Chapter Sixteen
After our emotional moment in the Selfridge’s changing room, I let Lucy persuade me to go to a fancy Japanese restaurant with her, so we could ‘test out my new look’ – her words. I didn’t know what she meant by that. I was hardly a showroom car going for a test drive.
We stepped back onto Oxford Street, laden with so many bags that it was a struggle to keep track of them all. It was dark and the twinkling Christmas lights that decorated the street and all the shop windows created a magical atmosphere that I’ve loved since I was a child. There’s nothing quite like Christmas in London: the lights, the songs playing in all the shops, the spiced drinks. My family and I don’t celebrate it though, unless you count the family roast dinner on Christmas Day and the baked salmon the day after because it’s heavily discounted in Morrisons.
‘Here we are,’ Lucy said, pushing open the heavy glass door to the restaurant, which was just around the corner from Selfridge’s. I followed her into the dimly lit room, where the waiter hurried to relieve us of our bright yellow bags before ushering us to a table at the back.
I slipped off my brand-new coat and brown leather handbag – a mid-range one because I wasn’t ready to part with three grand for the sake of a fancy logo the way Lucy wanted me to – before carefully hanging my coat on the back of my chair and placing my bag on my lap. I hoped I wasn’t going to ruin them seconds after I’d bought them. I had been known to spill soya sauce on my clothes before, with my chopstick-handling skills being borderline inadequate.
As I took my seat opposite Lucy, who had already begun to pore over the menu, I felt the uncomfortable sensation of someone looking at me. Turning around, I found Zakariya staring at me in disbelief. Our eyes connected and I instantly looked away, embarrassed. Why did he have to be in this restaurant, of all places? I hadn’t heard from him at all since I sent the rejection text and now, he was right there, ready to make my dinner experience as awkward as all of our previous interactions.
‘Don’t look now, but remember that guy I had to meet for marriage a few weeks ago? He’s here, in the restaurant,’ I murmured to Lucy, who automatically turned to look.
‘Lucy! I told you not to look now!’
‘Sorry.’ She didn’t look particularly sorry. ‘The Asian guy in the suit?’
‘Yes! And don’t you dare look at him again. He’ll know we’re talking about him!’
‘Maya, I need to check him out properly! I didn’t get a good look the first time!’
‘You can’t!’
‘Just quickly!’ Lucy, completely ignoring my pleas, looked over at Zakariya’s table again. ‘Ooh, he’s a bit of a fittie, isn’t he? You sure you don’t want to give him another chance?’
The rest of the meal was torture. While I should have been enjoying my new hair and the way it elegantly swished around my face, I couldn’t. I kept wanting to look over at Zakariya to see if he really was looking at me the way I thought he was. This was the second time I had run into him and the third time we had ‘met’. Why did God keep planting him in my face like this?
‘It’s called coincidence, not divine intervention,’ Lucy said with a giggle when I posed the same question to her. I felt my stomach tighten at her response. Not because she didn’t believe in God. A person’s faith, or lack of, had no bearing on how I felt about them. But it was at that exact moment that I missed Dina. She would have thought it was fate – or qadr – that we kept bumping into each other.
Lucy and I parted ways after dinner. Somehow, while she was wandering around the department store creating content, she had met a man and now had a drinks date, despite dating someone else ‘casually’. I wasn’t surprised. Lucy collected dates – or ‘sneaky links’ as she called them – like I collected Clubcard points. I was in awe of her talent and ability to put herself out there, time and time again.
It did, however, mean that I was now lumbered with all my bags. As I struggled to carry them while I took my phone out to book a ride home, Zakariya came out onto the pavement. I was hoping to avoid him altogether. The fact that he hadn’t come over to say hello meant that he also wanted to steer clear of me. Whatever the reason, I planned to disappear to avoid any awkward conversation.
‘Hey, salaams, Maya,’ he said casually, watching me as I dropped a bag in my haste to book an Uber and get away from him. ‘How are you? You look really different.’
