One Secret Summer Read online

  There was a constant line of yellow cabs crawling up the street. She tried to remember what Shirley had said – was it the yellow light to the left or the white light in the centre that indicated an available ride? She couldn’t remember. She shuffled along, her suitcases banging awkwardly against her legs and hips, looking for the end of the queue. Several times someone simply stuck out a hand in front of her, jumping into the cab she’d had her eye on. There didn’t seem to be a queue. She tried waving a hand like everyone else, but as soon as the cab swung over, someone else simply popped out in front of her and sped off. No one paid the slightest bit of attention to a slender young redhead whose face carried the painful outward expression of her nerves. She was close to tears by the time it happened for the tenth or eleventh time. Didn’t these people have any manners? A cab sped up the road towards her. She looked quickly left and right – no one else seemed to be waiting. She waved frantically at it like she’d seen everyone else do. It seemed to work – he appeared to be making straight for her. She stepped down off the sidewalk, determined not to let anyone else grab it before her, still holding on to her suitcases. She heard a sudden screeching of brakes, felt a rush of cool air sweep past her head and then the sound of someone shouting, ‘Oh! Oh, my Gawd!’

  She hit the kerb face first, catching her knee on the edge of one of her damned suitcases. She lay in stunned silence, the sounds of traffic and pedestrians rushing over to her receding slowly into the background as their voices rose. ‘What the hell was she trying to do?’ ‘What happened? Did I do something? Did I hit her?’ ‘Jesus!’

  She tried to lever herself off the ground, her face hot with embarrassment and her cheeks already sticky with tears. She’d tripped over one of the blasted suitcases. Someone bent down to her. ‘You OK?’ He knelt down so that his face was on a level with hers. He helped her to sit upright, squinted at the cut and pulled out a clean handkerchief, placing it firmly against her eyebrow. ‘You’ve cut yourself – just a scratch, nothing to worry about. When you get home, splash lots of cold water on it. It’ll help the cut close quicker.’ He had a nice voice. Maddy closed her eyes as he applied a gentle pressure to her forehead. ‘It’ll stop bleeding soon, don’t worry.’

  ‘Darling, she’s fine. We’re going to be late.’ A young woman’s impatient voice broke through the babble surrounding her.

  ‘Just a minute. She’s bleeding.’

  ‘It’s nothing – it’s a small scratch, that’s all. Just put a plaster on it.’ The young woman looked down at the dazed Maddy. ‘We’re going to miss the first act.’ She was beginning to whine.

  A middle-aged man bent down, and together they helped Maddy to her feet. ‘Will somebody get this girl a cab?’ he growled at the small crowd that had gathered to watch. Seconds later, a cab appeared. The driver jumped out, picked up her suitcases as if they were dust, and Maddy was helped into the back seat. Still holding the young man’s handkerchief to her forehead, she leaned back against the plastic seats, handed over the scrap of paper with the address of Gramercy House, the first-year hall of residence, and tried not to cry. The cab pulled smartly away from the kerb and was soon swallowed up in the traffic. She lifted a hand and tried to brush her tears discreetly away. It wasn’t quite the arrival she’d planned.

  3

  NIELA

  Hargeisa, October 1991

  Fifteen years after leaving Hargeisa, the Aden family returned. Not as the prosperous professionals they’d become, Hassan Aden complained bitterly to anyone who’d listen. No, they were returning as refugees from a war they hadn’t anticipated and knew nothing about. Refugees! He spat the word out. Refugees with nothing but the suitcases they were able to carry and the few possessions they’d grabbed as they ran. Not even the old second- or third-hand pick-up truck in which they were driving to Hargeisa belonged to them. Back home in Mogadishu there were three cars in the driveway, including the brand-new Mercedes, which he’d been forced to sell for next to nothing. Next to nothing! Hassan’s voice rose in pained indignation. Next to him, swathed in dusty black with only her eyes showing, his wife remained silent. On the back seat, nineteen-year-old Niela Aden and her two younger brothers sat squashed together, exhausted and irritable – and scared.

