My Sister's Bones(86)

I stood for a moment watching a group of men who had just arrived on the scene. They started sifting through a mound of shredded canvas – all that was left of the tents. Their faces were twisted with exhaustion as they searched for survivors.

I should have stayed. It was the right thing to do, the decent thing to do, but I knew I had to get out. I’d known it in the moments before the explosion when I heard my mother’s voice. This was not my battle now. I was needed elsewhere. As I stepped across the remains of the clinic I heard a child screaming for its mother, but it wasn’t coming from the camp. It was coming from inside my head, from the place where memory is lodged.

Something evil was festering in that house. I’d sensed it, heard it, seen it with my own eyes. My poor mother had done the same. And both of us thought we were going mad. I knew as I stood in that field of death that I needed to follow the child’s screams and try to put things right.

Miraculously Hassan had missed the bomb too. He had been delivering aid to a district on the east side of the city when it hit. He returned and found me dazed and wandering around in circles through the dust. When I saw him walking towards me I thought he was a ghost, and I collapsed in a heap by his feet. He picked me up, put me in his car and at my insistence drove me to the Turkish border. We arrived at sunset and he took me to a medical centre where he urged me to get my leg treated. At the hospital I made Hassan promise me that if anyone asked he would tell them I’d been killed in the blast. I knew I would have to fall off the radar if I had any chance of returning to Herne Bay. I handed him a pile of my things: notes, Dictaphones, my press pass, and told him to send them on to Harry and tell him they were found in the ruins. It had to look like I was dead. Poor Hassan stared at me as though I were mad, but when I told him I was doing this to save my family, he asked no more questions. For Hassan, loyalty to friends and family is all. He got me some clothes to wear – traditional Islamic dress – and arranged for a contact of his to smuggle me back through Turkey and on into Europe.

‘For now,’ he said as he waved me off, ‘Kate Rafter is gone. I tell them you’re Rima. I give you my mother’s name. For luck.’

I stand up and slowly make my way to the station exit, making sure I keep my hood low over my eyes. The place is quiet. Just a smattering of people, mainly tourists, congregate inside the ticket hall. As I pass the newspaper stand I see my photograph staring out at me. I stop and pick up a copy.

HERNE BAY REPORTER NOW PRESUMED DEAD, screams the headline. It is an odd sensation to read of your own death. My stomach feels hollow as the enormity of what I have done dawns on me.

I go into the toilet and read the piece. In it Harry is quoted as saying I was the finest foreign correspondent of my generation and even Graham bloody Turner gets a look in, describing me as ‘Brilliant and brave. A reporter who never lost her nerve.’

‘Bastard,’ I mutter to myself as I shove it in the toilet bin and head for the exit. He wasn’t saying that a few weeks ago when he went crying to Harry, saying I was a liability. His testimony could have got me incarcerated and I will never forgive him.

As I step outside I take a moment to decide what to do. I haven’t thought beyond this moment – arriving in Herne Bay. If I had a key for my mother’s house I could go there to wait and watch but I gave it back to Paul when I left. Part of me wants to go straight round to number 44 and confront Fida and her husband, but is that wise on my own? No, the best thing to do is to find Paul. I have to trust that he won’t tell the police I’m back until we’ve done what we need to do. He’ll probably be at work at this time of day, though, and it’s miles away.

Instinctively I root around in my pocket for my phone, even though I know it’s not there. I’m lost without it but I had to get rid of it. Though it survived the blast – it was tucked inside my padded waist pouch, along with my bank cards and passport – I knew that if I was to successfully carry out my plan I would have to be untraceable, so I left it in Aleppo, the SIM card crushed under my boot.

Passport control at the ferry terminal in Calais was brisk and thankfully nobody looked too closely at my name. The headlines described me as ‘Kate’ while my passport reads ‘Catherine’. Besides, customs officials are primed to look for potential terrorists, not journalists who have faked their own deaths. I’d bought new clothes in the hypermarket and tucked my hair into a thick woollen hat, though the chances of anybody recognizing me on the way back here were slim. Unlike Rachel Hadley, I’ve never been one for splashing my face across my reports and now I am glad of that.

There’s only one option left – I have to go to their house. Please let Paul be there, I think to myself as I make my way out of the car park, keeping my head down. Having to explain all this to a drunken Sally is the last thing I need. The more I can keep her out of this, the better.

Paul’s car is not in the drive when I get to the house and my heart sinks. I stand on the doorstep and ring the bell, willing Sally to be sober. I’ll have to persuade her to let me use her phone to call Paul. But there’s no reply. I go to ring the bell again then think better of it and make my way round to the side of the house.

But there’s no sign of Sally as I peer through the conservatory window. The room looks tidier than it was the last time I was here and there are no tell-tale bottles of wine lying about. Maybe they’ve gone away, I think, and then I panic. They’ll have seen the news. They think I’m dead. What if it’s sent Sally over the edge and she’s done something stupid? My heart races as I pull the door handle. It’s open.