Chapter 37 Kate
KATE
What is the city but the people?
Kate wonders if it takes a tragedy to sift out all the irrelevant particles that clog our lives. The shock shaking out the small irritations and worries, until they fall around us to be trodden underfoot. If we did look down, Kate thinks, we would be surprised to see them lying there.
I was worried about that!
She remembers this from the deaths she has known and wonders how long it takes for the cogs to start turning, once more sucking up the niggles of life.
Clarity only lasting for days or sometimes weeks.
Or is that piercing vision of what really matters unrealistic?
Like a shaft of sunlight, or a rainbow? Not the stuff of everyday life.
Kate sits with Pia and Satya in her kitchen.
Satya has been talking about Jack and the boys.
Honestly. How hard she finds it. Of course, she loves him, and my God, after what has happened, she and Jack had wanted to draw their boys to them and hold them tight.
But it is so hard sometimes. They can’t seem to see each other’s point of view.
Each thinks the other has it easier. And the worst of it is, every time she gets cross with Jack and the boys, she feels guilty.
And there is this endless conversation with herself about how she has every right to be pissed off.
She seems to be doing everything. Including a load of household stuff.
Is looking after the boys really that big a deal compared to what she does?
Then she remembers the times she has been the sole parent in charge and just how goddamn hard it is.
So this makes her feel guilty all over again . . . and so it goes on.
Where do they go from here?
Who knows.
“Have you seen Bardy?” Satya asks.
Pia and Kate shake their heads.
“He is still spending a lot of time at the hospital or with Gina and Mark, Lou’s kids.” Kate does know this.
“But he is going to be okay?” Pia sounds anxious. “. . . Lou?”
Kate does manage a smile at this. An exotic worrying about a fellow exotic.
“Lou is doing really well.”
Satya looks up. “When you first called, I thought you were going to say . . .”
“That it was Lou?” Kate finishes.
Both women nod.
Kate recalls the phone calls, the wary silence before she had told them about the young boy brought into the ICU from the car wreck. He had died a few days later from a heart attack when his body went into shock.
“Had he taught him?” Pia asks.
“For a bit, and he knows the family.”
“He was at the same school as our eldest,” Satya tells them. “Everyone’s so shocked. He was only seventeen. He was expected to do well in his exams, but he just started hanging out with the wrong crowd.”
“Linda knew a bit more because of Leonard’s contacts in the police. The older guy who was driving preyed on boys like him,” Pia informs them. “I think they have enough to charge him with manslaughter. He was well over the limit when he flipped the car.”
Pia looks off into the distance. “I once knew a young man who died of a heart attack, after his body . . .”
She doesn’t finish but turns to the two women beside her. “He was an Iranian refugee—an asylum seeker. I find it helps if I say refugee.” She shrugs, “If I start talking about asylum seekers, especially if it’s a young man, people can jump to conclusions.”
“Disruptive migrants?” Satya suggests.
“Oh, yes,” Pia nods, before continuing. “It was early on in my career and I thought I could change the world.” She passes a weary hand over her eyes and attempts a smile.
“What happened to the boy?” Kate asks, wondering if this is what is behind Pia holding herself apart from people sometimes.
“He had come here after many months of walking, hitching, and jumping trains. Eventually, he hid under a lorry. His father had been killed in Iran, tortured to death because he was a Christian. Arash had been studying physics at university. His English was good, which is why he chose to come to the UK. He thought that if he could make a new start, he could then bring his mother and sisters over. He was terrified of leaving them behind, worried about what the authorities would do, but he thought it was his only chance. He had already been locked up for a while by the police, but he thought if he disappeared, they would leave the women alone.”
“What happened?” Satya asks.
“He was taken into a hostel and from there things just dragged on, month after month. He tried to keep in touch with his family, but it was hard. He knew they were struggling and being watched by the authorities. He wasn’t allowed to work, but he took some jobs on the side to try and send them cash.
” Pia looks up. “That’s when I got involved.
When he was caught.” She shakes her head.
“I knew he had broken the rules, but at that stage I honestly thought I could make them see sense. At the hearing, the judge asked about his time with the Iranian police. We showed them photographs of his back and buttocks—the scars from the torture. But the judge said they could just be bad insect bites.” Pia shakes her head. “I just couldn’t believe it.”
“Did they send him back?” Kate asks.
Pia shakes her head again. “They didn’t have to.”
Kate sees the tears sparkling in her friend’s eyes.
“We appealed—oh, time and time again. But eventually that was it. He thanked me politely for everything I had done. And the next night, he threw himself off the top floor of a parking garage. He didn’t die immediately . . . it was his heart in the end.”
“Oh, Pia.” Both women move closer.
“He left me a letter. He just couldn’t face going back, but more than anything, he felt such shame at letting his mother and sisters down. Arash was only nineteen.”
Kate takes Pia’s hand.
“And the thing I can’t forgive myself for is that I gave him hope. I had been so sure I could make a difference. Like it was a game. I have always been competitive, but now I was playing with a young man’s life. So after that, I changed.”
“You grew a tougher skin?” Kate suggests.
Tears are running down Pia’s face. “But now I worry I am like that judge. I don’t believe he was a bad man. He had just seen so much and . . . I have seen it before . . . people get inured to what they deal with day in, day out.”
Kate thinks of Grace and her comments about Pia.
Satya leans in, taking Pia’s other hand. “You did everything you could.”
“Did I?” Pia wonders aloud. She shakes her head. “I am sorry, I didn’t mean to say all of that. It was just this young boy dying . . .”
“His brother was Finn, you know, the guy who runs the coffee shop and volunteers for the RNLI,” Satya says, tears in her eyes.
Pia and Kate nod.
It is a town where most people know someone you know.
Somebody is always going to be somebody’s brother.