Take It Back

by Kia Abdullah

  Jodie’s stomach lurched with a deep-seated anger for trusting her friend.

  Nina tossed a glance at the wall clock. ‘Look, it’s getting late. I’ve got to get home. I’ll call you as soon as I get there.’ She leaned forward and planted a kiss on Jodie’s head. ‘We’ll fix this. I promise.’

  Jodie watched Nina saunter from the room and close the door with a flourish. With shaking fingers, she reached for her phone and switched it off with a sob.

  Chapter Four

  The train slid to a stop at Greenwich DLR station. Scores of revellers spilled forward in keen pursuit of rare Saturday sun. They moved as one, pale limbs protruding from too-short shorts and sandals criss-crossing week-wearied feet.

  Zara weaved her way through them and stepped onto the train moments before the doors slid shut. Immediately, she felt the draw of attention, a dozen pinpricks piercing skin. She took a seat and made involuntary eye contact with the passenger opposite, an athletic man in a dark green bomber jacket and pepper-coloured crewcut. They both looked away. A second later, his gaze flitted back and seemingly undetected took rest on her face. Over the next three stops, he stared at her body, darting from breasts to lips.

  It took her back to the day she was waiting for a friend outside Mile End station. A group of Asian men, all in their early twenties, catcalled from a passing car. Zara scowled and averted her gaze. They laughed derisively and one leaned through a window. Oh, please! he shouted. Look at what you’re wearing!

  A red dress, yes, and three-inch heels, but there was no hint of cleavage. She hated herself for making that distinction. Would she otherwise be fair game? The compulsion to bargain with her own sense of decency was a relic of her pious childhood. Now, under the glare of the crewcut’s gaze, she struggled with it once again.

  When the train stopped at Bow Road, she stepped onto the platform and with practised speed gathered up her hair in a bun. She no longer wore the headscarf but the censure linked to free-flowing hair still bubbled beneath her skin, because of course a woman’s mane, full of seduction and deceit, was not to be flaunted lest it tempted men to think about fucking her.

  Zara thought about this bitterly as she wrapped a pashmina around her shoulders and, modesty resealed, walked briskly down the stairs and across the street to her childhood home. It was a neat two-storey house wedged between a pair just like it. Pure white curtains hung in all the windows and a row of immaculate plants sat in the little garden out front.

  Despite clear effort to the contrary, the place gave off an air of poverty. Perhaps it was the dark brown brick so pervasive on East London estates or the drooping gutter the council refused to fix, but the house felt sad and heavy above Zara’s silhouette.

  She reached forward and rang the bell. She was the only child of four who didn’t have a key. She had left that behind with everything else.

  ‘Assalamu alaikum.’ She gave her mother a kiss on the cheek, something that only now, at thirty, felt halfway natural.

  ‘Walaikum assalam.’ Her mother beckoned her inside.

  Fatima Kaleel was a tall woman once, the formidable matriarch of the family. Now the streaks of grey, the burden of age and the weight of bereavement pressed heavy on her shoulders, reducing her to a frailer version of her former self. Her harsh features had softened, her cut-glass cheekbones swallowed by aging skin. Even her frown lines of anger now looked like wearied wisdom.

  Zara was not yet sure if this softer incarnation comforted her or terrified her. Her mother was now ‘elderly’ and one day soon they would have to talk about the past and they would have to exchange forgiveness. But not today. Today would be another of words unsaid.

  Zara slipped off her coat and hung it by the base of the stairs. She paused for a moment and picked it up again. Sure enough, there was the distinctive dark blue coat that belonged to her older brother, Rafiq.

  She turned to her mother. ‘Is Bhaisaab here?’

  Fatima nodded, her lips tight with tension.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘I knew you wouldn’t come.’

  Zara swallowed her reaction. ‘Where is he?’

  ‘Upstairs.’

  Zara sighed. Kicking off her shoes, she marched into the living room. First, she greeted her sisters. Salma, the eldest, sat with her legs crossed primly at the ankles. She tilted her face upwards to accept Zara’s kiss and checked her watch while doing so. Salma’s life was measured in one-hour slots, always racing against an invisible hourglass. It was Saturday, which meant her kids were at Arabic class, to be collected in precisely twenty-five minutes. After that, an hour for lunch, then the drive home to Ilford, so that her husband could have the car for the second of his split shift.

