The Sudden Appearance of Hope

by Claire North

  A bit of both, perhaps. Umm Kulthum’s songs reinterpreted in the style of Beyoncé.

  I counted gold watches.

  I counted mobile phones.

  I counted steps to the door.

  I looked, and I saw the necklace I had come all this way to steal, no longer in its pressure-sensitive, motion-sensitive, heat-sensitive security case, but being worn around the neck of Shamma bint Bandar, who even now kisses a man in a smart black suit on the cheek, congratulating him on his hard work. Here, tonight, the Chrysalis was being put to its proper use; vanity makes people vulnerable.

  “I’ve just started my treatments,” exclaimed a woman in six-inch heels, the backs of her ankles incredibly thin, calves faintly etched with a translucent silver line where the surgeon had cut, visible only when it caught the light. “It’s incredible, just incredible, it’s changed the way I see the world.”

  She wore a dress that plunged at the front, the back, the sides, leaving little more than some tactically placed straps across her shoulders. The man she spoke to wore a white headdress held in place with gold, white robes, a black beard cut to a perfect V round his chin, and a ceremonial dagger decorated in rubies. They looked like they should struggle to communicate, but he exclaimed, “My first treatment was astonishing. My driver came up after, and for the first time I saw him. Not just him, but him.”

  I moved on. Circled, counting.

  Stealing jewels from a human is easier for me than stealing from a vault. CCTV will remember my face, the vault will need experts to crack, the motion sensors will require tools to deceive. I cannot execute the long con, but must wait for opportunity to strike, alone, unaided, taking risks that anyone who feared their face being known would never take.

  I turn, turn, turn in the room.

  Count the security men in overt black – eleven – and the more discreet security men blending with the crowd – four that I can see.

  I count Jordanian sheikhs in white robes, Saudi princes in smart silk suits, American embassy men with sweat patches seeping into the shirts under their arms, Chinese investors taking selfies against the background of the ballroom’s internal waterfall, smiling to the camera on the end of its stick.

  I count women who would rather not be there, their lips smiling where their eyes do not. I count wristwatches that cost more than the yearly salary of the waiters who envy them, and the number of times I hear the word “equity” said out loud. (Thirty-nine.)

  I count security cameras.

  I count steps to Princess Shamma, and the $2.2 million dollars’ worth of jewellery round her neck. My interest in Leena is gone, now she’s got me in the party, and she’s already quite drunk. Her aunt is not.

  Are you ready?

  I count seconds, place myself in the perfect position for my move, loosen my feet inside their ridiculous high-heeled shoes, which will only be an encumbrance when the moment comes.

  “Excuse me?”

  The woman speaks English with a faint American accent that is pure international school: stateless, bright. I stare at her in surprise, taking in her high-collared dress in a Chinese style, adorned with silver dragons on a black background; her black hair done up high with a messiness that could only have cost a great deal of money; her silver bracelet and earrings, her black mascara, her cautious smile. The darkness round her eyes make them seem deeper than they are; the earrings hanging down make her neck seem long. After a night of drinking, she would be a pale, starling-sized creature, but now, in this place, she is moonlight in heels.

  “Are you alone?” she asked. “Do you know anyone?”

  Instant thought: is this woman security? Why else would anyone watch me for long enough to discover my loneliness, without forgetting my being? But she remains at the precise physical distance required to be audible, without intrusion, keeps smiling politely, head slightly on one side.

  “I… no,” I mumbled. “I don’t know anyone.”

  “Are you British?”

  “Yes.”

  “Here for work?”

  “Yes – with the British Council.”

  A lie, quick and easy. I am here to promote Britishness. I spread the word of Shakespeare, the history of cricket, the memories of colonialism and the taste of fish and chips to the world. I am a symptom of goodwill. I am an adjunct to national arrogance. Who knows?

  The woman, still smiling, said nothing.

  “What do you do?” I blurted, to fill the space.

  “I’m in research.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I study the human brain.”

