Chapter Thirteen
Are you still watching?
The question strikes Anika as rude, even as she rolls into her fifth hour of streaming.
She hits yes and stretches over to switch on the lamp by the sofa as the vivid purples and pinks of the summer light outside finally begin to fade.
It’s been ten days since she came home and it’s amazing how much better she’s feeling having time to just chill, but maybe she is beginning to get restless.
As she eventually makes her way to the bathroom to get ready for bed, she strips off her T-shirt and inspects the neat scar starting to form on her abdomen, then glances at herself in the mirror.
She looks thinner but also stronger – her muscles tighter, curves still somehow supple.
There’s nothing in the reflection that she wants to critique, she realises.
‘You look … good,’ she tells herself. It’s like she’s begun inhabiting an alien craft – one chock full of potential if only she could figure out how to use it.
Getting into bed, she settles back on her pillows and picks up the diary. She takes a deep breath and on the next blank page, she enters tomorrow’s date.
Thursday 21st July
I’m pretty much back to fighting fitness and I’m gonna stay that way.
Today I decided that if I’m going to have to go back to work soon I’m going to do it looking like a bad bitch, so I went to the hairdressers and the health and wealth of my curls is abundant.
I went for a hot-pink dye job, but the bleach, colour and cut had no effect on their lustre. I’m looking fire, I feel great …
She reads over what she’s written so far, biting back a goofy smile.
It’s not massively far-fetched. Anika decides to see if she can actually book in to the one place in Brixton she knows might be able to achieve the look she’s described, but it’s likely that by the time she calls in the morning they’ll be booked up for this week and next, so …
‘OK, manifestation or pessimism?’ she asks herself out loud.
A makeover is something to aim for at least. Her external reinvention, if it works out, might also make a difference to how she feels inside.
Then again, things have already changed deep inside her.
Something that was growing unseen and threatening was now gone.
What will arrive in the space left behind?
Thursday 19th July
Anika is almost scared to look. She’s deliberately kept her head in a book and her eyes averted from the mirror since the hairdresser unravelled the foils, had a junior wash out the dye, and then brought her back to the chair from the sinks.
He’s been putting in serums and snipping errant hairs for a good half hour, and now she’s squeezing her eyes shut while he gets her to tip her head over for the diffuser hair-dry.
A short while later, Kai, the stylist, sits her back up and finishes the last touches.
‘Oh, wow, I have outdone myself, if I do say so … myself.’ He chuckles, putting his hands on her shoulders. ‘Anika, sweetheart, I think you’re gonna want to take a look!’
She managed to get an appointment at the salon after a last-minute cancellation. Gradually, she lifts one eyelid then the other, peeking at herself in the opulent gold-framed mirror.
‘Holy shit,’ she whispers. Her hair is rich with tight, defined, bouncing curls that graduate from her natural dark at the roots into a vivid pink.
She slowly reaches up to touch it. ‘Kai, you’re a miracle worker.
’ A grin spreads across her face as she looks at her reflection. It’s hard to believe it’s her.
‘Don’t I know it, doll,’ he tells her with a wink, then undoes the hairdresser’s cape from around her neck and flicks it aside with a flourish. ‘Lustrous!’
Pulling out her phone, Anika snaps some photographs of herself in the mirror, and a selfie, too, as if she might require evidence later.
‘Jeez!’ Shameeka shouts like a female Giggs as she sees Anika approaching her outside the Ritzy a short while later. ‘Oh … my … God. Babe! Like, what the fuck?’ She waves her hand around her friend’s head, hanging her jaw open exaggeratedly.
‘You only live once, right?’ Anika says ironically, then grins and shrugs.
‘Hitting reset and that.’ She bends down to the pushchair Shameeka has beside her.
Deon’s huge brown eyes peer back up at her, his adorable Afro shooting up into a peak above his head.
He openly laughs and points at her new ’do, but she decides to take it as a compliment.
‘Yeah.’ Shameeka’s tone is more serious as they head across the road.
She’s joined a new members bar on the roof of a nearby building.
Anika always jokes that Shamz is the first to decry gentrification, but also the first to enjoy a bougie space.
Her friend’s suede loafers flap a little as her slim calves peek out from the long, tan shorts she’s tucked a clean white tee into.
