Eamonn’s response to statements like that had always been, “I’ve never even been to Pakistan.” But he didn’t want to say that now.
Mrs. Rahimi walked in, took the beer bottle out of her husband’s hand, and replaced it with a glass of something yogurty. Mr. Rahimi said something in Farsi, his tone one of affectionate protest. They’d married over thirty years earlier, despite the disapproval of their families—a difference of class, more insurmountable than any other difference in his family’s eyes. Better you had married a Sunni from Iraq, Mr. Rahimi’s mother had said, the same mother who now spent months in London, telling anyone who’d listen how all her other daughters-in-law took such little care of her compared to this one, whom she’d treated so badly at first.
Eamonn stood up, apologizing. He had to go, he said. He was sorry, he’d forgotten in the warmth of his neighbors’ hospitality that he was expecting someone. He left the Rahimis sitting in front of the TV, Mr. Rahimi drinking from Eamonn’s bottle of beer, Mrs. Rahimi sipping from the bottle she’d confiscated from her husband.
He took the stairs two at a time, calling Aneeka’s name as he opened the door. When there was no answer he thought she’d left, but he found her sitting on the edge of their bed, still in the stained dressing gown.
He sat down next to her, for once not touching. She held her hand out to him. Within it, the phone with the factory-set picture for a home screen and security settings that ensured no one without the passcode could see who had called or texted. She tapped in the code and pulled up a photograph. A boy with headphones on turned toward the camera with an open smile and a thumbs-up gesture. He had Aneeka’s skin tone and her fine bones—but while hers made her look fierce, like a panther, his gave him a breakable air. His eyes were sleepy, his shoulders narrow. If he was standing in a room with his sisters, your eyes would go straight over him to Aneeka’s beauty, Isma’s gravitas. “That’s Parvaiz,” she said unnecessarily, and leaned into him. “That’s my twin. I’ve spent every day the last six months sick with worry about him. Now he wants to come home. But your father is unforgiving, particularly about people like him. So I’m not going to get my brother back. And I don’t really know what to do . . . half of me is always there, wondering if he’s alive, what he’s doing, what he’s done. I’m so tired of it. I want to be here, completely. With you.”
It was what she’d say if she were still only trying to manipulate him. It was what she’d say if she’d really fallen in love with him.
You think marriage is in the large things, Mrs. Rahimi had once said. It’s in the small things. Can you survive the arguments about housework, can you learn to live with each other’s different TV viewing habits. He thought of Aneeka opening his kitchen drawers, mocking the cherry pitter that pits cherries, the apple corer that cores apples. A life of small things forming between them.
“I’ve broken us, haven’t I?” she said.
He put his arm around her and kissed the top of her head. “No,” he said, and felt the relief go through her body, and his own. “Tell me everything about your brother.”
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His mother had warned him about increased security following the attention brought on by the Bradford speech, but that didn’t make it any less strange to see SO1 officers where previously there’d been trees at the bottom of the garden. Makes it less likely for a terrorist to get in undetected, his mother had said on the phone when he asked if he could stop by for breakfast, and she told him the noise he was hearing in the background was his beloved childhood tree house and its support structure being sacrificed. She had sounded unbothered, but there were dark smudges around her hazel eyes, and she was crossing her arms with hands tucked beneath her armpits as she did when she wanted to hide her usually immaculate nails bitten down to stubs. She was the portrait to his father’s Dorian Gray—all the anxiety you’d expect him to feel was manifest in her.
Terry Lone, mistaking the uneasy looks her son was directing at the officers, turned her back on them and slipped a check into his pocket. When he shook his head and returned it to her, she raised her eyebrows. “You mean that’s not why you’ve stopped by at this ungodly hour? That shouldn’t have come out as an accusation—you know I’m happy to help.”
He draped his jacket over his mother’s shoulder, as a show of affection rather than a response to any sign of her feeling the early-morning cold. “You’re magic. But some of the bonds you bought for me years ago just matured. And anyway, I’m going to get back to work soon. Alice thinks PR and I will be a good fit—she has a job waiting for me.” He wasn’t at all sure that was what he wanted to be doing, but he knew he couldn’t turn up at Aunty Naseem’s door as Aneeka’s intended if he didn’t have a job.
“Well, you know my thoughts on the matter of employment for the sake of employment. But your father will be pleased,” his mother said, allowing him to ask where the man in question was.