Things Left Unsaid

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Shirin is on the phone to Phoebe, her friend from back home. Phoebe is married to George, who they both went to school with. They live in a house around the corner from Shirin’s family home and are in the process of adopting a dog. Phoebe’s a social worker, and Shirin thinks she’s her only friend who has her life together—at least in the way everyone thought their lives would look when they were teenagers imagining their midtwenties.

It’s not that Shirin wants Phoebe’s life—because she doesn’t. Though the ease of Phoebe’s life is something Shirin sometimes envies. While Phoebe owns her house, Shirin shares a rental with three women—Chloe, Anna, and Jane—in a block of ex-council flats in Bow. The three women are all in their twenties too, and are relative strangers. Their flat is small, though two-story, and they share one bathroom between them. Sometimes it is like there are seven of them, when their boyfriends are round, and everything is either broken or breaking. The electric shower routinely stops working every six months. Each new shower that is installed is cheap and so is never worth fixing, resulting in a new cheap one being fitted, and so on. The rent is reasonable though, for London. They opt for cheaper rent so they can eat out, buy new clothes, and pretend their home life is less bleak. The landlady, a well-meaning Bangladeshi woman who once lived in the flat with her husband until they separated, responds promptly to their emails when things break, but Shirin senses she is overwhelmed by each email about something new going wrong. It is clear she did not want to be a landlady; this was not her ambition for the flat. It leaves an aura around the building.

Shirin mentions that she has plans to have coffee with Kian, to which Phoebe says, “Kian? As in Kian Rahimi from school?” Before Shirin can reply, Phoebe continues, “Hold on, let me stalk him.” Shirin can tell she has been put on speakerphone while Phoebe looks at his social media profiles because her voice is now distant.

“Why does he have no recent pictures of himself?”

“It’s annoying, isn’t it?”

“Very. I sometimes see his parents in Morrisons, you know,” Phoebe muses. “It was so sad when his dad got sick.”

“Wait, what?”

Phoebe explains that four years ago Kian’s dad was diagnosed with prostate cancer, and he underwent aggressive chemotherapy. She says that she used to see Kian around Hull a lot more during that time, visiting his dad, and that his mum always looked so tired when she passed her in the supermarket. Shirin forgets how small Hull is sometimes.

“Is he okay now?” Shirin asks, thinking of how hard Kian’s family life already was, with everything that happened to his brother.

“Yeah, last I heard it worked and he’s back to normal now,” Phoebe says. “Anyway, is it a date, your coffee?”

The switch surprises Shirin and she quickly says, “What? No. It’s just a friendly thing.”

“You were always close at school. I always thought you liked him.”

This insight, a decade later, floors her momentarily.

“Yeah. Ten years ago. And we were only ever friends then, too.” She is aware she doth protest too much. “And we hadn’t spoken since school. Since… you know.”

“Oh, yeah, since he went psycho, you mean?”

That isn’t how Shirin would phrase it, but perhaps if she hadn’t seen Kian again she would have accepted this version of what happened; perhaps it would be easier to see him that way. Now, one corner of her top lip twitches in irritation. “I mean, they were the violent ones, not him,” she says steadily.

She doesn’t want to say their names, but Phoebe has no such qualms. “Jordan, yeah—I will agree with you there. He’s in prison now, did you hear?”

“He is?” Shirin puts Phoebe on speakerphone and googles Jordan Young. She knows she shouldn’t, that she should put boundaries in place with Phoebe, as she has with Kian, on what they can talk about. Though she can never imagine saying this to Phoebe. Her friend would say she needs to get a grip, perhaps rightly so.

The first web page that comes up is a Hull Daily Mail article detailing Jordan’s conviction. It says he had a string of previous offenses and it was racially aggravated battery that put him away. The boy he beat up was only eighteen; he had come from India to study at the University of Hull for his undergraduate degree and had allegedly pushed ahead of Jordan in a takeaway queue after a night out. The pictures on the web page show a stock image of a splattering of blood on white-tile flooring. Shirin curses under her breath.

“Tom has really turned his life around though. I don’t think he’s friends with Jordan anymore, either,” Phoebe says. “George has mutual friends with him.”

