The Invisible Crowd

by Ellen Wiles

  Chapter 22: Yonas

  ‘THE HAMMER DIDN’T DO IT - I HAD TO STRANGLE HER’: CHILLING BOAST OF FAILED ASYLUM SEEKER WHO STRANGLED BRITISH GIRLFRIEND AFTER LEARNING HE WAS TO BE DEPORTED

  Yonas stood in Molly’s kitchen, keeping an eye on the first injera of the evening as it started to sizzle and brown, releasing its soothingly sour scent. He seasoned and stirred a pot of zigni with his good arm, contemplating the fact that Molly was away, and Nina was lying in the bath upstairs, right now, naked, about to dress and come down to him. This was real. This was his life, right now – his life that could so easily have been ebbing away in that shellfish factory, or in prison. He took one of the gleaming porcelain plates from the rack and rotated it slowly, watching the slim gold rim catch the light. Sarama would be happy for him, wouldn’t she? She would have expected him to move on, to find someone else. She wouldn’t have wanted him to be alone. But how on earth was he here, now, standing in this house, with all this luxury around him, when poor Melat probably still couldn’t even afford to buy meat, even after he’d sent her most of the money he’d earned looking after Clara?

  Not that he was cooking real meat now. And he was pretty sure this fake stuff Nina had insisted upon was going to be disgusting, and would ruin the dish. He hadn’t been able to bring himself to taste it yet. Apparently Nina had an ethical issue with eating animals – and he remembered his own horror at watching goats and chickens being slaughtered as a child, but they were adults now, and that was just life, wasn’t it? Animals ate other animals, and humans needed meat for nutrition and strength. Nina argued that these days it was easy to get the equivalent nutrition from other things, like nuts and seeds and avocados and spinach. Easy if you live in a country with supermarkets like this, he’d thought, but didn’t say so.

  It was time to taste the zigni, and to force himself to try the Quorn lumps. He looked at the packet to check the ingredients. Fungi? As in the stuff that grew on damp tree-trunks? Cautiously, Yonas fished a piece out with a spoon, and bit off a corner. It was spongy. It tasted of nothing much but the sauce. But it wasn’t hideous.

  A tinge caught his nostrils… The injera was burning! In his haste to grab the spatula and scoop it out of the pan, Yonas knocked over the jar of paprika that had been perched on the edge of the counter, and it bounced in slow motion across the floor, spewing a rusty trail of powder over the tiles. Then his phone rang. He switched it to silent, and tried frantically to wipe up the mess. The screen flashed up: a voicemail. Unknown number. He would listen to it later.

  He turned the heat down under the stew, put the singed injera into the oven to keep warm, and poured the next portion of batter into the pan, circling the jug in a thick spiral to create a circular shape with an even depth. Then he swirled the mixture around, the way he remembered his mother doing, until the edges started to sizzle and teeny holes began emerging in speckles across the surface. He wished he could package up this meal and fly a portion over to Asmara. He wondered if Melat was cooking right now, in the battered old vat…

  ‘Ooh, something smells wonderful.’ Nina! He hadn’t heard her come in. She rubbed her hand up his shoulder. ‘Your phone’s flashing by the way.’

  ‘Here – I want you to taste this and imagine you are in Eritrea,’ Yonas said, and offered her a teaspoonful of sauce.

  She sipped, and considered. ‘Mmm! Lush.’ Emboldened, he slid the spatula under the injera and flipped it deftly onto the waiting plate, while Nina took out a beer bottle from the fridge. ‘Speckled Hen?’ she asked.

  ‘Wait, I thought you didn’t eat hen,’ Yonas said. ‘But you drink it?’

  Nina laughed, and poured out the beer. ‘I’m a total hypocrite.’

  They clinked glasses. ‘Ooh, also I bought some music you might like,’ she said, and went to the CD player.

  Familiar rhythms flooded the room and Yonas turned around. ‘Bereket Mengisteab!’ – and it was as if his parents were just behind the door, ready to dance out and clap their hands to the beat.

