Free What Will Survive by Joan Smith Page A

to talk to him about how to handle the melee: ‘The last thing you want now is reporters crawling all over the lawn. Have you got anyone with you, sir?’
    Over her shoulder, Tim saw that her male colleague had got out of the passenger seat and was leaning back against the far side of the squad car, his head thrown back in the sunshine. For some reason, the orange light on the roof was flashing through Aisha’s old roses, which were in full flower over the front door. It was a surreal sight,
    â€˜Can’t you turn that thing off?’
    â€˜What thing?’ She turned in the direction he was looking. ‘Yeah, if it bothers you.’
    â€˜Mr Lincoln!’
    It was the TV reporter again, hovering at the gate with a cameraman just behind, recording the scene. Tim had seen her occasionally on theearly evening news, talking vivaciously to the camera in a West Country imitation of the anchorwomen on American TV shows.
    â€˜Please — it’ll only take two minutes!’
    â€˜You want to talk to her?’
    Tim turned on the WPC. ‘My wife’s been blown up by a fucking landmine. What do you think?’ A spasm twisted his face. ‘Sorry. Sorry. No need to be rude. You’ve got your job to do.’
    â€˜It’s shock, sir, we see it all the time. Excuse me a moment?’ She followed the path along the front of the house, under the Victorian metal canopy Aisha laughingly called the loggia, and headed down the drive. ‘Sorry, Nicola, nothing doing.’
    Tim had watched them fall into conversation, as though it was an ordinary summer afternoon and his wife was not lying unconscious in a foreign hospital, fighting for her life. That was the cliché the reporter had used, the one who got through on the phone shortly after the first devastating call from the Foreign Office, before it had even occurred to Tim that he would have to deal with the press. She was from the
Daily Mail
and he couldn’t speak to her coherently, eventually giving up and putting down the phone. After several more calls, all from journalists, he turned on the answering machine, forgetting that the next call would trigger Aisha’s recorded voice: ‘Hi, this is the number of Tim and Aisha Lincoln. We re not here right now, but leave a message after the tone and we’ll return your call. Or you can call my mobile on...’
    Tim had been paralysed. His first reaction was to wonder whether he would ever hear his wife’s voice again, his second that there must be a way of turning down the volume on the bloody machine. But then he wouldn’t know who was calling. The man from the Levant desk — the Levant desk? — at the Foreign Office had checked whether he had a mobile, said nothing when Tim admitted he hadn’t and then asked him to stay within range of the house phone.
    The guy hadn’t given much away, other than confirming that Tim was Aisha’s next of kin and saying he regretted to have to tell him that Mrs Lincoln had been involved in an ‘incident’ in Lebanon. It was only when the man added, in a studiedly neutral tone, that her ‘travelling companion’ had been killed in the same incident that Tim began to suspect how grave Aisha’scondition was; his first reaction was to blurt out that he’d better get on the next plane to Beirut, at which point the FO man revealed that Aisha was undergoing a lengthy operation and the outcome was ‘uncertain’.
    â€˜Uncertain? What the fuck does that mean?’
    â€˜Your wife has life-threatening injuries, sir. She’s having surgery now. It’s a four-hour flight to Beirut, even assuming you can get a seat. We’ve got embassy staff at the hospital, and you’ll hear more quickly this way.’
    Everyone, from the Foreign Office to the British embassy in Beirut — Tim called directory inquiries for the number as soon as he had downed a small brandy and got his trembling