by Tony Salter
He’d tried to speak to her when it was over, but her husband was there, protective arm wrapped around her and shepherding them out to the waiting Range Rover. He was the Alpha male, hours spent in the gym bulging through his expensive suit and understated superiority screaming silently from his vintage Rolex and his designer sunglasses. What was the story there? Mandela or no Mandela, white South Africans of Shuna’s generation didn’t marry black guys. Even if they were rich investment bankers. It didn’t happen.
They drove off and Jim walked slowly back to his cab, his anger and frustration growing with every step. And that should have been that. It should have been the last time he saw her.
Hassan
If he’d never met Mona …
Hassan walked slowly across the Kensington Road. He was overdressed and needed to avoid getting too hot. There was nothing more suspicious than uncontrolled sweating. They had been very clear about that.
If he’d never met Mona …
He knew there was no point thinking back. No value in dredging up old dirt. But what did it matter now? Surely it wasn’t wrong for him to revisit the milestones in his life, to see the steps on the road which had led him to this moment. It was a perfect time to exorcise those demons one by one, in time with the measured pallbearer paces which were leading him on to his destiny.
There were many milestones, but the only ones which mattered were the ones which marked out his time with Mona.
The first term had been coming to an end; the days and weeks had blurred in a grey swirl of activity and he couldn’t quite see how time had passed so quickly. He had a few mates on his course – boring geeks like him – and they must have dragged him out for a few drinks from time to time, but when he looked back all he could remember was days and nights filled with studying. He was smart enough, but there was so much to do and never enough hours.
The daily catch-up sessions with Mona made it all worthwhile – each time he spotted her, he stood a little taller, and the exhaustion slid off his shoulders and away. She was a shining metallic flash of silver glinting brightly through the dross of his daily slog.
She met him so she could share his notes and he could help her with work she’d missed, but it wasn’t entirely a one-way street and they didn’t only talk about their studies. As the weeks passed Hassan began to suspect that Mona might actually enjoy his company, and that they were becoming real friends.
That friendship was an unexpected bonus and he certainly never expected their relationship to be anything other than platonic. Mona was light years out of his league and, if Hassan knew anything, he knew his place in the pecking order of life.
There was nothing different or special about that particular day. A typical grey cold January morning – he and Mona had just spent two hours in Caffe Nero going through the previous afternoon’s lecture notes. Mona insisted on paying for the coffees and they set off for their weekly tutorial. Mona was babbling on about something or other as they walked past the Bodleian and Hassan was only half-listening, enjoying the moment and noticing, not for the first time, that they were walking in perfect step with each other.
‘Hassan!’ Mona stopped without warning in the middle of the busy street.
‘What’s up?’ he said. ‘We’re gonna be late.’
‘You’ve got no idea, have you?’ she said, looking deep into his eyes.
‘What?’ She was right. Hassan had no idea what she was talking about. People were flowing around them like river water around rocks, but Mona didn’t seem to notice them.
She lifted one hand and slowly stroked his cheek with the back of her fingers, all the while fixing him with that bottomless gaze. Hassan froze. Not breathing. Even his heart seemed to have stopped beating.
‘How lovely you are, idiot,’ she said, smiling.
And then she kissed him.
There was nothing different or special about that day, but the kiss changed his life forever, bisecting his entire existence into distinct halves – before and after. With the awful clarity of hindsight, the path from that moment to his careful overdressed trudge along Exhibition Road might as well have been laser-etched into his bones.
From the moment Hassan and Mona became a couple, his life revolved only around her. He studied hard so he could help her with her studies but every other moment was spent with her, thinking about her, or dreaming up new ways to please her. He wasn’t worried about missing out; he had everything he could possibly want.
Mona had lots of other friends and Hassan understood that he would always have to share her. She was one of those rare spirits who made things glow. Everything, and everyone, who came near her became brighter and more alive. It was an amazing gift and of course she had many, many admirers. That was all right. Hassan was her boyfriend, and he was certain she was faithful to him. Mona couldn’t lie.
Whenever Hassan parted from Mona, he would feel a slight shiver run through him, as though a cloud was sliding softly across the sun and he needed to find some warming comfort by thinking about the next time he would see her.
The long holidays had been the worst, especially the summer breaks. He and Mona talked often about him taking a trip back to Cairo with her – to see the pyramids and meet her family – but it didn’t happen. Something would always get in the way, either Hassan’s obligation to work for his uncle or some family drama of Mona’s that made it ‘not the best time’.
The subject of going to Bradford to meet the Qureishis never came up.
It was Mona who suggested they share a flat in their final year. It was the last chance to be outside the college accommodation, to have a little more freedom. They were spending most nights with each other, anyway. Why not move in together?
She found a place, which was perfect. A short walk into town and tucked away down a quiet street off the Iffley Road. It was way outside Hassan’s budget but Mona rented it in her name and charged Hassan a small rent. It wasn’t a big deal; her parents were paying.
