Chapter 30
She didn’t get the chance to speak to Jasper straight away. This served only to increase her frustration, further amplified by an annoying email from Tony that she picked up on her afternoon break. He was asking her to do a shit-ton more work on this potential opportunity he’d been banging on about. Consequently, when their paths did cross, she had a well-rehearsed script on abandonment and dereliction of duties which she gave him with both barrels.
‘Woah. Easy tiger!’ He seemed more amused than abused by her outburst.
‘Don’t easy tiger me!’
‘Are you okay? You appear to be experiencing a serious lack of self-interest. Do you need to lie down?’
The flush in her chest spread to her face. A guttural moan escaped her throat. ‘Ugh!’
‘Crikey,’ he said. ‘What did Hozan say to you?’
‘He thinks I have a chip in my head.’
He laughed. ‘You’ve definitely got one on your shoulder!’
Her hands clenched. If it wasn’t such a cliche, she’d have beaten her fists against his chest like some 1950s starlet.
‘I’m kidding!’ he said.
‘I’m not in the mood for jokes.’ She sounded like her mother.
Jasper glanced at his watch. The guy wore an analogue watch, for fuck’s sake, like it was still the nineties!
‘Do you want to grab a coffee?’ he said. ‘It’s practically home time and Gayle’s out at a funding meeting. She won’t know if you bunk off for a bit.’
This took the wind out of her sails a little. ‘What kind of coffee?’
The murky, clumped granules in this place were for genuine stimulant emergencies only.
‘I’ll shout you a proper one. At that place up the road.’
There were toilets she needed to clean – Gayle was still laying it on thick – and a pile of ironing she could scale, but she could always come in early again tomorrow.
‘Fine!’ she said.
* * *
The coffee shop was a tiny little place, most of its footprint taken up with the counter and the Tiffany-blue coffee machine that sat on top of it. The smell of the roasted beans was an instant balm to her jangled nerves. Jasper instructed her to grab the only remaining table whilst he ordered. She watched as the barista, a pretty girl with an ugly fringe who knew him by name, flirted with him as she made the drinks. It was odd. She hadn’t really considered him at large in the general population, interacting with people, or being fancied by them. Sure, he had the physique of an Action Man and the temperament of a puckish puppy, but she’d only ever really considered him within the confines of her own playroom.
‘One very pink beetroot latte with oat milk.’ He handed her the drink.
‘Thanks.’
He’d gotten himself a croissant and a black coffee. He placed them on the table and eyed her curiously. ‘Not going to take a photo of your drink for the gram?’
Apart from the occasional check-in on the girls, her self-imposed hiatus from the platform continued. Now, whenever she was at a loss as to what to do for a few minutes, she grabbed a sudoku or a crossword book. She felt much better for it.
‘I see you have a keen real-life follower.’ She motioned to the barista.
‘Who, Roxy? She’s lovely, but far too young for me.’
That was so typically right-on of him. The woman must have been at least mid-to-late twenties, which surely wasn’t an obscene discrepancy; certainly less than what stood between her and Marcus.
He opened a sugar and slowly and deliberately added half of the packet to his drink. She’d noticed that about him: all his actions and movements were so intentional. Not in a self-conscious way, just that he carefully considered everything. She wondered about his background and how he’d come to be so assured.
‘You asked me about Hozan and why I wasn’t doing more to help him,’ he said. He stared at his cup as he stirred, as if expecting an apparition to appear in it. He’d suddenly become very serious. ‘It’s a tough one.’ He tapped the spoon on the rim of the cup and then gently placed it on the saucer. ‘Hozan is a Turkish Kurd. Do you know anything about that situation?’
She hadn’t expected to hear that question in a lifetime, let alone twice in a day. She filled him in on their conversation, her frustration rising as she did so.
He nodded. ‘I get it. I really do. And I don’t pretend to know a great deal about what’s going on over there. Geopolitics, ethnopolitics, that’s way above my paygrade. But did he tell you much about afterwards?’
He hadn’t.
‘Hozan sought asylum in the UK in the late nineties. He’d have still been in his twenties, if you can imagine that?’
She couldn’t.
‘He sold everything he had to come to the UK. Two and a half thousand miles, in who knows what conditions, presumably in fear of his life the whole way. And then he arrives on British soil, hoping to make a new life for himself. The process is meant to take six months, but at that point the system had really started coming under pressure, so I think it took much longer. During that time, he wasn’t entitled to accommodation, and he couldn’t work or earn money, so he was entirely at the mercy of the state. On top of that, his father was killed. He couldn’t return to Turkey – it wouldn’t have been safe – nor could he send any financial support for his mother. So he had to deal with his crushing grief and his feelings of inadequacy here in this weird no man’s land. No friends. No family. No home. It must have been unimaginably difficult.’
