Chapter Twenty
‘To our last day of the Whole Dirty 30,’ Lucy said, raising her glass of water as a toast.
‘To our last day of this hellish lifestyle,’ I replied, tipping my glass towards her. ‘May we never again have to give up life’s simple pleasures for the sake of our health.’
‘Amen. Or for the sake of a man.’
‘Ameen.’
Clinking our glasses, we sat back and ate our last Whole 30 lunch; tuna salad for me, steamed fish and vegetables for Lucy.
‘How’s StyledByLucy getting on?’ I asked Lucy as we began to eat.
‘Good. Really good,’ she replied. ‘I’m on 513 followers on Instagram and 194 on TikTok. I know that doesn’t sound like much but it’s only been three weeks, so I’m doing all right. The posts on you have had the most engagement though, much more than my outfit of the day or styling tips ones. I need to find someone else who wants to be transformed.’
I tried not to visibly blanch when she mentioned the posts of me. I was happy for her, I really was and the whole reason I agreed to let her help me was because I wanted to support her passion. It was tough, though. When the post first went live, I checked back after a couple of days and some of the comments were awful. People who didn’t know me, who hid behind the comfort of their usernames, were tearing me to pieces. There weren’t many, to be fair. Most of the comments were generic: ‘Wow, she looks amazing!’ or lazy heart and fire emojis. There were three in particular that stood out, which Lucy deleted – but not before I had seen them. One was something about how I looked crap before and after. Another commented on my discolouration and the last called me a fake and a catfish, adding something about my man getting the shock of his life when I wiped my makeup off.
Those three comments were enough to negate all the positive ones. They plagued me for days. I kept looking at myself in the mirror, wondering if I was that ugly, that disgusting, that complete strangers felt the need to insult me in public.
I didn’t tell anyone how I was feeling, though. I rarely did. Maybe I needed to add something else to my list about learning to talk about my feelings more, instead of believing them to be invalid or unimportant.
‘What are you going to eat tomorrow?’ I asked Lucy, pushing the negative thoughts out of my mind. ‘I’m going to have eggs and paratha for breakfast with a big mug of sweet masala tea. And I’m going to finally enjoy rice and curry for dinner.’
‘I’m desperate for toast,’ Lucy replied, with a dreamy look on her face. ‘Toast with lashings of butter. And I’m going to go for drinks and get shit-faced in the evening.’
‘It’s a Wednesday. How will you deal with work on Thursday?’
‘I’ll figure it out.’
After lunch, we both went back to our desks and I began the mundane work of combing through some new contracts for any errors or irregularities. Halfway through my stack of papers, I checked my phone to see a new email from the organisation that I had applied to for sponsorship for my master’s. My heart stopped and my hands instantly turned clammy. The subject didn’t reveal whether I had got it or not, with its vague ‘Application Outcome’.
I looked around the office to see if Sheila was around before I opened the email, my chest tight with anxiety, straining against my ribcage and pushing against my throat.
‘OH MY GOD! I GOT IT!’ I shrieked, jumping up from my seat in a fashion that was very unlike my usual calm and quiet demeanour.
‘Got what?’ Arjun and Lucy asked in unison.
‘I got the scholarship! They’re going to pay for my LLM!’ Tears filled my eyes as Lucy rushed over and threw her arms around me. Arjun joined us and soon the three of us were jumping around the office like loonies, still holding on to each other.
‘What’s all this?’ Sheila’s steely voice cut through our laughter; we stopped jumping and instantly fell silent. Lucy and Arjun slunk back to their desks while Sheila glowered at me. She was smiling, but she wasn’t. Her big white teeth were showing, but her eyes were annoyed. Oh, Sheila, what big teeth you have! All the better to eat you with, my dear.
‘Sorry for the noise,’ I gulped, edging towards my seat before I suffered the same fate as Red Riding Hood. ‘I had some good news, that’s all.’
‘Oh? What’s that then? Are you getting married?’
What? My eyes darted over to Lucy and Arjun, their expressions of confusion no doubt mimicking my own.
‘Er, n-no,’ I stammered. ‘I applied for a scholarship and found out that I got it,’ I said as I backed away and slowly sat down in my seat.
‘A scholarship? For what?’
‘I want to do an LLM,’ I replied, my throat dry.
‘Oh? You know you don’t need a master’s to be a paralegal, Maya,’ she said icily, before abruptly turning around and slithering back to her office.
Exhaling deeply, I ignored the looks of horror mixed with pity on my colleagues’ faces, Sheila’s words already replaying over and over in my mind. There were no congratulations, only the not-so-subtle reminder to stay in my lane and the assumption that as a brown woman the only possible accomplishment I would want to celebrate was getting married.
The worst part was, Sheila was brown herself. What did that mean? How could she be racist towards me when we shared the same colour? Surely not. But then there were a subset of MPs, evil brown MPs, I call them, who capitalised on their brownness to make decisions that then destroyed brown people. Sheila was definitely giving me evil MP vibes.
The hope and joy I had felt moments earlier had dampened to a vague sense of relief. For the rest of the afternoon, I kept quiet and silent, just the way I used to be.
‘Guess what,’ I announced when I got home that evening. My mood had improved considerably by the journey home, partly because I got a seat all the way to Turnpike Lane for a change, but mostly because I had decided to text Zakariya with my scholarship news. His reply came instantly and I spent the rest of the afternoon texting him discreetly instead of working. It was my passive-aggressive way of giving Sheila the finger.
‘What’s up, Dimple?’ Malik drawled, sauntering down the stairs.
‘Oh, wow, fancy finding you home before midnight for a change,’ I replied sarcastically, taking off my scarf and coat and draping them across the banister. ‘Trouble in paradise?’