  “That sounds… big.”

  For the first time, a twitch in the corner of her mouth that could be a smile wanting to become real. “All of thought is feedback and association. Faced with mounting social stress, the body responds as it would to any alarm. Capillaries constrict; heart rate elevates, breathing accelerates, skin becomes hot, muscles tight. Charm falters in the face of hypertension. From this moment of social rejection, pathways are reinforced in the brain to strengthen a link between socialising and anxiety. A series of assumptions develop which leads to a perception of social systems as threatening, triggering an anxiety response. All thought is feedback: sometimes that feedback can become too loud. Are you with the 106?”

  “I don’t know what that means.”

  A flicker of surprise, then: “Do you have Perfection?”

  “What? I… no.”

  “Don’t tell my brother.”

  “Is your brother…”

  “He’s looking to do a version that promotes Islamic values. Fifty thousand points for going on hajj; five hundred points for every direct debit made to charity and so on. I said that I wasn’t sure God worked that way, through reward algorithms and shopping vouchers, but here we are…” A gentle raising of her hands, palm up, as if she would lift the room from its foundations to be examined. “And it would appear that everything is going… very well.”

  She thought she knew what “very well” meant once, but by the look in her eye, this present time is redefining it.

  I opened my mouth to say oh, really, that’s fascinating – but there isn’t time. The virus implanted nine days ago at an electrical substation goes live right on cue, and takes out some 30 per cent of the electricity of Dubai.

  A flickering, as the bulbs dim, followed by a recovery as the hotel’s emergency generator picks up the load. The sound of music dips, then revives, voices oscillating quiet, then loud again in the brief lull. The woman’s eyes flick to the ceiling, then out to the windows, looking across the water to where a pattern of lights have gone out across the shore.

  Thirty, twenty-nine, twenty-eight, twenty-seven…

  “Sub-station,” she mused. “Probably just a trip.”

  “My friend had Perfection,” I said, and was surprised to hear my voice, see her eyes turn to me. “At the time, I didn’t think she was unhappy.”

  “I’m sorry,” the woman said. “What was her name?”

  “Reina.”

  … nineteen, eighteen, seventeen, sixteen…

  I opened my mouth to say something more, something banal, and instead found myself offering my hand, which she took. “I’m Hope.”

  “Filipa,” she replied. “You’re much more interesting than you pretend.”

  “And you more than people think?”

  She pulled in her bottom lip, eyes up to the ceiling, as if seeking out a bright thread of silk from a tangle of cobweb. “Exactly that, I think. Exactly that.”

  … six, five, four…

  Seven paces to Leena’s aunt, the clasp around her neck is easy, I practised with my eyes shut on the same fitting for three hours the other night. Three people are between me and my target, now four, the turning of the room disadvantaging me.

  I open my mouth to say something that matters; but in the mess of service corridors and not-so-secure locked doors beneath the hotel, my nugget of Semtex finally explodes.

  The blast didn’t s
hake the building; there was barely enough firepower to punch through the cables to which it was attached. There was instant darkness, like hands round the throat. It will be a matter of moments before someone suspects foul play, a matter of minutes before engineers have found the problem. The generators, when I inspected them on one of my nightly rounds in a cleaner’s uniform, are designed to survive earthquakes and hurricanes. Repairing will not be hard.

  A lack of reaction in the room – a few sighs, a little gasp, but no screaming or panic. Power cuts happen; it’s just the way of things.

  I turn, hands in front as my eyes adjust to the dim, feel my way between silk and velvet, past lace and pearls, counting steps, five, six, seven, not rushed, until I feel the brush of a waist against my hand and hear the little intake of breath of a stranger in front of me.

  “Princess Shamma?” I ask in Arabic, inflected with my mother’s accent.

  “Yes?” the lady replies.

  I put one hand on her wrist, hold it tight, and with the other pluck the necklace from around her throat. Easy; practised. She is surprised, but only by the unexpected contact on her arm. The eye will always follow the larger motion; the body will always respond to the bigger feeling – every magician knows that.

