22
F ive years later
Leila
I lean into the fridge, hoping for the best. I’ve not done any shopping for weeks, but maybe Zayn has. Just a bottle of milk and some eggs would do…
No such luck. Half a lettuce, an open tin of beans already congealed, and a dried-up bit of what might once have been Red Leicester are the best I can come up with. I sweep the whole lot into the bin and contemplate cleaning the now-empty fridge.
“Leave it. Let’s eat out.”
I whirl. I hadn’t realised Zayn was even here. “It’s okay, I can nip out to the shop,” I offer.
“You look dead on your feet. Sit down. If you don’t fancy going out, I’ll order a pizza and get some groceries delivered.”
“No, I can?—”
“Sit!”
The command brooks no argument, and in any case, he’s right. I can barely stand, let alone trot off down to the off-licence on the corner.
I drag myself out of the kitchen and into our lounge where I sink onto the sofa.
“Feet up. Take a nap while I get shit organised.” Zayn has followed me in, and to press his point he crouches to remove my comfortable hospital shoes and lifts my feet onto the sofa. “It’ll take ten minutes,” he promises, his phone in his hand.
I nod, close my eyes, and promptly fall asleep.
I wake a while later, aroused by the aroma of cheese, tomato, and spiced chicken. My mouth waters even before I properly regain consciousness.
“Give me some of that. Now.” I struggle to sit.
Zayn thrusts a paper plate loaded with two slices of pizza and a pile of spicy potato wedges into my hand. “There you go, Doctor Mansour. Wrap yourself around that.”
“Not exactly healthy eating,” I observe as I stuff the handful of tangy deliciousness into my mouth. “Did you get cookie dough?”
“Is the Pope a Catholic?”
I glance up at him. “So I hear.”
He grins and settles next to me, his own plate heaped high. We munch in companionable silence for a few minutes.
“I never sorted a plumber,” I begin. “It’s been manic…”
Our shower has developed some sort of fault, it runs scalding hot the whole time. I desperately need a shower but can’t face the hassle of using the communal ones at the hospital. I’ll settle for a bath if I have to.
“Done,” he replies, setting down his empty pizza box. “I had a word with Beth, and she sent someone yesterday.”
Beth is married to Aaron, Ethan Savage’s brother, and she runs a plumbing business. Zayn is full of useful contacts.
“Is it fixed?” I can barely believe it. Such luxury.
“It is,” he assures me. “Fancy sharing?”
I nod happily. “Let me finish this first.” I grab a fourth slice of spicy chicken and onion.
“No rush.” He props his feet on the coffee table. “Hard shift?”
I consider the question around chews. “Not hard. Just long.”
“Yeah, I noticed.”
Junior doctor hours are brutal. I just finished a twenty-hour shift, having doubled up to cover a colleague with Covid. I’m due on again in less than twelve hours. It’s now three years since Zayn and I bought our own house, a modest two-up, two-down in the Edinburgh suburbs, and although I love the place, I’m lucky if I get home more than two or three times a week.
In fairness, Zayn’s hours are just as erratic. He gets called away at a moment’s notice and can be gone for days. Weeks, sometimes. Neither of us complains, we just value even more the brief times we can be together.
It won’t always be like this, but right now, while I’m completing my residency in Paediatric Intensive Care, it’s full-on.
“Baby Harry goes home tomorrow,” I murmur.
“Really? That’s great.” Zayn kisses my forehead. “Thanks to you.”
“It was a team effort,” I point out. “And he’s a little fighter.”
Harrison Blair, Harry for short, was born ten weeks ago at twenty-one weeks and weighing under two pounds. No one gave much for his chances, but he somehow clung on for the crucial first twenty-four hours, and since then, it’s been touch and go, but recently more go. He’s gained weight and now tips the scales at six pounds. He can breathe on his own, feed, and maintain his own temperature up to a point. I’ve been at his side almost constantly, partly because I didn’t dare to leave him in case he slipped away while my back was turned. He was so fragile, hovering between life and death for weeks.
“His parents must be relieved,” Zayn says.
I can only nod, preferring not to describe the sobs of pure joy when I told them their precious little boy was probably going to live. Mrs Blair—Roxanne—clung to me, weeping, while her husband battled not to dissolve in grateful tears himself.
It’s moments like this that make all the hard work and the crippling workload worthwhile. I may be exhausted most of the time, but I’m living the dream.
“I love you.”
“I know. I love you, too. And I’m proud of you. You’re going to be a fantastic doctor and an even better consultant.” Zayn takes my empty plate and tosses it in the bin with the rest of the debris. “Ready for that shower?”
