by Jen Thorpe
She knew she was speaking fast and that it was likely that nobody had understood a word, but she was anxious to focus the attention away from herself. She listened as everyone went around the room, most gushing at the progress they’d made, some more modest. When it came to Sam, Nazma held her breath. She didn’t want him to feel embarrassed for not improving, after so many of them had. She worried about his call the night before – he had sounded nuts. Her legs felt stuck to the chair.
‘I got robbed last night.’ The room released a collective gasp. ‘But, and this may seem mad so don’t judge me by it, I feel sort of relieved. I feel like now I’ve sort of survived it, and it wasn’t as bad as I imagined. Obviously I know that I’m lucky, and it could have been worse. The main thing I realised is that there is no way in hell I’d ever try to defend myself if I was really attacked. So that was something, knowing that I couldn’t do much. I mean it’s not as if I’m not still scared, but I guess I’ve learned something here that helped me cope. So I don’t know if the study worked, but if I wasn’t in the study, I wouldn’t have met you.’
He looked around at all of them, but his gaze lingered on Nazma.
Fairouz recognised her opportunity to interrupt and directed the circle around for the final few comments. Nazma was bursting with news that she wanted to tell Sam, and felt foolish for brushing him off. The pressure of things unsaid was overwhelming. When the session broke for tea, she moved over to Sam, and he turned to smile at her. Johnson was talking with Simon across the room and they were laughing like old friends. She couldn’t believe it after the way Simon had treated her that first night and at the hospital. Johnson must have been some sort of exception to Simon’s warped rules.
‘So, nutcase,’ she said to Sam, ‘I can’t believe you’re excited about a break-in.’
‘Got to get excited about something in life.’
‘Fair enough. But a break-in? Are you sure you’re okay, Sam?’
‘I’m good. I’m thinking it might all be a sign that I need to move forward. I’m thinking of going travelling.’
‘Where?’
‘I’m not sure yet. It’s just an idea.’
‘Are you sure you’re ready to travel? I’m sorry, what I meant was, that maybe you should just take a few days and let the stress of the event settle in properly. You seem a bit manic. Who knows, staying at home once it’s happened may be really scary, or not scary at all. I don’t know. I just … I don’t want you to go and not come back, I guess.’
She gave it a moment before she looked up at him, calming her nerves. He smiled back at her, and she continued, ‘I guess if you are going to travel I should tell you that I’ll be going to London. Just in case you end up there and see me in the street and think, “Hey, that girl is following me.”’
‘London! Amazing! I’m so chuffed for you, Nazma. Proud even. Though that sounds more condescending than it should. It’s only five weeks ago that we started this thing, and now you’re on your way to becoming a rally-car driver.’
‘Maybe one day. Are you free after this? There’s more I want to tell you.’
Fairouz called them all back to the table. Sam turned away and walked towards his seat. The session resumed, and Fairouz invited people to talk about the challenges they still faced. She was interrupted as Simon raised his hand, and she nodded in his direction. He stood up, which none of the others had done; he was wearing the same loose tracksuit pants as he was at the first session. He held on tightly to his cane, and waited an awkward length of time before speaking.
‘I have found that there are some hurdles for me. They are there even when I think they’re not. They are built into my split-second reactions, and my automatic way of being. Thoughts can be more troubling than they mean to be. It’s affecting my health. I … I want to start living before I can’t any more.’
Johnson smiled at him as he sat down, giving him a thumbs up from across the circular table. Nazma saw Simon as he was: an old man, stuck in the ways he had always been stuck in. She looked over at him sympathetically, but as she did he looked back as though he still thought she wanted to steal it. She shook her head at her own gullibility. Old fart.
She realised she was glad to finish, to get away from everyone and the requirement to be kind and supportive. It was sometimes nice to just take people at face value and not have to labour under the assumption that people were nice deep down, or that something bad happened to make people the way they were. Bad things had happened to all of them, and yet some of them were nice. She listened to the others, but found herself distracted. She felt empowered after her drive, and wanted to share that with someone, but she wasn’t sure that Sam was up for the challenge. She didn’t want to start something and then head to London, leaving things up in the air.
