And my hopes of finding Ali are fading. Already the weeks are turning into months. It’s mid-November now, and my chances of finding better work, of living a better life seem to be diminishing along with Ummu’s health.
‘Can I speak to Leila?’
I hear Ummu calling to my daughter. She must be playing out on the street. I wait a minute, two minutes. In the background far off, I can hear children’s voices, some Arabic music, and my longing to be home increases.
At last Leila’s voice comes down the phone.
‘Hi, Ummu.’
‘How are you, darling?’
‘I’m fine. I’ve just been out to get Tetta’s medicine. She’s too ill to go on her own. She’s gone back to bed now.’
‘Really?’
‘It’s OK,’ Leila’s saying. ‘I’m looking after her. I’m doing the shopping and the cooking and she says I’m a very good nurse.’
Leila, I want to shout, you’re six years old. You shouldn’t have to be a good nurse! I swallow.
‘Good. That’s good,’ I say. ‘And I hear you’ve lost a tooth?’
‘Yes, and I have another wobbly one. When are you coming home, Ummu?’
‘As soon as I can, darling.’
‘Got to go, Ummu. Ahmed’s here.’
‘OK. Salaam alaikum. Love you.’
I’ve reached the shops, am paying for my paper in such a daydream I don’t hear the voice at first. ‘You thought about using Unibank yet? I can do you a deal.’
I look up. ‘I don’t want Unibank, thank you. I can send money home by post.’
‘That’s crazy, man. It’ll get lost. You wanna send it electronically, much safer.’
‘But much more expensive. Just the cigarettes, thank you.’
‘How many do you smoke then?’ He bangs the Marlboro I’m buying for Leo down on the counter.
‘They aren’t for me.’
‘Who for then? I see you buy twenty every day. You should warn whoever it is they’re smoking too much, man.’
‘And your job is to sell, not to tell people what to buy! They’re for my employer’s son.’
‘Ah! Now I know who you work for. They live on our street up the other end!’
He grins, and his green eyes light up. With his brown skin and black hair I can’t help it, he makes me think of Ali. Those clear eyes like jewels in that dark face. Everyone commented on Ali’s eyes. ‘It’s my Berber blood,’ he would say proudly. He knew how gorgeous he was, he knew how to use it.
‘You what, a cleaner or something?’
‘I do as I’m asked.’ Ummu’s warning not to say too much rings through my head. ‘The walls have ears, Mona. People are suspicious. They’ll think you’re trying to sneak into the country, to live there illegally. There are ears everywhere,’ she said. ‘Keep as much to yourself as possible.’
‘She’s got that old man in the wheelchair.’ Another man has joined him at the counter. This one’s white, his skin so pale it’s almost transparent. He’s dressed in a T-shirt as though it were warm outside. A snake is tattoed on his arm. People here don’t seem to feel cold the way I do. The damp seeps into my bones so my fingers and toes feel permanently numb, my joints ache dully.
‘I’ve seen you in here before. Buying stamps, buying a newspaper. This is Sayed, by the way. I’m Johnny.’
The tattoo on the white man’s arm uncoils as he holds out his hand to shake mine.
‘You come here for what?’ he persists. ‘Work? Asylum?’
I’ve already said too much, and so I purse my lips together. Shake my head.
‘Oh come on!’ says Sayed. ‘Everyone round here – Johnny, me, Costas at the café, Pearl over there in the fabric shop, all the guys at the cab office, they’s all from somewhere else. Some is legal, some is illegal.’
‘Where are you from?’ I ask.
‘Afghanistan,’ he says. ‘Johnny’s from Albania.’
Something about Sayed, his green eyes, weakens my resolve. Maybe, amongst this crowd of immigrants, people desperate to get away from desperate situations, to start again or to improve their lives, they might have links? It’s possible someone has met Ali. But as I open my mouth, Sayed speaks.
‘Listen,’ he says. ‘You ever need help, like a British passport – you ask me, right? I know where to get documents, and I got people who can help you.’
