Chapter 36

CHAPTER 36

There is a breeze through the open window, floating the curtains. There is calamine lotion on my bedside table. Mum is at the door with a glass of water. How is the itching today, sweetheart? She places the back of her hand on my forehead and—

“ I KNOCKED BUT YOU didn’t hear me, so I used my key.” Ruth is on the edge of the bed, playing with her hands.

“Oh my god.” I plunge across the bed. “Roo!!!”

“I bought croissants. Two this time, before you kick off.”

She is here. She is here and she still loves me.

I inhale the morning in her curls. The books on the floor have been placed back in the bookshelf.

“What are you doing here?”

“One of the girls was driving back last night, so I jumped in with her. I felt weird about yesterday and you didn’t message…”

“I didn’t know if you wanted to hear from me.”

“Of course I did!”

“You need to know that I thought about everything and I’m so sorry.”

Ruth twirls the mood ring on her finger. The stone is a bright green. “No, don’t be. I was just scared of losing you. But if you tell me that he’s changed, then”—she tenses like a cat before it vomits—“then I’ll support you.”

“You don’t need to. It’s over, for real this time. The killer has to die twice, right? Or three times, in this case.”

She stops twirling the ring and studies my face. “Don’t say it if it’s not what you want.”

“It is. I promise.”

“Okay, well, if it happens again, just know that I’ll be here for you.”

“That won’t be necessary, Roo. It’s over.”

She tilts her head and smiles. “Laa, I know that you like to have everything tied up in a bow, but life is messy.”

“I know life is messy.”

“Yes, but you don’t like that it is.”

“No one likes that it is.”

“I do.”

“Then we’re talking about different things.”

Ruth suggests tea and leads me to the kitchen, where the light is pouring through the windows. The tulips that were left on the side have been trimmed and placed in the vase on the table. I feel something when I see them, but it’s not unpleasant; it’s more that I’m glad someone has taken care of them. Ruth gets two mugs out of the cupboard. One is the enormous Sports Direct mug. That will be hers. She will squeeze the tea bag and add a thimbleful of milk. The other is slimmer with a flower pattern. That will be mine. She will lightly dunk the bag and then pour milk until the liquid resembles pond water.

“So, how was yesterday?” I ask, leaning against the fridge, which he pressed me against last night.

She says that it was lame. “But I’m looking forward to starting properly. My presentation went well and I like the people. But if I hate it and decide to leave, then that has to be okay too.”

“It will be, if that’s what you want.”

“I do have a hilarious story to tell you about the training exercises, though.”

“Tell me.”

“Later. You’re not ready yet.”

She tells me to sit while she makes the tea. I move to the sofa and pull the blanket over me. She puts her hair up in a bun with the leopard-print scrunchie from around her wrist and fills the kettle. “How was yesterday for you ?”

The washing is still on the radiator behind the sofa. I touch my feminist T-shirt, and the fabric is dry.

“Ruth, honestly, it’s been the strangest twenty-four hours. So, the night before last, after I saw you, I got into a fight with this guy at the station and—”

“A fight? What? ” Ruth switches off the stove and sits with me.

“Not a fight fight, but I was pushed and then sort of pushed again.”

“That sounds like a fight. Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. I mean, I lost the fight. But I should have handled it differently.”

“Why, what would you have done?”

“I don’t know. Maybe not confronted him? But he knocked into me and smashed my phone and I didn’t want him to get away with it. But then he shoved me and got away with it anyway. So there’s no winning.”

“No, there’s no winning. Well, no, that’s not true. You’re winning by being you. These guys are going to be the losers ultimately. Even if they don’t know it yet.”

Ruth tucks the loose strands of her hair into the newly constructed nest on top of her head. She always looks effortlessly beautiful, like an art student from a movie who’s always got paint on her jeans and carries an armful of books and a portable coffee that she never spills even though she runs everywhere.

“Anyway, to cut a longer story short, I called my mum last night.”

“You did? Wait, on a Thursday? What did you talk about?”

“Dad.”

“Oh.”

“She told me I put him on a pedestal and that he wasn’t perfect. Did you know?”

“That you put him on a pedestal?”

“That he wasn’t perfect.”

“I mean… well, yeah. But, Enola, didn’t you ?”

“I don’t know,” I say, understanding now the capacity I have for both knowing and not knowing something at the same time. “But what does that mean? Am I supposed to just forgive her for everything?”

Ruth’s chest drops with a breath. “I don’t know, Laa. She isn’t perfect either. She handled it badly. But she does love you.”

I pull my knees up. “I have all these memories of my dad being fun and… now it’s like I don’t know either of my parents.”

“How well do any of us know our parents? Think of my dad—he doesn’t even know who his parents are.”

“Has he ever tried?”

“I think he did once but there weren’t great records. Lots of unwanted babies. Mum looked up her ancestry once, though.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah. My Scottish ancestors were rat catchers.”

“Excellent.”

“Ambition is in my genes.”

The clouds move, and the room darkens for a second.