‘Wa alaikum salaam,’ I mumbled back, my face heating up almost immediately. Why did he mention the way I looked? Was it a good ‘different’ or bad ‘different’? Flustered, I ignored the comment and reluctantly answered his question, ‘Good, thanks. You?’
‘All right, considering. Do you need any help with those bags? What did you do, buy up the whole of Selfridge’s?’
‘No, it’s OK,’ I replied casually, grateful that the phone in my hand meant that I didn’t have to look at him. ‘I’m trying to book an Uber and the next one is available in .?.?. thirty-two minutes ? What the hell?’
‘It’s hard to get them in central London these days,’ he said and I couldn’t tell from his tone if he was taking the mick or being serious. ‘My car’s around the corner if you would like a lift home.’
His offer came at the same time as I felt a drop of rain on my newly styled hair. I stared at my fifteen yellow paper bags in dismay and thought about all the beautiful new things they contained, not to mention my expensive hair and makeup. Was it worth ruining my epic makeover for the sake of my pride and dignity?
‘I would love a lift, thank you,’ I managed to croak as graciously as possible.
Within seconds, he had scooped up most of my bags and I trailed behind him with the rest, trying to match his long strides with my much shorter ones.
‘Thanks,’ I said, as Zakariya held the door of his fancy Mercedes open and I climbed inside, seconds before it really began to pour down with rain. He took the last few bags off me and stuffed them into the back of the car. When he finally got in, he was drenched. His hair lay lank and limp across his forehead and his eyelashes, which were abnormally and unfairly long, had drops of rain clinging to them.
‘Here,’ I said, pulling out a pack of tissues and handing him a couple. He took them gratefully and wiped his face, before switching the engine and the heating on.
‘What’s your postcode?’ he asked, turning to me. I got the sudden, overwhelming desire to brush away a lock of wet hair that had fallen across his forehead. With a gulp, I told him and hastily averted my gaze as he typed it into his phone and then pulled away from the kerb.
We began to drive through London in silence. The radio was on, but so quietly that I could barely discern what song was playing. The rain was louder, beating down heavily on the windscreen, the wipers thrashing away but unable to keep up. Zakariya didn’t seem to mind the rain or the silence. I glanced at him a couple of times. He had a nice profile, more so because of his beard and his straight nose. I thought back to Noah’s nose. I remembered it being imperfectly lovely, but I couldn’t remember why. He was fading from my memory faster than I thought he would. Painfully fast. Would I ever see him again, or was that morning on the Tube all the time I was destined to get with him?
‘That’s the third time you’ve looked at me.’ Zakariya’s low voice broke the silence and once again, heat rushed to my cheeks. Why did he always go out of his way to embarrass me?
‘I’m trying to figure out why you’re being so nice to me,’ I replied stiffly, turning to look out the window. Not that I could see much in the dark and rain. London was a blur of lights and buildings.
‘Why wouldn’t I be?’
‘We didn’t exactly part ways on a positive note,’ I replied frankly. Whatever game he was playing, I wasn’t about to be a part of it. ‘And you didn’t reply to my text message either.’
‘The one where you dumped me?’
‘There was nothing to dump. It’s not like we were dating!’
‘Dating? Interesting term. Not very Islamic.’
‘What am I supposed to call it, then?’
‘Seeing each other? Courting? Talking? Getting to know one another?’
‘Whatever you want to call it, Islamic or otherwise, we weren’t doing any of that. Therefore, it was hardly a break-up text.’
‘Have you sent a break-up text before?’ His sudden change of tone surprised me. I raised an eyebrow and looked at him again. His gaze was straight ahead at the road, but he was smirking.
‘Too many to count,’ I lied, folding my arms across my chest. He looked at me quizzically, unable to determine whether I was winding him up or being serious.
We continued sparring as he drove up to Marylebone but somehow, by the time we got to Camden, we’d started having a normal conversation. By Holloway, we were talking about work and I ended up telling him about my list (omitting the whole ‘Noah’ part of it) and how I wanted to go back to further education. To my surprise, he seemed to understand where I was coming from and agreed that I should do whatever I needed to do to feel content. He told me about an Arabic class he was taking, because a job opportunity had come up for him to work in Dubai for a year. Like me, he was also feeling like life had become stagnant and he needed to shake things up.
