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‘Want a DVD night?’ Mike broaches as he gathers the garden tools together.
‘Sure. I’ll make dinner,’ I offer, ‘by way of a thank you. Curry?’ I need something to warm me up as I feel frozen through to the bone.
‘I never turn down curry,’ he says. Which is true enough.
So while Mike trundles off to the Tidy Tip for one last time, I set about making what I call a good old-fashioned ‘English’ chicken curry, with chopped apples and raisins and livid yellow curry powder.
We sit at the kitchen table and eat. Mike, chatting away happily. Me, brooding in troubled silence. After we’ve cleared up together, I make us both a coffee and we linger in the warmth of the kitchen.
‘What do you fancy watching tonight?’ Mike asks.
‘I don’t mind.’ There’s a pile of DVDs waiting on the coffee table.
He looks up at me, concerned. ‘You’re very quiet tonight, Janie. Is everything all right?’
No, I want to say, of course everything isn’t all right. I’m missing Dominic more than I ever thought it was possible to miss another human being. Every cell in my body yearns for him. I want to tell him that I might be having Dominic’s baby and that it’s now even more important that I find him, if he’s going to be a father. I don’t want to bring my child up alone. I want him here with me. I want us to be happy together again. On top of that, I’ve fallen out with my best friend since school. A friend who, until all this, I’d been through thick and thin with. Unbidden, tears fill my eyes.
Mike reaches out and takes my hand. The warmth of his touch never fails to comfort me and I glance at him gratefully, mustering a tired smile.
‘I know that you love Dominic very much,’ he starts to say, ‘but what if he never comes back, Janie?’
‘He will.’
‘You can’t go on like this.’
‘I have to.’
Mike smiles tenderly at me. ‘You know that you’re very important to me,’ he says. ‘I’ll always look after you. All I want is for you to be happy. And I’ll do whatever that takes, you know that.’
‘I do. Of course, I do.’
‘Best of friends?’
‘Best of friends,’ I agree.
Then the phone rings and I go and pick it up, always with that same feeling of sickness and sense of dread that has become familiar to me.
‘It’s me.’ Nina’s voice is on the other end of the phone and she sounds completely hyper. ‘Are you watching the telly?’
‘No,’ I say. ‘Mike and I are just finishing supper.’
‘Put it on,’ she urges. ‘Put it on now! BBC News. I’ll be round in five.’ With that, there’s a click and she’s gone, leaving me looking puzzled on the other end.
Mike frowns. ‘Everything OK?’
‘No idea. That was Nina. She said to put the news on and then she hung up. For some reason she’s on her way round.’
‘Let’s go and see what all the fuss is about.’ Mike follows me through to the living room. I haven’t watched the news for weeks so consequently I have no idea what’s happening in the world, nor do I care.
On screen, the presenter is wittering on about some EU summit about something or other and I can’t think why Nina would be getting all hot under the collar about this. ‘Sure this is the BBC?’
Mike checks the channel. ‘Yeah.’
I shrug and he shrugs back but, as instructed, we continue to watch. That story wraps up and then the presenter says, ‘Coming up.’ There is a montage of the next breaking news stories and there, right there on the screen, is an image of Dominic. He looks different, scruffy, unkempt and he’s thinner I think, but there’s no doubt that it’s him. Whatever has happened to him, wherever he’s been, he is still my Dominic and I’d know him anywhere.
‘It’s him,’ I want to say. ‘It’s Dominic.’ But the shock of seeing his handsome face again has taken my voice and all I can do is point wordlessly at the screen.
‘Good God,’ Mike says in my stead.
The presenter continues smugly, ‘Find out why this Maasai warrior has been causing a stir.’
I scrabble for the remote and turn up the volume. Now we have to sit through ten interminable minutes of world news. Who cares what’s happening in China or Copenhagen or anywhere else for that matter? All I want to know is what’s happening to Dominic. I pray that it’s good news. If it was bad news surely they would have put it differently? It has to be good. Doesn’t it? Mike comes to sit close to me on the sofa and we both perch on the edge of the seat, me squeezing his hand so tightly that the bones might break.