  The truck groaned its way up the escarpment. As they rounded one bend after another, the first signs of the city began to appear – low whitewashed buildings, but with their walls and windows blasted open. As they drove slowly along deserted streets into the centre of town, everyone fell silent, even Hassan. The road was pitted with gaping craters that the driver kept swerving to avoid. Every single building they passed carried the scars of recent battles – even the street lamps had been blasted apart. They hung above the road dangling the remains of a bulb from a crooked, wavering arm. Niela swallowed. Although she could barely remember Hargeisa, it was obvious this wasn’t the small city of citrus groves and calm, peaceful streets that her parents spoke nostalgically about. This was worse than Mogadishu. Hassan gave the driver directions in low, wary tones. They turned left and right down one pockmarked street after another until they finally pulled up in front of a yellow wall, it too marked with wounds. ‘Wait here,’ Hassan instructed. Niela watched him walk up to the wrought-iron gate and rap authoritatively on it. From somewhere beyond the wall a dog barked, a low, menacing burst of sound. A few moments later, a small hatch in the gate opened. ‘Salaam alaikum,’ Hassan said. ‘Is Mohammed Osman at home?’ There was a quick muttered exchange and then the gate was hurriedly opened. Suddenly her mother, who had remained silent for almost the entire journey, began to cry.

  There was a thin trickle of water coming out of the shower head but it was just enough. Niela stood, letting it dribble its way through her thick curly hair, across her shoulder blades and down the backs of her legs. She turned her face up, revelling in the simple but forgotten sensation of water running down her face. It had been three days since she’d had a shower. Unbelievable. She, who showered three or four times a day at home! As the family fled northwards, her mother had shown her how to wash herself quickly at the side of the road with nothing more than a flannel and a small bottle of drinking water. Under her arms, under her breasts, between her legs. Her mother displayed no shame, squatting by the side of the road, hitching her black burqa up around her waist. Niela didn’t know where to look. She’d never seen her mother squat before. But there was no other option. She’d pulled down her jeans and joined her.

  She wrung the last drops of water out of her hair and stepped out of the shower. She scraped her hair back into a ponytail, shook the dust out of her jeans and pulled on her one clean T-shirt. She wondered where everyone was. Her father and brothers had been shown a room on the other side of the courtyard. She and her mother had followed the young servant girl, who shook her head wordlessly whenever she was addressed. She opened the bedroom door cautiously. The house was arranged around a courtyard. In its centre, long since dried up, was a fountain surrounded by pretty blue and green tiles. There was a single orange tree and several large terracotta pots that had obviously once held plants. In one, a long, thin green stem protruded from amongst the brown, decaying leaves, clinging on to life. She shivered suddenly, despite the heat. Hargeisa, like Mogadishu, seemed to belong to the dead.

  She turned away from the courtyard and walked along one of the outside corridors that led to the kitchen and probably where her mother was to be found. As she approached, she heard the low murmur of voices from within one of the rooms. She stopped; it was her father’s voice. He was arguing with someone – Mohammed Osman, perhaps? She looked around quickly – there was no one about. She stepped a little closer.

  ‘Get them out, Hassan,’ she heard the man say. ‘You have family overseas, isn’t it? What about your brother in Vienna? He can take you in, surely?’

  ‘Why should I leave? This is my country!’ Her father’s voice was angry.

  ‘Not any more, Hassan. They’ve taken over everything, I’m telling you. At least you have
a choice. D’you think I would still be here if I had such a choice? Don’t you think I’d be gone too?’

  ‘But where should we go?’

  ‘Go to Vienna! Get out! Go to Europe, America … wherever you can! I’m telling you, Hassan. Go now, before it’s too late. This place is finished.’