As she realises she’s edging ahead with the pushchair, she slows down a bit.
‘Oh, sorry, Neeks, here’s me forgetting you’ve just had surgery—’
‘Actually, I’m feeling pretty good, you know. I didn’t expect it, but …’ She pauses, remembering her manifestations. ‘Well, either way, I’m not going to jinx it, but I’m not doing too bad. Can’t complain, eh?’
‘I wouldn’t blame you if you did, though, hon.
’ She waves a fob at the nondescript door they’ve stopped in front of, and then they step inside and enter the lobby space – a small, chic area with exposed brick and dramatic artwork.
Two tall white men both wearing fisherman beanies are flirting with the receptionist. They turn around and eye the women as they enter, Anika holding the door open for Deon’s pushchair.
Shameeka’s eyes dare them to query if she should be bringing her child to this type of establishment, but Anika realises the two guys’ stares seem to be lingering on her.
‘Babe, hold the lift for us,’ Shameeka says over her shoulder, sniffing the air exaggeratedly as she signs them in at the reception desk. ‘D needs a change, asap.’
Anika grimaces into a smile. One of the men, with a reddish beard, is grinning openly at her as he leans against the far end of the reception desk while his friend moves towards the elevator button.
She decides to seize the opening. ‘Uh, sorry, lads, are you all right if we hop in the lift first?’ She gestures to Shamz and Deon, and then towards the tiny lift.
‘Three’s already a crowd, right?’ A flicker of an eyebrow-raise accompanies this, and the man with the lumberjack beard grins at her as he steps aside with an exaggerated sweep of his arm.
Anika stifles an eye-roll and says thanks, then Shamz steps inside the lift as it arrives on the ground floor.
‘Oh, my days, Neeks! Them man were ready to pounce on you!’ Shameeka says with a laugh as the doors slide closed.
Anika isn’t sure that’s necessarily a good thing, but the injection of confidence is welcome at least. She smiles bashfully, looking at her reflection in the mirrored wall of the lift.
Her skin is glowing against her blue sleeveless top and high-waisted denim cut-offs. She does look pretty good.
They manage to snag the last free table outside on the club’s sunny roof terrace, with the vivid azure sky slightly shielded by a wooden-slatted shelter.
Shameeka lifts her son out of his pushchair, taking him swiftly to the toilets.
When she returns with the toddler smelling markedly fresher, they order some fries and – on Shameeka’s insistence – vegan ‘calamari’ for the table alongside their drinks.
Anika surprises herself with how hungrily she falls on the snacks when they arrive, as if she has newfound tastebuds.
Even the faux fish tastes good. Shameeka hands a chip to Deon, who grips it experimentally in his little fist, nibbles it, then deposits it on the floor.
His mother and Anika ignore the debris for the moment and sip their pressed-juice virgin cocktails.
Anika relishes the feeling of the sun on her skin, slipping her birthday sunglasses on.
‘You know,’ Shameeka says. ‘I was thinking about what you said back there, about a reset – a new start.’ She lifts her own sunglasses up on top of her head. Anika takes off her shades again, too. She can sense her friend has something serious on her mind.
‘Yeah?’
‘The day you were heading into surgery, I prayed. I haven’t done that in quite a long time.’ Anika nods quietly. She isn’t religious, but she knows how difficult Shameeka’s relationship with the church has been. ‘Like, I was fully on my knees,’ she continues, then shakes her head wistfully.
Anika reaches for her hand. ‘Thank you so much, Shamz. I wouldn’t have got through all of this without you.’
Shameeka squeezes her fingers in return. ‘Neeks, it was truly nothing you wouldn’t have done for me.’ She leans forward to take a sip of her drink, then exhales hard. ‘Do you ever think “why me?” with all this?’ she asks, leaning one elbow on the table to study Anika more closely.
Anika shakes her head, feeling her curls bounce. ‘To be completely honest, babe – no. I think … why not me? I’m not special.’
Shameeka leans back. ‘You are special, Neeks.’ She holds Anika’s gaze pointedly.
‘Anyway …’ She draws in a long breath. ‘My point is, Dirty Thirties are here – you made it! You’ve joined me on the other side!
