Coming Home
Authors: Annabel Kantaria
Born in 1971,
ANNABEL KANTARIA
is a British journalist who’s written prolifically for publications throughout the Middle East. She’s been
The Telegraph
’s ‘Expat’ blogger since 2010 and lives in Dubai with her husband and two children.
Coming Home
is her first novel.
Home
Annabel Kantaria
For Mum
It’s taken the support of many to get this book to publication.
My deepest thanks go to my brilliant and patient agent, Luigi Bonomi, who picked my manuscript as a winner and offered his unwavering support at every turn, and to Alison Bonomi for her nurturing support and spot-on editorial advice.
Enormous thanks to the Emirates Airline Festival of Literature (EAFOL) and to Montegrappa for making the Montegrappa Prize for First Fiction a reality. Thanks in particular to Isobel Abulhoul, Yvette Judge and the entire EAFOL team; to Charles Nahhas; and to my talented editor, Sally Williamson, and the marvellous team behind the scenes at Harlequin MIRA.
To the first two readers of the first draft of
Coming Home
, Jane Andrew and Rachel Hamilton, I’d like to say thank you for being so polite.
Heartfelt thanks to the many friends who supported me along the journey, in particular to those who believed in me long before I truly believed in myself: Sarah Baerschmidt, Arabella Pritchett, Claire Buitendag, Vicki Page, Belinda Freeman, Rohini Gill, Julia Ward Osseiran, Sophie Welch and Sibylle Dowding. Special thanks, too, to Ghazwa Dajani and Valerie Myerscough—without your help, I may never have made my deadlines.
And, finally, thanks to my family, who have stood by me every step of the way: to my parents, David and Kay, for making me believe anything was possible; to my children, Maia and Aiman, for their patience when my study door was closed; and to my husband, Sam, for his love, pep talks and fabulous plot ideas, as well as for making me laugh when I most needed to.
C
HAPTER
1
I
hated seeing the grief counsellor, but I couldn’t get out of it. My teachers, unsure of how to handle me, had contacted social services and I’d been assigned weekly meetings with Miss Dawson, a sensible-looking lady to whom I was reluctant to speak. I blamed her for that: she should have known better than to tell me to think of her as my favourite auntie; everyone knew I didn’t have any aunties
.
Every week, Miss Dawson arranged a couple of chairs to one side, near a window that looked out over the playing field. I could see my classmates kicking about in the drizzle. As far as I was concerned, the best bit about the counselling was that I was allowed access to the staff biscuit tin
.
I didn’t have much to say to Miss Dawson, though. We’d spent the first two sessions locked in silence as I’d eyed the biscuits. Sometimes under the digestives I could see the edge of a custard cream—once, even a Jammie Dodger. But Miss Dawson didn’t like me rummaging in the tin, so I had to be sure I picked right the first time. A biscuit lucky dip
.
Miss Dawson doodled flowers on the clipboard she kept on her knee
.
‘Why won’t you talk to me?’ she sighed after we passed
the first twenty minutes of our third session together marked only by my munching. I looked at her. How stupid was she?
‘You can’t change what happened, can you?’ I hadn’t realised I was going to shout, and biscuit crumbs sprayed from my lips. ‘You can’t stop it from happening! So what’s the point of all this?’ I jumped up and hurled my biscuit at the wall. The sudden violence, the release, felt good. ‘It’s just to make the adults feel like they’re doing something! But don’t you get it? You can’t do anything! It’s too late!’
I threw myself back into the chair and glowered at her, breathing hard. What was the point? Miss Dawson’s hand had stopped mid-doodle. She locked eyes with me but she didn’t say anything. As we glared at each other, her eyes narrowed, she chewed on the end of her biro and then she nodded to herself, her lips spreading in a little smile as if she’d had some sort of epiphany
.
‘OK, Evie,’ she said slowly. Her voice had changed. It wasn’t all sympathetic now. It was brisk, businesslike. I liked that more. She rummaged in her bag and pulled out a tangle of blue wool stabbed through with two knitting needles. ‘I know what we’re going to do, Evie. We’re not going to talk: we’re going to knit.’
‘I don’t know how to knit.’
‘I’m going to teach you.’
She pulled her chair over to mine, arranged the needles in my hand and showed me the repetitive movements I needed to make to produce a line of stitches. It was fiddly and unnatural, and it took all my concentration. For the first time
since June, there was no space in my head for Graham. By the end of the session, I’d knitted five rows; by the following week, a whole strip
.
I was eight when I learned to knit. I haven’t stopped since
.
HAPTER
2
I
was making béchamel sauce for a lasagne when I found out that my father had died. It was late morning and the kitchen was filled with sunshine. Birdsong and the scent of acacia wafted through the open door; the flowers of the bougainvillea were so bright they looked unreal.
These are the details that stuck in my head as I struggled, in my peaceful surroundings, to take in what my mum was telling me on the phone. England seemed too far away; the news too unbelievable. The béchamel sauce, unfortunately, was at a critical stage.
‘He died in his sleep,’ Mum was saying. ‘Heart failure.’ She misread my silence as I continued to stir the sauce, my hand moving automatically as my brain fought to understand. ‘Darling,’ she said softly, ‘he probably didn’t even know.’
There was an echo on the long-distance line and I strained to hear her. I flicked off the burner and pulled the pan off the hob, knowing as I did it that the sauce would ruin; knowing also that what I was being told was bigger than that. I sat down at the kitchen table, the phone clamped to my ear, a heaviness in the pit of my stomach. I’d seen Dad in the
summer—he’d been fine then. How could he be dead? So suddenly? Was this some sort of joke?
‘When I realised that he was, you know … dead,’ Mum was saying, cautiously trying out the new word, ‘I called the doctor. I could see there was nothing that could be done; no need to get the paramedics out. The doctor said he’d been dead for several hours. He called an ambulance to take him to the hospital. I followed in the car.’
‘There was no need to rush, really,’ she added, ‘because, well, you know …’ Her words tailed off.
Suddenly I found my voice. ‘I don’t believe you! Are you sure? Did they try to resuscitate him? Is there nothing they can do … no chance …?’
‘Evie. Darling. He’s gone.’
I’d dreaded a call like this ever since I’d moved to Dubai six years ago. There was much I enjoyed about living abroad, but the fear that something might happen to my parents lurked permanently at the back of my mind, waking me in a sweat in the early hours: freak accidents, strokes, cancer, heart attacks. And now that that ‘something’ had happened, I just couldn’t take it in.
On the phone, Mum sounded calm, but it was hard to tell how she was really coping.