The Gulf Between Us Read online

  Dear Mum,

  Don’t panic. Seriously. I’ve gone abroad for a few days. I’m really sorry I couldn’t warn you, but I know you’ll understand.

  I realize it’s tricky, but if there’s any way you can avoid telling people I’ve left the country – even granddad, Will and Sam if possible – that would be brilliant. Maya’s family has a house in Yorkshire: maybe you could say I’m there? (I know you’re crap at lying, but just this once.)

  I promise I’ll explain the whole thing later. I love you and I’m taking care, honest.

  Matt xx

  I read the note, then read it again. Then I stuffed it in my dressing gown pocket and walked up and down the kitchen three times. Then I sat down. Then I stood up.

  What did he mean, don’t panic? He was going somewhere so secret and dangerous he didn’t trust me to know about it. He’d disappeared out of his bed on Christmas night leaving me with some rubbish cover story saying he knew that I’d understand.

  Well, no, I didn’t. I understood some things – that he’d gone to see someone he wasn’t supposed to meet, who was presumably surrounded by bodyguards. But not why he thought that was in any way a good idea.

  Matt and Rashid couldn’t have found each other and certainly couldn’t have exchanged enough information to make this possible without other people knowing. Whoever was policing Rashid would be monitoring all his phone calls and emails. And they would be particularly on the lookout for Matthew, who, not being a spy or an international terrorist, didn’t have the faintest idea how to cover his tracks – who, if anything, was rather flamboyant and garrulous.

  I switched on the kettle again. He’d be in the air by now. And the next thing I knew, he’d be found knifed in some Beirut back‐street, or floating down the Nile…

  How could he have done this? How could he have taken such a stupid risk, without thinking of me, or all the people who loved him? Didn’t he appreciate how dangerous it was? That the people who took an interest in the future of Shaikh Rashid did so because they were protecting what was left of the oil revenues and because they were desperate to maintain a status quo that allowed Saudi Arabia to go on quietly subsidizing the Hawari economy? For which you had to assume they’d do almost anything?

  It was so utterly out of character. Matt was the last person you’d think of as taking clandestine flights to foreign countries for illicit meetings. He’d never shown the slightest desire to needle history, to nudge it along a bit. All he really wanted was to be left alone to live like a normal person. A normal person who liked grooming products and scented candles, admittedly, but definitely not a person who fled from the house before dawn on secret missions.

  When dad wandered down half an hour later, I was still sitting in the kitchen, staring into space. He had a headache – he’d had two glasses of wine, a couple of snowballs and he’d gone to bed extremely late. Sam had stayed up after everyone else, watching some movie and probably finishing off the vodka, and when he eventually got up he had a hangover too. Neither of them questioned my frankly risible story that Matt had taken himself off to Yorkshire at first light on Boxing Day morning without telling anyone he was going. If Matt had really been planning a trip north, we’d have had discussions for days beforehand about what clothes he ought to take and whether it was possible to spend several days in Yorkshire in winter without getting wet. We’d have had descriptions of Maya’s parents’ house – which, knowing Matt, would have been big and built in the reign of Queen Anne. I wasn’t even sure that trains ran on Boxing Day, but they didn’t question that either.

  I spent the day clearing up. We ate leftover turkey, mashed potatoes and pickles, all of which tasted to me of nothing. Sam played CDs, fiddled about with his new iPod and watched old movies with his grandfather. It was all very disquieting. Subdued, but alarming at the same time.

  Finally, at eight o’clock, I had a text: ‘Arrived safely. All well, Inbox now full! Stop worrying. Really, no need. I love you.’

  I immediately rang back, but he’d already switched off his phone. I loosed off a text to join all the others I’d sent through the day… Call me… Where are you?… This is not fair, etc., but if his inbox was full perhaps he didn’t even get it. At any rate, I didn’t get a reply.

