five thirty?”

She shrugs. “Not that I can remember, but then I’m hardly your role model.” She walks with him to the exit. “Go on home,” she says. “If you feel like it, I’d love to meet you back here tomorrow. But only if you’re up for it.”

“What sort of time?” he asks, stepping into the glass elevator.

“Since you ask, nine sharp,” she says, with a smile, and the doors close.

He follows the same routine the next day, and the next, and when he leaves for the week on Friday evening, he stops and breathes deeply of the cool courtyard air. There are a lot of people walking purposefully past him, and around him, hurrying home for the weekend. He wonders if any of them see that the fading light has a crispness about it, a patina of life that hints at the coming springtime. He stops under the huge tree that dominates the centre of the paved area, and notes the sticky, ripe buds that are already clinging to its upper branches.

“It looked a lot of different the last time we were here, didn’t it?”

He turns immediately to the bench behind him. Estelle’s eyes hold a mischievous smile, a familiar look that he has tried hard to forget. They look at each other for a long moment. He is collecting himself, trying to repress the unseemly crashing of his heart inside his chest. When at last he takes the few steps towards her, she shifts over on the bench and waits for him to sit down. Now that he is so close to her, she finds she cannot quite look at his eyes. Not just yet.

“Are you waiting for Melissa?”

She shakes her head, then gives him a quick glance.

“I’m flattered,” he says, finally.

“Do you wish I hadn’t come?”

“Of course not. I just didn’t expect it. Didn’t dare to expect it.”

The emotion in his voice settles over her residual fears like a soft, warm blanket, easing them away so that she feels able to speak.

“I was wrong to have pushed you away that evening,” she says. “I didn’t want to – I guess I felt I had to.” She waits, unsure of how to formulate her next sentences, hoping that he will fill in the gaps with questions that will guide her towards what she wants to say. But he remains silent, his brown eyes fixed on a point just before them.

She wants to touch him, just the sleeve of his coat, or the top of his hand, or the back of his neck, which even at this age has the slim, shorn look of a little boy’s. But she does not dare. Instead, she leans over to her handbag and takes out a sheaf of paper, and offers it to him. He takes it, and then holds onto her hand. To her chagrin, she blushes suddenly.

“The first few chapters.”

“Is it about Katya?”

“Yes and no.”

“Because I don’t know if I can read it just yet,” he says. “If it is.”

“Well, I started out with her, but then I had a slight problem; I didn’t know a thing about the places I was trying to describe. Oh, and half my plot line was missing.”

“So what did you write about?”

“Well, I thought about the characters and story that I knew best. And so, we have the following scenario. Picture it. A mature woman – I hate to say old – who has always lived a safe and easy life. Who has been married for nearly thirty years, and who believes that marriage is for life, because there are such things between her and her husband as loyalty and respect, if not the attention and care she would have wanted.”

“I see.”

“But then, this woman meets someone. Someone who she loves to be with and who maybe sees in her more than there is. And there’s another character, you see, though I’m not sure how to bring her in yet. This character is my Katya. Someone whose story proves interesting and then inspirational to my main character.”

“Why inspirational?”

“Because in her young life, she has always lived for her passions and ideals and beliefs, no matter what the risks might be for doing that.”

He feels his eyes moisten, but with a breath, he controls the tears.

“How does your story end?” he asks at last.

“That’s the thing. I’m not completely sure. But I think the old lady gets up the courage to live life in the end. I really do.”

Standing up, he offers her his hand, and together they walk across the courtyard and to the main road. They join the line for a cab and he turns to her. His face is handsome and stern and kind as he stands there watching her. She feels lost suddenly, and a moment of panic crosses her face.

“Tell me what you feel, Estelle.”

She laughs nervously. “It’s a lot easier to talk about my characters.”

But he will not let her go so easily. His eyes hold her down until she looks away. Perhaps he is challenging her to show that courage that she just talked about. She swallows and looks up at him again.

“While I was away I began to realise that I would never see you again. That my life would just continue the way it had before – except that I’ve changed. And that’s the problem, you see. I don’t want my life to be the same as it has been. And I began to understand that – God help me – even with good blood pressure and low cholesterol, I can only have a very limited number of years left on this earth. And I don’t want to spend them away from you.”

He takes a deep breath, to try and slow his heart – he wonders how many more shocks it can take.

“What about your husband?” he asks, finally.

“I’m not sure,” she says. In her mind she has envisioned packing up, walking out, not returning, but the vision is one of too much brutality and harshness. “I would have to ask you to bear with me for a while.”

“Yes, I will,” he says quickly.

“Really?”

“Yes.”

She looks at him, a weight of compassion in her face. “Melissa told me you’ve had a hard few weeks.”

“Yes.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. It was time for everything to come out. But it just brought it all back, with such force. What she gave up for me, what she and I both lost.”

Estelle only nods, for she cannot speak just now. She does not know whether it is tiredness, excitement, relief or uncertainty, but she feels tears in her eyes. Despite her best efforts, a rogue droplet escapes from the edge of her eye and runs over her cheek. His hand reaches up to brush it away.

It is late, perhaps one o’clock in the morning. To be able to sit in her uncle’s living room, wrapped in a thick darkness that is scattered away only here and there by the last flickers of the fire, seems luxurious to Lauren, like being swathed in the softest velvet. She has waited until Alexander is asleep before methodically turning out all the lights downstairs. Her head begins to feel heavier as she watches the dying flames, and before she should fall asleep, she rouses herself and goes over to the cloth-draped easel that stands at the other end of the room. She lifts the cloth away, and glances at the beginnings of Estelle’s portrait. She can see little of it in the dim light. Lifting it down, she leans it against a second sketch that outlines the features of her uncle. Then she wraps the cloth around both.

She watched them both tonight at dinner, closely. In Alexander she saw a new softness and peace, a relaxation of the features And in Estelle, she sensed a more determined look in the blue eyes, which previously had only masked her inner feelings with irony and laughter. Or perhaps she merely imagined these changes – had wished for them so much that she read them into the faces before her. In any event, she is tired. She does not want to paint for a while, and maybe the time off that she takes will allow those developments to occur that she wants to see in her two latest subjects. Wandering back to the fireplace, she looks up at Katya’s portrait. The shadows cast onto her face by the glowing embers mean that her eyes and mouth are barely visible. How would her aunt have changed, had she been given the chance? Lauren looks at the painting, trying in her mind to re-work the familiar features so that age and experience cause their alterations. But she cannot – the choices that her aunt may have made, the way her character could have developed are too varied to be pinned down so easily. Lauren closes her eyes, but beneath the lids that burn from lack of sleep, the image of Katya still lies, clear and bright. She pushes down the last embers of the fire with the poker, and turns to leave the room.

“Good night Katya,” she says. “Good night.”

The End

I CAN’T THINK STRAIGHT Novel

Exploring the themes of self-discovery and tradition-breaking, the acclaimed novel
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is award-winning author Shamim Sarif ‘s third novel. Including behind-the-scenes photos from the movie, the book follows the journey of Tala, Leyla and their families in a touching and often humorous narrative.

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THE WORLD UNSEEN Novel

Shamim Sarif’s first novel took the publishing world by storm and went on to win the Pendleton May First Novel Award and the prestigious Betty Trask Award, garnering huge critical acclaim for its delicate portrayal of 1950’s South Africa.