Tom always hung around with Jordan and Rob. He very rarely would start something on his own, but in a group setting he did whatever they told him to do. Shirin’s lip twitches again now; it is an automatic response. Having even three degrees of separation from a racist smells racist to her. She has sometimes wondered whether George is low-key racist. Whether, on a night out, he might slip up. She’s seen it, the way drunk people switch; and she thinks if that is what they act like drunk, they are clearly thinking it sober, too.

“And obviously Rob is like crazy famous now. He bought his mum a huge house in Kirk Ella, you know. She used to live near me in a tiny terraced house. My mum is always asking why I didn’t become a comedian or something, like him, and buy her a house.” Phoebe is laughing, while Shirin clenches her fist. She is not an angry person, but she wants to hit something. Instead, she squeezes the pillow on her bed tightly for a few seconds.

“They’re all awful people,” Shirin reminds Phoebe through gritted teeth. “They were quite nasty to me.” She is playing it down. Quite nasty. Jordan once pushed her down the stairs and she sprained her arm. He denied it, said he accidentally knocked her, and Shirin even doubted herself in front of the teacher, wondered if she was imagining the malicious intent. When she faltered, said it might have been an accident, it was swiftly branded an accident, nothing more. When the teacher turned his back, Jordan winked at her. It was the day before she was supposed to perform her solo in the school orchestra, and she had practiced her flute every evening for the past few months. Instead, she watched them play from the audience, her arm in a sling, bitter and sad. That was just the start, anyway. And for all of Jordan’s physical violence, it was what Rob said—and subsequently did—to Shirin that she can never forget, or shake, even after all this time.

“Oh, really?”

There is a long, unpunctuated silence. This happens sometimes when they mention school. Phoebe was in most of the same classes as Shirin, and yet she somehow did not see what Shirin experienced. She is reminded why she chooses not to speak about it.

“Anyway,” Shirin says slowly. “How’s George?”

“Fine, nothing new to report really.”

Shirin can tell Phoebe has something more to say by her tone.

“What?” Shirin says.

“What?” Phoebe repeats back to her. Shirin lets the subsequent silence drag on because she knows Phoebe will fill it. “Oh, fine,” Phoebe concedes. “Don’t tell anyone, but… we’re trying for a baby.”

“Oh, wow. That’s amazing!” Shirin lets her voice go high-pitched, but she is straight-faced and all the enthusiasm resides in her tone. She is lying on her bed looking up at the ceiling and can hear two different housemates having sex on either side of her room.

She does not know what questions to ask because this is the first time a friend has said this to her, and objectively, while it sounds like it would be a thing one would find exciting, to Shirin they still feel like children themselves. She looks at babies in coffee shops, or when her colleagues bring theirs in on their maternity leave, and she thinks they look ugly and not cute, but says “Aw” when their mother or father look for validation. She cannot imagine Phoebe with one—or pretending to find Phoebe’s baby cute.

“How long have you been trying?” she finally asks.

“Only a month now—it could take ages, but I had to tell someone.”

“That’s so, so exciting,” Shirin says.

When they end the call, the flat is quiet, bar the footsteps of people coming in and out of the bathroom, post-sex. She puts on the sound machine next to her that blasts white noise. Then she retrieves a packet of Night Nurse from her bedside table. It is expensive and she rations out her use of it. Tonight she pops one capsule into her mouth with a large gulp of water and turns her lamp off. It doesn’t stop the intrusive thoughts though. Her mind is so busy—more so lately. In the daytime her thoughts flicker from worry to worry, but at night it is existential emptiness that consumes her. She wonders at the pointlessness of life. Or her life, more specifically. At the fact that she strives continually for things that she thinks will bring her happiness and yet she is never happy. She wonders if it is her that is the issue in all of this. Whether her work, her friends, her life—all of it—should be enough for her. Whether there is something inherently wrong with her that means she will never be happy. This thought remains until the Night Nurse kicks in and lulls Shirin into a heavy sleep.

