Chapter 3

Andrew woke after 40 minutes or so and lay there thinking about his life. Ara had talked about her confusion and had been more honest with him about personal things. Actually she had shared more, rather than be more honest. He knew it wasn’t the time to think about it now but at some point soon he would have to face up to the reality that how he was living his life could not and would not continue the way it had for the last couple of years. And Andrew knew he was shying away from it. He was worried about making choices, closing doors, with his career; and that had a fraction of the emotional baggage of the choice facing him. One of the things that he had discovered over the years was that talking something through with Leslie had helped sort things out in his head. If this was Catherine and Ara or Renee and Ara then Andrew would have gone for a walk with Leslie and talked it through. But it was Leslie’s best friend, Suzanne, and he had no one to talk to about the situation he had managed to end up in. And in an unusual moment of insight Andrew also had to accept that they both could, and likely would, walk away from him. Suzanne could find someone that could give her everything that she needed and Ara could decide to prioritise her career over a man, a partner, and Andrew could be sitting in that big empty house in Mayfair all on his own come September next year. Ara stirring in his arms sent all these thoughts flying off into the ether but he knew they were there and he had no answers.

“What do you dream of Andrew?”

It sounded like Ara had been having some introspection of her own.

“How do you mean?”

“Do you think of your life in the future? What do you dream it would be like?”

“It comes back to what we talked about this morning.”

He stopped.

“It is more than that. I have memories of life before cancer, lots of them, but at the same time cancer is the great divide in my life. But rather than the disease, the malignant cells in the small of my back, it is Faith and Leslie that are the divide. I worked it out once. From the day I was admitted to the cancer ward until the day Faith died was 63 days, that’s it. Nine weeks. The last time she was ever conscious was just 59 days after I met her, lying in adjacent beds in the cancer ward at The Royal Infirmary. But the last eight years are as a direct result of those nine weeks. My life has been planned with quite specific goals for all that time. And as you know I have achieved so many of those goals. But I don’t think that the way I have lived my life for the last eight years is possible going forward. The last thing Faith ever said to me was to ask that I live two lives, to live her life for her as well. She didn’t ask Leslie, she asked Leslie to help me, but her dying wish was to me and practically the last thing she ever said.”

Ara was lying transfixed beside me.

“So there I am 13 and a half, just survived cancer and with that burden. But I didn’t see it as a burden, I saw it as a challenge and it was one that I was going to tackle head on. While I was at school, studying for the Open University course at the same time, sacrificing being a normal teenager was, in my mind, clearly living two lives. That the business succeeded beyond our wildest dreams was something that we struggled to understand, to accept, to fully process. For years I was tormented with how to make a difference that managed to top what we had done already. Leslie has grown the £26m to more than £40m and we have already given £5m to the Imperial Cancer Research Fund and in a couple of weeks we will give them another £3m. I am 21 and have set up a medical research trust, that if managed properly, will still be granting money in 100 years. To try and top that somehow is a recipe for an unhappy life. And it took me years to get to the point where I need to be happy, be satisfied with making a difference at a different level. You asked what do I dream about. What does the man whose dreams came true dream about?

“During my time at university I have done a bunch of things, volunteered at Addenbrooke’s being one of the most significant, I will complete four years at the OTC and am going to attempt to be commissioned as a Territorial Army officer sometime in the next 12 to 18 months. But then I was asked to model by a woman who saw me at the pool. I didn’t respond to any adverts, it wasn’t as if I was going around showing off my body. The exact opposite in fact, I have to be careful about exposure to the sun. You have heard me talk about karma, my karmic balance, and how important it is to my life, and how I believe it to be important to life and society in general. It might be the closest thing that I have to a faith in my life. All the craziness with modelling has come about because I changed my mind on modelling for four College of Art students. I initially said no but it didn’t sit right with me. When I told them I would do it, even before that when I said to myself why not, then this weight lifted off me. From that selfless act I have lived this odd half-life of standing around bare-arsed naked with a collection of beautiful women, equally bare-arsed naked, while also trying to be discreet and private about it. I have worked for the Ministry of Defence all summer for the last three years on top of all that. I don’t need the OTC money, the money from modelling, the wages for working over the summer. So I think I am still trying to live two lives, Faith’s and my own. I like to tease Leslie that Faith is the nude model.

“But here I am six months away from completing my second degree, maybe even my third when I think about it. I will get a BA and an MEng when I graduate to go with the BSc I already have. Now this all sounds like a laundry list of how fucking wonderful I am. But in September what am I going to do? And how do I live a second life? I can’t work two jobs so I have to figure out what my life is like going forward. And how I can still honour Faith’s wish. So many hours ago you asked about my dreams.”

They both laughed, but he had been talking for a while.

