Free Star Shot by Mary-Ann Constantine Page B

time. She looks older.
    Oh, says Dan, parking Teddy neatly by the bench, I’m so glad you’re here. We missed you. Your bench has been empty for days – all the benches – I mean, I thought you were gone.
    Not yet, she says. Maybe never. She reaches over to stroke Teddy’s hair.
    Well, I’m glad anyway. How are you?
    She shrugs. It’s OK, she says. OK. You know?
    I know. He sits down next to her and shivers. Have you heard from your son? She shakes her head. And the others – the ones in Palestine?
    No. Not recently.
    The cold air around the bench defies the late April sun. Lina al Hassan has tears in her eyes.
    I wanted almond blossom, she says; now I want apricot blossom. I have a grand-daughter I have never seen.
    Dan bows his head, then gets up and extricates the unusually placid Teddy from the buggy. Praying that he will co-operate, he gives him a biscuit and puts him carefully into her lap. He doesn’t try to wriggle free, and by the time he has eaten his biscuit has discovered the bright stones in the rings on her worn-out hands. Lapis lazuli, opal, amethyst.
    Thank you.
    He can tell from her voice, from the soft curve of her arm, how the comfortable weight of the boy in her lap fills a void. It is her turn to ask:
    How are you?
    And his turn to shrug. OK, he says. It’s OK. All my time is with him, I don’t do much else. Are you working at the moment?
    She nods. Still cleaning at the hospital, a few hours a week. It’s fine; the girls are fun. I don’t mind it at all.
    Did you work before? Back home, I mean.
    She nods, looks almost abashed.
    University lecturer.
    Christ, says Dan. What in?
    Microbiology.
    They look at each other and see the absurdity of it and start laughing.
    Come on, says Dan. Let me buy you a coffee in the park.
    She raises her thick black eyebrows and looks almost fierce. Because I’m a university lecturer?
    No, he says, because this bench is bloody cold and just through that big gate there I promise it is actually spring.
    I don’t have a swipe-card, she says. I’m not, how do you say, legitimate.
    Don’t worry, says Dan. I know other ways.
    33.
    You took some finding, he says.
    I heard I had disappeared.
    They look at each other, delighted. He bends over to kiss her lightly on the cheek and is ambushed by thin arms which suddenly hug him tight.
    Thank you for finding me, she says, I was afraid you might never come.
    No chance of that, he says. No chance at all. I’ve got too much to tell you; it’s been building in my head. Like water behind a dam.
    So tell me, she says, pulling herself more upright and patting the arm of the chair. No, wait. Go and get a cup of tea, and let me do my hair.
    He grins and gives an ironic half-bow, and heads off in search of tea. Myra hauls herself further up and carefully puts her legs over the side of the bed, and sits for a few seconds, waiting to see what will happen next. Nothing. Good. She bends extremely cautiously to pull open the door of the locker by the bed where her things are, and is feeling around awkwardly inside when the distant buzzing starts up, and she gets a dim sense of the encroaching shadow. She curses, knowing she should retreat and get her legs back on the bed and lie flat as quickly as she can, but she thinks she can feel the spines of the brush, and tries to race the pooling dark as you might race an incoming tide in a place, like a channel or a sandbar, where the water comes from many directions.
    So when he comes back with a small tray and two mugs and some standard-issue biscuits she is not in the bed, but beside it, with her arms wrapped around her knees and her head down and her whole body shaking.
    Myra, for god’s sake!
    He puts the tray down and crouches beside her, and when she lifts her face to his she is tear-stained and laughing.
    What happened?
    She waves the hairbrush at him.
    Got the bastard, she says.
    She won’t let him ring for the nurse,