Fairouz brought the session to a close, allowing one final round of general comments before they had to complete the evaluation forms. Nobody except Fathima had anything to say, which was that when she used to be afraid, she never believed there would be a time that she wouldn’t be. But now she couldn’t believe there was a time she was ever afraid. Nazma rolled her eyes, along with everyone else in the room, but it was in good spirits.
She drifted off into her thoughts again, and when she next surfaced, everyone was looking at her, expectation on their faces.
‘Pardon?’
‘I was just saying,’ said Fairouz, ‘that perhaps you had something to say to end us off, given that you’ve done so well to get through your phobia?’
‘Um … not really …’
‘No advice for everyone on steps they could take?’
She wracked her brain to think of the perfect thing to say, filtering through all the cheesy e-cards she’d ever seen, but came up dry. It seemed crazy to her that only a few weeks ago her whole world had been different, and she wasn’t sure how to make sense of that for the others who had struggled. It was like the universe had all come together at once for her – and how could she describe that?
‘I guess, there’s not much to say, except nobody’s perfect …’
Fairouz looked at her as though she was expecting more, but Nazma just shrugged, inarticulate.
‘Okay then, thank you, Nazma, that is certainly true.’ Fairouz seemed mildly disappointed. ‘So now we have come to the end of our time together. What we need from you is to complete the forms that Ruby is passing around, and leave them here in the room when you go. I’d like to take this opportunity to thank you all for trusting us with your time, and I hope that you have had an opportunity to feel a little bit better as we hoped you would. Thank you. Ruby, do you have anything to add?’
‘Just more of the same. Thank you. Go well. And expect to hear from us in about a month or so to find out how you are doing. We hope that it’s well.’
The form looked reasonable, and Nazma concentrated again, determined not to make a mistake, as she’d done on the application form.
She thought back to Sam’s living room, her straddling him with her top off. The feeling of his fingers on her back and the way he’d pulled her closer. She thought of the feeling of driving to the study – the freedom of both of these acts. It wasn’t something that she could put on a form. Her whole world had changed. Soon she’d be in London, and who knew what would happen after that? She got to the final question of the form, filled it in, and looked up to find Sam staring at her. She looked down, signing that she had successfully dealt with her fear. Her palms weren’t even the least bit sweaty.
37
Sam
Cainotophilia: Love of change or new things
He hadn’t told Nazma yet, but he’d been to visit his mother earlier that day. He’d told her about the robbery, and how he’d felt afterwards, while she’d sipped her ten o’clock Irish coffee and nodded. Though he knew she didn’t understand, the telling of the story was more important to him than her empathy. He’d taken a trip up to his old room, with its cricket posters and memories of feeling safe. He hadn’t planned on leaving it
behind when he went upstairs, but as soon as he’d taken the knife out of his pocket he’d known it was the right thing to do.
When Nazma had caught him staring he hadn’t even started his form. He put his head down and completed it as fast as he could, trying to hurry time until they could talk. It was too late to go anywhere but forwards, and hopefully that would be with Nazma. The goodbyes to the others were shallow for the most part, but in some cases Sam wished he’d made more of an effort. It would be weird not to meet there every week, but also a relief. He’d lived his whole life without visiting the Centre before all of this. Yet, now, strange had become normal, and normal had become strange.
All done, he found Nazma waiting for him at the foot of the stairs. They walked down the road together in silence, looking around at the street that they wouldn’t be visiting once a week any more. The coffee shop beckoned, but they continued to the tiny jazz bar which was open during the day. Inside, the walls were papered with velvet, and the smooth wooden bar was being polished by a man who looked transported from the seventies.
‘Two beers?’
Sam looked at Nazma, and she responded ‘Jack Black?’ The man passed the bottles across to them, and they sat down next to each other on a chaise longue, sipping and tapping their feet to the background music.
‘Is it just you going to London?’
‘No. All of us. Mum too.’
‘Wow – I can’t believe you got her to go. Who will man the kiosk?’
‘My dad has hired someone. It’s not exactly difficult. Poor guy doesn’t even know what’s coming to him. If we come back and he’s died of boredom, I won’t be surprised.’
‘Are you sure you’ll come back?’ He tried to hide the anxiety in his voice.
‘I think so.’
