A little past midnight, the vibration of her phone tugged her from a deep sleep.
‘Is that Briony?’ It was a voice she faintly recognized.
‘Mmm. Who is this?’ She fumbled for the lamp switch.
‘I am sorry to ring so late. It’s Gita, Aruna’s mother, you remember?’
‘Yes, yes, of course. Gita.’ She sat up, suddenly alert. The image came to her of an older, rounder version of Aruna, dressed in an emerald sari at the wedding of her other daughter. Gita had a proud, upright bearing despite her lack of inches, and intelligent dark brown eyes that saw everything. Had she given Gita her phone number once? She must have done. ‘Is something wrong?’
‘I’m afraid there might be. Aruna phoned me, very upset. I think it’s to do with her young man, a quarrel of some sort. We could hear that he was there, but we are too far away to do anything tonight and I thought perhaps you might be able to help.’
‘I’ll try to, Gita.’ She slid out of bed, wide awake now. What could be going on?
‘You live close by, maybe you could ring or visit, find out if she is all right.’
It was a couple of miles to Aruna’s, certainly nearer than her friend’s parents in Birmingham, so she promised Aruna’s mother that she would do what she could, and Gita ended the call, full of effusive thanks and begging Briony to phone her as soon as she found out what was happening.
Maybe Gita was exaggerating the problem. Briony sighed and brought up Aruna’s number. The call went to voicemail, so she texted and waited, but no reply came. Then she thought of Gita’s anxious voice and reached for yesterday’s clothes where she’d left them draped over the back of a chair.
As soon as her car slid into the crescent of old red-brick semis where Aruna lived in a first-floor maisonette, Briony realized that something was up. Curtains twitched at bedroom windows, where light gleamed, silhouetting sleepy inhabitants peeping out. She parked in a miraculously free space and climbed out to hear voices, one angry, the other conciliatory. Pulling her coat round her against the cold, she hastened along the curve of parked cars, and at the sight of Aruna’s house stopped dead in shock.
It was Aruna she saw first. Her friend was leaning out of the upstairs window, casting items of clothing into the street. One by one, trousers, shirts, a jacket, flew like diving seagulls to land on the front hedge or the pavement beyond. There was a pause and Aruna’s tragic face gazed down, then she vanished inside, presumably to fetch more.
Briony drew back as Luke appeared from behind the hedge, but he was so busy snatching up his clothes and stuffing them into a holdall that he didn’t see her. She glanced round as a pair of trousers sailed past her to straddle the wing mirror of a car. Luke caught them up, then opened the rear door and shoved everything inside.
‘And don’t come back, ever,’ Aruna yelled down. She was sobbing now and her words were slurred. Briony, back pressed against the sharp branches of the hedge, was appalled.
‘Aruna, for Chrissake,’ came Luke’s hoarse whisper. ‘If you won’t let me help you, go to bed. I’ll call you in the morning.’
‘You can have this too,’ was Aruna’s drunken reply and a heavy object bounced off the hedge and fell with a soft crunch on the pavement near Briony’s feet. She looked down to see a washbag with dark liquid pooling round it.
Luke’s footsteps and she straightened to see his anxious face staring back at her in surprise. ‘Briony!’ he hissed, squeezing her arm as though to assure himself that she was real.
‘Can we get some sleep now?’ a tired male voice rang out from across the road. Then, above, came the sound of Aruna banging the casement shut. All around, neighbours’ windows clicked closed, one by one lights were dimmed and the street returned to silence.
‘What the hell are you doing here?’ Luke whispered and Briony quickly explained.
He bent down wearily and picked up his washbag by its zip then dropped it into next-door’s wheelie bin.
‘What happened? Will she be all right?’
‘I think so. She’s drunk, but not that drunk.’
‘I must go and find out.’
‘I don’t think that’s a good idea.’ He pulled her back gently.
‘Why not?’
‘Because, I don’t know, she’ll throw things at you, Briony.’
Her frustration rose. ‘I haven’t done anything. She’s my friend. What have you said to her?’
He lowered his arm and turned away, mumbling.
‘What?’
‘Nothing. I said nothing.’
‘I’m going to her.’
Luke shook his head, and pulled his car key from his back pocket.
‘You go home,’ she said, seeing that he had had enough. ‘I’ve got my own car here.’
He regarded her for a moment, his expression hard, unreadable, then he shrugged, opened the driver’s door and got in. She watched the car move away quietly, but he did not even look at her and she turned away, miserable.
At Aruna’s front door, Briony pressed the bell and waited, shivering, wishing she’d taken an extra moment to put on socks. ‘Come on,’ she muttered, rubbing her cold hands, but no one came. Finally she dug her phone out and summoned Aruna’s number. Four rings and Aruna’s bright voice invited her to leave a message. Am downstairs let me in, she managed to text with frozen fingers and eventually there came sounds from within, then the door cracked open and Aruna’s bleary face peeped out. She seemed to be wrapped in her duvet.
