Free Strangers by Carla Banks

them in that moment, laughing in a cloud of brilliant colours.
    The phone rang. She made a long arm and picked it up, her eyes still on the photograph. ‘Roisin Massey.’
    ‘Oh, Mrs Massey. Could I speak to Dr Massey please?’
    ‘He isn’t here. Do you want to leave a message?’
    ‘It’s Mike Alport, his technician.’
    ‘Hi, Mike.’ She had talked to Mike on the phone but she hadn’t met him yet.
    ‘Sorry to disturb you. I thought he’d be back by now. Could you ask him to give me a ring when he gets in? Tell him it’s about those results he wanted. They came in just after he left.’
    Roisin stared at the phone.
    ‘Mrs Massey?’
    ‘Yes. I’m here. Sorry.
When
did you say he left?’
    ‘About an hour ago.’
    ‘Yes. Of course. He said he might stop at the shops.’ Her voice sounded odd and artificial. ‘I’ll ask him to call you, OK?’
    She sat looking at the phone after Mike had rung off. Joe must have…He was probably still in his office, dealing with a backlog of admin. He wouldn’t necessarily have told Mike that. He’d want to be left alone to get on with it.
    Her fingers reached for the phone, pulled back, then reached again. She dialled Joe’s direct line,the one that went straight to his office, or to his pager if he was on duty and away from his desk. She listened to the phone ringing, then to the automated answering service that told her he wasn’t available and invited her to leave a message.
    He wasn’t there.
    She stacked his books carelessly on the shelves. One of them toppled off and fell open on to the floor with a heavy
thud
that resonated through the silent house. A dog barked in the distance. She picked up the book, trying to avert her eyes from the pictures, afraid she would see photographs of dead babies, babies with terrible diseases, but instead the infants looked normal: tiny, wrinkled, newborn, their minuscule fingers clenched, their eyes dark and curious.
    One day…She and Joe had married in a hurry, but one thing they both knew was that they wanted children. Roisin, at thirty-two, didn’t want to wait much longer and they had a tentative plan to try for a family after his contract in Riyadh ended. But, in the back of her mind, she could see his face, suddenly cold, turned away from her, and she could hear her mother’s voice:
Rosie, you hardly know him!
    She made herself focus on the task in hand. The packing case was just about empty. She dug down to the bottom and found a page from a newspaper. It was tucked into a plastic pocket to preserve it, and it had been folded, leaving a photograph on display. It was a picture of a young manwith a carefree smile. She unfolded the paper carefully, looking at the date. It was from April that year, and she wondered why Joe had kept it. Underneath the photograph, there was an article:
BRITISH STUDENT ‘ABANDONED’ IN SAUDI JUSTICE
    Supporters of a man who was executed in Saudi Arabia last week, today accused the government of failing to intervene. Haroun Patel, a Pakistani national who was a student in the UK in 2003, was convicted of smuggling heroin in Riyadh. A spokesperson said, ‘Her Majesty’s government is unable to intervene in cases involving nationals from other countries.’
    An execution. She remembered that first morning with Damien O’Neill, when she’d found her way to as-Sa’ah Square.
It’s known colloquially as Chop-Chop Square
…
    Early April. In early April, she and Joe hadn’t even met. When that article was written, when people were reading it, she was running along the tow path with Shadow dancing ahead of her, and just a week or two later, Joe would be running along that path towards her, the course of their lives about to change for ever.
    As she read on, the images of the Kingdom that she was starting to form in her mind melted andchanged. They were confused and disparate images: the houses in the old city, tall with small, shuttered windows, houses built close together creating narrow,