* * *
Rafi Bukhari’s hand was holding on to Hannah’s as they ran through the woods, helping her to run faster and because he loved touching her; her beautiful red hair and pale skin and her kindness; Angels are bright still. His best friend, Benny, would say, Wow, man, you’re so fucking deep, and he’d say back, Hey, bro’, you’re so fucking shallow.
The rhythm of his feet hitting the path as he ran, then Hannah’s a moment later, thudding out an iambic pentameter; his friends would say, You really are fucking weird, bro’, and they’d be right but Hannah was equally weird and they were united in their shared weirdness, a normality of two.
His mum and dad were fluent in English but never used words like fucking, bro’, chrissake, hench, peng, wanker; they’d be shocked, but his older brother, Karam, would have learnt it all immediately.
His thoughts were full of Hannah and the luxury of worrying about being late for your school dress rehearsal. He’d brought his dad’s copy of Macbeth from Syria but had never seen it performed. And now he had a part! He wished he could tell his dad. He heard Hannah wheezing and pulled her to a stop. A white snowflake landed on a fiery gold strand of her hair and for a moment he saw the beauty of it.
‘Have to go,’ he said, then he turned from her and ran towards Junior School, because his younger brother was terrified of snow – not stopping for even a moment to explain to Hannah, and later he’d wonder if it was because he thought she understood or because responsibility for his brother trumped everything and this was a kind of selfishness and smallness in him because he wasn’t able to incorporate Hannah too.
‘Snow is a PTSD trigger for Basi,’ Dr Reynolds had said, but for him and Basi trigger meant a gun, a real trigger on a real gun; men holding guns, their dogs barking and snarling; just the word trigger making memories jump alive again. So he and Basi had their own word – hole. Because the present was the floor you trod on, all fine and oblivious, and then – BAM! a hole – and you fell down into the past.
He saw the tarmac drive which wound through the woods ending in Junior School, but the path would be quicker.
He jogged, not slowly but not flat out; Basi had become quicker to recover in the last few months and he felt guilty for wondering how long he’d need to spend with Basi, if he’d still make it back in time for his cue.
The percussive roar of an explosion, ripping the air around him, cutting inside his memory as if it was flesh and could bleed, and he was falling into the past.
His dad was running, carrying toddler Basi in his arms, his mum and older brother ahead of him, yelling at him to run faster but he couldn’t hear them, just saw their mouths, because the sound waves had torn his eardrums. He fell as another building was hit.
He was under the rubble, calling for Baba and Mama, but his mouth was dried with dust and he couldn’t make any sound. It was four hours until he was pulled out by his parents, his right leg broken, but lucky; Baba’s hands bloody from digging for him, two of Mama’s fingers broken by her search through the rubble.
He was struggling to breathe under the rubble but at the same time he was pressed against an English oak tree, its trunk soft with moss. He thought of the face of a stranger who’d been kind because that’s how he could clamber back to the present. Today it was the judge, his beard flecked with salt, talking to him all through the first night on the boat, and Rafi came fully back to the English woods with snow falling.
He walked towards the flames being extinguished by the snow, charcoal smoke smudging the sky; then the wind blew the smoke into his face, stinging his eyes, smarting at the back of his throat. Pulling his hoody over his mouth and nose, he went closer. A twisted, blackened piece of metal, the size of a lunch box. A small bomb, nothing like the ones in Aleppo, but a bomb. The tree close to it had pieces of shrapnel sticking into its trunk. The lower branches were charred and, as he watched, fragments of blackened bark fell with the snow to the ground. He couldn’t see anyone else in the woods.
Fuck’s sake, it’s just your PTSD! You’re still in the middle of it, numb-nuts! His rational mind had to be aggressive and swear to get his attention because he had the six-pack version of PTSD with what Dr Reynolds called hypervigilance and delusions, a kinder way of saying psychosis. But delusions didn’t sting your throat, phantom smoke didn’t smart into your eyes.
He ran flat out towards Basi, his lungs hurting as they pulled in the freezing air.
The woods thinned and he saw the Junior School building and playground in front of it; the pirate ship playset with swings and a slide, and a huge old tree with parts of its roots exposed. Basi had shown him the houses they’d made for their Lego minifigures in the roots; tiny twig roofs.
Junior School had more security than the rest of the school, with a link-wire fence around the playground and building, barbed wire at the top, the suggestion and ugliness disguised by clambering ivy. The secretary always took ages to open the locked gate, huffing and puffing and complaining and making him sign something; every time; like she didn’t already know who he was.
No time.
He ran at the fence, leaping as high as he could, one foot hitting against it, bouncing against it, while his left hand grabbed the top through the ivy and his right helped swing him over, the barbed wire tearing his hands as he vaulted it.
As he ran through the playground to the building, he saw a hardback book on a swing, protected from the falling snow by the pirate ship canopy. The illustration on the cover of the book was a woodland in snow and looked so like the real school woods in snow that for a moment he paused, then ran to the door.
The secretary busybodied after him down the corridor; she must have seen his ninja-vaulting from her office window.
‘Tell Mr Lorrimer I need to see him straight away, please,’ Rafi said. ‘It’s an emergency.’
Then he ran to Basi’s classroom.
Just before circle time Basi Bukhari was looking at their scarecrows on the windowsill, waiting for springtime to guard the allotment, when he saw snowflakes. Everyone else in his class saw the snow too and ran to the windows, shouting, ‘Snow! Snow! Snow!’ But Basi was sick. Mrs Cardswell didn’t get cross with him, just with Samantha, who said it was gross. Mrs Cardswell told everyone else to go to the reading room and then Miss Price came because she was his teacher when he’d first arrived and still came to be with him when he was upset. But he was falling down the hole and no one could reach him. And then he heard Rafi’s voice.
‘S’okay, Little Monkey, I’m here, you’re safe. It’s all okay.’
‘Snow.’
‘I know. A hole.’
‘The worst hole.’
‘I’ve got you now.’
He put Basi on his lap.
‘The judge. Remember him in the boat? I was just thinking about him. His long grey beard with all the salt in it?’
‘He gave me a lemon, because I was seasick.’
‘Yes. He did. And it helped, didn’t it?’
Basi opened his eyes, fixed them on Rafi as he came back to the classroom and his brother.
‘His last lemon,’ Basi said.
‘That’s right. I have to go and see Mr Lorrimer for a minute but Miss Price will look after you and then I’ll be back, I promise.’
Rafi hurried to Mr Lorrimer’s office. It would be too dangerous to take Basi through the woods, the bomber might still be there, but this building wasn’t safe, he’d just got in without any problem. Junior School was at the top of the cliffs with a path leading down to an out-of-bounds beach. He’d gone to the beach last summer, a big group of them playing music and laughing, making more noise than they needed; challenging someone, claiming something. Too hot in the sun, they’d drunk beers and smoked in the cliff’s shadows and no one had seen; maybe the beach.