  ‘Niela!’ Niela jumped guiltily. Her mother was standing in the doorway of one of the rooms. She’d been so intent on the conversation she hadn’t heard her approach. ‘Come away from there!’ her mother hissed at her, gesturing to her to move away from the window. ‘Come here!’ Niela moved away as quickly and quietly as she could. Her heart was thumping. Move? To where? She couldn’t imagine her parents – especially not her father – leaving Somalia. Yes, they’d been abroad before – they’d visited their Uncle Raageh, her father’s younger brother, in Vienna several times, and one summer Hassan had taken the family to France, where Niela practised her schoolgirl French, ate ice cream every day in place of lunch and developed a crush on the neighbour’s son … but that was on holiday. At the end of their three or four weeks abroad, they’d boarded the plane and come back to Mogadishu, to the chauffeur-driven Mercedes and the large, comfortable house in the suburbs. She’d gone back to the International School, where her best friends were German and American and Senegalese – daughters of diplomats or successful businessmen like her father. She and her friends swapped notes and pictures of the places they’d been. The thought of not coming back was unthinkable. But the unthinkable had suddenly come to pass. The gunmen who roamed the suburbs neither knew nor cared that Hassan Aden had worked hard his entire life to provide his children with the best education he could, or the most comfortable home within his means. They grabbed the cars and seized the house, together with the seven Aden pharmacies spread across the city that he’d spent the last decade building up. It was all gone. Everything. Not even the signs outside the pharmacies remained. Hassan came running home one afternoon with as much cash as he could lay his hands on stuffed into a small leather suitcase and ordered them to pack. They fled with whatever they could carry, and that was it.

  ‘Didn’t I tell you to stay in your room?’ her mother hissed at her.

  ‘But …’

  ‘No buts! It’s dangerous!’

  ‘Uma, we’re inside—’

  ‘Come and help me prepare food. Your father and your brothers must be starving.’

  I’m starving too, Niela wanted to say, but didn’t dare. Instead, in silence, she followed her mother through the small gate to the kitchen. Together they set about preparing the simple meal of rice and beans. The little servant girl who’d let them in darted about, following instructions. There was no sign of either of Mohammed Osman’s wives. Insha’allah, her mother answered, whenever Niela asked a question. If God wills it. Sometimes, Niela thought to herself angrily as she rinsed the rice under the tap, she wished she had even just a fraction of her mother’s faith. Ever since the bombs started falling on Mogadishu, she’d begun to have serious doubts about where His attention lay.

  4

  JULIA

  Oxford, October 1991

  ‘Burrows? Is that with a ‘‘w’’ or a ‘‘gh’’?’

  Julia looked blankly at the porter. She could feel her hackles beginning to rise. ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Your surname. The spelling.’ His pen hovered above a list. ‘As in William S.? Or as in a mole’s abode?’

  ‘B-U-R-R-O-W-S.’ She spelled it out briskly. How the hell else was she supposed to spell it?

  ‘School?’ he asked, his lip curling in the faintest of sneers.

  ‘School?’ Now she really was confused. School was a good four years away. What the hell was he on about?

  ‘What school did you go to?’

  ‘What’s that got to do with anything?’

  He looked up at her. His eyes flickered over her, silently assessing her accent, her coat, her shoes and, of course, the all-important name of her school. ‘Rooming lists. We put the name of your school next to your name. It’s an old Oxford tradition.’ And one that wasn’t about to die either, his expression implied. Despite the sort of student they let in nowadays. Like Julia.

  ‘Kenton.’

  ‘And where’s Kenton?’

  Julia’s face began to redden. Behind her, she heard someone snigger quietly. ‘Newcastle,’ she muttered.

  ‘Ah.’ His voice carried with it about as much snobbery and disdain as could possibly be packed into a single syllable. ‘Of course. You’re in Room 11. Top of the stairs, turn right. Next, please. Ah, Mr Fothergill-Greaves. We’ve been expecting you … Eton, isn’t it? Excellent, sir …’