You’ll be having one of these soon.’ She nods at her son and pulls a biodegradable wet wipe out of the packet she’s left on the table to clean Deon’s small, chubby hands.
Anika laughs. ‘Yeah, because I have a man waiting in the wings to shoot up the club,’ she says sarcastically. Shameeka laughs too, flipping her sunglasses back onto her nose and peering at her friend over them. ‘Lack of a man didn’t stop me, babe.’ She points this out with a wink.
‘That’s different, obviously.’
Shameeka drains her drink. ‘Trust me, I hit thirty and it was a wrap. No more partying – it was straight-up adult business.’
‘You’re only three years ahead of me.’
She watches as her friend’s eyes drift down to her phone on the table.
‘Sorry, one sec …’ Shameeka says distractedly, tapping open an email.
She isn’t joking about adulting – Shamz is the head of her department at work.
Anika often wonders how she stays on top of it all.
‘Ah, shit, yeah!’ Her friend beams down at her screen.
‘I totally forgot Ayo was dealing with this account. She’s just forwarded me something, speaking of parties … ’
‘Yeah?’ Anika asks, distracted by playing with Deon’s little toes in his highchair.
‘You know that film End of the Day? It’s written by that guy from the SpinRadio breakfast show—’
‘Cam Asiedu,’ Anika says quickly, then straightens self-consciously in her seat.
‘Yeah, yeah, him.’ Shameeka is still scanning the email.
‘You’re gonna come to this thing with me.
See if you can meet some men.’ She glances at Anika with a grin then looks away again, clearly not clocking the widening of her friend’s eyes.
‘Ayo got our firm a load of guest-list for this pre-release screening and party, because she’s working with FlashMedia and they’re handling part of the PR … ’
Tuning out of Shamz’s comms speak, Anika swallows a long drink of water from the glass in front of her.
All she heard was that she’ll have a chance to go to an event for Cam Asiedu’s film.
Just how intimate are these types of functions?
The idea of being introduced to Cam and somehow spontaneously combusting with awkwardness is giving her pause.
‘OK, so this thing is in a couple of weeks, I think?’ Shamz is saying. ‘You’ll be up for a night out by then, yeah?’ She indicates Anika’s midriff. ‘They’ll sort the full guest list later, but I’ll get Ayo to put our names down now if you think you won’t still be a bit achy.’
‘Er …’ Fuck it. ‘No, yeah, I reckon I’ll be fine. I’d been planning to check the film out anyway, sounds good,’ Anika says, wondering if she sounds sufficiently nonchalant.
As if she’s somehow caught a glimpse of her thoughts, Anika’s friend snaps her fingers.
‘Oh, shit, but actually, hang on! The station Cam Asiedu works at is in the same building as you, innit? SpinRadio? Have you seen him about? He’s pretty nice, yeah?
’ She waggles her eyebrows and Anika feels her armpits heat. ‘What’s the tea with him, coz maybe …’
Anika attempts a shrug. ‘He has a girlfriend. I think?’ She pulls a face in spite of herself.
‘Is it?’ Shamz laughs a little, gesturing to the waiter for the bill. ‘Too bad. Well, there’s plenty of dick in the sea, or so I’m told.’
This elicits a chuckle from Anika, and then she notices the guys from the lifts watching her again.
If she’s honest, what Anika craves is just a good old-fashioned fuck.
She dug out her vibrator late last night, not quite satisfied with her fingers even as she was pleased that her capacity to orgasm wasn’t somehow dulled by the surgery.
And yet she’s eager for more. A ‘former-gap-yah’ media dude isn’t what she has in mind, though, and the man she thought about as she touched herself last night is consigned to a fantasy, even if he might be closer than she thought.
But it’s giving her another idea for the diary.
‘I’ll pay for this, hon,’ she tells Shameeka quickly when the bill comes.
‘You’re always getting everything.’ It’s true – she owes her friend so much more than a couple of drinks and some snacks, though looking at the bill, she sees that her spark of generosity is going to put more of a dent in her purse than she expected.
Come to think of it, if she really wants to manifest something, a boost to her bank balance isn’t a bad idea either.
Time to go home and do a bit of creative writing.