  I lay awake most of the night, half‐expecting to have to get up and go downstairs to the hall to answer dad’s phone, to speak to the British embassy in Syria or Jordan. When I finally drifted off to sleep, I had a nightmare about a gun going off in a back alley in Libya. (I don’t know why Libya. I know nothing about Libya so it’s unfair on Libyans that in my dream they were all liars, insisting the gun had gone off by accident.) The purgatorial atmosphere of this dream hung around me all through the next day.

  I was so tired I could barely function. Sam went up to town to see Faisal. Dad went back out into the garden and worried that he’d seen an unseasonal squirrel and that he was certain it was getting his bulbs. I nearly snapped at him that it was ridiculous to worry about squirrels when Matt was missing, until I remembered he thought Matt was in Yorkshire.

  Even if I’d told him that Matt had flown half way round the world to meet a prince with whom he was in love, I’m still not sure he’d have believed me, because the whole thing had the irresponsible, creatively‐slipshod quality of a dream.

  By this time, I hadn’t heard from Matt for more than twenty‐four hours. He’d said in his note (which I kept re‐reading, hoping that I might have missed some vital clue) that he was only going to be away for a few days. He hadn’t hinted that he wouldn’t be coming back to Hawar with us on Saturday, for example. But I’d now sent him fifteen texts without getting any response and he could have been anywhere, doing anything.

  I kept thinking I should have been able to stop him doing something so reckless. As I wandered aimlessly around the house, unable to settle, it seemed to me I’d made a mess of everything. This was galling: I’d always prided myself on having quite a good touch emotionally, but it now seemed less of a touch than a wild jab. I’d got James all wrong, and Al Maraj, and Will wasn’t happy, whatever he might say, and I had no idea what was going on with Sam. I hadn’t paid him enough attention over the last few months, what with the wedding and Matt and James Hartley, even though he was the one who was changing fastest, so that I sometimes felt everything he said or did was capable of surprising me. At sixteen, he was a person still in search of a personality: one minute talking like someone from South Central LA, the next holding forth about politics; now a bit racist, now thoughtful; now mature, now like a child. If he was looking for something to fix on, to build his identity around, then I probably needed to give him more help.

  ‘You seen this?’ he asked me through a mouthful of toast on Friday morning, looking up from dad’s paper. ‘Says here that the Ministry of Information in Hawar has closed the Al Jazeera bureau.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It’s not clear.’

  I looked over his shoulder. The story was a few sentences at the bottom of a column headed ‘News in Brief’. One of these sentences was entirely taken up with explaining that James Hartley had been filming in Qalhat a few weeks ago, where he’d ‘been the target of a terrorist bomb’. This seemed to be the main reason to be interested in the place. Hawar almost never made appearances in the British press and this story was probably only running now because nothing else was happening between Christmas and New Year. Although the piece was so short, it managed to convey the impression that closing down Al Jazeera offices was a generally good thing and the Ministry of Information had been sensible.

  ‘Someone from Hassan Town probably rang some phone‐in programme to complain about the ruling family,’ Sam said gloomily. ‘The same thing happened before in Kuwait, and I think the Palestinian Authority closed their bureau a while ago. Al Jazeera could soon be the first Arab TV station without offices in any Arab country. Honestly, how can Matt’ve got involved with those people?’ He meant the Al Majid. ‘If they don’t like something they just
close their eyes and ears to it. And then think they can do the same to everyone else.’

  ‘I think, to be fair, that’s the sort of thing Shaikh Rashid wants to change.’

  ‘Yeah, well, he’s not making much progress, is he? Why has he given up Matt if they’re still shutting down the only place people can go to express an opinion?’

  ‘I guess it’ll take time,’ I said, uncomfortably conscious that Shaikh Rashid’s attention was probably somewhere else right now.

  ‘They won’t give up their power,’ Sam said, turning the pages of the newspaper. ‘They want it all. Freedom to go off to Monte Carlo and drink and gamble and have sex for them, nothing for anyone else. It’s like when dad died…’

  I paused, lifting my hands out of the washing‐up bowl. ‘What d’you mean?’ I asked carefully.

  ‘I mean,’ he answered pityingly, ‘they didn’t find the other driver, because he was a rich Arab. Never mind that he’d killed someone. He was allowed to escape back to Saudi or go hide in his fuck‐off mansion.’