She was so excited about having their own love nest and couldn’t stop giggling about it. It was exactly like being with an eight-year-old playing “house”.
The love nest came with rules, as had their frequent nightly encounters for the previous two years. Mona was a proper girl from a good family, traditional and a devout Muslim in her own way. She wanted to be “intact” when she got married and Hassan respected that. With a bit of imagination there were plenty of alternatives, and neither of them seemed to be short of fresh ideas.
Hassan stood by the side of the road and smiled. There were so many good memories, happy times and moments of physical closeness that could still make his toes curl.
How could it all have been a lie? Surely he wasn’t that stupid? He should have figured it out when her parents came to visit. It was understandable that she didn’t want her mother and father to know that their precious princess was sharing her bed, but he hadn’t even been allowed to meet them. That was a pretty bloody big clue. Sadly, naïve idiot that he was, Hassan had accepted Mona’s feeble excuses without question.
A man in a suit brushed past him roughly, the token ‘excuse me’ signifying nothing. Hassan looked up sluggishly and realised that he had been standing motionless at the pedestrian crossing while the green man flashed at him unseen and ignored. He dragged himself out of his daydream and stepped forward, cursing silently. He was supposed to be keeping a low profile, not standing around like a sleepwalking mental case.
The first sound he heard was the high-pitched scream of protesting tyre rubber, the next was the blaring horn. He barely had time to turn his head and the white van was there, dirty windscreen filling his vision. He started to brace for the impact – much too little and much too late.
But, praise be to Allah, the driver was young, he was watching the road and had lightning reactions. The van stopped with its snub-nosed bonnet half touching Hassan’s hip and the white-faced delivery man staring into his eyes from a few inches away.
They held that frozen
tableau without breathing until Hassan crumbled. He sank to his knees on the road, gulping short, sharp, sobbing breaths.
The driver climbed down from the cab and stumbled towards him. ‘Jesus Christ! Are you all right?’
Hassan looked at him and nodded, afraid to speak.
‘What the fuck were you doing?’ said the driver, panic and fear fuelling his anger. ‘You just walked out in front of me. I had a green light.’
Hassan reached his fingers into the van’s radiator grille and pulled himself to his feet. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I didn’t see you.’ He started to walk away down Exhibition Road.
‘Where do you think you’re going?’ shouted the driver, taking a step towards him. ‘You can’t just bugger off.’
By that stage three or four cars were waiting behind the van and they began to hoot and honk out their impatience. When Hassan looked back and lifted one hand in apology, the driver stopped and shrugged his shoulders. ‘Fuck it,’ he muttered, as he turned and ran back to his van.
Shuna
Shuna always took a while to settle in to exhibitions. Whatever was on display, and however well it was displayed, there was always too much to see and she found it difficult to decide where to start. Little Anna had no problem. She had studied all the winning entries online and printed out a list of the ones she wanted to visit first. She’d disappeared down the dark avenues before Shuna had even begun to get her bearings.
Where had she got that from? Neither Shuna nor Simon were particularly organised and Zoe left chaos behind her with a natural ease that sometimes left her parents slack-jawed in admiration. Anna was the cuckoo who was going to push them all out of the nest one day.
For want of a better plan, Shuna decided to start at the end and work backwards. Zoe trailed slowly behind, oozing indifference and resentment. The winning image was blown up to cover the whole wall of a small room; an orangutang slowly climbing up a thigh-thick creeper, wrapped around a bare and isolated tree trunk which soared hundreds of feet above the rain forest. Shuna felt her buttocks clench with vertigo. The more you looked at the picture, the more you realised how far it was to fall. Very clever to get the photograph, but was it so clever to make people feel that uncomfortable?
She felt a tug on her sleeve.
‘Mum,’ said Zoe, pulling her out into the main corridor. ‘You have to see this.’
The stopped in front of an image of snail shells piled on a beach and, for a moment, Shuna was confused.
‘It’s disgusting,’ said Zoe. ‘So gross. Why would they do that?’
It was only after Shuna had read the information card that her eyes adapted to the real subject of the photo. They weren’t snail shells, they were the half-defrosted corpses of pangolins which had been seized in a raid. Over four thousand of them.
‘Oh my God,’ said Shuna, wrapping a protective arm around her daughter. ‘That’s awful. I thought they were snail shells to begin with.’
‘So did I,’ said Zoe. ‘When I realised what they were, I was almost sick. They’re going extinct and it’s just so some rich Chinese businessmen can eat something different.’ She looked up at her mother. ‘Mum, I don’t want to hang around here any more. Can I go and get a Coke? I’ll see you in the dinosaur hall.’
‘Of course you can, sweetie. We’ll be along in fifteen minutes or so. See you then.’ Shuna turned, but was stopped by another tug on her sleeve.
‘Mum?’
‘Yes.’
‘Can I have some money?’
Shuna smiled as she handed over a fiver. When everything else was looking dark and teenage rebellion was dominating their lives, there would always be money.