‘For God’s sake, it’s perishing out here,’ Briony whispered and Aruna, with difficulty, widened the gap to admit her. Briony followed her friend’s bulky figure up the narrow staircase, the billowing duvet rustling against the walls, to where the door to the flat stood open. From inside wafted a strong stink of burnt milk. Briony pushed past Aruna to the kitchenette, rescued the saucepan from the stove and dumped it in the sink, where it hissed and spat. Something warm rubbed against her legs and she glanced down to see Purrkins, Aruna’s cat, and bent to stroke him, but he ran off, elusive as ever.
When she turned, there was no sign of Aruna. She filled a glass with water from the tap and carried it through to the cramped sitting room where she found her friend lying on the sofa, wrapped in the duvet. The silent glow of the television illuminated the wreck of the evening. Dirty wine glasses, crisp crumbs, a couple of empty wine bottles. Briony stepped over an open box containing the mangled corpse of a pizza.
‘Aruna?’ she said to the spray of black hair at one end of the duvet, and Aruna’s woebegone face peeped over the top.
She gave a gulp. ‘It’s over,’ she slurred. ‘He . . . he says it doesn’t feel right any more. I want to hate him, Bri, but I don’t. I love him.’ And she began to sob. Briony put her arms round her and rubbed her back through the duvet until the sobs quietened and Aruna’s eyelids started to close.
‘Ru, you ought to get to bed,’ she whispered. ‘Come on.’ She helped her sit up properly, made her sip some water, then saw her to the bathroom and from there to the bedroom, trying not to tread on a trail of clothes and towels.
‘Did he explain?’ she asked her friend, sitting beside the curled-up form on the double bed, but Aruna merely snivelled. ‘I’d better ring your mum, it was her who told me to come,’ she added. Aruna was too out of it to reply.
Briony went to find her coat, which she’d thrown over the sofa back, picked bits of hedge off it and scooped her phone out of the pocket. Once she’d spoken to Gita and assured her that she’d stay the night with Aruna, she returned to the bedroom to find her friend had fallen into a deep sleep. She made sure she was wedged comfortably on her side, topped up the water glass and left her, gently drawing the door to, then made herself a cup of tea. Her teeth were chattering, from nerves as much as the night chill. She wondered what precisely had happened that evening. It was clear that Luke and Aruna had had a terminal row, but quite what it had been about she didn’t know. She hoped that her name hadn’t been brought into it, but from what Luke had hinted outside it possibly had. Still, Aruna had let her in and allowed her to help, so she obviously wasn’t in too much trouble.
The tea, annoyingly, woke her up rather than calmed her and when the cat crept out from behind the television and crouched to eat the pizza with disgusting crunching noises, she shooed him away and set about clearing up, scraping food into the bin and rinsing out the glasses, turning on the kitchen extractor fan to rid the flat of the burning smell. It was when Briony returned to the sitting room and reached for a dirty plate on the computer table in the corner that she saw a book next to it splayed open face down. She recognized it instantly. It was the guidebook Briony had bought in Tuana. She had forgotten that Aruna still had it. What a happy time they’d had there, well, mostly, she thought as she picked it up and turned it over, but seeing it was open at the entry about the church she realized she thought about it differently now, because of Paul’s letters. The church had been partly destroyed by the departing Nazis, she remembered. How cruel it was for either side to destroy a people’s heritage; brutal, senseless, to leave innocent survivors with no future.
Someone, presumably Aruna, had drawn a cross next to one of the photographs. Briony switched on the desk lamp to read it properly and puzzlement washed over her. The picture was of the oval memorial plaque that they’d seen on the wall near the altar. Who had it been for? She stared, tiredness causing the gold letters of the inscription to glitter and dance. It was in memory of a fifteen-year-old boy and had been set there by his family. The text beneath gave an explanation. In the margin was a phone number in Aruna’s curling writing, the sevens crossed in her flamboyant manner. It troubled Briony, Aruna’s obvious interest in the plaque. A fifteen-year-old boy killed in the Second World War, what, seventy years ago? She read the name again: Antonio Mei. The name meant something to her, but for the life of her she couldn’t think what. She closed the book, conveyed the last dirty plate to the dishwasher, then went to search for the spare duvet.
It was just getting light when she was dragged from sleep by a ring on the doorbell. On the front step she found Aruna’s parents, short, sombre, weary figures with anxious eyes. They had driven through the night to fetch their daughter home. Inside, Aruna greeted them with the frantic tears of a lost child found.
They waved away Briony’s offer to make breakfast, so she tricked the cat into his carrying cage for the journey to Birmingham, gathered coat and bag and took herself home, their effusive thanks ringing in her ears. She drove through early morning streets shining with rain that had turned the autumn leaves to mush. It was Saturday, she was weak from emotion and lack of sleep, and all she could do was fall into bed.