  Lena, the youngest, sat with her legs curled beneath her. She caught Zara’s eye and rolled hers discreetly, a signal that their brother was being especially tiresome. Lena was naturally quiet, but nursed a spiky wit. When an uncle recently marvelled that her husband was minding her child, she smiled sweetly and said, ‘Yes, Jash is very excited to continue being a father’. Of course, where Lena used wit, Zara used force and she now turned breezily to their brother in the corner.

  ‘Hi Bhaisaab, how are you?’ she asked evenly.

  He leaned back on the kingly sofa while his wife, Amina, fussed over tea. A faint smirk settled on his features. ‘It’s you.’

  ‘Yes, it’s me.’

  ‘Sit down.’ His words pulsed with an imperiousness found only in cosseted Asian men and their rich white peers.

  Zara leaned on a wall instead, not yet too old for these small acts of defiance.

  Rafiq took a bite of bora, a puff of steam curling visibly upward. He chewed slowly for a full minute. ‘So where are you living now?’

  ‘The same place I was living last time you asked.’

  His face grew tight. ‘You can never answer something simply, can you?’

  ‘Is “yes” simple enough for you?’ She watched a vein contract in his temple.

  Salma sighed. ‘Would you two give it a rest?’

  Rafiq ignored her. ‘How much is your mortgage?’ he asked.

  Zara shrugged. ‘The same as the last time you asked.’

  ‘Why don’t you rent it out and move back in with Mum? You could be making thousands.’

  ‘If we’re going to use that logic, why don’t we all move back in with Mum?’

  His eyes grew wide, surprised as ever by her gall. ‘Tafa kayteh?’

  Zara almost laughed at the predictability of his catchphrase. Do you want a slap? She straightened. ‘Rather not, but thanks for the offer.’

  He pushed the table away from him in a single forceful blow, making his teacup rattle on its saucer.

  Salma held up a hand. ‘Rafiq, that’s enough.’

  He turned his anger to a more amenable target. ‘How many times do I have to tell you?’ he growled at Amina. ‘Don’t make my tea so fucking strong! This isn’t Bangladesh. We get our milk from Tesco, you understand? We’re not gonna send you to the fields to milk the cows at dawn.’

  ‘Rafiq,’ Salma’s voice grew stern. ‘I said that’s enough.’ She, though benign in nature, was never scared to step in. As the eldest child, she had the advantage of age, which in their culture, superseded gender. She could scold him with impunity, but she used this power sparingly, aware that allowing some transgressions prevented the ones that mattered most.

  Like a defiant child, Rafiq pushed the table again, now spilling tea across the shiny mahogany.

  ‘I am sorry,’ said Amina, dabbing at the tea with the corner of her sari. The heavy roll of her ‘r’ grated on him, she knew, but it surfaced at times of stress despite her best efforts. ‘I will make you another one.’ She gathered the debris and hurried from the room.

  Zara closed her eyes to calm herself. With a slow, deep breath, she followed her sister-in-law to the kitchen.

  Amina busied herself with the kettle. ‘I know what you’re going to say.’

  Zara frown
ed. ‘I’m not going to tell you what to do. God knows you get enough of that from him, but you’re a smart woman, Amina. You taught yourself English in two years and you speak it better than he does. If you want your own life, I can help you.’

  Amina shook her head. ‘Zar, I don’t need the freedoms you do.’

  ‘But don’t you want them?’

  Amina smiled wistfully. ‘I have more than I could ever have imagined. It’s enough for me.’

  Zara blinked. ‘And him? He is enough for you?’

  Amina placed the small white teacup in the centre of the saucer. ‘He is a good person at heart. He just expected more from life.’ She lifted the teacup and dabbed it with a kitchen towel, absorbing the extra moisture. ‘He thinks a lot of you, you know. When you’re not there, he tells people about his sister, the successful lawyer and property owner. He tells them how you used to beat him at chess when you were only six years old, or how you knew every word he picked from a dictionary.’

  Amina spun the cup around, lining the handle in a precise horizontal line. ‘In your presence, however, he remembers everything he should have been. He knows he was given every chance to excel when you had to fight for it all and I think that makes him feel small. He uses piety as a shield, but he does think highly of you.’