I nod and let him help me to my feet. We’re halfway up the stairs when my phone buzzes in the pocket of my jeans.
Zayn grins. “Not the hospital. Please…”
I check. “No. It’s…it’s my dad.”
His brow furrows. Zayn’s opinion of my father is low to say the least. He regards him as a weak, spineless individual who failed to lift a finger to protect me when I needed him.
He does have a point, but I prefer to think of my dad as a victim, a bit like I was. My mother and Abdul were a formidable force, and my dad was simply no match for them. They bullied him just as they bullied everyone else; he never stood a chance.
“I should take this,” I mutter, “It could be important.” I sit on the step to take the call.
Zayn sits down, too, on the step above. “Make it quick,” he mouths.
“Dad? What’s up?” I put the call on speaker so Zayn can hear, too. “Zayn’s with me.”
“Ah, good. Good. How is he?”
“He’s well. What about you?”
“Ah, you know. Can’t grumble.”
That was always his problem, I reflect. He never grumbles. Never has, no matter how vicious his wife and brother-in-law became. I sigh and move on.
“I just got in and I was going for a shower.”
“Well, I won’t keep you, then. I know you’re busy. It was just…”
“Dad? What’s the problem?”
“It’s Eid next week.”
“Is it?” Things have been so hectic at work I’d actually forgotten.
“Yes, so I was wondering if you might join us for the evening meal?”
“I beg your pardon!” I’m baffled. He’s never invited me before.
“You can bring… Mr Abbassi, if you want to.”
It’s a grudging offer; I can hear it in his tone. He steadfastly refuses to call Zayn by his first name, preferring to maintain a degree of formality. I try to convince myself that it’s his idea of being polite, though in reality I suspect it’s his way of pretending my relationship with Zayn is somehow that of ordinary acquaintances, nothing more. The prospect of his daughter with a live-in lover is just too much for him. And even if it wasn’t, I’m pretty certain he knows of Zayn’s involvement in the disappearance of his brother and nephews. Abdul likely told him at the time.
“I’m not sure…” I begin. I can sense Zayn’s unspoken “Hell, no,” from behind me.
“Please, if you can make it, even for just an hour or so. It would be…wonderful to see you.” He fails to conceal the hitch in his voice.
“Farah and Amina will be there,” I remind him. It’s not as though he’ll be spending the holiday alone.
“It’s not the same without you,” he argues. “Eid is for family; we need you to be here. Surely, they’ll give you the time off work.”
“I can’t be sure if we’ll be free, either of us.”
He gives up finally. “Well, if you can. We’d love to see you. It’s been a while…”
Over a year, to be exact. I visit my sisters regularly—well, as regularly as my schedule at work allows—but I generally manage to avoid him. It’s too awkward. I can’t forget the sight of him on that video, on that boat, letting me be thrown overboard like a sack of trash. I understand it wasn’t what he wanted, I do believe that much, but he was there all the same.
“I’ll see what we can do,” I promise. “Listen, Dad, I have to go.”
“Yes, yes, I understand. You’re very busy. I won’t keep you. Bye, love.”
He ends the call, leaving me to stare at my blank screen, my stomach in knots.
I twist my neck to regard Zayn over my shoulder. “You heard all that.”
“Do you want to go?” he asks me.
“I don’t know,” I reply. “It is Eid, and it would be nice to see my sisters…”
“But?”
“I know he’s sorry. He bitterly regrets what happened, his part in it. He’s told me often enough.”
“I know that. It’s easy to say.” Zayn has made no secret of his scepticism regarding my father’s repentance. Once a bastard, always a bastard in his view.
“I know that, and…it did happen, didn’t it? It’s not as though I really blame him anymore. I never did, actually. He was under my mother’s thumb, and my Uncle Abdul. He did as he was told, like he always had. It’s only since she left that he’s even tried to reestablish any sort of relationship with me.”
My mother moved back to Pakistan not long after her brother’s ‘disappearance’. She couldn’t face life in the UK without him and wanted to be with her family. Apparently, me, my sisters, and her husband didn’t count. My dad managed to gather together enough backbone to finally divorce her, and I heard she remarried. A wealthy cloth trader from Lahore, I gather.
My dad has blossomed since. According to Farah he’s actually happy. I’m pleased, I suppose, though I can’t recall a time I would have ever described any of us as being happy.
“We could go, just for a while,” I suggest tentatively. “See how it feels.”
