by Jane Davis
Astonishment moved to excitement. “Tell me it’s you!” She struggled to move a display of newspapers aside so that she could lift a hatch in the counter, her hands dancing impatiently as if she couldn’t go fast enough. Briefly, Ayisha set aside her earlier reservation and allowed herself to feel happy for Shamayal - this is how it should feel to be greeted. Here he was in front of her, clearly delighted: “It’s me, Mamma!”
The woman tried to cradle him, but at barely five foot she settled for clamping his arms to his sides, insisting, “Tell me again.” As she pressed her face sideways against his chest, her eyes closed in pleasure. “I’ve waited four years to see my boy and look at you: grown into a man!”
He shouldn’t have to be a man at fourteen, Ayisha reflected, but he was. He might even turn out to be a good one - if he could drop the talk. No thanks to his mother.
“How did you get here?”
“I hitch-hiked. This lady gave me a lift.” He was sticking to the story they had agreed on. Ayisha was to remain anonymous. Guard lowered, Shamayal sounded childlike as he asked, “Can I stay with you, Mamma?”
“Course you can, baby,” she cooed. “Whatever happened to your face? Your father do this to you?”
Despite relief that her part was over, Ayisha found she was frowning. However concerned she sounded, if Shamayal’s mother thought - even for a moment - that her husband was capable of this, how could she have left him behind? Was it Shamayal’s choice (if ‘choice’ was the right word for a ten-year-old who has been the referee in his parents’ relationship)? Did he stay because his father would never give up looking if both of them went? Or was it possible that the father was the better option? Perhaps, over the past four years, Shamayal had granted his mother saint-like status. Ayisha didn’t care how bad things were, a mother who abandons her ten-year-old son didn’t deserve to be raised up on a pedestal.
“No, Mamma, I was jumped. You got to stop squeezing. They broke some of my ribs.”
“Let me feast my eyes.” Her hands reached up to his face and, although Shamayal flinched, he didn’t pull away.
A private moment. Ayisha felt the need to extract herself, and quickly. She wanted to get back to Jim’s bedside. She cleared her throat. “I’ll be off, then. Take care, Shamayal.”
He was standing behind his mother, his hands on her shoulders. “Miss…” he ventured, then stopped as he realised his slip-up.
“Don’t worry,” she said, words heavy with meaning. “I was glad to.”
But he followed her out of the shop door, closing it behind him and stood on the top step.
“Don’t. Don’t you dare.” She swiped at the corners of her eyes. “Too many goodbyes.”
“I wasn’t gonna. My mamma sent me out with a bottle of water for you. She said you must be parched.” He lowered his voice. “Did you know your skirt goes see-through in the light? I mean, I ain’t got no problem with it. Fact, I’m all for that sort of thing.”
“It does not!” But, looking down, she thought, Oh God, it does! I hope Jim didn’t notice.
“F’you say so.” Grinning. “Then you won’t mind if I watch you walk to the car.”
“Go back inside!” She batted the air behind her, running across the road.
Raising the binoculars to his eyes, he studied her and then angled his head sharply upwards. “You’re not going to believe this!” he said in awe.
With one hand on the driver’s door, Ayisha shielded her eyes and followed the line of his gaze to a black speck. “What is it?”
“That crazy pigeon followed me here!”
Perhaps this had been the right thing to do. Let’s face it, if the boy could get excited about vermin, he was going to be fine. Her three-point turn, on the other hand, was a disaster. She blamed her lack of sleep. There was a ditch on either side of the road and she worried about ending up in it. By point three, she saw in the rear-view mirror that Shamayal had gone back inside the shop. By point five he was back outside, his bag lying by his feet, the mother nowhere to be seen.
She pushed a button in the recess of the door and the window slid down. “Forgotten something?” she asked as casually as possible.
“Need another lift, Miss, don’t I?”
“Get in,” she said, wondering, What the hell do I do now? No nearer to a decision after loading the boot, Ayisha found Shamayal slumped in the passenger seat, knees nudging the door, arms folded.
