Free Cause Celeb by Helen Fielding Page A

the vaccine fridge?” she said, then saw my face and hurried over to me. “Are you all right?”
    â€œYes, I’m fine. It’s just . . . it reminds me of—”
    â€œI know,” she said.
    â€œAre you all right?”
    â€œYeah . . . but . . . Well. You know, don’t you?”
    I had to get a message to Malcolm, tell him what had happened, before he left Sidra. It was only one family, but this hadn’t happened for so long, they were in such a bad state, there were all these rumors: he had to know about it before he went back to the capital. I climbed into the jeep to drive to Safila village. There was an office there with a radio—the local branch of the Nambulan Commission of Refugees. COR was one of the plethora of acronyms which filled our talk: COR, UNHCR, RESOK, NGO. We were supposed to report all new arrivals to COR. Possibly their radio would be working so I could get a message to Malcolm. I climbed into the jeep and drove along the track to the village. The heat had gone out of the day now, the sun was starting to soften.
    The COR office was surrounded by a high rush fence and a scruffy yard. A pig was snuffling around in a pile of rubbish in the corner. A girl with a cloudy eye was sitting on a low bed, picking at her foot, Hassan’s girl. She was wearing a pair of my earrings. She jumped up, beaming as I arrived, eyeing the earrings I was wearing and showed me into the office.
    â€œHassan maquis,” she said. Hassan is not here.
    Hassan was the COR officer. I sat down and tried Sidra on his radio. There was the same empty crackle. The girl reached over and fingered my earring. I shook my head and pointed to the ones I had given her last time. She smiled sheepishly. I fiddled with the dial to try and get El Daman, the capital. There was nothing there. I kept trying. Nothing.
    When I left the office it was six o’clock and already dark. The darkness came swiftly out there, once the sun had set. The lights of the vehicle picked up crazily shaped plants sticking out of the sand dunes. I passed the others coming back from the camp just before I reached the hill and stopped opposite them leaving the engine running. Henry was at the wheel with Sian, Debbie, Linda and Betty squeezed inside.
    â€œWhat’s happening?” I said to Henry.
    â€œAll doing fine, old girl.”
    â€œHave any of the arrivals said anything about locusts?” I said.
    â€œNot as far as I know. Did you get through to Sidra?”
    â€œNo. Nothing.”
    â€œBloody hell. Bad luck. See you up there, old thing.”
    â€œWe’ll have supper waiting for you,” said Betty. “Kamal’s doing us a chicken.”

    The camp felt very different at night, foreign and inaccessible. The huts were closed up. Here and there, I could see a candle through the darkness but almost everyone was already asleep. There was nothing to do without the sun. I pulled up at the hospital, which was an arc of white canvas supported on a metal frame. I went in through the flap and stood just inside, watching. Halfway down the row of low wooden beds was one with a drip set up above it. O’Rourke was adjusting the bag on the end of a length of tube.
    The mother was asleep, breathing noisily and unevenly. O’Rourke signaled a cautious thumbs-up at her and gestured me back towards the door. We walked together without speaking and then stepped outside. He needed a shave.
    â€œYou OK?” he said, first of all, putting his hand on my shoulder. I obviously hadn’t pulled myself together as much as I thought.
    â€œYeah, I’m fine,” I whispered back. “How are they? What did they say?”
    He said the family were seventy-five percent malnourished, which was pretty bad. The child had died of a diarrheal disease, but it wasn’t cholera.
    â€œAnd the father? Where’s he? He was all right, wasn’t he?”
    â€œHe’ll be