Shari awoke to find that her mother had already got up, showered, dressed and gone to breakfast. She remembered being annoyed at her, going to sleep last night, but her mother had stayed up long after she had gone to bed, talking with the others downstairs – as ever.
Now she remembered that she was cross with her, this time because of her book. It wasn’t in her bag and Shari was sure her mother had taken it. She had a particularly low opinion of Shari’s dad. It was just like her, that although he had died not nine months ago, and she knew how much Shari treasured the book, her mother had taken it and hidden it, so that she wouldn’t be “influenced by that old mumbo jumbo” pedalled by her father.
Her parents had got divorced when she was five. Shari had never seen her parents together.
Most of her childhood had been spent at boarding school, with holidays dominated by time with her mother in one or other exotic location and hotel where her mother’s work was centred at that moment. The early years of her mother’s career with McKenzie had been meteoric. She had risen to Practice Director at an early age, even for McKenzie. This meant that she travelled a lot and only visited school when her schedule took her to the UK. It also meant that Shari couldn’t spend weekends away with her. And vacations were often subject to last minute changes of venue.
Her mother’s preoccupation was with Shari’s material needs, uniforms, sports equipment, books and vacation study trips.
They had never had a home like other people. Her mother said that real estate needs management. Her father said home was the world.
Her father was the easiest going, calmest, most understanding man she’d ever met. Only after he died of lung cancer last year, had she begun to understand the spiritual nature of her father’s life and even now, she grasped only the bear outlines of his life’s journey. A journey that had taken him away from her for most of her childhood.
Her father had given her the book just before he died. He had said that it was the most useful thing he had ever been given.
Martin lay barely awake, with his eyes closed to the brightness of the winter sun as it crept through the corner of his window. He could vaguely hear the morning noises of the Centre waking up. Opening one eye and lifting his head to see his alarm clock, he thought it’s too late to go for a run. Then the time penetrated his consciousness and he sat up with a start and a loud “Shit!”. He was half an hour late for his Skype call with his mum.
Jumping out of bed, he pulled on his tracksuit bottoms, punched his MacBook into life and clicked the Skype button, hoping that his mum was still on-line.
It seemed to take an age for the Skype connection to show who was on-line and he was about to start typing an e-mail full of apologies when his mum’s icon blinked: “on-line”. Hitting the call button, he hoped she hadn’t gone out leaving her computer on, as she often did. But after half a dozen rings he got the fuzzy voice of his mother saying: “Martin? Is that you?”
“Hi mum!”, Martin said brightly, hoping she wouldn’t hear the sleep in his voice, “Sorry I’m late!”
“Comment ça va, mon petit choux? Tu fais une grosse matinée?”
“English, mum!”, moaned Martin, “It’s too early for French! And yes, I’ve overslept…”
“No problème, my little one. How did you sleep?”
“Fine, mum”, replied Martin, enjoying the warmth of his mum’s familiar French accent. Her voice was enough to put him into a gentle trance of the little boy being wrapped up by the gorgeous dark haired mum as she banished the woes of the world from his bubble.
He was quickly brought back to reality as his mum continued: “But I have no time chéri, I have to go out to a meeting in a minute. So let’s reschedule to tomorrow. Is everything all right?”
“Yeah, everything is fine, mum. Are you coming for Easter?”
Martin could hear sounds of his mum moving around in the background and then a distant voice saying: “I hope so, I’ll know for certain by the end of the week. Bye!”
“Mum, turn your computer off when you go out!” But it was to no avail as the sound of the door shutting behind her confirmed her departure.
“Mum!”, Martin shouted to the empty room, his mind’s eye seeing the apartment in Beirut on the fourth floor of the modern apartment block, high enough to have a view over the yacht harbour with the sun glinting off the shiny hulls and the wind snapping the rigging against the masts. Her job as Assistant Director for the UNHCR in the Middle East took her all over the region. Days when she was at the apartment were few and far between and he kicked himself for having screwed up the call.
Martin missed his mum. He’d gone to live with his dad when his dad had started the Centre, five years ago. His parents agreed that the local grammar school was a better place than the endless round of international schools that he’d been used to since he started school at four.
Although his mum said that his dad was turning into a hermit, lost in the hills of the Lake District, there had been no argument between them that Martin should settle down in one place with his dad. Before then, Martin had lived with his mum, wherever her job in the Canadian diplomatic service had taken her. He had seen a succession of international French schools with varying levels of success.
His dad had been working as a legal advisor and executive coach with a small international agency, which had taken him on various orbits around Martin and his mum. The periods of them living as a family of three became shorter and more infrequent and although there were never any arguments Martin had slowly grown aware that his parents were no longer a couple. They never divorced and seemed quite pleased to see each other but their relationship was no longer sexual.
His mum had left the Canadian diplomatic service to join the UNHCR at the same time that he had moved to the Lake District. Martin had always had the feeling that he had been in the way for his mum.
“Now Bernard, I can call you Bernard can’t I?” said Ekantika as she got into the room where their first session would be starting soon, "I'd just like to run through the details one more time. You have a spare bulb for the projector? Have you found a third flipchart? I really do need three! That tea break will be at eleven fifteen won’t it? And there's no need to serve coffee! They won’t be drinking coffee."
"As I told you last night, we don’t have a third flipchart,” answered Bernard patiently, “but there is a whiteboard and pens over there which you can use. Breaks can be when ever you like. There are tables outside the room with biscuits and drinks."
Ekantika didn't hear, she was moving the chairs again; Bernard made a mental note to make sure there was a thermos of coffee. He turned to leave as Jenny burst into the room.
“Ah! Bernard!”, Jenny exclaimed, “Have the Indians checked in yet?”
“Em. Not that I know… I can check again for you, but just after breakfast we had no other arrivals.”
“Bloody hell!”, said Jenny, exasperated, “I spent all this time organising people and places, and they just don’t show up when they agreed to! I have to call them, but my cell phone doesn’t work here. Do you have a land line?”
“Sure”, said Bernard, “but let’s go via the kitchen to see if anybody knows if they’ve checked in yet. You can use the phone in the bar.”
“Thanks”, said Jenny with a grimaced smile.
“It’s easy to loose sheep on the fells around here”, offered Bernard as he headed off to the kitchen.
The door opened suddenly as Ekantika rushed into the bedroom and started picking up the papers and putting them in her briefcase.
"Mother, what have you done with my book?" confronted Shari.
"Not now darling, I'm in a rush, I still need to brush my teeth and the first session starts in fifteen minutes."
“But mother you've got my book, and you've no right to hide my things, that was dad's book – as you well know, and you have no right to hide it, even if you don't like what's in it."
“On’t know whot yor alking abou” said Ekantika, a mouth full of toothbrush."
”Yes you do! You’ve taken my book, give it back now!"
"I haven't got your book darling, and I'm really busy right now – can we talk about this, this evening? Got to go now love you enjoy your day in the hills looks nice outside…” and with that she disappeared out of the door carrying her bag and laptop.
Shari sat down on her bed with a bump and nearly cried, she had not wanted to come with her mother on this week in the Lake District. She’d done her best to organise the half term holiday with some friends, but somehow her friend's parents didn't have space for Shari and so very reluctantly she had agreed come.
"You'll be able to do some quiet reading and catching up on your studies, and it’s a beautiful area" her mother had said when Shari had confirmed that she would be coming, "you'll like the Lake District”.
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This is the sixth chapter from the Book of Ma'Chi