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“If I settle here,” she repeated his words. “I hadn’t thought of doing that.”
“Why not? You probably have relatives here. You appear to like the country. And I have to say, I’m enjoying your company. Maybe you’d like to stay here permanently.”
She raised her eyebrows in surprise. “The time it’s taking to get my passport, maybe I’ll have to,” she answered flippantly, not willing to take his comment seriously, in case he hadn’t meant it that way. “But it would be good to stay a little longer than planned,” she ventured, choosing her words carefully. “I know so little from my grandfather about Sirun. He didn’t want to talk about it until the end. Everything he did, he did for me. He said he owed it to me after the death of my parents.”
“Why?” asked Kadar. “Did he feel responsible for their death?”
She didn’t answer immediately. It was something she’d often wondered, but had never asked because the past wasn’t something her grandfather had ever wanted to discuss.
“I don’t know.”
She felt Kadar glance at her. “You never asked?”
She shook her head and bit her lip. “No. It wasn’t that easy. Grandfather never wanted to talk about it and I didn’t want to upset him, so…”
He put his hand on her arm. “It’s okay. You don’t have to talk about it if it’s still too painful.”
She looked at him and thought that, for the first time, she found herself wanting to talk about the past. No one before in her life had showed any interest or would have ever understood. But this man knew more about what had happened than anybody. “Itispainful. But I think I would like to tell you what I know. Maybe you could help fill in the gaps.” She paused as she collected her thoughts. She didn’t want to tell him too much. Not yet. “The deaths of my parents weren’t accidental. I think it was political, but I don’t know why or how they died.”
It was his turn to be silent for a few moments, masked by negotiating a tricky corner in the road. Eventually he relaxed a little, and with one hand on the wheel, glanced at her.
“Tell me what you know.”
“I’m the only child of my grandfather’s only son. It seems my grandmother looked after me as both my parents were involved in politics in some way. I don’t know anything about that. Grandfather refused to speak of it. All I know is that they were shot down at a public meeting about taxes. My father died first. My mother died a lingering death. Further assassinations followed and my grandmother killed herself in grief. Thing is, I don’t know why my parents were killed. Why kill two random people who were demonstrating?”
She watched his reaction closely. She’d omitted to tell him one significant piece of information—that her grandfather had blamed Kadar’s father for their deaths. But there was no change in his expression.
“Perhaps,” he said thoughtfully, “the deaths weren’t random. Perhaps the government considered them to be a risk.”
“Pretty brutal way to mitigate a risk.”
“Indeed.”
“So you know nothing about the circumstances of their deaths?” she asked, desperate for him to shed some light on that tragedy which had happened so many years before, and the truth of which was shrouded in mystery.
“What were your parents’ names?” he asked.
“I don’t know. That’s the problem. I’d assumed we shared the same surname. But it doesn’t look like it. It turns out there are no Albrights in Sirun. I think grandfather must have changed our name after arriving in England. He certainly wanted to make sure no one could track us down.”
“Hopefully, when you receive your birth certificate for your passport, it’ll have the answers on it,” Kadar said.
“Maybe. I’ve never seen it. My grandfather organized my passport years ago and, now I think of it, anything else which required proof of my birth certificate. He didn’t leave it among his possessions.”
“Has the British Consulate contacted you yet?”
“No. I thought they’d have called me at least.”
“I’ll contact them. I’ll do what I can to expedite matters.”
She had to know. “Kadar… I wonder, could you tell me why your father?—”
He interrupted her by pointing to the mountain face which they’d now reached. “We’re here.”
She looked, and what she saw swept her question out of her mind. A sheer rock face lay ahead of them.
“Where are we exactly?” she said, peering up through the windscreen.
“Where we need to be.”