‘You know, I heard there’s a man who wants to cross the sea to Robben Island using a bunch of giant balloons.’
‘I heard about it on the radio. It sounds pretty crazy.’
‘You should tell your mum. Bet it will give her a whole new perspective on the aeroplane. It’s definitely safer than a bunch of balloons.’
‘I guess it’s shorter to Robben Island.’
‘It certainly feels like you’ll be very far away in London.’
She reached over and squeezed his hand.
‘I hope that wasn’t for goodbye.’
‘It was for good luck.’
‘Luck?’
‘We all need luck.’
There was a moment when they could have taken up where they’d left off, but it passed, and she picked up her beer again, gulping it and then touching her mouth where his had been that night. They finished their drinks in a silence that was overburdened.
As they walked slowly back up the hill after their drinks were finished, Sam offered her a lift out of habit, forgetting she had her own car now. They looked up at the Centre as they passed, and saw Ruby standing in the window, holding binoculars. They waved, but she didn’t see them. She must have been looking elsewhere.
Nazma’s car was parked at a strange angle around the corner from the Centre. As she dug for her keys, he leant towards her.
‘Nazma?’
She turned to face him, and he pulled her close and kissed her. It was a long kiss, as if they had lost something momentous. She pulled away first, taking a minute to look at him before speaking.
‘Want to help me out of this jam, Mr Edwards?’
‘I’d love to.’
She got into the car, winding down the window to talk to him.
‘Hey, before you go—’ he started to say.
‘I’ll still be here for a while if my parking is anything to go by.’
‘What if we meet each other then?’
‘When?’
‘To watch the man with the balloons, when you come back. Maybe he’ll make it.’
‘What if he doesn’t? It seems unrealistic.’
‘Yes. But what if he does?’
Acknowledgements
This book began in 2011, written in pencil in an A5 manuscript book on the lawns of Zoo Lake in Johannesburg. There have been so many people who have helped it grow since then and I hope I can remember them all. If I’ve left anyone out, please know that I’m grateful. It’s a real book! Hooray!
Thanks to Mike, for encouraging me to take my writing seriously and apply for the creative writing master’s programme at UCT, and for celebrating with me when I got in, even though it meant I would have to move back to Cape Town.
To Imraan Coovadia and the UCT creative writing class who started with me in 2012, thank you. For the afternoon readings, important conversations on the hated semi-colon, astute criticism and feedback, and all the laughter.
Thank you to Matthew Blackman, my supervisor, for questions like ‘can you really see that far without binoculars’ and for the many readings of many drafts. I stuck with my original title, and I hope he doesn’t mind.
Thank you to the women of the 2014 African Women’s Development Fund and FEMRITE writing workshop in Uganda. Thank you for celebrating one another, for writing from the heart, and for being the fierce women writers that I will encourage my friends and children to read one day. Thank you to Yewande Omotoso and Mamle Kabu for convincing us all we were ‘real writers’ and giving me the courage to send off this manuscript.
Thank you to Beth Lindop and Fourie Botha from Penguin Random House for all the support, advice and hard work. Thank you to Jenefer Shute for the excellent edits, and to Genevieve Adams and Michelle Buchel-Kruger for the proofreading. I was presented with four cover options and absolutely loved all four. Thank you to publicide for the cover. I feel like you have polished my stone into a diamond.
Thanks must also go to my crazy, determined (stubborn) office mate, Tasneem. Our little office is often a refuge from the real world, all because of you. You inspire me often – with your generosity of heart, excellent singing and lip-syncing skills, and tenacity. We met each other at such interesting times in our lives – 2016 is going to be our year!
Thanks to Kath, Liz, Sarah and Van for all the wine, laughs, tears, celebrations and commiserations, and for being such truly solid friends. Also, thanks Kath for getting married so that I could meet my real-life Sam.
To Sam – for being the exact same amount of strange as me. You were so easy to fall in love with, and I’m so looking forward to our life and to all the books we’ll write together.
To my family who are just the best – witty, wonderful and wise – thank you for always making me feel like I can do anything. It’s probably enormously bad for my ego, but it’s pretty useful for getting stuff done. Mom, Mags, Fi – thank you for always being there, I’m so grateful.