  Zara swallowed. ‘Maybe he can learn to feel big without stepping on me to do it.’ She sighed. ‘Look, if you ever change your mind, promise me you’ll call me. I have space, money, whatever you need.’

  Her sister-in-law kissed her cheek. ‘I know, Zar. Thank you.’

  Zara wanted to say more, but knew that dogma was tiresome. Amina knew what was best for her and Zara had to respect that. She said goodbye instead, then turned and left the kitchen. She retrieved her coat and pulled it on with grim determination.

  ‘Deka oyboh,’ she said, a perfunctory parting tossed inside the living room.

  Her mother walked into the corridor. ‘Why are you going?’

  ‘I can’t deal with him.’

  ‘Why don’t you just ignore him?’

  ‘Why doesn’t he just shut his mouth?’ The words sounded churlish to even her own ears but it was too late to rein them in. She blinked beneath her mother’s gaze, wishing she had the words to explain why she couldn’t just ignore him, why she couldn’t just be okay with another man controlling the women around her. Perhaps her mother would never understand. After a lifetime of outsourcing her choices, could she appreciate the value of making her own?

  Zara took a stiff breath. ‘I’ll come round another day.’ She walked out and closed the door with a decisive thud. The wind snapped at her face, making her eyes water. She clasped her hands together and held the tips to her lips, breathing deeply once, twice, thrice. Then, she walked away just like before.

  The dark brick exterior of the Wentworth Estate held the stench of peaty damp mixed with stale urine. Cracked white trim lined the balconies while a heap of rust-red bicycles lent the place an eerie dystopian feel. Zara sidestepped a bag of rubbish, ripe in the summer sun, and started up the concrete stairwell. She slipped on a slushy piece of greying cardboard and steadied herself on the black iron banister. Carefully, she rounded the corner onto the communal first-floor balcony and knocked lightly on a brown door marked seven. It swung open with a long whine.

  In the corridor stood a woman in her late thirties, rail thin, dressed in leggings and a baggy brown jumper. Her thin lips stretched across a tight face and her hair, gathered in a messy bun, was platinum blonde with streaks of black. She tapped her cigarette and the ash floated down to the grey linoleum floor.

  ‘Who the fuck are you?’ the woman rasped.

  ‘Ms Wolfe?’ Zara’s tone was neutral. ‘I’m Zara Kaleel from Artemis House. Has Jodie spoken to you about my visit?’ The question was met with silence. ‘May I come in?’ Zara hazarded a step inside.

  The woman jabbed a thumb at the living room. She took a deep drag of her cigarette, her cheeks growing concave like Edvard Munch’s The Scream.

  Zara stepped around her through a cloud of nicotine. She pushed open the living-room door and spotted Jodie on a sofa, knees to her chest and arms wrapped around them. ‘Everything alright?’

  Jodie glanced up. ‘Yes.’

  Zara closed the door behind her. ‘I take it that’s your mum?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘She seems angry.’

  Jodie nodded plaintively. ‘She usually is.’

  Zara perched on the sofa. ‘Has she spoken to you about what happened?’

  Before Jodie could answer, her mother entered the room.

  ‘So,’ said Christine. ‘Are you the one putting these grand ideas into her head?’ She tapped her cigarette and sent another wisp of ash floating to the floor. She didn’t wait for Zara’s answer. ‘That girl’s been nothin’ but trouble since the day she was born. You wanna make sure you watch her. She ain’t so fuckin’ innocent.’

  Zara gestured at the sofa. ‘Ms Wolfe, please sit down.’

  ‘Don’t you tell me to sit down,’ she snapped. ‘This is my home. Who said you could sit down?’ She stubbed her cigarette into a glass ashtray. ‘Tellin’ me to sit down in my own home. This is my home.’

  Zara held up a palm. ‘Ms Wolfe, it is perfectly normal to feel what you’re feeling. Many parents of victims feel disbelief, denial or even rage.’

  The woman laughed – a high, amused trill you might hear wafting from a fairground. ‘“Victims?”’ She laughed again. ‘Jodie ain’t no victim. Jodie wants attention. It’s always been “me me me” with her.’

