This is sounding ominous. ‘Yes.’
‘I can get you on a flight to Sydney. Straight through. Just a two-hour stop in Dubai. Some airport shopping. Then, Australia. Week in the sun.’
Week in the sun.He’d said the same before Sri Lanka.
‘I thought you said that was it,’ I say. ‘I thought you said I could have this life for the full eight years. No interruptions.’
‘You are sounding like a man with an anchor. You’ve no anchor.’
‘No. Not an anchor. A dog, though. I have a dog. Abraham. He’s an old dog. He won’t last the eight years. But I can’t just leave him.’
‘You can just leave him. They have dog sitters nowadays.’
‘He’s a very sensitive dog. He gets nightmares and separation anxiety.’
‘You sound like you’ve been drinking.’
I knew I couldn’t endanger Camille.
‘I had some wine earlier. Enjoying life’s pleasures. That’s the whole point, isn’t it? Isn’t that what you told me?’
‘On your own?’
‘On my own.’
Camille is standing up now. She is holding the lead.What is she doing?But it is too late. She is already doing it.
‘Come on, boy!’
No.
‘Abraham!’
The dog runs over to her.
Hendrich’s tone becomes steel. ‘Is that your anchor?’
‘What?’
‘The woman who called for Abraham. That’s your dog’s name, right?’
Hendrich has a thousand symptoms of old age. I curse that one of them isn’t hearing loss.
Camille clips on Abraham’s lead, then looks at me again. She is ready to go.
‘Woman?’
Now Camille is listening to me.
‘Who is it?’
‘No one,’ I say. ‘She is no one at all.’
The mouth I had just been dreaming of kissing is now agape with disbelief.
‘She?’ she whispers, but it is one of those whispers that is more a voiceless scream.
I don’t mean it, I mime.