Shirin hands Kian an advance reader’s copy of You People by A. K. Hosseini. To get said copy she had to beg Mariam to ask her friend in another department for a proof. At lunch Mariam said that they didn’t have any to spare, which led to Shirin sneakily taking a copy from the publicity cupboard. When Kian’s eyes light up and he says she’s the best, she simply says, “It’s no problem—they were giving them away.” She does not condone stealing, but when it is from a multimillion-pound company that still pays its entry-level staff ￡18,000 a year, she can justify it. With that, and since her conversation with Lilian about what Sally said at the author party, right now Shirin has no affinity toward a company that does not value good morals.

They are in New Cross, in a coffee shop just down the road from Goldsmiths. Kian said that he was visiting his studio space seven minutes on the train from her office, so she said they could meet here. She has never been to New Cross before and is initially taken aback by the sheer number of people walking along the pavement, the liveliness of the area, with its strip of pubs, takeaways, and cafés. In the distance she can see a tall gray building with a squiggly metal sculpture atop it. She imagines it has something to do with the university, though it contrasts with the other buildings, which are rundown and graffitied.

She is not sure coffee past 5 P.M. will be good for her, or her sleep issues, but asks for a soy latte anyway. Kian gets up to order their drinks, and while he is away from the table she quickly smooths down her hair. Old-school R it is fresh and ever so slightly fruity. A marked change from the Lynx Africa of his youth. He is wearing a long-sleeve striped T-shirt and navy Nike shorts, and she is also wearing a striped top and a tennis skirt. She debates making a joke of this.

“What I need to know,” she says instead, “is how you went from your parents not letting you study art at A-level to doing an MFA in it?” She has been thinking about this, after the initial shock of Kian returning had dissolved from her mind. It is so at odds with the Kian she knew, who loved his art but was so cautious about taking it seriously.

Something in his usually soft face changes then. His eyebrows furrow together, and she notices his jaw tighten ever so slightly. Shirin knows she is perceptive of how other people are feeling; a psychic told her she has a third eye, which she took very seriously. It is a curse in some ways because, like right now, she cannot ignore that something has shifted, that Kian is annoyed by something she’s said, when she thought she was asking an innocent question.

He scratches his chin, then says, “I saw my friend Ahmed earlier at the mosque and he asked the same thing. Well, he told me it was stupid to spend years studying it further and that it’d be better for me to get a real, well-paid job.” He shrugs. “He’s probably right, but here we are.”

Everything he says is loaded. She has so many questions and he didn’t even answer her original one. “Ahmed from Hull? He lives here?”

Kian nods. “He was always the clever one; he’s a lawyer now and lives in Greenwich with his wife and son.”

“Wow, okay. I mean, for what it’s worth, to me what he said sounds like rubbish. If you love something, why not pursue it? And also, not being funny, but would you want a wife and kid right now?”

The last part makes Kian scoff, like the thought is unimaginable. Their drinks are brought over and set down on the wooden table. The latte art is impressive, and Shirin gazes at it briefly before using her teaspoon to stir the rosette away. Kian leaves his as it is and takes a long sip. His hands are large and make the teacup look especially tiny.

“It’s fine,” he eventually says. “It’s not like my parents haven’t said the same thing to me. So, to answer your question, I just ended up doing what I wanted even though they didn’t like it. It was easier at uni, because when my brother came back from… you know… they were so busy wanting to fix his life that they focused less on me. At least I was going to uni, you know? At least one of us was. And for me, I just found art to be such an outlet after everything. It helps me make sense of the world, I guess. But now, doing a master’s in art, my parents don’t get it. They think it’s a waste of money and time.”

“What do you think?”

He looks up at her, surprised by the question. “I think I need this. In Manchester I was working admin jobs while I did my art on the side. If I was lucky, I’d be involved in tiny exhibitions, but because I was so tired from work, I never felt like I focused on my art. And now I’m excited,” he says, and she can see it in his eyes. “For the first time in ages, I’m excited by the future. Jesus, I sound depressing, don’t I? But it’s true.”

She smiles. “We’re old now, Kian: it’s okay for us to be depressing. I do need you to back up a bit though—since when do you go to the mosque?” She wants to say You never used to, but ten years have passed; of course he’s not the same boy as back then. People change.