His lips thin, but eventually he gives a curt nod. “Fair enough. We don’t have to stay long,” Zayn concedes, offering me his hand to help me back onto my feet.
“Do you think so? Really? I don’t know…”
He pauses. “What do you want, Leila? How do you want this to work out?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, I get why you need to be in touch with your sisters, but what are you actually hoping for by being in contact with him? In a year’s time? Five, ten? Can you ever forgive, do you think? Do you even want to? Really?”
“Of course I do.” The suggestion otherwise jolts me into some sort of certainty. “That’s what anyone would want.”
“Is it? Okay, if that’s your agenda, you need to take the first steps. Small steps, certainly, but in the right direction. He’s reached out. Now it’s up to you.”
“I thought you couldn’t stand him,” I point out.
His derisive snort is all the confirmation needed. “This is not my call, though. Is it? I want you to be happy. I want you to have peace, enjoy your life, your career. Our life together.”
“We will. I do.”
“But I can see how confused, how conflicted you are.”
“I just want everything to be normal. Why can’t my family be like everyone else?”
“No family’s ‘normal’,” he counters. “We all just do the best we can. I doubt if I’ll ever warm to your father, or really trust him, but I can see when a man is trying.”
“You think I should forgive him?”
Again, he frowns. “No, not unless you truly feel it. But you could perhaps learn to tolerate him and meet him halfway.”
“You want to go there for Eid?” I can hardly believe it.
“Not especially, but I think we probably should. Baby steps, toes in the water. Shall we just try it and see what happens?”
“You’re here!” My father beams at me when he opens the front door. His greeting for Zayn is less heartfelt, a thin-lipped smile. “Mr Abbassi.”
“Mr Mansour,” Zayn replies with a polite nod. “ Eid Mubarak .”
“And to you, too. Please, come in, both of you.”
He steps back to allow us to access the modest terraced house where I grew up.
The babble of voices reaches us as we enter. “It sounds as though you have a houseful already,” I observe. So much for me worrying that he might be lonely this Eid.
“Ah, yes. My cousin and his family. You remember Uncle Imran?”
“Of course. Does he still run the restaurant?” Uncle Imran is the proprietor of Naan Nirvana, a curry house in the town centre.
“He does, he does. And he has two more now, all doing very well.”
I mutter something appropriate just as Farah and Amina come barrelling out of the kitchen to hug me, then Zayn.
“I knew you’d come,” Amina trills. “I told her you would.”
Farah is decked out in her traditional Eid finery, a crimson silk shalwar kameez with glittering gold thread embroidery at the collar and cuffs. Heavy gold earrings dangle from her lobes, and her hair is scattered with small red beads. I note she’s not wearing a headscarf, no doubt due to the lack of my mother’s influence.
Amina, my younger sister, is also wearing an ornate shalwar kameez, though hers is a sort of turquoise and decorated with contrasting shiny beads.
“Don’t you two look fine today.” I laugh, wishing I’d perhaps chosen something more traditional for the occasion. My own outfit is smart enough, a pale-grey and pink trouser suit that set me back two hundred pounds on my last visit to the high-end boutiques in Edinburgh, but distinctly western in style. I rarely wear anything that reminds me of the old days.
“Come in, come in, say hello to everyone,” my father urges me. “Fareed is here, and Nasir. They’ve all been asking about you.” He grasps my elbow to usher me into the already crowded living room, ignoring Zayn entirely.
I glance over my shoulder to see Zayn being fawned over by my sisters, both of whom have a monster crush on him. I leave them to it. He’s a big boy, he can cope.
The next half hour is a whirl of introductions as I’m presented to an assembled army of relatives and family friends.
“You’ll remember my eldest daughter, Leila. She lives in Edinburgh now.”
“Auntie Saleena, say hello to Leila. She’s visiting us from Edinburgh.”
“Uncle, did you know Leila was here?”
I’m politely greeted, by and large, and treated to a moderate degree of curiosity regarding my lengthy disappearance. “What have you been up to, dear?” “My, I would never have recognised you…” “Where are you working now? Or are you settled down?” By which they mean safely married to a man of substance, commanding respect in the community, ideally with a couple of bouncing babies to cement the arrangement.
“Leila works in the children’s ward at the hospital,” my father explains effusively. “She’s been too busy to settle down yet, but maybe…”
“I’m with my partner,” I try to clarify over and over. “Zayn is here, somewhere…”
“What do you do at the hospital, Leila?” Auntie Mumtaz helps herself to another samosa.
