Page 83 of Secret Paths

“When I first went out, I think part of me believed work like that had to be enormous to matter. Big change. Big purpose. Save the world, or at least try hard enough to feel noble about failing.”

“That sounds exhausting.”

“It was. Also arrogant.”

“Was it?”

“A little.” I smile faintly. “You learn quickly that you cannot fix a broken government, or stop a war, or make poverty vanish because you arrived with a stethoscope and some training. You cannot save everyone. You cannot even reach everyone.”

Peter does not interrupt and that makes it easier to talk about my past.

“But you can treat the child in front of you. You can sit with a woman who has walked for hours because her baby will not feed. You can clean a wound properly. You can explain medication in a way that means someone actually takes it. You can help one person, then the next.” I breathe out slowly. “That mattered. It still does.”

Peter’s gaze is on me.

Not intense in the way men sometimes get when they want to turn your life into something impressive for their own benefit. He is not looking at me as if I am brave or broken or something to be admired from a respectful distance.

He is listening.

“That is why you came back to be a GP?” he asks.

“Partly.”

“And the other part?”

“Karim and I were tired.”

Peter nods.

No flinch at my ex-husband’s name. No foolish male need to compete with a man who is not in the room.

“Our life made sense out there,” I say. “The work, the movement, the intensity. We understood each other in that world. Then we came home, and ordinary life asked different questions.”

“What sort?”

“What do you want for dinner? Where should we live? Do you want to spend Sunday with my parents? Why are we both still at the surgery at eight? Why do we have nothing to talk about if nobody is ill?”

Peter’s mouth softens.

“We loved each other,” I say. “We were kind to each other. We just did not know how to be married in a life that was not running on emergency and purpose.”

“That sounds sad.”

“It was.” I glance at him. “But not tragic.”

“No.”

“We did not destroy each other. We did not betray each other. We simply realised friendship was what remained when the adventure stopped.”

Peter is quiet for a while.

Then he says, “You make that sound very calm.”

“It took two years.”

“That is less calm.”

“There was some crying in car parks.”