Free Landing Gear by Kate Pullinger

be the point of that? There’s no money for people like you and me in Pakistan.” He put his arm around Yacub’s shoulder. Yacub could smell the alcohol on his breath. “There’s no way to get ahead.”
    Yacub felt bemused that Imran would speak so freely, as if the two men had something in common beyond their Pashtun heritage. If Imran wanted to pretend that they were friends for the evening, equals even, and that Yacub was not a former worker left to suffer in the dust of the abandoned labour camp, that was fine with him.
    “But I’ll bet you a thousand dirhams that after a month of working here, you won’t want to leave. That’s not a job offer, mind you,” he said. “Don’t get any ideas.”
    Yacub rinsed his bowl and placed it on the big metal drainer. He went to his room—his roommates were well and truly gone. He packed his few possessions into a plastic bag. Yacub set off, walking.

22
    I was up and dressed and had made the house respectable. My son was upstairs asleep. It was eight o’clock on Sunday morning, and I was listening to the news on the radio in the kitchen when I heard my husband come through the front door.
    I walked through the door and into the house.
    I had no idea what to say to my wife.
We’d been married for fourteen years.
    We’d got married the month before Jack was born;
    we moved into this house two months before that.
    My wife kept her secrets, but they were old
    secrets now. What was I going to say to her?
I called out, “Is that you?”
    “It’s me,” I replied. I put down my suitcase.
    I took off my coat and hung it up. I stood
    for another moment in the doorway.
“I’m in here,” I said.
    I went through to the kitchen. I was wearing the
    new clothes that Marina had helped me buy.
    Dark grey trousers, a cashmere pullover, a pair
    of shoes. I’d had a haircut. I’d lost a bit of weight.
    I’d brushed my teeth on the plane. I smiled at
    my wife.
“Oh,” I said, “you look different.” I put one hand on the counter to steady myself. “You look …” I stopped talking.
    I could see that she knew. “Yeah,” I said,
    and I nodded. “Yes.”
I took a step toward him. I hadn’t trusted anyone in my life as much as I trusted Michael. It couldn’t be true. But it was true. I could see it on his face. My heart stopped and started again, as though it was freezing. Tiny shards of ice pierced my skin as I moved through a vast cloud of ice toward him—my hair snapping, my face cracking, my hands and feet becoming brittle and sharp. I felt myself shatter. As I moved toward him I felt a great wide surge of pain.
    I watched Harriet and felt nothing. In my mind’s
    eye I saw Marina’s hair as it fell against my face,
    as she leaned low to push her body against mine.
    I kept hearing that Prince song, “Purple Rain.”
    It took all my concentration to prevent myself
    from singing. But then as I moved toward Harriet,
    I was overwhelmed by a terrible vertigo, as though
    if I looked down I’d see the earth was no longer
    beneath my feet. I had stepped through the front
    door of our house and into a gaping void, a hole,
    an empty sky, and I was falling out of my marriage.
    I was falling out of my life.

23
    Upstairs, Jack was not in fact asleep but wide awake, had been for hours. Information was flooding in through his networks, and he had no idea how to tell which bits were true and which were not. David McDonald had died in Ruby’s arms. David McDonald had died in the street. Six people—no, ten people—no, two people—were in intensive care, Ruby among them. Half the kids at the party had been arrested and charged with drug offences. No one had been arrested. David McDonald had taken smack, he’d taken K, he drank a whole bottle of vodka and choked on his own vomit. He’d jumped off the roof of his house because he thought he could fly. He’d taken a little red pill with a devil’s face on it that someone at the party had given him.
    Jack heard his dad come