“Ruth, you don’t have to answer, but what do you remember of my dad?”

She adjusts her bun. “I remember that holiday in the Mara.”

“Were there good bits?”

“Of course! Look, I know you, Enola. You’re going to be eager to organize your thoughts. But it’s not about deleting the good; it’s just about making room for the bad. Likewise with your mum. You must have some happy memories?”

I think about Mum at the door with a glass of water, and my eyes fill with tears. Ruth leans to hug me. “Don’t,” I tell her. “I’ll just cry. Just tell me what else you remember, Roo. Please?”

“Honestly, mainly I just remember seeing you after,” she says.

“Catherine made tacos.”

“She did.” Ruth smiles.

“I hadn’t had tacos before.”

“Enola, what do you remember of that day?” she asks softly, carefully, because she has never asked me that before.

I look at my hands.

The way a child draws hands.

“I remember the noise of the train. People telling me in Swahili that they would be here soon, and I thought the ‘they’ meant Mum and Dad. I remember the sirens and this pervading feeling that I had done something wrong. Everyone was so odd with me, especially Mum. I remember asking him if we could go for ice cream afterward. Afterward. Like he was going into the post office or filling up the car or something.”

Ruth takes my hand and circles my palm like she’s reciting that rhyme about the teddy bear in her head.

“Those train stations in England—you know the ones in the countryside?”

She nods.

“I still can’t use those. They’re nothing like where he… but I tried once, for a festival, do you remember? You were meeting me there, I think. Anyway, I had to leave the platform and catch the bus. It’s weird. I don’t remember the details but I remember the feeling.”

“Enola, there was nothing you could have done.”

“And, like, I keep thinking how far we must have driven—there are so many tracks in Kenya, but to find a working part, with that train to the coast, arriving at that time? And I would have just been sitting on the seat next to him, waiting to find the right spot, for hours, oblivious, just happy to be with my dad.”

Ruth grips my hands. “It wasn’t your fault. Okay? Your dad killed himself.”

She looks at me like she has been waiting to say those words.

“I do know that. I do.” I smile so that she knows I’m being honest. “It’s strange. I used to have this place in my head, like home , and it’s not home, it never was. And it’s the same with Dad.”

“You can’t go home again—that’s the saying, isn’t it?”

“And it’s especially true if you lose a parent.”

The more that Ruth and I talk, the more I think that home isn’t anything real, not a place or a building or a person; it’s just a sense of something, an inaccessible realm of playing in the grass and being called in for tea, of a towel held out after a bath and ice cream dripping on bare toes.

“Fuck! I was making tea.” Ruth slaps her forehead and goes to the kitchen. The stove clicks on. “You know, when I tell people that I lived in Kenya, they always assume I’m Kenyan. I mean, I was there for four years, the same as you. It’s all very ‘Africa is a country,’ you know?”

I turn to the kitchen. “Where do you think of as home, Roo?”

“I don’t know. But I’ve lived in London longer than anywhere else,” she says, opening the fridge and sniffing the milk. “I’m really proud of you, Enola.”

“Because the milk’s in date?”

“Yes,” she says with a grin.

Ruth gets the tea bags from the cupboard and puts them in the mugs. I turn to the bookshelf where all the books are in the right place.

“Roo, do you think that was why the relationship with him didn’t work? Because I kept him at a distance?”

“That’s ridiculous. He knew how much you loved him.”

“But did he know me ?”

“Did he try to?”

“Maybe not. But I don’t think that I really wanted him to. He was never going to push, and so it was safe. I never even told him what really happened with Dad. If he had lied about something like that, I would have accused him of not letting me in.”

The kettle begins to whistle.

“He didn’t let you in.”

“But you know what I mean.”

Ruth scoops my tea bag out—

“Enola. I think you gave it everything. And I think you didn’t give him that information about your dad because you knew, on some level, that it wasn’t safe to.”

—and presses hers on the side of the mug.

“I’m glad that I met him, though, Roo. Maybe these two years have been necessary. Like how a summer storm clears the air?”

But as I say it, I know that’s the wrong metaphor; it’s more accurate to say that something was disturbed, like how a change in weather can reveal a body.

“Save that for the next book,” Ruth says, smiling.

I feel love thick as honey for her, my best friend, my partner, my family. She pours the milk with her tea bag still in the mug. She won’t remove it until there is a residue like skin on custard.

“Roo, you told me yesterday that what I felt wasn’t love.”

“I’m sorry,” she says, cringing visibly at hearing her words back. “I shouldn’t have said that. It’s not for me to say what you feel.”

“No, you were right. But I don’t think that love is one thing. We pretend that the word means the same thing for everyone, but it doesn’t. I’ve been pushing you away and I’m so sorry. I promise I won’t do it again. Because the way I love you is every definition, every dictionary, every translation.”

We look at each other for a moment until we are interrupted by my phone in the bedroom.

“Go and get that. I’ll put the oven on for the croissants.”