  Julia was summarily dismissed. She picked up her bags and turned, her cheeks flaming. Two young men who were standing in line behind her looked her up and down as she walked past. Their expressions were as clear as if one or the other had spoken. Who the hell are they letting in these days? Determined not to let them get the better of her, she raised her chin and marched past them, biting down fiercely on the urge to snap at them. The three years she’d spent at university in Nottingham had taught her one thing: when feeling overwhelmed, say nothing. Nothing at all. She lugged her case up the stairs, turned right as instructed and walked down the corridor to Room 11. As soon as she opened the door, however, she forgot all about the porter and the snobbish looks the two young men had given her. She stood in the doorway, half afraid to enter. Her room at Holywell Manor, Balliol’s graduate residence, was everything she’d ever dared hope for. Small, cosy, charming … exactly as she’d pictured it. There was an apple tree outside the window, still heavy with fruit. She let her case drop to the floor and moved hesitantly into the centre of the room. She looked around her, suddenly overwhelmed with emotion. She’d done it. She was finally at Oxford. She’d beaten twelve other hopefuls to win a place on the coveted year-long Bachelor of Civil Law degree. It was the start of the Michaelmas Term. Ahead of her lay eight weeks of lectures and tutorials and then she would go back up to the small house in Elswick that had been left to her when her grandmother died, a few years earlier. She opened the window and leaned out, breathing in the scent of freshly cut grass and autumn flowers. Up and down the narrow lane in front of her cars came and went as students were dropped off and parents said their fond farewells. The lump in her throat swelled suddenly. She quickly pressed her fingers against her eyes. She’d promised herself – no tears, and certainly not on her first night. But it was hard not to cry. She could just picture her father’s face, his ruddy cheeks reddening even further with pride. What wouldn’t he have given to see her at Oxford? What wouldn’t she have given to see her parents again? She closed the window abruptly and turned away. She looked at her watch. It was almost six thirty. There was a welcome dinner for all new postgraduate students that evening. Time to unpack her belongings, take a bath and prepare herself for the evening ahead. After her brief encounter with the snobbish porter, she had a feeling that finding a place for herself at Balliol was going to be much harder than she’d thought.

  It took her less than half an hour to hang up her clothes, put her books on to the bookshelf and change the bed, replacing the university standard-issue sheets with her own eiderdown and the patchwork quilt that had been hers since her thirteenth birthday. She smoothed it down and plumped up the pillows – the room was already beginning to feel like her own. She closed the wardrobe door and turned to the last item on the bed – the photograph of her parents. She stared at it for a moment; it had been beside her bed for the past seven years, so much a part of the furniture and her surroundings that she sometimes looked at it without seeing. She ran her finger along the scrolled edge: Mike and Sheila Burrows, Mike’s arm around his wife’s shoulders, both looking quizzically into the camera. Her nan had taken the photograph one afternoon as they’d come back from a Sunday walk down by the river. Julia remembered it as if it were yesterday. Mike had bought the camera for Julia’s fourteenth birthday. She and Annie, her best friend, had joined the afterschool phot
ography club. It was Annie’s idea … there was some boy she had a crush on who was also in the club; Julia could no longer remember his name. She’d gone along more out of loyalty than anything else but she’d discovered she actually liked taking photographs, and Mike, always on the lookout for the little hobbies and interests that would open up the world for Julia in a way that hadn’t happened for him, had bought her the camera. She looked into her father’s face. Sandy brown hair, blue eyes … a strong, stern face. There was nothing in it, no sign of the tragedy that had followed. At the time, it was still two years off. She put the frame down with trembling hands. Now was not the time to think about it. She had to focus on getting through the evening ahead. Time to take a bath, wash her hair … think about something else instead. She pulled off her shirt and wriggled out of her jeans, pushing her shoes off impatiently with first one foot, then the other. She grabbed her dressing gown from where she’d hung it and opened the door. There was no one about. She walked down the corridor to the bathroom, wondering where everyone was. Holywell Manor was suddenly quiet. She looked at her watch again. It was half past seven. The dinner was at eight. She had half an hour to change into the dress she’d bought specially for the occasion, do something with her straight, dark brown hair and possibly even put on some make-up. Not that she had much – she’d never been the sort to paint her face. A touch of mascara and a dash of lipstick – those were the limits she’d stuck to for most of her adult life. She’d never paid much attention to her looks. After what had happened to her parents, it seemed silly, trifling … almost blasphemous. She gave herself a little shake. Stop. Stop now, before it’s too late.