It was a treat to be alone for ten minutes, even though the defrosting pangolins had left her feeling queasy. God, people were such idiots. Couldn’t they see what they were doing to the planet? The idea that people were custodians of the natural world was something Shuna had been brought up with from an early age. All use of the land came with responsibility and obligations. Sadly, the values of traditional Afrikaans culture tended to give more respect to the environment than they did to the majority of their fellow countrymen.
The exhibition had a small urban section, wild animals who’d found a home in the city, and one image leapt out at Shuna. The subject was a beautiful dog fox, brush stretched behind him as he sauntered across a zebra crossing perfectly lit by the streetlights and looking like he owned the place. But behind the fox, and waiting for him to pass, was a black cab, headlights staring out of the photograph and the driver no more than a shadowy figure behind the windscreen.
Wherever she went, she couldn’t get away from them. Maybe she should suggest to Simon that they move out of London. It wasn’t good for her to be continuously reminded of that night. She couldn’t decide which was worse, the fear or the guilt but, as the months went by, the fear faded and the guilt didn’t.
The tribunal had been bad enough. He hadn’t lost his license but Shuna could tell that he hadn’t been expecting things to turn out like that. She hadn’t wanted to make an enemy and, if she’d been able to take it all back, she would have. But, as the tribunal chairman had told her, she should have thought about that before registering her complaint. Still, what was done was done, and that should have been the end of it.
But, of course, it wasn’t.
It had happened just before Christmas. Shuna had taken the girls to get presents for their dad and they’d popped into Muriel’s for a treat. She’d been feeling on edge for a few days and, that morning, she’d realised why that was. She left the girls with their hot chocolates and stepped outside the cafe to call Simon.
‘I think that taxi driver’s following me?’
‘What?’
‘I think he’s stalking me.’
‘That seems unlikely. He knows he was lucky to get away with a warning before. He’s not going to push it.’
‘I’ve seen him three times in the last week. I’m not making it up.’
‘I’m not saying you’re making it up, but it could just be a coincidence. Were you a hundred per cent sure it was him every time?’
‘Yes. I know his number plate by now,’ Shuna said. ‘But it’s more than that. When I left the house this morning, he was parked across the road and it looked as though he was taking photos of me.’
‘Now that’s really creepy. Why would he do that?’
‘How would I bloody well know? He definitely had a camera though – a big paparazzi one with a proper zoom.’
‘Shit. We need to do something about that. Look, I’m just about to go into a meeting. Can we pick this up tonight? Are you going to be OK?’
‘Of course. I’m fine. Aren’t you coming home first?’
‘No. I’ll see you at the restaurant at seven. We’ll have half an hour before Josie and Adam get there and we can talk about this properly. If you see him again, try and grab a photo with your phone.’
‘I’ll do that. See you later.’
She should have said something to Simon sooner. Her sixth sense was working overtime but not fast enough.
After they left Muriel’s, she’d dropped the kids with friends for a sleepover, walked home and indulged herself with a long, hot bath. Candles, glass of prosecco, the works. She was excited about the evening; the restaurant they were going to had only been open for three months and reservations were like hen’s teeth. Luckily Simon knew someone … who knew someone … who was a friend of the chef’s wife and he was feeling very pleased with himself. He loved to fix things.
After her bath, Shuna had almost an hour to get ready and, for once there was no-one to tell her to hurry up. She had the same cheesy ‘80s playlist running at full volume on every speaker in the house and was singing along. It was great to not have to worry about anyone else for a little while.
She would have had time to spare if her house keys hadn’t disappeared. She always left them in the bowl on the hall table, but they’d chosen that evening to hide somewhere else. After fi
fteen minutes of checking and double-checking every possible location, they’d eventually turned up under her scarf in the kitchen. And Simon wasn’t even there to be blamed.
It didn’t matter how the keys had found their way there; the result was that her good mood was shattered, and she was running twenty minutes late by the time she threw on her long, black coat, locked up and ran up to the Gloucester Road to look for a cab. For once, luck was on her side and she saw an orange light behind her straight away. She held out an arm, watching as the taxi indicated and pulled over.
‘Chez Alice, please,’ she said, breathing hard as she slid into the back of the cab, taking care to lift the hem of her new coat. ‘It’s a new restaurant on Blandford Street … and quick as you can, please. I’m terribly late.’
‘Right you are,’ said the driver.
Shuna checked her phone for messages from the kids before zipping it back in her bag and leaning back in the seat to catch her breath. She would only be ten minutes late, and it was set to be a wonderful evening. The couple they were going with, Josie and Adam Gardner, were great fun and they’d not been out for ages. She closed her eyes and began to feel the warmth and relaxation from her long bath seeping back.
When she opened her eyes, she noticed the taxi driver looking at her in his mirror and, without quite knowing why, the first tendrils of panic started to snake into her stomach. Her eyes flicked down to the permit on display. Jim Pritchard. It was him.