  ‘Yes! Do you like it?’ Nina asked. ‘I just asked the guy in the world music section…’

  ‘Of course I do…’ He didn’t want to tell her about how Mengisteab had been co-opted by the regime after liberation. It would sound ungrateful, and it wasn’t as if he no longer liked the music – it was just complicated. ‘Do you?’ he asked.

  ‘Yeah… it’s… really interesting.’

  Yonas got the sense that interesting meant not much, and felt a jolt of disappointment. It felt so discombobulating to hear this music in this place. He closed his eyes for a second and was transported back to that night when Mengisteab came to play for the fighters, back when the family was still together, all alive. ‘I saw him play once,’ he told Nina.

  ‘Really?!’ she said, but just then there was a knock at the door. ‘I wonder who that could be?’ she said, with the kind of effervescent curiosity that a chat show host might use as she prepared to admit a film star onto the stage.

  Yonas closed his eyes. Nina couldn’t know what an unexpected door knock meant to someone like him, how it felt like a hammering on his skull shooting fear down his spine. The police. They had caught up with him after all. They’d found out about his illegal working, they were coming to arrest him, and the spiral of prison, detention and deportation had begun. He could almost feel the cold metal of the handcuffs about to encircle his wrists. More loud knocking followed, and he remembered the claustrophobic panic of that day in the train toilet.

  ‘I’d better answer it,’ Nina said.

  She got up, and Yonas followed her to the kitchen doorway and looked through, ready to put his hands in the air.

  But it wasn’t the police. It was a white man with a receding blond hairline, glasses, a check shirt, deck shoes and high colour in his cheeks. ‘Quentin!’ Nina gasped. ‘What are you doing here? Where’s Clara? Is she all right? Why…’

  Yonas drew back. In real life her husband looked even more familiar than he had done on the TV. Where had he seen him before?

  ‘Nothing’s happened to Clara,’ Quentin said. ‘I wanted to see you. Darling, I miss you so much. You’ve got to believe me – I never cheated on you. Not once. I swear. I’ve even got Alice to sign a letter to confirm nothing ever happened. Here, I’ve brought it…’

  ‘Oh Quentin.’ Nina’s voice softened, like chocolate held over a flame. Yonas could tell she was relenting already. He might as well chuck the whole meal in the bin, climb over the back garden wall and run.

  ‘Like I said, I should have nipped her messages in the bud earlier,’ Quentin said. ‘I should have been firmer. But it never ever went any further than that, and maybe some flirtatious body language, on her part, which I stupidly failed to quell. I wish I’d insisted. I never imagined you’d see the messages, never mind leave. Please…’

  Yonas didn’t want to hear this. Why was he stupid enough to have believed he was about to spend the night with this man’s wife? He shouldn’t be here. He was an interloper in every possible sense.

  ‘Don’t touch me. You shouldn’t assume,’ he heard Nina snap.

  ‘Love, I know you’re angry, and rightly so, but you’ve got it wrong about the affair, I promise. Look, all I want is for us to work things out.’

  ‘It’s always about what you want, isn’t it.’

  ‘That’s unfair.’

  ‘Expecting me to come home because you want it! You probably just want to salvage your reputation.’

  Yonas couldn’t help walking back towards the kitchen door to hear better.

  ‘No, I want to salvage our marriage.’

  ‘You should have thought of that before you cheated.’

  ‘Look, you’ve got to believe me, I didn’t. I swear. Darling, look at me. Missing you is killing me. And Clara, the idea of living apart from both of you… I can’t bear it.’

  Yonas felt embarrassed to witness this, though he did feel bad for the guy now, despite himself. It must be awful to have your child taken away from you,
whoever you were, whatever you’d done. And Quentin sounded pretty genuine in his regret, if not the denial. Or was he just a good actor?

  Nina was silent. She must be poised to kiss and make up, Yonas thought. But he couldn’t help poking his head around the door to see. They were holding hands… and then Quentin looked up and saw him. Looked him straight in the eyes. There was no point in him withdrawing now, it was too late… Then, he suddenly made the connection: the guy from the train! How had he not realized on polling night, from watching him on TV? He couldn’t tell if there was any mutual recognition. But what was clear from Quentin’s furious stare was that, if he could shoot Yonas in the head right now, he would.