I N THE BEDROOM , I get to my phone just as it stops ringing. There is a missed call from Diana. My heart instinctively races, the way it has every time I’ve seen Diana’s name on my phone over the past few months and wondered if that email would be the one to change my life. But then my heart calms. I know why she is calling. This will be the final word, the We’ll have better luck with book two. It’s strange, but it doesn’t feel like a failure. Writing my book was the best thing to come from the past two years, the thing that I will remember long after his name has faded from my lips. It’s okay if no one wants to publish this book. I’m only thirty. I will write another one.

My phone vibrates. Diana has left a voicemail.

I look at the notification, appreciating how different I feel, and then press play. First, the sounds of the office, then my name, and then Diana gives the news. Everything slows and then accelerates until I am back in the kitchen, where Ruth is eating Virinder’s peanut butter with a spoon.

“Can I eat this?” she says, mouth full. Then: “Enola, what is it?”

“That was Diana.”

My voice is high and shaky, and Ruth puts the jar down.

“… and…?”

“… and we have an offer…”

“… an offer…”

“… to publish my book…”

“Oh my god.”

“It’s an independent publisher. A small place. But Diana wants me to come to the office after lunch to talk about it. The editor wants to meet, apparently.”

“ Oh my god! ” Ruth screams and runs to me. She lifts me up and spins me until we are both screaming and laughing. “You’re going to be a published author!”

“I’m going to be a published author!”

My whole body is shaking. I hold my arms out to show Ruth, and she steadies them.

“Roo, I really wasn’t expecting that.”

“I was,” she says with a wide smile. And she means it. God , I think, I am so lucky .

Less than a minute ago I had accepted that it was a no, but now that it’s a yes I already know that everything has changed. What I’m willing to fight for. What I’m willing to accept. This excitement . It’s like my body can’t hold me, like I’m bigger than my bones. I’m on the top of a roller coaster. I’m dancing in the rain. I’m running into the waves.

“Does this make you want to call you-know-who? It’s all right if it does. I would understand. He is a writer too.”

I catch my breath.

“No. It’s the opposite.”

Ruth hugs me again. I tell her that I’m going to go to the bathroom to get ready. “But I’ll come back and we can have breakfast. Do you want to come into town with me?”

“Yes! Croissants will be ready in five.”

I N THE BATHROOM , I look in the mirror and try to process the last two minutes and the last two years. Someone wants to publish my book, my thoughts, my words. My words.

I weaved through the crowds and squeezed until I was standing just behind him, close enough to see the white threads in the rip in his jacket.

I put my hands to my cheeks and stretch the skin like clay. There are thin lines around my mouth and larger ones on my forehead; beads of moisture in the pores of my nose and half-moon shadows beneath my eyes.

A rumbling began in the tunnel. The lights of the train became visible. A receipt blew across the tiles.

I have my mother’s eyes and my father’s face, but the flaws are mine. Soon, the thumbprint on my collarbone will vanish like a leaf or a butterfly.

I thought about every cruel thing he had ever done or said, and yet without thinking, I put my hand on his back and pushed.

This is what it is like

But then she looked up, and he was pulling her with him down the path and across the burning sand to the ocean, the cool waves smacking them with the full force of happiness as their bones broke.

I am thirty years old

crouched in the river with

beach-burned soles and a cigarette breeze

rippling the air like rain like a

cool hand on my forehead and I’m

giddy drunk beneath the corpse stars.

Close your eyes and count to three and

I am the view from your face

I’m trying to make you perfume, Mum.

It’s Wednesday

And I am waiting in the dust for you.

“Enola, they’re ready! Are you coming?”

“Coming!”

or, at least, what it is like in words.

W E SIT ON THE sofa with tea and croissants, and I am the sort of tired you feel after going on a long walk. I stare at my tea, and in the second that it takes me to contemplate a sip, I miss him, but in the second that it takes me to have the sip, the feeling passes. I know it will be like that for a while, but not forever.

“I forgot, but Mum wants to know if you’re coming for Christmas,” says Ruth.

“Oh yes, she called me yesterday. And I want to but… I had another idea. And it might be a bad one. But would you mind if I missed this Christmas?”

“Why? What were you thinking of doing?”

“I was thinking about… France.”

Ruth’s eyes scan mine. “Enola, I think that’s a great idea.”

“You do?”

“I do.”

“It’s just a start.”

“Do you want me to come with you?”

“I think maybe I should do this on my own?”

Ruth hums. “Like in the bad movies.”

We look at each other and almost laugh. Then I break the moment. “Okay, Roo. It’s your turn. Tell me about the training day. I want to hear the full story. Leave no stone unturned. No detail left out. Leave no…? No, I can’t think of another one.”

Ruth tuts. “And you call yourself a writer ?”

“Stop procrastinating.”

“Okay, but are you sure you’re ready?”

“I’m ready.”

And with the winter sun pouring through the window, together as we’ve always been, as we will always be, Ruth and I drag the body across the kitchen floor and burn the remains.