‘You’re fucking joking?’
‘Fucking not.’
Why did she never really like this girl before? She has a girl crush on her now, because of her lending her mobile and because she hasn’t commented on her standing there with nothing on her top and because she said, ‘Fucking not.’
‘Hannah …?’ Antonella asks.
‘I’ll be there in a minute,’ she says, because she is shaking now, uncontrollably, and can’t even get the teacher’s cardigan back on again. ‘It’ll stop in a minute,’ she says.
‘It’s okay,’ Antonella says. ‘Got nowhere I need to be for a while.’
* * *
Rafi is trying to run, the wind driving snow against him and into the abrasions on his face; he has to find Basi before the terrorist, but he doesn’t know where to go.
The lights of Abu Qir harbour at night; in the darkness dogs are barking and men are shouting and they have to leave the beach and get to the boat again.
He knows now how deep the sea is, that Basi will be out of his depth and that he’s not strong enough to carry him. He gives money to a man on the beach next to them, who’s told him that he’s an engineer like Baba; a strong, kind-looking man. The man promises he’ll carry Basi through the water to the boat. Rafi splashes through the waves, having to swim by the time he reaches the boat. He hauls himself up and looks for Basi. The engineer is getting into the boat without Basi, and he sees that the man has dumped Basi in the water near the beach. Out of his depth, Basi is trying to swim to the boat but he can only do doggy-paddle. The people smugglers start the boat’s engine, and Rafi is yelling at them to wait, yelling and yelling, but they don’t turn off the engine. His phone is vibrating but it’s part of the boat’s engine, the whole boat vibrating, and they’re going to leave Basi behind.
* * *
Hannah has joined her friends on the stage because it has reception and she’s phoning Rafi but he doesn’t pick up. Maybe he doesn’t know it’s her phoning because she’s using Antonella’s phone so she texts him.
It’s Hannah using Antonella’s phone
She sends the text, then rings him. His phone rings five times and each time her heart beats faster, please let him be safe. He answers and she thinks he says something but can’t be sure because all she can hear is the violent wind.
‘Rafi? It’s me. Can you hear me?’
* * *
Rafi is sitting on the snow, his hoody soaked through, his leg bleeding, pressing his phone against his ear.
‘Are you okay?’ Hannah asks.
Her voice is a pure warm thing among the wind and pain and isolation of the snow.
‘Yes.’ But she can’t hear him so he raises his voice, ‘Yes!’
Pressing his phone against his ear, holding her against him.
‘Where are you?’ he asks, having to shout above the wind.
Because surely she’s at home with her father by now.
‘I’m safe. Is Basi all right?’
‘I’m going to find him.’
He’s having to shout so Hannah can hear him and he had to shout when he spoke to Rose Polstein too, to be heard above the wind, but Basi had used his usual little voice when they spoke. It had been hard for Rafi to hear him but that was the wind where Rafi was, not Basi, because where Basi was it was quiet. He’s inside. That’s what he knew when he first talked to Basi, but didn’t register it, not properly, just thought he must be inside Junior School. So, he must be inside somewhere near to Junior School and he will find him.
One hand presses his phone against his ear to hear Hannah better, and he makes out noises in the background, other voices.
‘Where are you?’ he asks again.
‘The theatre. Don’t worry, it’s completely safe here.’
‘But Frank said …’
‘I asked him to lie, I’m sorry. I didn’t want you putting yourself in more danger for me.’
‘I love you,’ he says but the harsh wind is gusting, screaming around him, so he has to yell, ‘I love you!’ He checks around him in case the terrorist has heard and is coming after him and imagines his love decimating hate, flattening it, no contest, the man turning into a phantom, a ghost in the snow. But Basi needs him and the terrorist is real and armed.
‘I love you too,’ she says and in the background he hears people cheering; someone even whistles, the way Benny whistles. ‘They’re rehearsing Macbeth,’ she says. ‘They’re all a bit bonkers right now. You should be Young Seward, you know that, don’t you? Find Basi and stay safe.’
He pockets his mobile.
She got Frank to lie to him about being evacuated. She was protecting him, didn’t want him to be in danger, didn’t want him to be hurt.
All this time she’s been digging for him.
The engineer was in the boat, leaving Basi in the water, and Rafi was yelling at the people smugglers as they started the engine, screaming at them, the boat vibrating with the engine, and they were cursing him, but he wouldn’t stop yelling and then they turned the engine off and the boat was quiet and still and Basi was doggy-paddling towards them, Rafi calling to him in Arabic and in English, ‘Come on, Basi, not much further, come on! Come on …!’ and another man, an elderly man, was calling to Basi too, and then he and the elderly man, who later turned out to be a judge, pulled him in.
There’s a boatshed, he remembers passing it earlier when he ran across the car park from the top of the cliff path; the only indoor place where Basi might be hiding. He will go to the boatshed and find him.
He thinks that a long time ago he was like a glass, a tall jug, he imagines, clear and transparent, made of invisible love – Mama’s and Baba’s and Karam’s and Basi’s – and he was filled with liquid running life, right to the brim.
Then a truck stopped – ‘Enter Gloucester his eyes put out’ – and he’d had to leave Mama behind and he’d been beaten and ashamed and frightened and he was a thousand pieces scattered on a snow-covered pavement in Aleppo, an Egyptian beach, the deck of a boat, a migrant camp.
But then he met a girl, loves this girl, and each of those thousand pieces know their way back to their place in the glass, the cracks in him kaleidoscopes of light.
* * *
In the theatre, Hannah feels again that flashing joy, euphorically happy, weightless with it. She walks up the steps to the back of the auditorium with her own phone which has enough charge now for one call.
She reaches the back of the auditorium, where it’s quiet and gets a good signal. She dials.
‘Hey, Dad? I’m in the theatre. I’m safe. Don’t cry.’
It feels like a miracle to Daphne, all of them here and safe in the theatre. She thinks that for everyone in Old School the noise of his footsteps is still there – they’ve all told her about the footsteps – but now they are borrowing phones and chargers and they’ve been to the loo and they’re with friends and teachers, all of them together in their school theatre, and they’re about to watch a dress rehearsal of Macbeth, which is what is meant to be happening this morning, and the fact that one normal strand of the morning is continuing, and they are a part of it, takes them a little bit further away from the fear and the trauma.