‘It’s OK. I don’t need documents. I have documents.’
He shrugs. ‘Just letting you know I’m here.’
On my way back to the house, the worries start up, along with a dull pain in the pit of my stomach. I’ve said too much, I should never have told them anything. If I get caught up in illegal practices I’ll be putting all of us at risk, Ummu, Leila, me. Even, possibly, Ali. Ali. I’m no nearer to finding him. Ummu. How sick is she really? Should I go home, get her to a hospital? Should I forget Ali, the money I’m earning? That’s impossible. The money’s essential. Dora. Something’s changed, she’s working me harder every day. She owes me, for the nightwork I’ve done. For the weekends I’ve worked. If I object, she might bring up the things I’ve had to take for Ummu, the little things that I’ve taken for myself, or that Leo’s given me to sell. Things I’m certain she knows I need, but that so far, she’s overlooked out of a mutual understanding.
I’d like to ask Dora for time off to make a short trip home, to see Ummu, to ensure she’s not got anything serious, that she’s getting the treatment she needs. And to see the gap in Leila’s front teeth.
Then the vision of Dora the night she woke me to get Charles from the street comes back to me, unsettles me. And this morning, the way she turned, the rolling pin raised as if she was threatening me. I’ll have to bide my time, wait for the right moment.
I’m in the kitchen making the almond pastries Dora has asked for when Leo comes in. He’s in his tracksuit and socks, his hair unbrushed.
‘Don’t you feel guilty, lying about while other people work?’ I hand him his cigarettes.
‘What are you making?’
‘The almond and honey cakes you like.’
‘Hmmph.’
‘You can mix the almond paste, if you want. Then help me fill the filo tubes with the paste, and you can pour on this syrup.’
‘What’s in it?’
‘Honey and sugar. We made these at home. Before—’ I stop myself. ‘When we had the ingredients.’
He sits at the table and lights a cigarette. I stare at him.
‘Your mother doesn’t like you smoking in the house.’
‘She can’t stop me.’
‘Put it out. When I’ve finished we’ll go outside and I’ll have one too.’
‘You smoke?’
‘Occasionally.’
When the cakes are finished, and lying on a tray for Dora’s homecoming, I fetch my own packet of cigarettes. The one I brought with me in my bag from home. I haven’t had one since I arrived here, but now the smell of Leo’s smoke has given me a craving.
‘We’ll go outside,’ I say, and to my surprise he follows me, out of the front door, round the back to the garden. We sit on a bench, light up, and for the first time in months I draw in the taste of the black tobacco, feel the rush of smoke as it hits my head, and feel for a few moments, as we sit and smoke silently together, that I could, if I shut my eyes and imagine hard enough, be at home.
‘You’re always on the computer,’ I say, ‘always playing those games. Car chases and so on. Don’t you ever get bored?’
‘That’s not all I do.’
‘What else then?’
‘Social networking.’
‘Ah yes. Everyone does that these days. I wish I knew how.’
‘You don’t know?’
‘No. I never had a computer before I came here.’
‘Fuck me, that’s crazy. I can show you, if you like.’
‘Really? Can you show me how to search on Google as well?’ Things are happening at last.
‘Of course. I can give you lessons, Mona, y
ou’re fucked if you can’t use a computer.’
We sit side by side in Leo’s room at his screen. An hour later, he has set up a page just for me.
‘You need contacts to put on your page. Otherwise you’ll just have to wait for people to contact you.’
I shrug. ‘You could perhaps search for a few of my friends.’
I tell him the names, and he punches them in. Hait and Amina and Jasmine. Amina has a Facebook page and Leo presses what he calls a ‘friend’s request’ and sends it to her.
‘If she “confirms” your friendship you’ll be able to chat to her online,’ he says.
‘And you could try Ali – Ali Chokran,’ I say casually, as if Ali were just another friend.
Photos and names pop up. I peer closely.
