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She wanted to
do
things—she didn’t have to, but she did. To clean and tidy, to fetch the shopping. To show she was grateful, to be their servant, to earn her keep. An initial cool, polite, obedient stage.
    And cooking, I thought, did she cook? Surely not, if that was Sarah’s speciality. But then she would have helped, perhaps—been Sarah’s under-chef. And yes (I guessed right), that’s how they really got to know each other, preparing meals. There are worse ways. That’s how the cool and awkward phase turned into something else. This girl about the place. A kitchen warmth. Good food, winter evenings. The smells that can creep from an oven and into the nostrils like kindness itself.
    Did Sarah even learn a thing or two from her? What do they eat in Croatia?
    In those days, not much, I suppose. What do refugees normally get fed?
    But, as it happens, there was a connection. There was a ghost there in that kitchen, at the side of this girl who was ready to act like a maid. There were three ghosts. But the brother, the soldier of just a few weeks—his name was Milos—had once worked in a restaurant, first in the kitchen, then as a waiter. Too handsome—Kristina had said— to be kept in the kitchen for long. One summer, before it all happened, in the tourist days. A waterfront restaurant in Dubrovnik. Having a high old time—cutting a swathe through all the foreign girls.
    You never know what’s in store.
    But that first Saturday in September (Sarah would tell me later) was almost a disaster. It was almost the point where she’d had to say it had all been a terrible mistake.
    All her own fault.
    They’d picked her up—in the Saab—along with her few boxes and bags of things. It had all been arranged, discussed, agreed. But, to their surprise, she’d sat in the car not speaking, not even looking at them, as if she didn’t know them, as if she was under arrest. At any moment, it seemed—when they stopped at lights, a junction—she might have made a sudden bolt.
    And when they’d arrived she’d just sat rigidly at their kitchen table, while Bob carried her boxes silently up to her room. This was her home now, her place, but it was as though she was trying not to be there. She said things, mumbled things to herself, but they weren’t in English, or any other language that Sarah could understand.
    She just sat there, like a prisoner, in Beecham Close.
    And then—“Thank God”—the tears had come, in a gush, in a flood that went on for minutes, and Sarah had simply put her arms round her while she sobbed and moaned, and had known then that it would be all right, once the tears had stopped, they could make a start.
    She’d never seen Kristina cry before. She’d seen the student with the frown and the dark eyes that were dark in some extra way, but she’d never seen her cry.
    I can see it. You have to put yourself in the scene. The two of them in that kitchen. The girl sobbing and Sarah holding her, as if there was no question who needed protecting.
    But him? What about him? What did he do with the two of them glued there together at the kitchen table? He’d carried up her boxes, like some servant. His feet had crunched on the gravel as he’d to-and-froed from the car.
    He felt it too. A relief. It would be all right now, after the sobs. A lump in his own throat maybe—though, God knows, he’d heard enough women sobbing, in his job. Not such a mad idea, not such a bad idea, after all. A good idea. But right now—standing there empty-handed in the kitchen doorway—what should he do?
    A gynaecologist. But this was a woman’s thing.
    He’d have made himself scarce, he’d have beat a wise retreat. September: a nip in the air. But he’d have gone outside, warm from lugging boxes, paced around, like a man whose wife is in labour. He’d have thought of other things. His son in Seattle, maybe, who didn’t even know yet (would he have to?) that a Croatian refugee girl would be sleeping in his