‘Everything’s fine, thank you for asking,’ he scowled at me, shooting a glance at the open living room door where the sounds of Bangla TV could be heard.
‘Guess what, Baba!’ I entered the living room where my dad was watching the news in Bangladesh.
‘Kita oiseh?’ Baba replied distractedly, his gaze fixed on the screen.
‘I got the scholarship to do my master’s! Law school, here I come.’
‘Congratulations, Affa, I knew you’d get it!’ Malik exclaimed, thumping me on the back. ‘Well done!’
‘Good news,’ Baba’s reply was lacklustre. He wasn’t the most enthusiastic of people. As someone who grew up sharing a room with five brothers and used to study by candlelight on the hallway floor because it was the only space available, he isn’t often impressed with success that hasn’t come with odds-defying hard graft. ‘How much will that save you?’
‘Over twenty grand,’ I told him with a flourish. He perked up at that.
‘Fantastic! Fantastic news!’ he said, showing delayed enthusiasm. ‘Fantastic, what a relief.’
Rolling my eyes, I went to find Ma, hoping for a better response.
‘Oh my goodness, Maya! Congratulations!’ she exclaimed, tears instantly filling her eyes. ‘Give me a hug. Well done!’ Now that was a response. ‘I wish you had told me earlier; I would have made something more special for dinner.’
‘What did you make? Tonight’s my last night on the Whole 30, I was going to have grilled chicken and salad for dinner.’
‘Well, come home straight after work tomorrow and I’ll make you something special. Is there anything you fancy?’
‘Anything with carbs, dairy and sugar, please. Preferably all three at the same time.’
‘Deal, my darling. I’m so proud of you!’
Now all I had to do was get offered a university place and my plan to become a solicitor in approximately five years would be underway.
Later that night, once I’d had my final Whole 30 meal and gone to bed excited at the prospect of having paratha the next day for breakfast, a text from Zakariya came through. I smiled when his name popped up on my home screen, my stomach instantly fluttering with anticipation.
Although we had been messaging each other all afternoon, this felt different. It was dark and I was snuggled up under my duvet in my fluffy onesie with matching socks. Hardly the most romantic of outfits, but it wasn’t like our conversations constituted romance. They were friendly, sure, but no one would be able to misconstrue our communication as anything but platonic.
But still. It was dark. I was in bed, about to fall asleep. It was just the two of us; no Lucy looking worriedly over at me after my run-in with Sheila, no Arjun huffing and puffing across from me. No threat of Sheila suddenly bursting into the room – and bursting my bubble with it:
ZAKARIYA: Hey you awake?
I waited a few minutes before I replied, as was the norm when trying to appear aloof and mysterious, I assumed. Not that I had a norm, exactly. I had never been one to enjoy late-night texting sessions with random boys. There was never anyone I liked enough to bother wasting my time on. The only guy I had really fancied during my university days was a Japanese international student called Kaito, who never looked at me. All I did was look at him though. I used to dress up for the lectures I knew he would be at. Once I had to do a presentation on the case for a co-habitation law reform and I spent days choosing the perfect outfit. Looking back, I now realised that my ‘cute’ outfit wasn’t cute at all (a floral dress over skinny jeans and cardigan) and the thick black kohl that rimmed my eyes was more Marilyn Manson than Cleopatra. He caught my eye once during my whole presentation, as I stumbled and mumbled my way through my argument about how the UK needed to loosen its hold on the traditional institution of marriage. I know now that it didn’t mean anything. I mean, I was at the front of the class talking, he was bound to look at me at some point. At the time though, it meant everything . I spent hours analysing the look he gave me, droning on and on about it to Dina, replaying that moment over and over on a loop. The more I thought about it, the bigger the incident became and I was convinced that it wasn’t a ‘look’, it was a message.
So I did what anyone would. Rather than slide into his Instagram DMs, I threw myself into them with something ridiculous like, ‘Hey! How are you? Fancy finding you here!’
I waited days for him to reply, agonising over what he would say, certain that it would bloom into a romance. I imagined him saying things like, ‘Wow! I’ve been looking for you online for ages!’ Or, if I was really lucky, ‘Maya Rahman, I’ve been waiting for this moment all year.’
His reply came all right. A friendly but completely humiliating, ‘Hey do we know each other?’
I was mortified. The boy I had spent the good part of a semester dreaming about, whom I was convinced beyond doubt was into me too, didn’t even know who I was.
That was the first and last time I approached anyone. Since then, any time I caught the eye of an attractive male, I told myself it was an accident:
MAYA: Hey. I am indeed. What’s up?
Zak’s reply came immediately. He clearly didn’t feel the need to wait a few minutes first – the thought of him sitting there waiting for my reply made my cheeks heat up:
ZAKARIYA: I’ve got some news for you, Ms Scholarship Winner
MAYA: You do? Will it beat being Ms Scholarship Winner?
ZAKARIYA: You can be the judge of that.
MAYA: Well????
ZAKARIYA: I asked my team leader at the charity I volunteer for if you could join us on the Snowdon trek without having to fundraise, since there isn’t much time. They never let people do the fun part without the fundraising part.
MAYA: Oh wow, thanks for trying. What did they say?
ZAK: So soon you’ll be Ms Snowdon Climber as well as Ms Scholarship Winner!
MAYA: Yay! Thanks so much, can’t wait!!!
Gulp. I could wait. I had been starving myself for the past month, how was I supposed to climb a mountain so soon? All my energy had been burnt for fuel. I was too weak! I couldn’t admit that to Zak, not after he went out of his way to help me. Besides, the trek was on my sacred list, so I had to do it no matter how tired or scared I was.