44. Sarah
44. Sarah
Outside, the snow is still falling after breakfast, coating everything in its magic white carpet. Lying in bed with Carl, watching it together, I am overwhelmed by a cosy feeling of belonging. It’s as if I’m lying at the warm centre of the universe and no piece of me ever wants to let him go.
His hair, cut specially for the wedding, is as short as it was when he was in the army, but there are flecks of frosted grey around his temples now that weren’t there then.
The eyebrows are still wild and unruly, and I can’t resist the temptation to reach out and run my fingers over them to smooth them down.
He frowns, making them knit together, and I laugh. Then he grabs my fingers and kisses them.
‘We better get a move on,’ he grins. ‘Cherub said they’d be leaving at about eleven, and I want to give them a proper send-off. I’m going to hop in the shower.’
I follow him into the bathroom, borrow his brush to clean my teeth, and admire his broad, tattooed back as he steps into the shower. Last night he was so nervous about showing it to me, afraid that I might think it was a mistake.
Looking at it now, I think how beautiful it is. How wonderful it would be to wake up to it every morning, fall asleep lying next to it every night. I feel so blessed and privileged that he trusts me enough to have shown it to me. To be part of such a special secret.
Like yesterday, getting ready for the wedding, witnessing Jenni’s excitement, I feel a flush of hopefulness. At the prospect of being with Carl, of having the chance to get to know Dad again, of working with both of them to help the people I couldn’t help before.
I’m still haunted by the local Afghans we treated in the camp hospital. Innocent bystanders caught up in a situation beyond their control. We’d patch them up in the hospital as best we could, give them a meal, then send them back to their homes to pick up the pieces of their broken lives.
To homes, I knew, that were often unheated and without running water. What became of them? I wonder. We may have saved their lives, but what sort of life lay ahead for them?
A life like Habiba’s and her children’s, lived in fear, in hiding from the Taliban? And hiding was the best-case scenario. I couldn’t bring myself to imagine the alternative – where the Taliban found them and punished them, like they had Assami.
With Carl and my dad’s help, maybe we have a chance to help them. And maybe others too.
Spitting my toothpaste into the sink, I watch Carl in the mirror. Suddenly an image of two mini-Carls, with mad, curly dark hair and twinkly, cheeky eyes, roaring into our bedroom on Christmas morning, pops vividly into my head.
Two chubby little boys in matching checked pyjamas. The image is so vivid, it feels like an actual memory rather than a fantasy. It’s as if I already love them.
Danny, before he got ill, talked about us having children. One boy and one girl. I used to listen to him talking about them, but those children never once felt real in the way these two little boys do.
I think of Danny now and a shudder passes through me. A shudder of pity for a life crippled by PTSD. I don’t know if he will ever be as happy again as I was last night. As I am right now, buoyed up by the idea of a future with Carl at my side.
He turns, sees me watching him, and smiles. Then he beckons for me to join him. As I open the door he pulls me inside and folds me in his arms.
‘Is the water warm enough?’ he asks.
But he doesn’t need to because, as always, when Carl touches me, my body is flooded with warmth. I nod, and he pushes my wet hair out of my eyes.
My God, this business with my hair. It’s something he’s now done a handful of times, either holding it back from my face with the palm of his hand, or both hands, or tucking it behind my ears.
Each time he does it, it feels like an act of such intense sexiness and affection – exactly how love and longing should feel – and I know I don’t ever want to go back to a life without it.
He starts to hum ‘It’s Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas’. Christmas is just two weeks away, and suddenly there is only one person in the world I want to spend it with.
‘What are you up to, this Christmas?’ I ask.
‘Nothing much. Just me and the dogs. Although I’m busy training Mr Jones to pull a cracker, so it won’t be as tragic as it sounds.’
‘Well, I wouldn’t want Mr Jones not to have an audience.’
Slowly, his face lights up as it dawns on him what I’m suggesting. ‘So you’ve got room for one more?’
‘Of course! I better get a tree. A tree – and Mr Jones pulling a cracker. It’s going to be a magical Christmas.’
He tells me it will be the first Christmas tree he has ever bought, and my heart twists with affection for this wonderful man, who has had so little in his life so far. I want to make it up to him, to give him everything.
I picture myself with Carl in the Yorkshire of my imagination, all tearooms and pubs with roaring fires. And hot buttered toast and market squares and Yorkshire puddings and flat caps and chimneys. And dogs. And Carl.
I’m not due back at work until the new year. Vihann insisted. He was so upset when he came to see me in the hospital, he buried his face in his hands, unable to bring himself to look at mine.
I tried to protest at the time. Because the weeks seemed to stretch before me like a cruel prison sentence, with no idea how to fill it. But now, now I never want this moment in time to end.