“I know you think I have the soul of an engineer, and it is true. But in this case let me channel my soldier soul instead. My dreams have all been tactical, short term. Even the longer term goals have been met, the Trust being the most obvious one. I lived my life through these six goals. It was years later before I thought about the overall plan, and what was the plan. With Leslie and Suzanne we came up with the phrase ‘Be Passionate’. So having rambled on for far too long, I suppose that is my dream. But what it means I don’t know. All the usual dreams of graduates, well I have achieved them all, money, cars, houses, and my challenges around jobs are there are too many choices so I don’t even have to worry about that.”

Andrew finally stopped talking and looked at Ara. She was smiling at him and leaned in and kissed him.

“All I wanted to know was whether you wanted a wife and kids by the time you were 30.”

They both laughed.

“That was fascinating. The stuff about how to beat the amazing stuff you had achieved already. You are right, there is only heartache and failure down that path. Not that I don’t think you can do something amazing but still. I love how you tie it back to those terrible two months in hospital. The first snowball rolling down the mountain was then and the avalanche of everything else you have done is from that.”

“What are your dreams Ara?”

Ara answered without skipping a beat.

“Be successful in life. Be respected and have an impactful career. And at the same time I have always thought I would be a wife and mother.”

She stopped and smiled.

“I have thought about these sentences for the last five minutes for when you asked me. But the truth is they are dreams but I don’t know what they mean, how to achieve them, and whether they are interlinked or mutually exclusive. Think about what I was talking about this morning. However much I want to be a mother, right now I want to establish my career. I presume that will change but I don’t know. My career, using my brain, using the skills I have learned over the last seven years, they are most important to me. So although I have a dream I also have a reality and I wonder, and worry I suppose, that you can’t have it all. I don’t think I am alone in worrying this way, I sure as hell hope I am not alone.

“I think a lot of my issues have come as I have started to realise what is important to me, as opposed to what was important to my mother. Subsuming my dreams and what I think I should do, what I know I would be good at, for something else. I tend to swing back and forth, that is why I talked this morning about just giving up on relationships altogether. Just put everything else aside, put everybody else aside, and just focus on my career. But then I think about how important you and Grandfather have been in countering the negativity from my mother. And that is before the simple fact that I am a 22 year old woman who has discovered sex, and really likes it. A lot. Which then leads back to the whole idea of wanting it all, having it all. You said you and Helena used to talk about this together. Did you get down to this level of detail?”

Andrew nodded.

“Yes we did. We talked through one or other of us getting a job in a different city, I think we always used New York for some reason but it could be anywhere. It could be here. We talked about careers, putting other people first, the impact on the other person’s career if we decided to move. But she was like you, worried about the traditional female role of being the one who has to deal with the change because of the man’s job. She asked me if I would move to New York if my wife got a promotion or the opportunity for a new job there. It was incredibly useful, fascinating and at times really awkward to think about, and to talk about, all these kinds of hypotheticals. There was a lot where the answer was ‘I am not sure’ or ‘I don’t know’.”

“Were you two talking as a couple?”

“No, not at all. In fact we were using the nature of our relationship as a barrier. What I mean is that it really was hypotheticals. We were not a couple, we did not have kids, and we did not have jobs, so it was nothing more than a typical university chat, although the topic wasn’t typical.”

“So what were some of the things that you talked about, decided?”

“There was a lot of talk about the impact of children. She went to the same school as you, in Ascot, and so we talked about private schooling, boarding school, getting a nanny. But it was interesting to be put on the spot. ‘Would you stay home and raise the children Andrew?’. Questions like that. And that was one of the uncomfortable ones. I want an intelligent wife with a career but it didn’t stop me thinking, don’t be ridiculous that is the woman’s job.”

He saw Ara’s face.

“Exactly. I think that was exactly the expression that Helena pulled. But you talk about societal programing and there it was from my perspective. I had never seen it; my father definitely wasn’t like that so my reflexive thought was ‘don’t be silly’. But it was only by having these discussions that I could hear myself and stop and be embarrassed at the way I was thinking. And to complicate it even more, because this whole thing isn’t complicated enough, money is not going to be the determining factor in any of these discussions, well not unless it is an absurd amount. I don’t have to work for the rest of my life. We both know that I would be bored on the second day but it is true. So my job, and by extension my wife’s job, can be doing something that is important to us, is interesting, is challenging, and I don’t have to worry about paying the mortgage. I don’t really think that way but it is true and like I said it is just one more wrinkle in the whole thing.”

“You are only here for a couple of days so let’s not waste all our time in discussions that we can have in London but can we keep talking like this when I get back. Like you said, this is the time to be having these conversations, not when I can’t see my feet anymore.”

The vision of Ara pregnant with their baby flashed across Andrew’s mind. He could tell they were both thinking about the same thing as an awkward silence descended. A trip to the toilet broke the moment but they both knew that they had been thinking about the same thing.