  I pulled the diamonds away, released her wrist, and walked away.

  It was all of forty-seven seconds before Leena’s aunt began to scream.

  Chapter 10

  I was not always what I am now.

  Once, I was remembered.

  I had friends and family, teachers and homework.

  I did badly at school and that was fine.

  You’ll never amount to much with your attitude, said the geography teacher.

  It’s not your subject, is it? said maths.

  Just write it out!

  One day in English, we were told we had to talk for a minute on a random subject. The girl before me, Emma Accrington, pulled the words “open-plan offices” from the hat on the teacher’s desk.

  “I don’t know what this is,” she explained, twisting painfully before the staring class. “I guess it’s like an office but, you know, in the open air and that. Like, maybe everyone goes outside and like, there’s animals, yeah? Like, chickens and cows and that?”

  The class laughed, and she laughed too, recognising the absurdity of it all, and when the teacher told me to speak next, I was still laughing, and couldn’t say a word about my subject – dog walking – for the tears running down my face.

  Do you think you’re funny? asked my teacher as she gave me detention. Do you think you’ll ever do anything of worth?

  Worth: the quality that renders something desirable or valuable.

  Worthy: having the qualities that deserve action or regard.

  Characterised by good intent, but lacking in humour.

  A person notable in a particular sphere.

  Synonyms: virtuous, good, ethical, high-principled, right-thinking, noble, righteous, venerable, conscientious, trustworthy, dependable, exemplary.

  Antonyms: disreputable, unworthy. Nobody.

  I was fifteen years old, and as I walked home through the grey winter, I knew that I was worthy of nothing at all.

  When my school report came, Dad was silent. I waited for him to shout at me, but he wouldn’t. My mum shouted until she wept. Her skin was dark as burnt mahogany, her hair was already grey at the temples, cut to a perfect scalp around her skull. She wore a carrots and cauliflowers apron when she cooked, which she did five nights a week unless Dad was on night shifts, in which case he cooked before going out. When I was ten she said, “You will now learn how to cook!” and I sensed that this was not a matter on which there would be any arguing. Nyaring Ayun-Arden, my mum, co-ordinated customer service at the council-housing office and was a good cook, even though she loved sardines more than anything else.

  “It’s just wonderful!” she exclaimed. “It’s fish, in a tin, for 16p!”

  My dad said he’d met my mother at a community event.

  My mum laughed and said, “You call it that!”

  I ignored this as a silly adult joke, until one day my aunt Carol whispered, “Your mum walked across Sudan and up through Egypt, walked until she got to Istanbul, came to this country in the back of a truck and got work sorting laundry for the hotels, but ended up begging after they said they couldn’t pay immigrants minimum wage. Your dad picked her up, put her in the cells for a night, gave her a cuppa tea and a microwaved meal. Three years later she was running the reception desk at the big council office in the centre of town, and he’d just made sergeant. Your dad had forgotten her, but she didn’t forget, not your mum, and that was lucky for him.”

  The year I was born, my mother’s sister, left behind in Sudan, also gave birth and called her child Sorrow. My mother, unaware of this, or even that her sister was alive, called me Hope. Her family were Neur, but to advance their lot in life, my grandfather had insisted they all learned Arabic, in the hope his children would one day enter the civil service. The civil service would not have them, but my mother sang to me in Arabic in my crib, and cursed in Arabic, and paced up and down the room berating me in Arabic, with the words, first in one language, then another, “You will speak many languages and have the opportunities I did not!”

  As a child, I heard these words as condemnation. She had not had opportunities, and so now was forcing me, her daughter, to live the life she could not. It took until after I had lost my family for me to understand what she was trying to say.

  “For a copper to marry an immigrant, particularly at that time,” mused my aunt, “it says a lot about their love. But then, your dad always was a good man first, and a copper second; it’s why his career’s been so slow. And your mum… she’s always believed in people. That’s why she called you Hope.”

