Page 33 of The One Day You Were My Husband
“Tell me about this job in Myanmar, Johan,” Mum said, on her return from the bathroom. “It’s one of the few countries I’ve never visited in that neck of the woods.”
She sat down and crossed her legs. She didn’t need to rearrange herultrasmart linen culottes because they were made so beautifully they needed no human intervention. Mum, who’d watched her own mother’s struggles to operate on a level playing field, was probably the most immaculate activist in the country.Nobody listens unless you’re well dressed and well-spoken, she’d always said, somewhat bitterly.Especially if you look foreign.
Mum had read politics at Cambridge and her voice had never borne a hint of either my grandmother’s Malay or my grandfather’s North Wales. She was immaculate at all times: pressed clothes; smart cropped haircut; expensive, thick-rimmed reading glasses; and shoes that were passed on long before they became marked. She was the reason I ironed a new blouse before bed every day, no matter what shift I’d just finished.
“It’s a contract for a green energy firm,” Johan told her. “They want to build a massive wind farm in the Gulf of Martaban. My company’s been commissioned to survey the sea bed.” He took a drink of his beer. “I’ll be off there in September for six weeks. Can’t wait.”
“What an excellent opportunity,” Mum said. “Although I hope you’ve satisfied yourself that this firm really is ‘green.’ Many of them aren’t.”
I closed my eyes. She literally could not help herself.
“Yes, of course,” Johan said, unbothered. “We’ve been talking to local historians and they do actually think there’ll be stuff down there. I’m not clear on what, yet, but the Gulf has always had a huge tidal range. I’d imagine shipwrecks. Although I’m secretly hoping for a giant marble Buddha.”
“Oh, wonderful,” Mum said, eyes shining. “Johan, youmustkeep us posted.”
We talked until she had to leave for her panel, Johan about his times backpacking in Southeast Asia, Mum about the work she used to dowith rape victims in the same region. Johan listened, fascinated, and laughed when she broke off from a spirited critique of one Asian country’s rape legislation to call their president an “arse worm.”
By the time our brief meeting was over, he was entranced by her, which I’d expected. This power she held over others—it didn’t matter what gender—was exactly how she and Dad, who should never have been a couple, had come together.
When their divorce papers finally came through back in 1993 Dad told me, as he held that envelope of endings, that he’d have turned down Michelle Pfeiffer if she’d come knocking back when he was dating Mum. His eyes were faraway and sorrowful, even though he’d come to hate her in the intervening years.I’d have turned down any job, any house, any amount of money, Carrie. Just for five minutes with Adelina Ghali. I was mesmerized by the woman.
But then again, I thought now, as Mum walked off to shake hands with a ferociously intellectual-looking man carrying a clipboard, so was I. We all were.
“Adelina,” the man was enthusing. “Such a great pleasure. I heard you on Radio 4 the other day and…”
Mum hadn’t spent even five minutes prepping for her panel this evening. It was all there, in her head, and all the fire and fervor she’d need to deliver her message was in her heart. She was the real deal, my mother: a true metahuman. As I’d said to Maya, could it not be OK that some mothers just weren’t meant to be mothers? Could these women not have a different purpose?
No, Maya had always said shortly. I did rather hope that Maya 2.0 might develop a little more compassion. She’d just been accepted on a psychotherapy training course in Colorado.
“You Cole women are quite something,” Johan said, as Mum disappeared off upstairs.
He’d met Maya two nights before at her leaving party in Brixton. They were off to the States in four days, in spite of Maya not yet having a US visa. (“It’ll all be cool,” Eagle had said, which was what he seemed to say about everything.)
Maya had been at her drunk and deadly best, dangerously beautiful in black silk, teetering on the brink of mania most of the evening. She’d made a speech that had left most of us wondering if we should quit our own jobs and move to the Colorado mountains, and then she’d settled down to interrogate Johan for nearly an hour.
I smiled at him. “Firstly, don’t ever let Mum hear you describe her as a ‘Cole woman.’ She never considered taking Dad’s name. Her own mother even refused to give Mum the patriarchal surname. And, secondly, I’m nothing like either my mother or my sister. They’re the headline acts. I’m just the doctor nerd waiting backstage in case either of them get into trouble.”
Johan watched me for a few moments, drinking his beer. “You really can’t see yourself, can you,” he said.
I felt my face color.
“You have no idea.” He leaned in, tucked my hair behind my ear. “No idea.”
—
Nearly five weeks into our relationship, Johan went away on a short diving job.
“I’m going to be sleeping on an oil rig,” he said. “In a bunk the size of a mortuary cabinet. So if I’m not in touch it’s because I can’t call, rather than I don’t want to. Understood?”
“Understood.”
We were outside Johan’s flat as evening began to fall, loading a vast pile of Peli cases and strangely shaped equipment bags into a taxi.
“Good. I’ll be thinking about you constantly. Even if I can’t call to tell you that.”
“It’s OK! I’m not the type to stay up late, wondering why you haven’t called.” Then I frowned, passing him the smallest bag of all: his own suitcase. “Or at least, I don’t think I am.”
The truth was, I’d only had one boyfriend, and it had not lasted long. I had not been in love with him. I had not been in love with anyone, until now. Four weeks, four days. I was high as an endoscopy patient on Entonox.