  ‘No. That’s not right.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘That’s not what happened.’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘He was drunk. I’m sorry. Dad.’

  ‘What d’you mean?’ He was glaring at me, but I could tell he was afraid.

  ‘I should have said.’

  ‘Why didn’t you? Drunk? How come we didn’t know?’

  ‘When you were younger,’ I faltered, ‘I wanted you to have an idea of him that was – I don’t know – good. I wanted him to be someone you could admire.’

  ‘So what happened?’

  ‘He’d drunk about three‐quarters of a bottle of brandy before he got in the car.’

  ‘The accident was his fault?’

  ‘The blood results were off the graph,’ I said wearily, sitting down on the stool opposite him. ‘His car crossed the central reservation on the Arad Road and hit a pick‐up truck. He spun round and went into the side wall of Jashanmal’s Furniture warehouse. The other driver was very lucky.’

  ‘You know who he was? The other driver?’

  ‘Yes, although he panicked and drove away: that part was true. He could see dad was an expat and he was old enough to remember when the British had been in charge. The police picked him up as soon as he took his truck in for repair, because he didn’t have an accident report. I met him.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell us?’ Sam’s eyes were hot. ‘Or did you? Am I the only one who didn’t know?’

  I shook my head. ‘I didn’t say because I wanted you to believe in him.’

  ‘But if it was an accident… Oh God,’ he looked at me, realizing, ‘it wasn’t a one‐off, was it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What, he drank all the time?’

  I nodded.

  ‘And you think you’ve helped by not saying?’

  ‘I don’t know. Probably not.’ I swallowed. ‘The driver of the pick‐up truck was in his sixties. He lived in Hassan Town. He asked to meet me. He kept on apologizing for not reporting the accident, but we knew that dad had died immediately; it wouldn’t have made any difference. The police gave him a hard time, but nobody really wanted to make a fuss. It wasn’t actually his fault and – well, you were right about the conspiracy of silence in a way, but it wasn’t to protect a rich Arab, so much as to protect us.’

  ‘Yeah, and their precious emirate… Why did he drink?’

  He obviously thought that that was my fault.

  ‘I don’t know. He felt that the world was against him.’

  ‘Was it?’

  ‘No.’ Although it’s difficult for the world to be on your side if you are an alcoholic. ‘Of course not. He was… somewhere else when he was drinking. Somewhere that felt better.’

  ‘We weren’t enough for him?’

  ‘No. Sam, surely you can see why it was difficult for me to talk about it when you were small?’

  He looked at me in a way that was both despising and pitying.

  ‘Did other people know he was an alcoholic?’

  ‘No. They knew he liked a drink, obviously. Until near the end, he covered it up pretty well, but in the last few weeks things had started to slip, almost as if he was giving up, giving in to it. He’d made a couple of mistakes at work. And a few weeks beforehand he’d shouted at a woman in the street for running over his foot with her pushchair. The night he died he hit someone in a bar.’

  ‘Do other people know how he died? Like, I don’t know, Faisal’s parents, or the Franklins?’

  ‘No. It looked at first sight like a hit‐and‐run accident, and that’s how it stayed.’

  ‘How convenient. Did he hit you?’

  ‘No.’

  At least that was true. He hadn’t hated me. But I hadn’t been able to help him in the way that would have made a difference. I hadn’t been able to make him stop.

  ‘I wish you’d said.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Sam.’

  ‘Are we like him?’

  ‘Yes and no.’ Sometimes a ghost of Dave stole across the boys’ features. But in the ways that really mattered they weren’t like him, not least because I was so determined they shouldn’t be. Sam, for instance, floundering around for a way to be an adult: if I had anything to do with it, that was going to involve facing up to what he felt.

  Friday was the evening I was supposed to have dinner in Notting Hill with Antonia and David. It was the last thing I wanted to do, but I didn’t see how I could back out without concocting a lot of complicated lies, which would have been more effort than actually going. It would also have meant disappointing dad and Sam, who approved of my going out, thinking that it was a sign that I was getting over James. They had no sense of how little thought I’d given to James in recent days.

