Chapter 9
Before
Kasie loved to describe herself as a creature of habit.
She banded it about as if it were a positive thing that said all you needed to know about her.
And in some ways, yes, she liked what she liked and wasn’t interested in straying far from it.
Though there was another side to Kasie, one I had noticed was steadily raising its head ever since she’d moved away from her family home.
One that was enquiring about new things and tentatively dipping its toe into new experiences.
I didn’t draw attention to it, because Kasie was like a cat; if you showed her you were too keen, she would back off.
‘There’s so much stuff on the menu,’ she said as we sat across from each other at Vasantha’s, the cheap curry house she always chose when we wanted to eat out locally. ‘I might mix it up. Try the dal makhani.’
We’d been eating there for over a year, and she’d never considered ordering anything other than chicken biriyani.
‘Yes,’ she said, folding her hands over the menu as if to say case closed. ‘Dal makhani.’
I held back my grin. ‘Go for it.’
‘Do you have a comment to make about dal makhani?’ she asked, while narrowing her eyes at me.
‘No. It’ll be nice, I’m sure.’
She reopened the menu. ‘Do we think it’s going to be spicy?’
‘Isn’t makhani butter?’
‘I don’t know Google, is it?’
This time I laughed behind my own menu.
‘Know-it-all,’ she muttered, while digging around in her bag. She pulled out her pink glittery water bottle and chugged from it.
Vasantha’s was always overheated, and its service was confusingly slow, yet it was cheap, the portions were enough that you’d have dinner for the next day, and its samosa was postcode famous.
‘This needs to be the last time we’re eating out,’ she said. ‘The flight prices to Italy are insane. We need to save.’
‘Italy?’
We’d been to Italy the previous two years and while I’d loved those trips, I wasn’t quite sold on spending so much money to go again.
‘That’s not a happy holiday face,’ Kasie said. ‘You don’t want to go?’
‘Course I want to go. I want to go away with you, I just . . . Nothing. Italy will be great.’
The waiter came for our order. I hadn’t had the chance to look so went with chicken biriyani; if Kasie didn’t like her dal makhani we could swap.
‘Where do you want to go?’ she asked.
‘Everywhere.’ It was the absolute truth. Sometimes I’d sit for hours watching travel vlogs on YouTube, overwhelmed with how many places I’d yet to see.
‘Too vague,’ Kasie said with a wave of her hands. ‘Where’s your number one place?’
‘Indonesia.’
Kasie slammed a hand on the table in fake outrage. ‘Indonesia? Do you think this is your honeymoon? I’m not going all the way there with you.’
‘You asked where I’d want to go.’
‘I meant with me,’ she specified. ‘Girls trip, not trip of a lifetime.’
‘Cambodia?’ I tried. ‘I know you’ve always wanted to go too.’
Unease flashed across her face, then she pushed it away. ‘I’ve always wanted to see penguins in the Arctic too, but I ain’t going there.’
‘Penguins live in the Antarctic,’ I said.
‘Zoe.’
‘Sorry. You’re right, you’re right.’ I was embarrassed I’d mentioned it. The furthest Kasie had travelled was to Nigeria when she’d been a teenager. She’d stayed with her extended family and claimed to have hated every second of being so far away from all that she knew.
‘The cost of Cambodia would be . . .’ Kasie whistled and drizzled a poppadom with raita. ‘Pipe dream.’
‘Of course.’
The poppadom curled under the sauce, and she had to scoop it up with a fork. The poppadoms were always slightly too soft at Vasantha’s, as if they’d been sitting around for days.
‘I don’t know why I said somewhere in Asia.
It was stupid. The long flights. The heat.
The risks.’ My mind flipped through all the things we would have to worry about on a trip like that.
‘At least let’s go somewhere different within Europe.
Maybe we push it to next spring and do Croatia, Bulgaria or even Bosnia. These places are so interesting.’
Kasie’s head tipped to the side. ‘Bosnia? What we going there for?’
‘Culture.’
‘I’m not interested in those kinds of places. Do I need to show you the travelling-while-black hashtag?’
‘Not this again.’
‘I’m not going on holiday for a bunch of Eastern European people to stare at me.’
Anytime I brought up travelling, Kasie referred to this hashtag, as if it were the TripAdvisor for racism. I’d once asked my mum if people looked at her when she travelled and she told me she got stared at wherever she went; gift and curse, she’d said with a pout.
Kasie beckoned me over to her side of the table and we had a scroll through the hashtag.
Most of it was from black influencers travelling through parts of Asia and Eastern Europe, where locals were clearly not used to Western visitors brandishing cameras and speaking the local language.
Despite Kasie bringing it up as a legitimate concern, she belly-laughed at the perceived micro-aggressions and shouted at her phone, ‘What did you expect? Why are you there?’
‘Forget about Bosnia.’ I moved back to my seat slightly defeated.
Kasie stayed with her phone while I tried to get the waiter’s attention. How long could it possibly take to microwave some average food?
‘This is doable,’ Kasie said as she quickly flicked her screen my way. I didn’t catch what she was showing me. ‘The average January temperature in Cambodia is twenty-five. And we could break up the flight.’
Was she serious?
The food arrived and Kasie poked at hers suspiciously. ‘What would I eat in Cambodia?’
‘Food,’ I offered.
‘I’d be so paranoid about food poisoning. I’d be like Charlotte when she went to Mexico and lived on chocolate pudding.’
‘Charlotte from your work?’ I asked.
‘Charlotte from Sex and the City. Why have I never made you watch Sex and the City?’
‘You did. I hated it. The women were so annoying. Come on, try the dal.’
‘Cambodia would be amazing. I could have my photo taken at Angkor Wat like Lara Croft.’
‘I knew there was a geeky reason you wanted to go there.’
A geeky reason and also a desire to throw away restrictions.
I wanted that for her too, but now the idea was out there, the difficulties felt steep.
The problems with getting insurance, the pressure a long-haul flight would put on her body, the unpredictability of a healthcare system in a country like Cambodia.
‘What about Morocco?’ I tried. ‘The flight is short.’
‘You’ve been before.’
‘I’d go again.’
Kasie lowered her head to sniff her meal.
‘Maybe talk to Amara first,’ I tried.
‘My mum is the person I go to when I want to be talked out of something.’
Which is exactly why I’d suggested it.
‘I should call your mum,’ Kasie said, ‘Eartha’s the most encouraging person in the world.’ Kasie tasted a small spoon of her dal then a much bigger one. ‘This is nice. Try it.’
I reached over to scoop some out. ‘It’s so bland.’
‘No, it’s not.’
‘It tastes like air.’
She pulled the bowl tenderly towards herself. ‘Stop talking about my food. So, it’s settled.’
‘What?’
‘You, me, Cambodia.’
I took a deep breath and hoped my anxieties weren’t showing too much.
‘I’m also,’ Kasie said as she raised her spoon, ‘going to get this dish every single time I come here from now on.’
By the end of the following week, we had, after a call with Kasie’s nurse and many hours cruising #TravellingWhileBlack, both booked ten days off work and return flights to Cambodia.