  ‘I see you have a guest,’ Quentin said drily.

  ‘Oh,’ Nina said, turning round to Yonas and back again. ‘I do, yes. This is Mum’s student. He’s just round for supper.’

  ‘Where’s Molly?’

  ‘Out. And we’re just about to eat,’ Nina said. ‘So it’s not a good time for you to come round here unannounced. You should have called first. And where’s our daughter, more importantly? You’re supposed to be—’

  ‘She’s with Bernard.’

  ‘With your brother! I thought you wanted to spend time with her, that’s what—’

  ‘Bernard said he saw you with a man the other day,’ Quentin said. ‘A man… of that description.’

  ‘He must have made a mistake. But, Quentin, you need to accept that I have moved out, and we need to give each other space, so let’s not get into conspiracy theories, or imaginary scenarios or spying on each other, okay?’

  ‘Spying! I had no intention of spying, but Bernard told me – I assumed it was his imagination. And I wouldn’t even have mentioned it if I hadn’t seen him here, with you. The only reason I came was because I miss my wife – you’re the one who’s now made me feel like I should have been spying, to make sure you haven’t completely lost your mind and started putting our child at risk by starting some kind of relationship with—’

  ‘Don’t you dare start harassing me and bringing my mental health into this – you know I’d put Clara’s welfare above anything else.’

  ‘I didn’t even mention your mental health, though now you mention it, I’m pretty worried. Are you on medication? And what the hell is he doing here with you now, anyway?’

  ‘As I said, he’s her student. Anyway, who I have dinner with is none of your business any more. At least I have some company.’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘All those late nights “working”, coming back home and expecting a plate of food to be ready, missing Clara’s bedtime…’

  ‘I was running for election! And the hard work paid off, didn’t it? But I might not have done it at all if I’d known you’d fuck off with an illegal immigrant.’

  ‘That’s rubbish. And insulting. To him and me.’

  Yonas closed the kitchen door, as quietly as possible. But Quentin’s voice penetrated. ‘You’d better not be letting this guy, whoever he is, look after Clara. I don’t want her anywhere near him…’

  ‘You know full well my top priority is what’s best for my daughter.’

  Yonas turned the music up. He stared at zigni that was starting to look dull and unappetizing. At best, the mood of the night was ruined and he wouldn’t get to sleep with Nina for a while, if ever. At worst, Quentin was about to report him to the police.

  Footsteps stamped, the kitchen door opened, and Quentin was inside, adopting the sort of stance that immediately precedes a punch. Yonas stood back against the counter, wooden spoon in hand – the most pathetic of weapons. ‘Excuse me for disturbing your intimate meal with my wife,’ Quentin said vehemently. ‘I don’t know who the hell you think you are but you’re obviously a manipulative little bastard. And I want to warn you right now that if you cause my wife or our daughter any upset whatsoever, I will…’ He paused. He frowned. ‘Have I seen you before?’

  ‘I am Molly’s student. I did not want to cause a problem.’ Yonas spoke as softly and calmly as he could manage.

  Quentin paused, his face going a dark shade of red, like ketchup, as if he were preparing to say something explosive – but then walked out. The front door slammed.

  Nina slid into her seat at the dining table, her face wet, flushed and swollen. She smiled a little, and then let out a sob. ‘I’m so sorry.’

  Yonas walked around to her and rubbed her back gently. ‘You will feel better for some food.’

  ‘I’m not hungry any more,’ she croaked. ‘I’ve ruined Clara’s life. I’m a terrible mother.’

  ‘You are a very good mother, and you must be hungry,’ Yonas said hopefully. He served her a large helping of zigni and showed her how to tear off sections of the injera with her hands and use it to scoop up the stew. Brown juice dripped down her chin as she ineffectually shoved it in her mouth, and several chunks of Quorn fell onto her plate. Yonas told her she looked especially pretty with her face covered in food. She giggled with her mouth full.

  ‘Okay, this is amazing,’ she said when she’d swallowed. ‘How do you say delicious in Tigrinya?’

  ‘Ti’um.’

