‘What’re the police doing now?’ I say, my tone strangely proprietary, as though I am an interested party. An aunt or a friendly GP, rather than what she believes me to be: a librarian who is sympathetic that her brother died. I’m desperate to know so many things. To know that Bilal is okay. That she is okay. And underneath all of that is something self-serving: I am desperate to know that they do not suspect.
I glance down at Bilal. Is his new slenderness just growing up, or is it something else? He is running his fingers along the tops of the books, lining them up so all of the spines are exactly level. I feel a wave of nostalgia as I recall my childhood trips to the library. Age five, ten, fifteen. When it was all still to play for. Wilf would head to the sci-fi section and I’d go for Sweet Valley High and The Baby-Sitters Club. We’d reconvene, out the front of the bus, stacks of books teetering in our arms. We walked home that way. We never thought to bring a bag. We’d read one a day, all week. Occasionally lend the other a particularly good one. My brother is still alive. I could call him up right now. I look at Ayesha and wonder how I’d feel if it were me.
‘What was he like?’ I say softly, the impulse to ask the question a complicated, tangled mixture of curiosity, atonement and sadness.
She gets her purse out and flips it open. ‘Here,’ she says. She shows me a photo of her and Imran.
It’s a selfie. He’s holding the camera. Just as Sadiq did, twenty minutes before I made the biggest mistake of my life.
I feel like a rubbernecker, a voyeur, but I can’t seem to stop. I stare at his face, his slim, smiling face. He has high cheekbones. A wide smile, with straight, white teeth. He looks like he should be playing soccer in America. Bounding home for Oreos and milk.
‘Imran,’ I say, tracing a finger over the photograph.
Imagine if she knew. Imagine if she knew who I was, standing here in front of her.
‘Yeah,’ she says, letting me take the photograph. ‘I’ve got loads. But that’s my favourite.’
‘Tell me about him.’
‘He wasn’t perfect,’ she says, which surprises me. ‘You know when someone is killed –’ she says the word easily ‘– everyone always says they were a shining light or something.’ Her accent’s becoming more London. Getting stronger as she continues speaking. ‘He wasn’t. He had mental social anxiety. He’d go to parties and stuff but come home and tell me everything that he’d said … ask me for reassurance. All of that. Did my head in.’
‘Wow.’
‘Yeah. He was talented, though. Loved food. He was doing a cheffing course. In Central. Used to do those posh food smears on plates, bring them home on the tube.’ She pauses, studying her nails, then adds, ‘He was good.’
‘I see,’ I say. There’s something in my throat. The old animal that lives on my chest has momentarily climbed up, making my voice sound heavy and husky.
‘He was a park runner, too. He got up at eight every Sunday morning. What was your brother’s girlfriend like?’
‘Oh, no,’ I say. ‘I’d love to hear more about him. Imran.’
It’s hot, here in the back of the bus, and my top clings to my chest under my jumper. The panic sweats are back, but I don’t walk away. Can’t seem to.
‘He was funny,’ she says. ‘He was fun. You know? One of those people who makes things more fun.’
I nod. I know the type. Wilf used to be that way, when we were growing up, before we lost each other. We used to spread the sofa cushions out on the living-room floor when Mum and Dad were out. It was massive, our living room, with no television in it – that was in the den – and they’d have had a fit if they knew what we were doing. We’d bounce from sofa to sofa, pretending the floor was covered in lava. We called it electric shock. We’d shriek with laughter. I’d keep an eye out on the drive, checking for Mum and Dad, and Wilf would almost always nearly wet himself with laughter. So much so that I would have to remind him to use the toilet before we played.
I stare into the distance. How would I feel if he wasn’t around any more? I can’t imagine the scale of that loss. Not in spite of the fact that we don’t see each other much now, but because of it.
‘We had a traditional funeral, which he would’ve hated. But there you go. Mum and Dad came back. From Pakistan. We were living on our own, before that.’
‘Are they back there now?’
‘Yeah,’ she says. ‘Just me and Bilal now. Imran’s room is empty. Probably get kicked out soon – the bedroom tax, you know?’
I close my eyes, briefly, against this story. I can hardly stand to hear it – their losses.
When I open them again, she’s looking at me. ‘That’s why he was on the cheffing course. He discovered he liked cooking. For us. Well, he sort of had to cook for us.’
‘I see.’
‘I’ve got loads more things,’ she says, opening her purse. One section is stuffed. She passes me two more pictures. Both are her and Imran, again. One on a holiday, tanned against a bridge crossing a river. The other is from when they were little. Their high, distinctive bone structure leaps out at me, like stars in the night sky, getting more obvious the longer I look.
I could tell her now. It would be so easy. She might even be misled, by me, at first – by my casual tone. She might not realize the enormity of what I am telling her. She’d grasp it soon enough, of course. But maybe I could fool her, for a moment. And I could say sorry, and she’d say she forgave me. And then, afterwards, she’d angrily realize, and turn me in.
My hands start to shake. My eyes fill with tears. I look down as I wait for them to disappear but they won’t. They keep gathering, my throat feeling tight.
‘But now it’s over, you know?’ she says.
‘I’m sorry,’ I say, my voice barely audible.
‘He probably didn’t know it was happening.’
I think of the reality of his death. He couldn’t catch his breath. It would have been freezing. The ground. The air. That water all over his nose and mouth. Maybe he would have thought of her, as he died. Maybe he would have seen his parents in his mind. Maybe he would have wondered, Who would do this to me?
I meet her eyes. They’re damp, the bottom lashes clumping together.
I can’t help but ask. ‘Do you know what happened to him?’ My voice is raspy and strange. Desperate sounding.
‘That night?’ she says sharply.
‘Yeah.’
She closes her eyes, looking as though she’s in prayer. Her skin is flawless, but becoming lined. Not happy lines – smile lines around the eyes, the mouth – but miserable ones. Forehead lines.
Her eyes open. ‘No,’ she says, blinking. ‘The police say … they said it was suspicious. But now … we don’t know. We just don’t know what happened to him. Nobody knows.’
‘Are you any closer to knowing?’ I say, and, to me, my tone is so obvious. So hungry. I marvel once more that people don’t know; that they can’t tell; that it is not broadcast above my head somewhere in neon.
I move towards her. She backs away.
‘Closer?’ she says. She looks wary now. Takes another step back. Her rucksack hits a stand of Quick Reads and she reaches to steady it with her hand as it rocks.
‘To finding out,’ I say.
I brush my hair from my face and notice my hand is shaking. Surely she sees it too. Her eyes stray to it, then back to mine.
She doesn’t say anything for a moment. She shakes her head, biting her bottom lip with those white teeth of hers. She glances at my face, her eyes scanning mine. Can she see my tears?
‘No, not really,’ she says.
And, for a moment, the paranoia is extinguished, replaced by a strange kind of jubilation. This is guilt, I am learning. The odd ups and downs of it. The inconsistencies. The relief, followed by the opposite, because true, lasting relief is no longer possible.
I nod once. ‘You can always tell me. Talk to me, about it,’ I say.
She just looks at me. Says, ‘Right,’ and turns back to the books. I have frightened her.
I spin around, then start, feeling adrenaline rush from my heart and down my arms and legs: Ed is right behind me. I didn’t hear him. His tread is soft, like a cat’s. I should have been more careful, but I look closely at him and see he hasn’t heard. His expression is entirely neutral, impassive. He can’t have heard, with the noise of the heating above us. It’s like a dim roar.