“Fought I was only stayin’ the weekend, din’t she?”
“She asked you to leave?”
“Not exactly. There’s only one room comes with the job. ‘Parrently, there aren’t too many buses. She said I was best off tryin’ to catch up with you.”
Ayisha bet she did! Making a meal of buckling herself in, she hated the fact that her instincts had been proven right. She felt it was up to her to make sense of the situation, but no words came to mind.
“Can we at least drive off down the road? She might be lookin’ out the window.”
Glancing in the rear-view mirror, Ayisha nudged the car into gear. Done with feasting her eyes, there was still no sign of the woman. Ayisha drove slowly, wondering if, having changed her mind, she would come running. But no.
“Just drop me some place. I don’t care where.”
“I’m not just dropping you!”
The boy sat up as they reached the junction, preparing to get out. “You haff to.”
Ayisha stole a glance at the boy in the seat beside her as she took a left turn. She felt devastated on his behalf. There was no need to ask how he was feeling. Her thoughts turned to her own parents: self-sacrificing; solid; predictable. She may never have seen that look of joy on her mother’s face, but she would never have to hear words of rejection.
Obeying a sudden impulse, Ayisha disobeyed the satnav and turned left at a signpost down an unfamiliar road towards a familiar name. In reverse, the fields were left behind, narrow lanes were buttressed by pavements; white lines marked the centre of roads; speed limits and requests to drive carefully through villages came into view. Shamayal turned to stare unhappily at a young black boy walking a dog. Eventually, she arrived at a roundabout she recognised. From here, the Mini knew the way.
“Where are we?” Shamayal asked as she cranked on the handbrake.
A face appeared at the bay window, then the front door opened inwards, the same face aglow, the crunch of gravel. “Ayisha, darling!” Her mother bent into view, her smile beaming. “How lovely. I wasn’t expecting you!”
And Ayisha understood something she had never realised before. This was how it would always be if she surprised her mother.
CHAPTER 48: NINA - AUGUST 2010 - WILTSHIRE
Gravel redistributed itself under Nina’s sandals. It was immediately apparent that something was very wrong. The boy in the passenger seat was leaning against the door: his forehead; the elbow of a folded arm; his knees. He had the stance of someone who had been utterly let down. She selected an expression fit for a goddess as her daughter emerged from the car. “You’re not on your own, I see.”
“No.”
It wasn’t very much to go on. The reflection in the windscreen shifted, allowing a view of the boy’s swollen face. Breath catching in her throat, Nina was glad she had already settled on her expression. Ayisha crunched around to the passenger door and helped the boy to his feet. His elbows were tight against his sides, hands high over his chest.
“Mum, this is Shamayal.”
For a moment the car door was a shield between them, then she saw the corners of his mouth move: an attempt at a smile, as much as he could offer. He could barely bring himself to look at her. It must have taken all of his effort to say, “You must be Mrs Emmanuel.”
Her daughter’s expression was anxious, as if she was just holding on. She didn’t gush, Call me Nina. “I don’t know what my daughter’s told you about me, but I don’t bite.”
Shamayal appeared to hesitate. “She ain’t… she hasn’t told me nothin’” He closed his eyes
and corrected himself. “Anything.”
Nina broadened her smile, masking disappointment: the truth didn’t surprise her terribly much. “Go inside. Make yourself at home.” She shepherded them into the house, through the hallway.
Her daughter’s head twisted towards her. “Is that lamb I can smell?”
If Ayisha wanted to pretend this was an ordinary visit, that was fine. “Ah, you’re in luck. You’ll both be staying for lunch, I hope?”
“If that’s alright. You’ll love my mother’s roast lamb,” Ayisha told the boy. “She marinades it in yoghurt with chilli, ginger and garlic.”
“Listen to you, giving away my secret recipe!” Nina scolded, with a certain amount of pride.
“Shamayal’s quite a cook.”
He paused again at the threshold of the large bright room that spanned the width of the house, and looked out to the garden beyond. Looking for somewhere to hide, Nina thought.
