Monday 11th September
I t was not when Karmela saw the prompt on the whiteboard that it struck her, nor when she began to write. She was alone in the studio, with Jo nowhere to be seen, although she had turned up at breakfast maybe a fraction quieter than usual, and certainly with more make-up around her eyes.
Karmela knew there were extra bags under her own as well. She had had an almost surreal night, drifting off to sleep in a wine-fuelled fug of contentment after Iain left, reliving his gentle kisses, the solid strength of his arm around her shoulder. That was all they had done, cuddle and kiss and talk, but it had been enough– especially now she knew there was more to come.
Then, at three in the morning, she had woken with a start, worrying about Jo and feeling terribly guilty she and Iain had not even tried to reach any conclusion about what they might be able to do to help her.
Lying wide awake in the darkness, Karmela had run through what Iain had told her about the overheard row and come to the conclusion that if Jo was harbouring a secret that even her mother would find hard to forgive, she was unlikely to share it. But clearly her relationship with Rees was not just distant, as she had told her at the taverna, but actually toxic. She had seen the damage a controlling relationship could do and witnessed how hard it was to move on. She had to persuade Jo to get out, and quickly. But how?
Round and round her thoughts had chased, so she had been glad to get up early, shower, then sit on her terrace with an espresso, watching the sunrise flood the low hill between the retreat and the sea with a deep band of orange light, the fingers of the dawn stretching between the olive trees beyond the vineyard as colours came to life and the shadows around their trunks became goats.
The presence of the escaped goats to the south side of the retreat meant that the best place to release Sybil was in the pistachio orchard to the north. Karmela had been delighted that as they wandered between the trees, watching the greyhound sniff and run, their hands had somehow wound together. She could not be sure which one of them had initiated it, and it had felt completely natural. If this was being in a relationship… wow… she wanted more. More tingling lips and fingers, more… what was the word? Oneness?
By unspoken consent they had separated when they came in sight of the farmhouse to return towards the retreat. While Karmela had no wish for their affair to be clandestine, she had the distinct impression that for Iain the watershed would be their date, and logic told her he was right; it was better to get to know each other a little more in private first.
Dragging herself from her thoughts, she looked at the prompt again. Childhood. Write the first thing that came into your head, that was the idea.
My childhood ended the night we left Sarajevo for good, our car crammed with our most precious possessions and the necessities of life.
Sophie and Diana arrived, and Karmela nodded to them, before bending over her notebook again, smiling to herself. Eighteen months ago she never would have been able to write those words, her painful past locked away in a box. Just a year ago, she had never returned to Sarajevo, even though her father had died there after separating from her mother at the end of the war. But she had loved growing up in the pre-war city, and now she would write a letter of praise to it.
For too many years I left my memories behind in the house where I grew up. Perhaps tucked in the drawer of my grandmother’s ornately carved hallstand, along with keys, stamps, loose change… Or maybe they were hidden beneath my bed, or between the pages of the books on the shelf, in the room where Emina, Nejla and I played with my doll’s house, then later wrote our stories, shared our hopes and dreams.
Karmela sat back for a moment. Letting the hidden past in still felt as liberating as when she had first realised she could do it. Back then there had been copious tears– of happiness and of grief– but now it simply filled her with joy that her life was so much better for being able to embrace it.
She glanced at the clock. Five to nine. She heard Jo’s door close and footsteps cross the landing. Jo smiled at Karmela, but it was a small, tight thing. And as Karmela lowered her head to continue writing it hit her: her story was Jo’s too. She had to confront her past to be free as well. Whatever the secret was, she needed to exorcise it, or it would drag her down forever. Karmela had wasted thirty years in a half-life and she could not let Jo do the same. Could not and would not.
She had an idea about how to get her message across, but was she a good enough writer to pull it off? There was only one way to find out.