  Chapter 11

  Walking barefoot away from a robbery in Dubai.

  I don’t exit the hotel directly, not yet. If I do, someone with a lot of patience could pull camera footage, assess who was there when the power went, who was not there when it came back on. The comparison would yield my face.

  Most police forces don’t have the time, and time is money. But the Dubai police is commanded by prince someone who is a relative of prince someone, and while a petty theft, a little assault, a touch of domestic or sexual abuse might slide for want of time and energy, no one lays a finger on a member of the royal family.

  So I waited.

  I put the diamonds in a plastic bag in the cistern of the third toilet along in the ground-floor ladies. In Hollywood crime capers, a bumbling fool and their winsome child will stumble on my stolen goods; japes ensue, love is found and I end up as villain, femme fatale perhaps, for it is narratively impossible for me to be anything other than a sexual predator, as well as a criminal mastermind.

  As it is, the police, when they arrive, immediately set to interrogating the hotel staff, pulling grown men around by the scruff of the neck, hollering in the faces of the Filipino maids, while the expats and dignitaries mingle together in shock and excitement, for this is just the most thrilling thing that has happened for a long while and they will dine out on it for years to come.

  A man in the lobby, screaming down his phone. The woman dressed all in black stands behind him, watching without expression.

  “At my fucking party!” he screams. “At my fucking party stole her fucking jewels do you know what this fucking does for us, do you know how much we’ve just fucking lost…?!”

  The elevator doors close, cutting him off from my view.

  In my bedroom I lie down, back straight, arms on my chest.

  Breathe.

  Once.

  Twice.

  Watch the reflection of the water on the ceiling.

  Discipline.

  Every day: some form of exercise.

  Every day: some form of social interaction.

  Discipline.

  I close my eyes, and breathe.

  Chapter 12

  I was fo
rgotten when I was sixteen.

  Why then?

  My parents loved me, there was no doubt. But when my sister was born, she needed almost constant attention. Little Gracie, who at four years old caught measles off a kid in nursery whose mother thought the MMR jab was poison.

  “See?” she hollered, as my sister was rushed to A&E with a fever of 41°C. “She had the jab and what good has it done her?”

  I thought Mum was going to slap her, and when Dad drove me home, Mum still sat in the ICU, he almost hit a cyclist, and we had to wait in the bus lane for ten minutes while he got his breath back.

  Doctors are taught the three Cs for diagnosing measles: cough, conjunctivitis and coryza (blocked nose to you and me). You could also add a K – Koplik’s spots. Clustered white lesions on the buccal mucosa. They appear as little white marks, like grains of salt, around the inner lining of the cheek where it joins with the molars. Early detection can lead to a quick diagnosis before full infectiousness is achieved. We did not detect them early; we didn’t know to look.

  At 42°C organs start taking damage. I was allowed to miss school, and wished for the first time that I wasn’t, as the rash spread across Gracie’s body.

  It was fifteen days before my sister was allowed home. After nine months, it was obvious that she had suffered brain damage. The mother of the unvaccinated child came over three days after we took Grace out of nursery. She stood in the door, a small woman with a rainbow scarf, and talked low to my mum, and at the end she was crying, and so was Mum, though neither raised their voices, and I never saw her again.

  I think it began then, in the months and years that followed the measles.

  Slowly, a piece at a time, I began to diminish, and the world began to forget.

  Chapter 13

  Thirteen hours after I planted the diamonds in the women’s toilets, I reclaimed them, and checked out of the hotel.

  The Dubai – Muscat bus was a sleek, air-conditioned cruiser that drove at unchanging, ponderous speed down the middle of the giant, sparse highway for six and a half hours, two of which were spent in a maze of border crossings. Emirati officials glanced at my American passport and weren’t interested. The Indians and Pakistanis heading to Oman were subjected to several hours of speculation.