  I drove into town and followed Antonia’s directions to the Pembridge Club, which turned out to be two large, stucco‐fronted houses in Notting Hill knocked together and furnished to appeal to the resident abroad market, blandly but with touches of the exotic – a Chinese carpet here, a Korean rice chest over there, a sofa scattered with cushions covered in Indian silk. Antonia and David would have felt at home here, among the sort of trophies that expats carry away from their postings in exchange for bits of their lives left abroad.

  Antonia showed me into a chintzy room, softly lit by table lamps, where a waiter was serving pre‐dinner drinks. It was warm and comfortable; you’d never have guessed it was raining outside and that a greasy film had settled over the city.

  ‘Do come and meet Johnny,’ she urged, taking me by the arm. ‘You’re so going to like him.’ She lowered her voice. ‘He’s a bit obsessed by how much money his ex‐wife managed to get off him, but if you can ignore that, he’s lovely.’

  Unfortunately, I didn’t manage to ignore Johnny’s obsession with his ex‐wife, which wasn’t surprising as it was his only topic of conversation. We were placed next to each other at dinner, during which he explained to me that you need to squirrel your money away well before your wife leaves you: it’s no good trying to move it once she’s run off with someone else and filed for divorce. The key thing is to build up your secret offshore accounts in good time. Fortunately, he’d had advice from friends, and he’d thought ahead and done it, or he’d have been fleeced even more, and she’d have had an even bigger house in Chelsea to share with her personal trainer.

  It was OK sitting next to him, though, because I just had to say ‘Oh, really?’ whenever he paused for breath and then I could go back to worrying about Matthew.

  The other guests were two couples called Miles and Juicy, and Adam and Harriet – or it may have been Miles and Harriet and Adam and Juicy. I called her Lucy for the first half‐hour because I’d never met a person called Juicy before, and also because it’s an adjective. And, in fact, whichever one of Adam or Miles was her husband did sometimes call her Fruit.

  ‘So what happened to South Ken or Knightsbridge or whatever it was, darling?’ Antonia asked, when we got t
o the salmon. ‘Seems a bit of a come‐down… Oh, but that reminds me, you’ll never guess who I bumped into in Harvey Nicks yesterday? I’ll give you a clue: someone from the film!’

  ‘Nezar Al Maraj?’ I said without thinking.

  ‘No, but close! And it’s funny you should say that, because she asked if you’d seen him. I mean, as if I’d know! The other one, Fiona thingy… Eckhart? We met her on Al‐Hidd, with James Hartley, d’you remember?’

  ‘Ah, yes.’

  ‘What happened with you and James Hartley?’ David asked. ‘There was a rumour going round that he kept sending you flowers…’

  ‘Well, he did once,’ I said vaguely.

  ‘What d’you mean, what happened?’ Antonia tutted at her husband. ‘What on earth could have happened? He’s a film star, darling… Anyway, she remembered me. She was quite chatty and, really, I don’t know why she told me, because I could know anyone – and in fact I do know a lot of people – but apparently, James Hartley met someone recently, some scheming woman who very nearly got her claws into him, Fiona said, and she’s had to clear up the mess. There was some flat he nearly bought her or something.’

  Rented, I wanted to say. He rented it.

  ‘That’s why she was here. I asked her along tonight, but she couldn’t make it.’

  That, at least, was a relief. I’d have had to leave.

  ‘Who was this mysterious woman?’ Adam asked. ‘Isn’t he with that Rosie Thingy from The Undetected?’

  ‘To be honest, she was a bit cagey. But she did say she’s hoping to come back to Hawar: she’s made lots of friends among the shaikhas, through the producer’s sister. Al Maraj, is he called? Are they together?’

  ‘What?’ I realized she was asking me. ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Oh, are you sure? I rather got the impression they were. Why would she think you’d seen him?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I replied honestly.

  ‘You don’t even like him, do you? That’s what I told her: “I’m sure Annie said she couldn’t stand him.”’