December’s always been a good month for me, and 21st December a good date in particular. Don’t we all have lucky dates? As each year wheels around, I spot them.
Good things seemed to happen time and time again. On 21st December, I passed my driving test – a sweaty, gung-ho girl on my fourth attempt. It was when I was good, back then. I was the straight-A student. Everybody knew me; I was off to Oxford the next year. I played Sandy in Grease at school, won the swimming competition, was captain of the hockey team. I was an all-rounder. Now, I am a jack of all trades, but a master of none. Everyone’s interests seem to have narrowed to one, except mine. Mine have widened, dispersed, to almost nothing. I do nothing. I am nothing.
And then, on 21st December, almost a decade later, Reuben proposed. I’m glad it was after all of that, and after Oxford; that Reuben asked me to marry him in my second guise, and not my first. That his love seemed – to me – to be unconditional.
And now here we are, and the wheel has turned again, and everything is different.
It’s sleeting, hardly daylight, and the traffic is slow moving. It takes us longer than usual to get to Brentford. Sometimes, when traffic is bad, I pretend I am a celebrity in a slow-moving convoy. Reuben thinks it’s ridiculous; Ed doesn’t know.
It’s 11.03 a.m. when it happens. We’ve just pulled into our stop and there’s somebody already waiting. A tall woman, holding a little boy’s hand. He has floppy dark hair, a turned-up nose. Plump cheeks, like a hamster. She’s wearing bright green trainers and a black leather jacket that’s spattered with sleet.
I think I know immediately, but I pretend not to, organizing library cards in their filing boxes, ignoring it. Ed opens the door, letting in a blur of cold December air. And then they’re here, on the bus, and I can’t ignore it any longer.
‘Alright,’ she says, clambering up the stairs, the boy behind her. She has long, angular legs, like a grasshopper, and takes the steps two at a time.
I am standing against the counter, listening to the sleety rain on the skylight. Deliberately looking up. Up, up, away from her. When I glance back, she’s looking at the boy, who’s standing on the top step, holding his tiny hand, palm up, to feel the flakes on it. Slightly impatiently, she reaches out and grabs him, like pulling on a dog’s lead when it wants to stay and sniff the grass.
The child joins her, and when she turns her face to me, I have to acknowledge it. Those dark eyes. That mole. Her grief, worn like a layer of foundation slicked across her skin. Underneath her eyes. Across her forehead, which is furrowed, more lined than before.
And, as if my body remembers, too, it’s as though there is a Catherine wheel of fire in my stomach. It churns so much I feel as though I might vomit, but it also creates a heat of its own, radiating outwards. Sweat forms in strange places. The small of my back. My upper lip. My sides, trickling down from my armpits in rivulets. She is here for me. It is over.
Ayesha. The surviving relative of the man I killed. And a child. Whose child?
‘Hi,’ Ed says, stepping towards her. He glances at me.
It’s only a momentary look, but I know what it means. He’s wondering why I am standing, stock-still on the bus, instead of serving our only customer. He is probably wondering why I am staring so intently at her. Perhaps he’s caught my expression. He is very perceptive. Spends his time, like me, people watching. We used to discuss people together. Before.
I don’t care what he thinks. I have to get off the bus. Away from her. Out into the cold air again.
‘I’ve been sick and I’m going to be sick again,’ I say in an undertone to Ed, which isn’t too far from the truth.
‘Um,’ Ed says, dithering. A book of mindfulness is splayed open on the counter behind us, which he’s been reading during the quiet stops – now that I don’t talk to him, I suppose. ‘Do you need to go outside?’ he says.
‘Yes.’
I clamber down the steps and out into the cold. What’s she doing here? Who’s the boy? My breath clouds up the wintry morning air. Sleet pours down, as cold as snow but as fast and needle-sharp as rain. I’m cold, but I don’t care.
I can hear Ed serving her. I cock my head, trying to listen.
She’s trying to get the boy – Bilal – into reading. They’ve had some family problems recently, she explains in her south London accent. I’d forgotten how husky her voice is. ‘Very recently,’ she adds, as I listen. ‘Only two weeks ago, but it’s never too soon to try new things, is it? Maybe reading picture books will help him to – forget?’
Ed is silent as she talks, which is his way.
‘So you’d like picture books?’ Ed eventually asks, mildly. His voice is more muffled than it should be. He’ll be squatting down, his knees clicking, as he tries to find the right age books for Bilal. I’d deal with them much better than Ed is doing. For all his compassion, his calm silence is unnerving. I’d find out what Bilal liked. Adventure. Colourful picture books. Escapism.
‘My brother was – well. We don’t know what happened,’ she says. ‘Bilal wants – his uncle was – I think he should be … aren’t books supposed to be a great distraction?’
Blood pounds in my head. Bilal’s uncle. Guilt and regret hit me like a first frost. I feel myself withering underneath it. I think of all the things he might miss out on, with the uncle that he’ll never really know. The sharing of a cheese platter late at night while they watch The Godfather together. Phone calls about things he couldn’t tell his parents. Those things. Those adult, uncle–nephew things. I can picture the scenes so vividly, they may as well be playing out in front of me. Poor Bilal, I think, my back to them as I look out across Brentford, feeling sick and repulsive.
‘Distraction sounds good to me,’ Ed says.
‘Yes,’ she says softly, so quietly I can barely hear it.
Perhaps … perhaps she is not here for me. Perhaps she doesn’t know. Maybe it really is simply about books, and the things they can do for people. I would turn to a library in grief, in tragedy. Why not her?
To my frustration, Ed says nothing back to Ayesha. Couldn’t he console her, where I can’t? But then, this is not Ed’s way. How many times has he sat silently, munching on pick ’n’ mix, back when I have had problems, and said nothing? (He loves sweets, and is one of those people whose preferences seem to dominate, and so all we ever eat on the bus is pear drops and bonbons and foam bananas.) Hundreds of times. He just listens, does Ed. Without judgement, and with compassion. I am never usually irritated by it.
I keep breathing in the winter air until I hear them coming down the steps. Bilal’s clutching two picture books. Ayesha has a few more. She glances at me, just briefly, but I see it. Ed waves them off, then perches on the top step where Bilal had stood, catching flakes of sleet, looking at me carefully.
I avoid his gaze, walking up the stairs and squeezing past him. My bad hand brushes the door frame and I wince in pain. Ed leaves it. He’ll choose his moment. He tilts his head back and I see his huge, thick glasses blanch white as they catch the reflection of the skylight. We are both silent for a moment.
And then, suddenly, she has appeared again, right at the bottom of the stairs, looking up at me, her nose scrunched.
‘Hey,’ she says, her tone upbeat, her voice higher than usual, for just a second.
I freeze, knowing almost before it happens what’s to come.
‘How’s your brother doing?’ she says.
Ed looks at us, his head moving left and right, from her to me and back again.
‘I thought it was you, when I saw you – when we were coming out,’ she adds.
‘Oh,’ I say, wondering if I can deny it.
I had my scarf around my hair in the mosque. Perhaps I could get away with pretending not to know her. No. I can’t. She hasn’t asked if I’m the same person: she knows. I can’t lie. I won’t get away with it. The sweat is back, the heaviness on my chest, and I shift, gulping as I loosen my scarf. The same scarf. Stupid Joanna. Why did I go? How could I have been so foolish?