  ‘Tiyoom,’ she echoed. Wiping her chin with her napkin, and her eyes with the back of her hand, she told Yonas that he should set up as a chef when he got his papers. By the end of dinner she seemed calm again, and she got up to put on another CD. ‘I feel like some Nina Simone. My namesake, actually. Do you know her music?’

  ‘Of course,’ Yonas lied, and went to start the washing up. But actually he did recognize the voice that bloomed behind him. It sounded more like a man’s voice than a woman’s, but it was rich and warm and vibrated with feeling. Then he felt Nina’s finger down his back, her palm resting at the bottom of his spine.

  He swallowed, wiped his hands on the tea towel, turned around and let his lips sink into Nina’s. He took her narrow waist gently in his hands, hoping she couldn’t feel him trembling. She ran her hands down to his buttocks, and squeezed. This is less than an hour after her husband left, he thought. This cannot be a good idea. But she took one of his hands, and pulled lightly, and he followed her silently out of the kitchen and up the stairs.

  When Nina went out to the bathroom afterwards, Yonas splayed his body out on the bed, heart slowing, fingers tingling, yellow light swimming around his body. Whatever happened after tonight, he thought, it was all worth it! There had seemed so many possibilities for his life in the UK, but not one within his remotest contemplation had involved falling for a British artist who happened to be a politician’s wife and acting as a secret nanny for her child and finally sleeping with her, in her mother’s house… And then he noticed his mobile phone on the floor where it had fallen out of his pocket, still flashing. It occurred to him that he’d never listened to the message that came earlier in the evening, and now there was another.

  ‘You have – two – new messages. Message one. Yonas. It is me, Gebre. I am in London! Where are you? End of message.’

  Yonas’s whole body clenched. The relaxation of a second ago felt suddenly like treachery. Gebre. He’d come, finally. Gebre!

  ‘Message two. I am at a phone box by a supermarket, I am so hungry, I have no coins left after this, can you come find me? End of message.’

  Both calls were from blocked numbers. Why didn’t Gebre think to say which road he was on? Yonas tried to put himself in his friend’s panicky shoes. Where would he have gone, if he saw police at the warehouse, if he had to run but didn’t know the area? He drew a mental map of the area around Canning Town, and all the supermarkets where Gebre might be. He remembered his own first sight of a supermarket, and a British shopping street, the bombardment of all the colours and signs, each bearing a different logo but somehow blending into each other… He had to go and search. Should he tell Nina? Now, in the middle of the night, when everything was still perfect? She would panic, and see Gebre’s arrival as the lid coming off a can of maggots… He pulled on his clothes, too fast, he coul
dn’t get his leg in his trousers…

  Then Nina returned, dazzling him momentarily in the doorway. ‘Yonas, what’s going on?’

  ‘I am sorry, I have to go out.’

  ‘Oh. You have to go – right now?’

  ‘I am really sorry.’

  ‘What’s happened?’

  He didn’t have time to make anything up. ‘It is my best friend from Eritrea.’

  ‘What, Gebre?’

  ‘Yes, he’s in London now, but he is hungry and lost – I have to help.’

  ‘Do you know where he is?’

  ‘I am not sure – I think he is at a supermarket near Canning Town.’

  ‘I’ll drive you!’

  ‘Are you sure? It is late.’

  ‘Just let me get some clothes on.’ She pulled on a pair of jeans, flung on a jumper, grabbed her car keys, and they ran out together into the night.

  Chapter 23: Gebre

  SCANDAL OF THE ‘GAY’ ASYLUM SEEKER RAPIST

  Coffee? The last time I drank coffee was back in Eritrea.

  If I could see you I would draw a cartoon of you. I used to boast that if I met any person for one minute, I could draw a cartoon of them in another minute that would make them laugh and cry. But I was only a kid. Just bragging. I soon learned not to brag about cartoons.

  You must think I am stupid to be caught stealing bread from a supermarket. But I made it all the way to the UK, then all the way to London, then all the way to the shop that Yonas told me to go to. I even found the place the shopkeeper said that Yonas would be, but then I was so tired and hungry, and I had only one silver coin left. I found a telephone box outside a supermarket and I tried to call Yonas but I could not get through, so I left a message. I sat down on the floor, and I had no strength left to move.