“My dad got cancer just when I graduated from uni. So I moved home for a bit and it really shook me up. It made me realize that we’re all going to die. And the thought of nothing happening after—it fucked me up. That my dad would simply be gone if his treatment didn’t work. So, as a family, we started going to the mosque. I’m not perfect, obviously, but it really helped me get out of a dark time. I like to go sometimes even now, to balance myself, I guess.”

“I’m sorry you went through that with your dad,” she says, looking away from his eyes to his ear, because she is never good at comforting people, even people she cares about. “How is he doing now?”

“He’s recovered, knock on wood.” He taps his knuckles on the table and smiles. “Sorry, I’ve offloaded on you for the last fifteen minutes. I bet you think I’ve not changed at all,” he says, the tops of his cheeks lightly pink, like he is embarrassed.

Her heart begins to beat quicker and she takes a long sip of her drink to give herself some composure time.

“Don’t be silly,” she says, her voice imperceptibly unsteady as she tries to maintain nonchalance. “I’m interested. And you have changed. The Kian I knew at school definitely wouldn’t be going to the mosque. Nor would he be doing a master’s in art.”

“Do you ever go to the mosque?” he asks, bypassing her comment completely.

The waitress returns to bring them a slice of lemon cheesecake and two spoons, and she is glad of the interruption because questions like this remind her of her mild identity crisis. She often feels this way around her friends who are Muslim. Shirin’s relationship with her religion is confused. In fact it always has been, but the gulf between her saying she is Muslim and her actually doing what Muslims are supposed to do has only got bigger. Her parents were never strictly religious, though they warned her to stay away from boys and to cover herself—fairly standard stuff. If she ever told her parents she was scared of dying one day, something she keeps to herself, she would be scolded that a true Muslim knows what will happen next: God will protect us. She is not sure God will protect her, though, or whether she deserves protecting.

“No, not really,” she says, thinking Kian might push it, but instead he nods. Because he says nothing—and because she dislikes the silence—she continues. “It feels too late for me now—to try and go to the mosque, I mean.”

The one thing she doesn’t want is for Kian to preach at her. Or maybe she does. Maybe she is saying this to see what he will do—to see whether he is the same as he was when they were younger: kind and solid. She walks the fine line with Mariam, but it’s not like that with every friend. Mariam is patient with her, never tells her what she should or shouldn’t be doing. It is refreshing, and Shirin knows not everyone is like that.

Her warmth toward Kian is almost threatened, but then he says, “It’s never too late. And it doesn’t make you any less of a good person, you know, that you don’t go.”

God, even now he knows exactly what she is thinking. She feels this stinging in her eyes and it is humiliating. She bites the inside of her cheek hard, letting her incisors really dig into her stupid fleshy mouth. It helps to focus the pain elsewhere. She waves her hand in the air dismissively. “It’s fine,” she says, echoing him.

“I want to know about you,” he says. “You always said you’d get the fuck out of Hull and be a big shot editor—looks like you did it.”

She scoffs loudly, though her heart is soaring that this is how Kian sees her. But anyway, out of habit she says, “Hardly. I’m an assistant editor—still.”

He shrugs, taking another spoonful of the cheesecake. “You still got out.” The way he says it, though, is like it’s an accusation—like she abandoned him. Or maybe that’s just because she’s always felt guilty for the way they left things. And because, in some ways, she knows she did abandon him when he needed her most. This realization hurts, and when their eyes lock, she hopes he can see the apology in hers, but she isn’t sure if he can. Then he asks, “Are you happy, Shirin? Like really happy?”

She is laid bare in front of him. She can’t remember the last time someone has asked her this question, and she is dumbfounded by how to respond.

“What do you mean?” she asks pointlessly. The question is basic, she knows what he means. Knows that because he actually sees her, he must know also how beaten down she is. How, though she often thinks she hasn’t changed, she has, in negative ways.

“Just, you don’t look very happy, and you deserve to be. If anyone does, you do.”

Jesus, she thinks.

“Is anyone really happy?” she throws back. “Are you?”

“Sometimes,” he says with a sad smile.

