37. Chapter 37
A ria
The call with her landlord lasted seven minutes.
That was all it took to undo ten years.
He was polite, as always. After all, she had been late with her rent only twice in those ten years, and she always made up for it.
He casually mentioned that someone had expressed interest, and would she be alright if they came to see the flat?
She said she understood, and that she was alright with that.
Then she hung up with a strange hollowness pressing into her ribs.
This place, this cramped little unit-with its creaky windows and temperamental plumbing-had been her first real home since everything went to hell.
She'd brought Lule here as a teenager, taken shifts at three jobs to keep the lights on.
It had been theirs, and now it was ending with a quiet conversation and a forwarding address.
Crispin's messages kept coming. They were simple and full of longing. She shouldn't hope.
But she did.
I dream of you most nights. Not just your face, but your voice, your skin. The way you look when you're half-asleep and annoyed with me for breathing too loudly. It's not snoring, I tell you !
She stepped out to get a packet of salt and vinegar crisps that she had been craving. She was halfway down the narrow stairwell, coat barely buttoned, keys in one hand and her phone in the other, when Khalid appeared at the bottom of the steps, a bag of groceries balanced in one arm.
He paused when he saw her. "Binti," he said gently, "I heard you are leaving."
She hadn't planned for him to find out like this, but Khalid had his ear to the ground and knew everything that went on.
"Jiddo, I was going to come find you," she muttered guiltily.
He tilted his head, a knowing expression shadowing his weathered face. "I thought this would happen."
She looked away.
"That young man," he added with faded eyes that saw everything. "Is he the reason?"
There was no judgment in his tone. There was only concern, the deep kind that had weathered years of watching over her. She remembered the first time he had asked her to call him Jiddo-grandfather-back when she and Lule were still like wary wildlings from the woods .
She hesitated. "Not entirely," she said. "But yes."
He nodded once, slowly. "You don't have to explain. But I hope he knows what he's doing. He does not understand your worth."
She swallowed hard. "I need your help. I need to sell something."
"Jewellery?"
"Yes."
"I know someone. Come. I'll take you. Let me put these groceries away."
He knocked at her door within the hour. The shop was tucked into a quiet street in Kensington, the kind of place with no online presence and a single, gold-lettered sign in the window.
Inside, it smelled faintly of old leather and metal polish.
A place that had witnessed thousands of partings and valuations, none of them simple.
Aria laid the items down carefully, each wrapped in soft cotton, each piece a memory.
The watch came first.
A slim, curved piece with a platinum case and a thin leather strap .
The jeweller adjusted his glasses, eyebrows lifting.
"Cartier. Early Platinum Tank Cintrée. July 1926." His voice was reverent. "Very rare. Possibly museum-worthy." He looked at her, cautious. "This isn't stolen, is it?"
"No," she said softly, flipping it over and pointing to the back. Her name was engraved there in small, elegant script: Aria Bektashi.
He nodded and, after a moment, named the price.
Her knees nearly buckled.
She had no idea it was worth that much. It had been a birthday gift from Crispin-he'd called it "a piece of time for the woman who always stole his.
" She had accepted it reluctantly. He'd given her one gift each year, always expensive, always met with resistance.
And always, eventually, worn with silent, secret joy.
It was just that she never knew they were worth this much.
Then came the French antique set. Fraumont. Mid-nineteenth century. Silver and gold, set with glittering diamonds. Another birthday; another year when she'd said, this is too much, and he'd replied, not for you.
She let them go.
But not the white porcelain hair clip .
It looked like nothing special to most-delicate flowers painted in enamel, a few tiny glints that she now knew were actual diamonds. She had worn it the night of the dinner.
She ran her thumb across its edge as Khalid stood beside her, his silent support soothing her in her turmoil.
"No," she whispered. "Not this."
He said nothing, just gave a small nod.
Another message from Crispin.
I think about your body more than I should. The curve of your hips. That spot at the back of your neck where your hair curls, and the way you sigh when my mouth is there.
When they walked out of the shop, the cold bit her skin, but her bank account was warm and full.
Still, she felt no lighter.
Just...emptied in another way.
Still, thanks to Crispin, money was no longer a source of anxiety. She was, to her quiet disbelief, wealthy .
She stood still for a long moment in the narrow hallway when she got back.
The swell of her lower abdomen had become noticeable. Not to strangers yet, but to her, it was impossible to ignore. There was a sensation of pressure there. She woke twice a night to pee. Her breasts were fuller, nipples darker, more sensitive to the brush of fabric.
She was being rewritten, cell by cell, by a force smaller than the palm of her hand.
Still, another message from Crispin.
One week and two days until my birthday. I've never counted days like this before, not even when I was a kid.
Packing was a strange ritual. Each drawer opened unearthed a memory of her.
A chipped mug from her first café job.
A festival ticket from 2011, when she'd taken Lule on a whim after saving for a month.
Crispin's hoodie, worn thin and soft. She could still smell him on it.
One of his white dress shirts. He had insisted she put it on but not button it up.
A box full of nonsense-storybooks, postcards, cheap bangles, Lule's report cards, the first love letter a boy had written her. All of them tied to laughter, to warmth .
She touched each thing, paused, then made decisions without words.
Yet another message from Crispin.
Saw you walking yesterday in that blue dress I love. I sat in the café across the street. You didn't see me. You looked...peaceful. Like you were lost in your own world. But God, Aria, I wanted to follow.
From the fridge, she pulled down the sonogram. The little grainy jellybean, her child. She gently tucked it in the hidden pocket of her handbag.