“My husband keeps koi,” she explained, walking towards the open French windows and, as she did so, she saw the heron; a silent shadow, biding his time. “I don’t believe it! This is his second visit today. I’ve already been out to chase him off. I don’t suppose you’d…?” She deferred to Shamayal, who understood this as his invitation to go outside. “Tea?” she asked her daughter.
Ten minutes later, sitting at the kitchen table, a story was unfolding, her daughter unravelling. After what she had seen of the news, little of it came as a surprise, except in terms of the extent of Ayisha’s involvement. How she could have kept all this to herself at her last visit, Nina didn’t know. Probably, she had wanted to spare her father. He did fuss so.
“I don’t understand it, Mum. I don’t understand how she could leave him behind in the first place. He was only ten! And how she could reject him now, when he obviously needs her. The really sad thing is that Shamayal idolised his mother.”
Nina sighed: one snip and the thread is broken. “And how did Shamayal end up in that mess?”
“Loyalty,” Ayisha replied. A single word. A good word. Not a bad boy then. One worth going to an awful lot of effort for, apparently. Nina observed Ayisha’s face, her daughter’s dark eyes, rimmed in red. “You look exhausted, darling.”
“Jim’s back in intensive care. I didn’t sleep properly last night.”
Nina refrained from commenting about the mysterious Jim. Piece by piece, she must compile a picture of him, as clues are dropped into the conversation as lightly as feathers.
“And you drove all this way?”
“I didn’t know what else to do. I was so sure that this would be the answer, but…”
Ayisha nodded towards Shamayal and Nina shifted her gaze to the boy. A mother has to train herself not to offer opinions to her adult daughter. She must wait until she is asked. There was no sign of the heron and the boy was sitting, his back to them, his head low.
“What do you think he’s doing out there?” Ayisha asked at length.
“I expect he’s talking to the fish. They’re very good at keeping secrets.”
Her daughter laughed. “What kind of secrets do you have?”
She didn’t intend to be cruel, Nina conceded. It was simply that Ayisha couldn’t imagine the kind a mother harboured. Nina recalled the last time she confided in the fish after ending up in tears on the phone to her daughter. She restricted herself to what she hoped would be interpreted as a knowing sigh. She may have been a little selfish. Of course, she’d had no idea what was going on in the background. Ayisha had opened up to her today in a way she hadn’t for years. Nina felt her daughter taking one of her hands.
“I’m glad I’ve never had to know how Shamayal feels.” Ayisha stopped short of saying Thank you, you were a wonderful mother, but, with Nina’s heart skipping a beat, it was enough. The fact that she had come to her when she had run out of options spoke volumes.
As if reading her mind, Ayisha leant her head against Nina’s shoulder. “Thank you for worrying about me, Mum. I do appreciate it.”
She felt a second lurch in her chest and tried to make her voice ordinary. “It’s what I signed up for, isn’t it?”
“But not this! I’ve messed up, haven’t I?”
Her instinct was to protect her daughter, but Ayisha had made it clear that her concern was for the boy. And with her daughter’s head still resting on her shoulder, Nina said, “For all the right reasons. You’ve made me very proud.”
“I’ve been so scared that I would lose my job. So - so worried about letting you and Dad down.”
“Nonsense. You’ve acted selflessly, just as I would expect.”
“I’ve broken every rule in the book!”
“If the rules are unworkable, what choice do you have, hmm?”
Ayisha’s hair curtained her face as she sat back, looking floored. “What do you think I should do?”
Nina weighed what she knew of the situation, aware that she had only been given the edited highlights - barely enough to counter her husband’s inquisition. “Let’s think this through. This mother of Shamayal’s will have to phone her husband and tell him what’s happened.”
“I don’t know. It’s a strange set up.”
“We have to assume she’ll feel some guilt!”
Raising her eyebrows, Ayisha appeared to concede this.
“And as far as she’s concerned, he will have hitch-hiked after you dropped him off.”
