“What about the money?” he asked.
“Keep it safe. I will come and get you when I find us a place. We can pay for it then.”
She kissed him on the cheek and walked through the doors ahead of him.
Not only her father, but it looked like her whole family were there to greet her. He ignored them and walked past, heading for the elevators and escalators to the underground station. He was very nervous, but also excited. This was what he had dreamed of.
Suddenly, his excitement gave way to fear, as two heavily armed police officers approached him rapidly. He couldn’t move, so stood stock-still unable to take his eyes from their machine guns.
They brushed past, heading off into the crowd behind him. He felt slightly sick, but was able to force himself to walk onwards.
These were nothing like the khaki cad bullies who police most of the places in which he had lived so far. These were wearing more equipment than most of the soldiers in Pakistan: body armour, pistols, the HK MP5s, CS spray and auto-lock batons. These were not the fat, lazy infidels of which he had read. Perhaps this might not be as easy as he had imagined.
Just before he descended into the depths, he glanced back and saw Shamin leave with her family around her. He already felt more alone than at any time in his life.
Four
England.........Spring 2009.
“I'm sorry Mr Baldwin, but there's nothing for you today,” the girl said.
William Baldwin sighed, ran his hands through his thinning hair and thanked her, putting the phone down.
“Well?” Carrie asked from the kitchen.
They'd celebrated their silver wedding anniversary just five weeks ago, three days before he was made redundant.
“Nothing.”
“I'm sorry, love. Have you tried the thingy agency?”
“I've tried them all, and no bugger wants a fifty-nine year old with bags of management experience just as everyone is downsizing and releasing staff left, right and centre.”
Carrie tried so hard not to let her concerns show, as she knew her husband was trying as hard as he could to get a job. She just felt he was being a little choosy. After all, he'd been offered an office administrator's job that paid twenty thousand and he turned it down, as he was used to earning four times that.
Their few saving graces were that they'd all but paid the mortgage; their two children had left home after completing university, so they weren't as desperate as many.
However, William recently had a health scare, in that he had a heart murmur and was in the middle of a series of tests and consultations with a specialist. Coupled with the stress of losing his job, Carrie was very worried about him.
“I'm going to take Compo for a walk, as I need to clear my head,” he muttered. Compo, the Jack Russell, on hearing the magic ‘w’ word, was off the sofa and waiting by the back door.
Carrie sat on the sofa and cried, as she hated seeing him so hurting. Just after he’d left, the telephone rang. It was William’s sister Linda. She and her husband lived at Cookham, in a nice house overlooking the Thames. Carrie wasn’t that fond of Linda, as she felt that her sister-in-law was a snotty bitch. For the sake of her husband, she was always pleasant to her.
William’s father, Neil, had died five years ago aged eighty-four. His mother had been three years her husband’s junior, and had stayed on in the home that had been bequeathed to them by a grateful employer. John Parnell had died of cancer aged seventy-nine and had left his elderly chauffeur a house and one hundred thousand pounds for thirty years loyal service.
Indeed, it was John Parnell’s generosity that had enabled Neil to send all three of his children to university and to see them in good jobs and settled before he died. William went into management for an engineering firm in West London, while Linda became a consultant for a promising interior design company and married a financial adviser called Graham. Billy’s brother John (named after Neil’s employer) had been the baby and he was now a head teacher of a grammar school in Amersham, Buckinghamshire.
“Hello Carrie, it’s Linda. Is Billy there?”
“No, he’s just popped out with Compo,” Carrie sad, sensing that Linda was upset.
“It’s Mum, she’s been rushed into hospital with chest pains and breathing difficulties.”
Oh God, not another thing! Carrie thought.
“How long ago?” she asked.
“I just got the call. I tried to get hold of John, but he’s busy. Graham is in Brussels again, so I’m heading to the hospital with Kenneth now. I was hoping that Billy would meet me there.”
“He shouldn’t be too long, Linda. I’ll tell him as soon as he comes in,” Carrie said, reluctant to share their own problems with an already distraught sister-in-law.
Billy and Carrie lived in a small village in Buckinghamshire called Denham, on the outer fringe of West London. They'd moved here because his previous office had been in Acton, and this was an easy distance for commuting straight down the A40. After getting married, they had lived in Ealing, but both had become fed up with the hustle and bustle of London, so it had been an easy decision some twelve years ago.
Then, life had been good. He had been a successful manager of a branch of a big Multi-national Engineering Corporation. His salary had given them a good standard of living and paid for things like school fees, expensive cars and lovely holidays. Therefore, the slide after being made redundant had been that much harder. They had some savings and investments, but they wouldn't last forever.
He hadn’t shared with his wife that the specialist told him that the arteries feeding his heart needed a triple bypass otherwise it was 78% likely that he would suffer a massive heart attack within twelve months. Carrie knew he was having heart problems, but not the extent to which he required surgery.
He walked into the country park and wandered aimlessly for half an hour. His mind was turning over many things, not least his personal demon, his health.
He did what he always had done. He shrugged it off and buried the fear deep in his subconscious. He made his way home.
Carrie met him at the door with the news of his mother.
He got to the hospital in time. He found his sister and nephew, Kenneth, sitting in the A & E holding his mother’s hand. They had not yet managed to secure a bed in the High dependency Unit.
“Oh, Billy!” Linda exclaimed and collapsed on him, crying. He peered over her shoulder at the still form of his mother on the bed.
She was still in her nightdress and wore an oxygen mask over her face. A urinary catheter tube disappeared up into her groin and ended in a bag by the bed. Several IV tubes fed into her arm from a variety of plastic bags. A heart and breathing monitor bleeped and did what monitors do.
She was breathing in short raspy movements. He didn’t think she looked like his mother.
“What did the doctor say?” he asked.
“They think she’s got pneumonia. The pain is fluid on the lungs.”
“When did this start?”
“I saw her on Sunday for lunch. She was fine then. She had a bit of a sniffle, but claimed to be okay. On Monday she called the doctor who told her to take some Ibuprophen and keep drinking fluids. I popped in on Tuesday and she said she didn’t feel like eating. I noticed her breathing was a bit wheezy, but she told me that I was fussing. I offered to take her to the doctor, but she said she was fine. You know how she was. Anyway, I asked her neighbour to keep an eye on her, and it was she who called the ambulance today. She’d fallen going to the loo, possibly sometime in the night.”
While she was telling him the tale of woe, two doctors came over. The older one introduced himself as the senior consultant.