When they’ve finished their drinks, Kian offers to show her his studio. She quickly says yes to this suggestion, not wanting the evening to end. On the walk there, she asks him about his brother. It is so different from before, she realizes. His brother and his imprisonment at such a young age brought Kian so much pain; he shouldered the burden, even though it wasn’t his fault. Though he would never accept that. There is warmth in Kian’s eyes when he speaks about him now, as he tells her Mehdi is doing well.

“I’ve got into mindfulness,” Kian confesses, giving Shirin a cautious sidelong look.

She bursts out laughing and then apologizes. “That’s very Zen of you.” She locks eyes with him and gives him a sincere smile, which he returns. They maintain eye contact for a beat longer than normal. When he eventually looks away, she finds herself breathless, realizing she has been holding her breath.

They have gone down a side street with terraced houses, which upon further inspection belong to the university, with placards proclaiming them as the counselor’s room or the history office. It is typical of London universities, whose campuses are spread far out—not really a campus at all.

“Hey, it helps. I’d recommend it. You know, since you mentioned that you struggle with anxiety.” He says this last part quieter—and Shirin remembers she told him and immediately feels irrationally pathetic. She thinks he might see this on her face because he says, “But who am I to talk? I’m pretty fucked-up myself.”

She turns to him and frowns. “ You don’t seem fucked-up at all.” And she means this. Kian appears emotionally intelligent—a trait very few men, Shirin has realized, possess—and he has coped with so much while seemingly being much more stable than Shirin, who thinks about death every night and perpetually has an existential crisis while she has had minimal tragic life events thus far. She is the one who cannot bear to think about the past—about the specific moment when she and Kian stopped speaking. If Kian is fucked-up, what does that make her?

“Well, we haven’t actually spoken in like ten years, so I don’t think you’re the best judge of that,” he jokes, and she is reeling, thinking: How can he make a joke of that? She is so taken aback she lets out a pathetic little laugh and then clears her throat.

As they walk farther down the street, the car horns and hum of motor engines become more and more distant. They round the corner and walk through gates to the silver building that she saw all the way from the station and wondered at. He tells her this is the Ben Pimlott Building, where the art studios are, and that people call it the squiggle building for short. He taps his pass onto a metal sensor by the doors, which automatically open. The entryway is sparse, with cream floor tiles and white walls. They climb two flights of metal stairs and follow a walkway until they reach his corner of the studio.

“You know what I realized recently?” she says.

“What?”

The lights are automatic and turn on one by one as they make their way farther down the floor.

“That work—and by work I mean publishing—is no different from school,” she muses. She had been thinking about this earlier in the day.

The walls are all glass, and outside the sun has gone down, the sky a hazy pink. She is sure when she opens Instagram there will be numerous pictures of the sky, with the same captions, by different people. She looks at it briefly, uninterested when she thinks she should be more interested. The problem is, next to Kian, she feels herself on edge—not in an unpleasant way, but like this small moment is so significant, though she doesn’t want it to show in her body language. She never thought they’d see each other again, never thought they’d speak so casually, like no time has passed. She certainly did not think she would be telling him passing thoughts again, like she is now.

Kian pulls a face. “I mean, that is very concerning. What makes you say that?”

“Well, I went to an author party last week and an author said something questionable—”

“Questionable?”

“Racist,” she amends. “And I spoke to my manager about it and she was quite dismissive. I always thought life would be much different. But it’s like that song ‘High School Never Ends.’”

“Oh God, I hated that song,” Kian says, attempting to lighten the mood.

“It’s a brilliant song,” Shirin says, taking her phone out of her pocket, as though to put it on.

He puts his hand over hers lightly and says, “God, no.” His hand on hers feels particularly intimate—perhaps because it is Kian’s hand on hers—her face suddenly feeling hot. She looks up to see him looking down at her, smiling, his teeth white and straight, his face decorated with slight laugh lines now, but it is his eyes that are the same—he is the same Kian from back then, after all.

“Okay, okay,” she says, lightly shaking him off because this is all too much and she won’t let herself indulge in it any longer. “I won’t put it on.”

“Thank you. Anyway,” he says, arms out in exaggeration, “this is my space.”

It is a small area of the room with tall white panel dividers, which give some semblance of privacy from the other artists he shares the room with. Tonight they are the only ones there. His desk looks out the window, and on both sides of it are numerous plants, mainly cactuses of various sizes in mismatched pots.