After two serious conversations inside nine hours they spent the rest of the evening wandering around the centre of Istanbul, they crossed the Golden Horn and just walked about playing tourist, they found some hole in the wall restaurant for dinner, and had a fun time. Andrew knew if he prompted Ara he could get her talking about her research and so when he asked her what was the most unexpected thing that she had discovered, she was off. She wasn’t self-absorbed about it but you could tell that she loved to talk about her research. He was interested, not as much as she was, but it was a fun night. It was an evening that encapsulated Ara, and them, perfectly. They were in Istanbul, out for dinner as a couple, but get Ara talking about Middle Eastern history, and its impact on the present day, and she lit up. And do you know what was best of all? It was only after dinner that she realised that she had been dominating the conversation and felt guilty. Andrew did like the way she proposing to make it up to him.

There was no consistency to sex with Ara. There were occasions when it was quick, something to get out of the way, but they were starting to become less and less. What Andrew found that weekend was Ara wanted vigorous sex, nothing very adventurous, nothing kinky, but slow and steady was not the preferred approach.

“I know we have talked too much today already but there is something about you that just gets me going. Did you hear me? ‘Fuck me harder’.”

Ara was lying along him and they were sweating despite the cool of the evening.

“I have been swimming while I am here, there is pool just across the bridge not far from where we had dinner. I remember you telling me you found my core attractive, which might be the most random thing anyone has ever said to me. When I am in bed with you I hear that and I know that I can cope with being fucked hard. It is the strangest thing, almost Pavlovian.”

She shook her head.

“I could talk half the night but I didn’t want you to come all the way here just to have to listen to me the whole time.”

She kissed him.

“I have you all day tomorrow as well.”

Her impish smile made him laugh. A quick clean up and they fell asleep spooned together.

Sunday morning was a repeat of the previous day, Andrew was up hours before Ara and sat and studied while she slept. But when she woke they showered, dressed and grabbed some breakfast. After that it was tourist time. They visited the Blue Mosque, then the Hagia Sophia before finishing up at the Topkapi Palace. They are in a straight line and quite close to each other, closer even than the main monuments in Washington DC. Andrew’s memories at the day? There was so much history that you should spend two days at each place and you could spend a whole week in just this small part of Istanbul. The Hagia Sophia is nearly 1500 years old and just understanding the history of the building would take hours. So spending a couple of hours in each building was just the merest hint of the real and full experience. It was great, and maybe that is the way to do it, have a taster of the history of this part of the world, the intersection of east and west.

Ara explained how Istanbul was formerly known as Constantinople and was the seat of the Eastern Roman Empire. When Rome fell it continued on, becoming the Byzantine Empire at some point. Then you had the impact of the Crusades, one of which captured the city, before you got to the final defeat of the Byzantium Empire when the Ottomans conquered the city in 1453. Ara covered more than a thousand years of history in two breaths, and didn’t even cover the last 500 years, the impact of Islam, the constant wars, the role of the Ottomans in creating the current Middle Eastern situation. He knew he could spend a week there and never leave the same small area. Oh, and he had a doctoral candidate as his guide that day.

By 4.00 Andrew was ready for a break and they walked down to the promenade round the peninsula. Ara wanted to do one last piece of shopping, and this time it was for him.

“I want to get you a shirt that shows off your body.”

Andrew goldfished at her.

“Don’t look so surprised. How do they dress you in all these commercials? I want something snug and tight.”

It took a while but they found something that met with her approval. She had him change into it at the store and then they carried on walking. With Ara leading the way they got on a small water taxi, a tourist ferry and crossed the Bosporus to the Asian side of Istanbul. It is an arbitrary distinction on a map but they got off the ferry and were standing on Asian soil. The first time Andrew had left Europe. They waited for the next ferry and promptly returned to the European side. His first trip to Asia and it took all of 20 minutes. An arbitrary line. They found a café to sit and chat, out of the chill of the autumn wind. Andrew was starting to understand how every woman with large breasts felt. Ara’s eyes were drifting south.

“Thank you for coming to see me Andrew. I had been so looking forward to it.”

Ara smirked.

“And you look great. The body that first captured my interest all those years ago, well I am still drawn to it.”

“Do you like showing me off?”

Andrew was intrigued. Ara nodded vigorously.

“There have been plenty of looks, not just here, but back in London. Women check you out.”

He wasn’t sure what to say.

“You are with the nerdy woman who talks too much about the Ottoman Empire. I confess it makes me want to show you off. Sorry.”

Ara didn’t look that sorry.

“Can we talk about the Christmas break, what are your plans?”

“I am in Cambridge until the first week of December. Thursday is the 4^th I think and I am coming down to London then. We have our annual meeting with the Imperial Cancer Director on the Friday and then I am in London until the Sunday afternoon. First it is Paris for a week then Martinique for a week modelling. I am scheduled to get back to London on the 20^th or the 21^st, I haven’t confirmed flights back yet. I don’t know what time we get into Paris from the Caribbean. I will have four weeks of the break left at that point. I will spend two weeks in Edinburgh, see my Grandmother, possibly see my parents, although that is still a long shot, and then the last two weeks in London.”