There are hundreds of photos, none of them him. I’m swamped all over again with the sense of despair I’ve felt every time I realise how far I am from finding him, and try to hide the look of pain that must have crossed my face.
As I get up to go and see to Charles, Leo calls me back. He holds out something shiny in his hands.
‘Grandad’s cufflinks,’ he says. ‘No one wears them any more. Thought you could sell ’em.’
By the time Dora comes home, Leo has helped me make a Facebook page and I’ve made a little extra cash and sent it all to Ummu. It’s then I realise what the dragging in the pit of my stomach is. My period has come and I have no money to buy tampons.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
I’m tired when I get in from work. I go straight up to my room, undress, put on my bathrobe which Mona has laundered and is fresh-smelling and fluffed up. It’s at times like this I wonder how I managed without her. Hugging it around myself, I walk across the clean landing and down the stairs to the bathroom where I intend to lie in a deep bubble bath, smoothing on exfoliator.
I push open the bathroom door.
Mona, on a stool, her hand in my cabinet.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Oh!’ She turns. ‘I’m looking for tampons,’ she says, her eyes wide, betraying her guilt.
‘Tampons?’
‘Yes. I bleed, I wasn’t prepared. It’s come early.’
‘But you have money for tampons.’
‘I . . . I have no money, I . . .’
‘Mona! I give you money for shopping, I gave you your wages, only on Friday! What do you mean?’
‘Sorry. Next time I’ll buy them. I forgot. It’s an emergency.’
She smiles. I see she’s hoping for a kind of conspiratorial warmth from me. I could of course let her take the box, or hand her a fiver, tell her to trot to the shop and buy some tampons for herself, or, if I was the fool I was when she arrived, I would go myself. But I’m not.
And there’s something else I can’t even quite grasp. Something to do with Mona’s periods, using my tampons – such personal intimate things. She isn’t a friend. She isn’t someone to share things with.
‘You may take one, for now. I bought you this.’
Her expression softens as I hand her the package, as if she thinks I might have bought her a present. She takes it from me.
‘It’s a monitor, you keep one piece by your bed and we’ll put the other by Daddy’s. Then if he wakes in the night again you will hear and can go to him.’
Her soft expression hardens again. Never have I known such an expressive face.
‘I cannot work twenty-four hours a day,’ she says.
‘You’ll work the hours I need you to work,’ I reply. ‘And you’ll buy your own essentials.’ She gives me another blank look then begins to walk away.
‘And Mona,’ I say. She turns. ‘You have your own bathroom. You’re not to use mine.’
Later, when Mona’s down with Daddy, sorting out the monitor, I go into her room.
What is happening to the money I pay her? She sends some of it to her mother and daughter, I know, but there’s enough, should be enough for her to buy basic necessities as well.
I have a quick look about. The study is unrecognisable, tidier than it’s been since I moved back. She’s got her little photo album by her bed, a notebook. Her clothes are hanging up on the back of the door. She hasn’t got many. Most of them are cheap manmade fabrics, tracksuit bottoms, T-shirts. No wonder she looks so dowdy, so middle-aged most of the time! There’s one pretty purple dress, and a skirt, but that’s about it.
I go to the bureau. I find Daddy’s writing paper. And tucked into it, ten-pound notes.
Mona’s accepting my money, stashing it up, instead of spending it on things she needs. So that’ll be why she’s pilfering other things!
I go up to the dressing-table in my room. I’d taken the precaution, of course, of locking my jewelry up in a box I keep under the bed, and hiding the key. But I’m not worried about this. Mona’s too clever to take things of any value and think she could get away with it. It’s the little things that have passed across my consciousness without my registering them that are suddenly bothering me.
I open my expensive moisturiser. It’s hard to tell, but I’m sure someone – Mona, who else? – has put their finger into the pot and taken some. I’m certain there was more rose-water in the bottle than there is now. I remember then the hand cream that disappeared. I barely paid any heed to this when I saw it had gone; it was, after all, just a free sample I’d been given when buying some other products, but now, in the context of everything else that’s happening, I begin to feel a fool.