Simone had a mental image of when she’d moaned to Jasper and Street Pete about her mortgage. She swallowed hard at the memory. First world problems.
‘At that point, the story gets less clear. We assume he was granted leave to remain, but neither Gayle nor I have found any record of him, and he claims not to have any personal ID. As you know, he doesn’t trust authority, so I wouldn’t be surprised if Hozan isn’t his real name. He was on the streets and off the grid for a long time.’
‘How the hell did he survive?’
‘You tell me. But he did.’
‘Surely he’s entitled to a bed though?’
‘Our place, the accommodation at least, it’s meant to be a temporary thing. If we don’t know who he is, we can’t work out what he’s entitled to, and therefore he gets the bare minimum.’
He tore a little off his pastry but made no attempt to eat it.
‘Luckily,’ he said, ‘back when he first came to our attention, someone had the idea of giving him a vehicle, so he became a fixture in the car park instead. He’s not doing anyone any harm, and he seems content enough to have found somewhere as stable as he’s ever likely to get.’
‘But couldn’t you still be helping him mentally?’
‘To do what?’
‘You know. Join the real world.’
He laughed bitterly. ‘The last time I looked, that wasn’t such a great place to live.’
It was a rare display of disillusionment from him.
‘So you’ve given up?’
‘Anything but primary care is denied to non-citizens. I’m worried if I dig too deep, I’ll learn something about his status that I don’t want to know. Besides, the downsides of treatment are often a high price to pay. Antipsychotics can shrink the brain, cause tics and spasms, and come with a higher suicide incidence.’
‘A real Sophie’s choice.’
‘Precisely. As you have so eloquently pointed out before, I’m no psychiatrist, but from what I can tell, whilst the drugs dull the senses and curtail the emotions, they can’t remove the memories.’ He shook his head sadly.
‘But the life he could live if he was…’ She stopped herself.
‘Were you going to say normal?’
She nodded, abashed.
‘Define normal,’ he said.
‘But he patently believes things that aren’t true!’
‘Who doesn’t to a certain extent? Who hasn’t incorrectly read something into a look, or a text message, or the way someone spoke to us? It’s all a spectrum.’
‘Are you suggesting we’re all mentally ill?’
‘I’m saying we all suffer from irrational thoughts.’
‘I don’t!’
‘Really?’ He leaned forward. ‘Simone, you think buying shoes will make you happy!’
‘No, I don’t!’
‘Really? Haven’t you ever convinced yourself that if you bought those shoes, or that dress, or that fancy flat, then everything in your life would magically fall into place?’
Yes. She’d thought all those things, but didn’t everyone?
‘Just because your delusion is one that more people buy into,’ he said, ‘doesn’t mean that you’re not suffering from a form of madness. It’s just a more sociably acceptable kind.’
He did his signature cross-between-a-smile-and-a-shrug thing. Was that where the word ‘smug’ came from? It was maddening, but there was something in what he said.
‘Fine. You win.’
He looked up at the ceiling, as if calling on a higher power. ‘This is meant to be a conversation, not a competition.’ He sighed. ‘And besides, making people normal isn’t the only way. Accepting difference. Learning to live with it. Acknowledging people as they are. He’s just a man. Sure, his life choices and experiences are different from ours, but that doesn’t make him less worthy of our love and attention. Same goes for anyone. We’re all just a little bit lost, trying to find our way as best we can.’
She examined Jasper’s open face. How had he ever felt lost? His whole bearing screamed sorted. He was, without doubt, the most philosophically minded person she’d ever spoken to. To think she’d considered herself out of his league when, intellectually and emotionally, he was obviously superior. A myriad of questions formed on her lips. There was so much more she wanted to ask him, so much more she felt she might learn from him. But where to start?
He checked his watch. ‘You’ll be relieved to know it’s home time.’
Nope. She’d never been less relieved for a day to end. He offered her the remains of his croissant, which she ate whilst he took their empties back up to Roxy. She hoped the barista didn’t take it as a sign of interest; she wasn’t so old and jaded to have forgotten the exquisite ache of an unrequited crush. But it did beg the question: exactly what age did Jasper like his girlfriends to be?