She wanders around the small space and notices some painted canvases that are stacked against the wall. When she looks up at him, she realizes he is staring at her. He quickly looks away and clears his throat.

“Can I?” she asks, to which Kian nods.

She flicks through them. They are portraits of people, each one utilizing a different color palette. There are more of the girl she saw in the summerhouse, and something dawns on her then—something illuminating that takes her momentarily out-of-body.

“Is this your girlfriend?” she asks, not looking up at him. Truth be told, she had been wondering all evening how to ask him if he was seeing anyone. It never came up, until now, and even in this situation it sounds an odd, abrupt question.

She can hear a laugh; it is distant in her ears, less confident than she’s sure he wants it to be. “No,” he says. “Just a friend.”

She turns to him and manages to smile, though she knows it does not look genuine. “She’s, like, naked in some of them.” The key is to keep her tone light, she reminds herself, though that in and of itself is difficult.

He leans against his desk and crosses his arms. His biceps tense and strain against his T-shirt, so she looks down. But then she is faced with his thighs, which are pleasantly thick. So she looks away, out of the window.

“Why? Does that bother you?” he asks gently.

She is momentarily taken aback by how bold his question is. It’s not like she could say Yes, actually it does . (Because it does.)

“No, obviously not.” When she eventually looks at him, he seems incredibly smug, which is why she quickly adds, “Truly, it was just a question.” She doth protest too much, not for the first time in the past twenty-four hours, and she can feel her face coloring.

He nods. “Okay. I believe you.”

She continues to look through the canvases, though she doesn’t focus on any of the art. She is thinking about how to bring the conversation back to safer ground. Then she stumbles upon a portrait of Henry and lets out a sound between a tut and a laugh of derision. Henry’s eyes are big, his lopsided face magnified. Kian has given his face likability somehow, added something extra that gives the piece warmth. If Shirin didn’t dislike her friend’s boyfriend, she might be able to appreciate it.

“I think this is your best piece yet,” she says, rolling her eyes.

He pushes her with his shoulder. “He asked for a portrait to be done of him. It was quite hard to say no, and I thought it’d be good practice.” Kian looks like he is resisting smiling.

She continues her perusal of his space to give herself a break from feeling so stupidly excited. She hasn’t felt this way around a man in a very long time, and it feels in many ways treacherous to have such a reaction now. She is always saying that men are disappointing, but when she says it, she realizes, she never means men like Kian.

Atop his desk is a sketchbook that looks familiar. She is thinking Surely not , and without asking, she reaches for it and flips it open. And there she sees some of his older work from the very beginning, his sketches that were scrappy but beautiful all the same. As she flicks through, she stops when she sees herself reflected on the page. Shirin at fifteen. Her fingertips lightly touch the paper. “You kept this?”

The familiar steps of Kian’s Converse can be heard against the linoleum floor, his nervous laugh audible, too. “Yeah. I keep all my sketches.”

She turns to face him. His face is pink, embarrassed, but he keeps his head up to attempt to mask this.

“Really? All of them?”

He scratches his neck, a vein visible on the back of his hand as he does so. “Only the ones that are special to me.”

She doesn’t allow herself to venture into what this means. It is something she will tuck away to dissect later, when she is alone in her bed and needs something to think about when she is lying awake. “So what you’re saying,” she begins, jokily, “is that I was special to you?” She is smiling, thinking he will laugh and make a dig.

Instead he says, “Yeah, you were, actually.”

She is dumbfounded by this admission. Of course she is. Who says that? Even if they mean it? Especially if they mean it? Resounding now are the words you were . Particularly were. The simple two words make her soar and fall. She imagines herself reaching over, caressing his cheek, and saying I am sorry and I miss you. But when she looks up at his face, she loses her nerve, realizes it’s ten years too late for that, isn’t it? Then, she clears her throat and says, “I best go soon, I’ve got an early-morning meeting with an author tomorrow.”

He nods, the tops of his ears pink now, matching his cheeks, and if it were not for that, she might think him not bothered at all by the abrupt end to their night.