My heart starts to pound. I feel humiliation heat my skin, almost as if I were blushing to myself. A vision of a scorch-mark on a tablecloth flashes into my head. I push it away.
I’m not concerned about what these things cost me; it’s the fact Mona’s taking advantage of me.
I notice then that my blusher has been left open; a dusting of powder trails over the lid though I know for certain I haven’t used it this week. I go back to the bathroom. Yes, the shampoo, I’m certain has been used.
‘Leo!’ I push open the drawing-room door and brandish the bottle in front of him.
‘Did you use my shampoo?’
‘What?’
‘I need to know.’
He shrugs. ‘Don’t remember.’
‘Did you help yourself to the dark chocolate I left in the fridge?’
‘You know I can’t stand dark chocolate, or you should. By now.’ He’s affronted that my questions imply I don’t know him, his tastes. It’s an unspoken issue between us. I kick myself for putting my suspicions around Mona before intimacy with Leo. She’s even messing up the bond I’m trying to establish with my son!
‘I need to know if Mona’s been helping herself,’ I plead. ‘If you haven’t, it must be her.’
I want his affection, I need his response.
But he’s not listening, has reconnected himself to whatever film or game he’s playing. Disconnected himself from me.
I give up on Leo and go to knock on Mona’s door. Hold out the things I’ve shown Leo.
‘Just a reminder, Mona. You are an employee, not a guest,’ I say. ‘You buy these things out of your own money, it’s what I’m paying you for.’
She stares at me, with no expression on her face. That mask has come down that’s impossible to read.
‘I give you money to buy things. You don’t have to steal.’
‘You don’t want me to work for you any more?’
‘That’s not what I said.’
I look at what she’s been doing. It seems she’s been studying, in her work hours, from a little book of English phrases, writing into a notebook. I’ll tell her later that she isn’t here to study, that I’ve employed her to work. I don’t have the strength now. Her expression’s unnerved me.
Instead I go down to see Daddy.
He’s settled already in his pyjamas, reading the local paper he prefers, the radio on, his whisky by his side. I can’t fault Mona on her care for him.
I smile at him. ‘Hi Daddy.’ I wait to see if he recognises me this evenin
g.
At last he looks up. ‘Where’s Mona? I want Mona!’
‘You can have her later. I’ve come to see how you are. And to get my necklace,’ I tell him. ‘The one you gave me when I was born.’
‘What necklace? I haven’t seen a necklace.’
‘My special necklace, the one that says Theodora on it. I left it so you would remember that you live with me, your daughter, that I’m the one you always liked best.’
‘I don’t know where it is.’
‘Daddy, you must know. I put it here, on your table, to remind you who I am. Your gift from God. Your eldest. Theodora.’
‘I don’t remember seeing anything.’ A furrow crosses his papery old brow, tears spring up in the corners of his eyes. I’ve upset him. This is not what I intended.
Mona’s made me do this. And I know now that tampons are the least of my worries. Mona is too clever to take things of value from my room, but she’s also clever enough to know what an unreliable witness Daddy would be.
Smarting with indignation, I leave him, and return to Mona’s room.
‘Mona, my necklace is missing, I left it in Daddy’s flat. Where have you put it?’
She looks up at me. ‘What?’
‘My necklace, the one I wear here.’ I pat my throat. ‘I gave it to Daddy in his flat and now it’s not there. You must have it.’
Her face has gone stony blank again.
‘Where is it?’
She shrugs. And I know no amount of questioning will make her weaken.
There’s nothing I can do, because Daddy’s started to bang on the ceiling and faintly, through the floorboards, up the dumb waiter shaft, and simultaneously in an echo through the baby monitor that she has set up by her bed, his voice fills the room in a chorus, calling, ‘Mona! Mona! I want Mona.’
PART TWO
The Girl with a Dolphin
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
It is Saturday, and I am drained and exhausted.
‘Today is the English weekend,’ I tell Dora. ‘I need a day off.’
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