Tell the Truth, Shame the Devil(114)

“The only reason I’m not shouting at you, Bish, is because the girls are happy,” Katherine said.

“All I—”

“Ring your mother,” Sadia interrupted, her tone cool. “She will be the only person who’ll want to speak to you today.”

He rang Saffron—not because Sadia told him to, but because he wanted to.

“Everyone’s a bit furious with you, Bish darling. Is it true you’ve kidnapped the children from the hospital?” And it made him smile, the way his mother had of announcing the most dramatic thing in the most normal tone.

He was suddenly overcome with homesickness for her. As if he’d regressed thirty-five years. “Where were you all those years I was at school?” he asked. “Because if you say you were drying out I think I can cope with that. More than with you not wanting me.”

He had to wait a long moment for her reply. “Did I ever tell you that I went searching for my father when you started boarding? I missed you so much and I think I needed to fill that void.”

Bish didn’t know why he was surprised that she’d tried to find Bashir Nasrallah.

“I was too late by six months. I didn’t think it would affect me so badly, but of course it wasn’t just about his death. It brought up everything. My mother, and brother, leaving Alexandria, and growing up with Aunt Margaret. So I did what the Worthingtons do so well: I drank. It’s easy to hide how much you’re drinking when you have the expat’s lifestyle. Brunch, followed by a long lunch, followed by cocktails and then predinner and postdinner drinks. Different guests each time. No one picked up that I had a problem. Then I’d try desperately to pull myself together for your school holidays, and I failed at that.”

In the silence Bish wanted to say the right thing. Something that would make sense to them both.

“Eight days without a drink.”

“Thirty-three years.”

“So it gets easier?” he asked.

“Not at all, darling. Stevie’s death made me almost give in about a thousand times a day. And if it wasn’t for visiting those kids in Buckland, I would have had one for sure these past weeks.”

“Demons,” she had called them.

“No more secrets, Mum,” he said. “They make us lonely.”

“Do you want to hear some good news coming out of this whole bombing mess?” she asked.

“Always.”

“My nephew found me. My half sister’s son. Out of respect for my father’s second wife, they waited until she died to search for me. It was what our father wanted—that one day, all his children would be reunited. They got as far as knowing that my surname was Ortley and that my brother had died, then they hit a roadblock. Until my nephew saw us on Al Jazeera—you and I talking outside Buckland Hospital. The French ran the story and identified you as Bashir Ortley.”

Bish turned at the sound of a car and watched as a sedan pulled up and an older man stepped out. John Conlon.

“I’ll take you there, Mum. To Alexandria. Bee can come too. Right now I’ve got to go, but I’ll ring you later.”

Grazier was there to greet Conlon and they embraced. Eddie and Violette walked out of the visitors’ center and stood close together. They looked so vulnerable. Bish went over to join them and the atmosphere was strained.

“Can you introduce me, Eddie?” Bish asked.

The kid did a mumbled pointing and naming. “Have you been feeding my fish?” he asked his father.

Conlon nodded. He seemed not to know what to say. Wasn’t that Noor’s fear? That all the talking would have stopped now that Anna was dead?

“Am I going to live with them?” Eddie asked his father. “With Violette?”

Conlon flinched as if someone had struck him. “Don’t be silly, Eddie. You belong with me.”

Eddie was gripping his sister’s hand. “I belong with my dad, Violette.”

And she was trying not to cry and nodding all the same. “Yeah, that’s what my mum said.”

“We saw the graffiti,” Eddie said to his father. “On YouTube.”

“It’s all gone now. Didn’t have to lift a finger myself. People are mostly decent, Eddie. I’ve dug the graves of their loved ones. They’ll pay me back with decency.”

John Conlon looked at Violette for the first time. “We’ll take you home,” he told her.

Bish read the confusion on her face.

“Me and Eddie together,” Conlon said, turning back to his son. “It’s where our Jimmy always wanted to go, you know, Eddie. The other side of the world. I bought him an atlas and we picked a place together. And our Jimmy, he said, ‘I’ll get your passport stamped if it’s the last thing I do, Da.’”

This time Violette did cry. “It’ll mean everything to my grandparents to see Eddie. Everything.”

Bish felt as though he was in a fishbowl. Their little group in the car park, surrounded by a circle of police, surrounded by the press. All wanting a glimpse of these kids’ lives. Soon afterwards, Violette was saying good-bye to Charlie, just as the Crombies were parking a Smart car.

“If their snogging entails tongues and saliva, one of you is going over to stop them,” Grazier said, approaching Bish and Elliot. “I’m f*cking traumatized by those Instagram accounts.”