A reasonable starting point. Nina needed time to think, to concoct a story. “I want you to go and have a lie down. I’ll call you when lunch is ready.”
“No,” her daughter groaned, just as she used to as a little girl when told it was bedtime. “I need to stay awake.”
“Do as your mother tells you, Ayisha. The best thing you can do is get yourself back to London, but you’re not driving anywhere without a rest and a good meal.”
“I can’t leave Shamayal…”
“You may have to. Ah!” She looked up to see Shamayal conscientiously wiping his feet on the outside mat. “Here he is! Let me pour you some tea.”
Beyond the swelling Nina observed a good-looking boy. The day had been tough on him, and Nina admired his lack of self-pity. Important to keep pity out of her own expression.
“My daughter and I have just been talking. Don’t stand on ceremony. Have a seat, have a seat.” Only once the boy was seated uncomfortably did she ask, “What is it you want, Shamayal?”
His answer was a shrug. It seemed to matter little to him.
“I can only work out how to help you if you talk to me.”
He looked into his teacup. “None of this is what I wanted, is it?”
Nina was put in her place. “No.” She paused. “Let me put it another way. One of us is going to have to pick up the phone and call someone. We need to decide who makes the call and who to ring.”
Unimpressed, Shamayal turned to Ayisha, “Miss -”
“No,” Nina said firmly. “Ayisha isn’t here. She can’t be here.”
“Then what am I doin’ here?”
This question forced Nina to think out loud. “I picked you up at the service station on the way home from visiting my daughter in London, just intending to drive you a few miles and drop you off, but we got talking and I discovered that you attend the school my daughter teaches at. And, naturally, I’ve been following the news. So when you told me you were the boy who helped Mr Stevens, and why you needed to leave, I volunteered to drive you to your mother’s.”
Ayisha picked up the thread. “And you could hardly leave him there, so you brought him back here and -”
“Not knowing who else to ring, I called my daughter. What then?”
“I gave you Mr Peel’s phone number. He’s the school’s Designated Person.”
“Who?”
“He’s the person who deals with child protection issues.”
“Hang about, Miss. He’ll just ring Social Services, won’t he?” Shamayal cut in sharply. “They’ll make me go back, even though it’s not safe.�
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“Look at him, Mum! He can’t go back.”
Oh, but you can! Nina thought. But countering this attitude was the beginning of acceptance that Ayisha had important work to do in London.
“What happens if you ring both my parents? See if either of them actually wants me.”
It struck Nina then: “The reason you couldn’t stay with your mother was lack of space, wasn’t it?”
“That’s what she said.”
“If you want to live with your mother, the council would be under an obligation to house you both.”
Nodding her agreement, Ayisha turned to Shamayal, asking silently if he would be prepared to give her another chance.
It was too much to expect of the boy when he was so fragile. What he needed was time. Nina thought she might be able to buy it for him. “Would Social Services get involved in a private arrangement?” she asked her daughter.
“I don’t see how they’d know. Unless the child had been identified as being at risk.”
“So if I were to offer temporary accommodation and your parents consented - just for you, I mean - while you think about your next step.”
“You’d do that?” the boy asked, looking at her as if he was seeing her for the first time.
As a Muslim, Nina saw hospitality as her duty. Remembering her daughter saying I don’t think Shamayal’s had a lot of discipline in his life. Jim found him wandering the streets at two in the morning, she added hurriedly, “You must understand, we live very quietly here. This isn’t London. The door is bolted at 11.00pm.”
“Quiet is good, believe me.”
She was satisfied.
Two tense and heartbreaking phone calls later and Nina’s faith in human nature dipped to a new low. At some point, while she was pacing, while she resisted saying, And you’re not embarrassed - you’re not at all concerned - that a stranger is offering to take your son in, except knowing how much it will cost you! She looked pointedly at her daughter: Get him out of here. Get him out of here, because I don’t want him to see me weep when I put down the phone a second time.
“I don’t want your money,” she spoke into the receiver.