The Other Hand

will you do if I do not go to the police?”
    “Will I turn you in myself, you mean?”
    I nodded. Lawrence tapped his fingers on the sides of his tea mug.
    “I’ll do what’s best for Sarah,” he said.
    The fear raced right through me, right into my belly. I watched Lawrence’s fingers tapping. His skin was white as a seabird’s egg, and fragile like it too. He held his hands around his mug of tea. He had long, smooth fingers and they were curled around the orange china mug as if it was a baby animal that might do something foolish if it was allowed to escape.
    “You are frightening me, Lawrence.”
    “I’m reacting to the situation, that’s all. That’s what Andrew didn’t do. He was like a stuck record. He stuck to his principles and he let this thing with you overwhelm him and Sarah. That’s why he lost her.”
    I shook my head. “Don’t you have principles too?”
    Lawrence sat forward in his chair.
    “My principle is that I love Sarah. You can’t imagine what she means to me. Apart from her, my life is utterly mundane. I’ll do anything to keep Sarah. Anything, do you understand?”
    “You are worried I will take Sarah away from you. That is why you do not want me here. It is nothing to do with what is good for her.”
    “I’m worried Sarah’s going to do something silly to try to help you. Change her focus, change her life more than she needs to right at this moment.”
    “And you are worried she will forget all about you in her new life.”
    “Yes, all right, yes. But you can’t imagine what would happen to me if I lost Sarah. I’d fall apart. I’d hit the bottle. Bam. It’d be the end of me. That terrifies me, even if you think it sounds pathetic.”
    I took a sip of tea. I tasted it very carefully. I shook my head. “It is not pathetic. In my world death will come chasing. In your world it will start whispering in your ear to destroy yourself. I know this because it started whispering to me when I was in the detention center. Death is death, all of us are scared of it.”
    Lawrence turned his tea mug around and around in his hands.
    “Is it really death that you’re running from? I mean, honestly? A lot of the people who come here, they’re after a comfortable life.”
    “If they deport me to Nigeria, I will be arrested. If they find out who I am, and what I have seen, then the politicians will find a way to have me killed. Or if I am lucky, they will put me in prison. A lot of people who have seen what the oil companies do, they go to prison for a long time. Bad things happen in a Nigerian prison. If people ever get out, they do not feel like talking.”
    Lawrence shook his head, slowly. “But whatever’s going to happen to you is going to happen eventually, whether I do anything or not. This isn’t your country. They’ll come for you, I promise you they will. They come for all of you in the end.”
    “You could hide me.”
    “Yeah right, like they hid Anne Frank in the attic. Look how that worked out for her.”
    “Who is Anne Frank?”
    Lawrence closed his eyes and folded his hands behind his neck, and sighed.
    “Another girl who wasn’t my problem,” he said.
    I felt a rage exploding inside me, so fierce that it made my eyeballs hurt. I banged my hand down on the table and his eyes snapped open wide.
    “Sarah would hate you, if you told the police about me!”
    “Sarah wouldn’t know. I’ve seen how the immigration people work. They would come for you in the night. You wouldn’t have time to tell Sarah. You wouldn’t get to say a word.”
    I stood up. “I would find a way. I would find a way to tell her what you had done. And I would find a way to tell your wife too. I would break both of your lives, Lawrence. Your family life and your secret life.”
    Lawrence looked surprised. He stood up and walked around the kitchen. He ran his hands through his hair. “Yeah,” he said, “I really think you would.”
    “I would. Please do not imagine I would forgive you, Lawrence. I would make sure I hurt you.”
    Lawrence looked out at the garden. “Oh,” he said.
    I waited. After a long time he said, “It’s funny. I’ve been lying awake all night thinking what to do about you. I thought about what would be best for Sarah, and what would be best for me. I honestly didn’t even think about what you’d do. I suppose I should have. I just assumed you wouldn’t be so switched on. When Sarahtalked about you I was imagining, I don’t know…not someone like