“I’m a doctor—” I begin.
“Leila always wanted to work with children,” my father interrupts. “I’d hoped she might join Naima at Little Acorns, support the family business. But she prefers the big city…”
I gape at him. It’s on the tip of my tongue to point out why I found it necessary to move away and stay away. He seems to have conveniently forgotten the small matter of attempted murder.
I should never have come here. Nothing changes.
My father’s not done yet. “Ah, here’s Fareed. He’s been eager to meet you again.” One of Uncle Imran’s sons is heading our way, a hopeful smile on his moon-like face. “I told him you were still unattached. He’s just been promoted at the bank. A junior manager now, you know, with the promise of a company car. And health insurance.”
Good for him. I exchange a somewhat chilly greeting then head off to seek out Zayn. This isn’t working. It’s time to leave.
I jostle my way through into the kitchen, then the dining room, but neither Zayn nor my sisters are anywhere to be seen. I turn to head upstairs, only to be accosted once again by my father.
“That was rude, Leila. Fareed wanted to talk to you.”
“Maybe later,” I begin. “I was looking for Zayn.”
“He’s probably in the kitchen, or?—”
“I checked there. Excuse me, I’ll just?—”
He grabs my arm as I attempt to get past him. “Forget about that individual for a moment. Fareed is family. He’s interested in you, despite…despite everything. You could do worse.”
I stare at him, my jaw dropping. “Are you mad?”
“I want what’s best for you, like any decent father would. A reliable boy, with prospects.”
“I have prospects,” I hiss. “I’m a doctor, fully qualified. I can take care of myself.”
He waves his hand airily. “You wouldn’t need to, not with Fareed. And if you insist on carrying on working for a while, there’s always Little Acorns.”
“I’m a paediatric registrar, not a bloody childcare worker,” I snarl. “Have you listened to anything I’ve told you this last couple of years?”
“Of course, of course, but a father knows best. Let me?—”
“Knows best? You think throwing me into the fucking ocean is ‘knowing best’? You’re not mad, you’re deranged.”
“How dare you use that language in this house? You’ll show some respect while you’re under my roof, young lady, or I’ll?—”
“You’ll what?” I thrust my chin up, right in his smug, arrogant face. “What? What will you do?”
He takes step back. “Leila, please, there’s no need for?—”
“There’s every need,” I hiss. “Because nothing ever changes, does it? Even without Mum and Uncle Abdul to egg you on, you still think you know best. You think you can do whatever you like. You never even listened to a word I’ve said, about my career, my life. Zayn.”
“Pah. That man. A thug. He’ll never amount to anything. And you don’t need a career, not with a good man who’s prepared to take you on.”
“A man like Fareed?” I sneer.
“Yes,” he shouts back. “You could at least consider?—”
“Fuck you, and fuck Fareed.” I shove past him to march upstairs.
Amina meets me halfway. “Hey, what happened. You look…not very well.”
“I’m leaving. Where’s Zayn?”
“Er, outside, I think. In the back garden. He had calls to make.”
“Right.” I spin on my heel and march back downstairs, sweeping past my father when he attempts even now to engage me in some sort of conversation.
“Shut up and get out of my way.” I barge past and head for the back door.
Zayn is seated on the old swing, his phone at his ear. He stands up when I exit the house, and one glance at my face is enough to make him end the call there and then.
“Hey, may-ri-jaan, what’s happened? ”
“We need to leave. We should never have come here.”
“Okay.” He gets to his feet and offers me his hand to head back inside.
“No, I’m not going back in there. This way.” I drag him across the garden to the small gate at the end, then into the dark alleyway running behind the terrace of houses. Our heels clip on the cobbled street as we make our escape.
“Are you going to tell me?” he asks when we get into the car.
“It’s my dad. He…he…”
“Do I need to have a word with him?” he offers. “Remind him of how precarious his position is?”
I shake my head. “I told him all he needs to know. It’s up to him if he actually hears what I said, but he hasn’t up to now. Fuck him, fuck all of them. I’m done.”
“I see.” He starts the engine and steers us along the side street and back onto the main road. “Home?”
“Yes. Home.”
I shoot a sideways glance at the man who always listened to me. Who believed me, protected me, the man who laid my future out before me and invited me to go for it. “I love you,” I whisper.
He returns my glance. “I know. I love you, too, may-ri-jaan .” The vehicle cruises on for a mile or so, then he turns to me again. “Is now a good time to ask you to marry me?”
I look up and smile. “Yes. Yes, I think perhaps it is.”