  Zara glanced at Jodie with a fierce tug of pity. It was little wonder she had tried to keep her from Christine. She appealed to her now with gentle sincerity, ‘Your daughter needs your support, Ms Wolfe. She needs you.’

  The woman glowered. ‘I love that girl. I gave up her father for her. Love of my life he was but I let him go. Don’t you tell me what I need to do. I done everything for her but I ain’t to be made no laughing stock.’ She turned to Jodie. ‘You need to get your head straight ’cause I ain’t havin’ no part in this.’ She shoved the ashtray away from her. ‘I told you, didn’t I? You’re on your own.’ With that, she turned and stalked to the balcony.

  Colour washed through Jodie’s face. ‘Sorry about that,’ she said, aiming for upbeat but sounding sad and small.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said Zara. ‘It’s not unusual for parents to feel anger and denial. It’s a coping mechanism.’

  Jodie grimaced. ‘Mum’s not trying to cope. She thinks I’m a liar.’

  Zara blinked. It was the second time that day that Jodie’s story had been questioned. Zara moved onto the seat of the sofa and turned to face the girl. ‘Listen, Jodie, I’m here to take care of you. If your mother won’t do it, I will. If those boys raped you, they will face their day in court.’

  Jodie pulled away. ‘If they raped me?’ She gripped the cuff of her sleeve. ‘I thought you believed me.’

  Zara exhaled slowly. ‘I do believe you and I want to make sure that we can prove you’re telling the truth.’ She paused. ‘Jodie, we are making very serious allegations against four people so we need to be absolutely sure that we are clear on the details of what happened. We have to be certain that your recollection of events is unmarred by alcohol or drugs or hazy memory.’

  Jodie caught the undertone in her voice. ‘Something’s changed,’ she said. ‘What happened?’

  Zara moved aside a cushion that sat in the gap between them. ‘When I first took this role, I wasn’t sure that it was right for me. I don’t tiptoe around sensitive subjects, offering tea and sympathy, but I soon realised that I’m perfect for it. I understand what the law needs to prosecute a case and I can help tease it from my charges. I can give them the best chance at justice – but I need to know everything, not just an edited version.’ She paused. ‘I believe you. I will always believe you but I also need to assess what others see and think.’

  Jodie threaded her fingers in her lap. ‘What happen
ed? Did you speak to Nina?’

  Zara pulled back in surprise. Did Jodie’s best friend doubt her too? ‘I’m going to be honest with you,’ she said. ‘One of our investigators met Farid last week. I don’t know exactly what he said, but our investigator asked me to double-check all the details. She said there were some inconsistencies and she wants to make sure we have everything right.’

  Jodie shifted in her seat. ‘Your investigator – was she that tall girl in reception with the dark hair?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Jodie nodded knowingly. ‘She’s beautiful.’

  Zara pictured Erin’s porcelain skin, her jet black hair and long, dark lashes. ‘Yes, she is.’

  ‘She dresses like she knows it.’

  ‘Yes, she does.’

  Jodie considered this. ‘Was life always easy? Being pretty?’ she asked.

  ‘I wasn’t always pretty.’

  She scoffed. ‘Your investigator doesn’t believe me because when she’s around, men don’t look at other women. She goes through life knowing that she’s better than others around her so she lowers them in her mind – maybe without even knowing that she’s doing it. Me? I’m the lowest you can get. I’m a piece of fluff on her jacket, I’m a stick of gum on the floor. I’m someone she wouldn’t even notice if I wasn’t so ugly.’ Jodie’s voice grew hard. ‘Things happened the way I remember them and, no, they’re not “marred” by alcohol or drugs or hazy memory.’ She met Zara’s eyes. ‘I am not a liar.’

  Zara felt a wash of relief. She reached out and touched the girl’s hand. ‘I know. I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I believe you.’

  DC Dexter smoothed down his jacket and desperately wished the next resident wasn’t Asian. With his reddish brown hair and generous sweep of freckles, he was so conspicuously white, so conspicuously different that every potential witness had rejected him without thought. Door after door had been shut in his face – quietly and respectfully but always without pause. One family after another refused to talk to him, refused to even acknowledge what had happened in their midst.