‘You know you don’t need Arabic to work in the Gulf,’ I told him. ‘They speak English everywhere.’
‘I know,’ he replied with a shrug. ‘But I don’t want to be one of those expats who don’t evolve or learn anything about their host country’s culture. I want to make the most of it.’
I found it strange that he was planning to move abroad in the middle of trying to get married. If this was his intention, why had he put me through all the drama of meeting him? Forget the fact that my mum made me scrub every inch of the house until my hands almost bled, forget the fact that I was paraded around in front of him like a concubine, what was worse was how my parents had behaved with me since. I was the family pariah because I exercised my God-given right to say no.
Before I could persuade myself not to pry, I blurted the question out.
‘Why did you meet me if you’re planning to move abroad?’
We were passing Finsbury Park now, so we didn’t have a lot of time before we arrived at Turnpike Lane, maybe ten minutes or so. If I didn’t ask now, I would never find out.
‘My parents aren’t happy that I’m moving abroad,’ he said, looking as pained as I felt. ‘They’re scared I’m going to meet the daughter of a Russian oligarch out there and their dreams of having a Bengali bahu would be dashed forever.’
‘Wow. So they made you agree to meet prospective partners if you wanted their blessing? Hoped you would meet someone and take a wife with you?’
‘Basically, yes. How did you know?’
I couldn’t help but laugh at the irony of it all. I knew it wasn’t as hilarious as I was making it out to be, but once the giggles started, they wouldn’t stop. Zakariya continued driving but kept glancing at me in bewilderment as I snorted until tears filled my eyes. The look on his face only made me laugh harder.
‘OK then,’ he said when I finally stopped, minutes before we reached my house. ‘I don’t know if I want to know what has you in hysterics right now.’
‘Our lives are a lot more similar than you would think,’ I managed to say in between hiccups. ‘My parents cut a similar deal with me when I told them I wanted to go back to uni.’
Zakariya laughed and shook his head. ‘What a pair we are, agreeing to marriage so we can do what we want to do in life.’
‘Pretty tragic really,’ I replied. ‘I’m glad I’m not the only one dealing with this.’
Zakariya pulled into my street and double parked outside my house. The rain had stopped a while before, but I felt the urge to stay in the car for longer. He was so easy to talk to, almost like a different person from the one who came to the marriage meeting. But obviously I couldn’t. He had made it clear that he wasn’t interested in marrying me or anyone. He was keeping his parents happy. Mistaking his good manners for anything more would be foolish and naive.
‘Thank you so much for the ride,’ I said, as he put the hazard lights on and began climbing out of the car. I stared at the door in surprise, wondering why he was getting out. Surely, he didn’t think it would be appropriate to come inside the house and chat with my parents? This wasn’t an American teen movie. My dad wouldn’t pretend to be overprotective and tell us that we could hang out in my room if the door was open. My parents would kill me if they knew I was risking my reputation by accepting a lift from not just any man, but one who knew people in my extended family. I got the impression that they would be less concerned if there was a smaller chance of the grapevine finding out about my shenanigans.
I didn’t have to worry though, because all Zakariya did was come over to the passenger side and open the door for me, before getting all my bags out of the boot and backseat and handing them to me carefully, so I didn’t drop any of my precious new wardrobe into a puddle.
‘I forgot to say that your new hair looks really nice,’ he said as I thanked him again and began to walk towards the house. I turned back to gape at him, but he was already climbing back into the car.
Unable to stop the smile spreading across my face, I trudged up the path and let myself into the house. As soon as I got to my room, I dropped all my bags to the floor and collapsed onto the bed. What had happened? Were we friends now? Would I ever see him again? Was I reading into it too much? Probably. He seemed to be the sort of person who said whatever was on his mind, offensive or otherwise. Whatever it was, I hadn’t felt this good in a long time. And the best part was, most of it was nothing to do with Zakariya, but everything to do with the amazing day I’d had with Lucy.