Chapter Twenty-Eight
I didn’t sleep a wink that night. It was impossible with the prospect of Noah matching with me hanging over me like fog, blurring my vision and clouding my senses. I must have checked my phone at least fifty times, if not more, waiting to see if he would accept my swipe, or whatever the correct terminology was. I went through a conveyor belt of checks – was my phone on silent? Were my notifications on? Was my phone even working? – more times than I cared to admit. I knew that he was most likely asleep and therefore hadn’t seen my request. But after hours of evading sleep, I wasn’t exactly thinking rationally.
At around five, I gave up on sleep entirely and pulled on my running clothes. I peeped into Malik’s room to see if he wanted to join me and to my surprise, he was also wide awake, mindlessly scrolling through his phone and looked dully over to me when I opened his door.
‘Hey, wanna go for a jog?’ I whispered.
‘Gimme two mins,’ he murmured back, dumping his phone and getting up immediately. I guess I wasn’t the only one suffering from insomnia that night.
Malik and I jogged steadily and silently together, side by side like equals, not like the first time we went running together when he kept lapping me and then gave up and went home without me.
As our feet pounded on the tarmac, I wondered if Noah would remember who I was. I doubted he’d spent half as much brain power on me as I had on him. That was because of the list, though. If I had left something intriguing behind – like a photo album, for example – then I’m sure I would have become equally as interesting to him. Well, maybe not, remembering the state of my camera roll pre-makeover. Fine. Case notes? Nope, boring. My phone messages weren’t interesting before the list, either. They consisted mainly of texts from Dina of the ‘I’m running late’ variety, shopping lists from Ma or the odd message from Malik.
My life, I was ashamed to admit, was utterly boring before the list. Now, my phone was full of me making plans with my friends and cousins, cool pictures from all the experiences I was having and the occasional text from Zakariyah.
I nearly tripped over the uneven, chewing gum-studded pavement when I remembered Zakariya. Shit. I had forgotten all about him in my Noah-induced haze. Stopping abruptly, I bent forward and clutched onto my knees, trying to gather my breath and my thoughts. The most beautiful sunrise was illuminating the sky, casting the world in an orange glow, but I couldn’t appreciate it because suddenly I felt overcome with guilt.
‘You OK, Dimple?’ Malik asked, stopping beside me. ‘Have you pulled a muscle?’
‘No,’ I panted, turning to look at him. ‘Question. If you were casually chatting to someone as a friend, but you knew they sort of liked you, but you’d never given them any indication that you sort of like them .?.?. Is it bad to join a dating app and then swipe right on someone else?’
‘I don’t really want to participate in this conversation,’ Malik grimaced. ‘Ask one of your girlfriends.’
My brother jogged away and I stood there, bent over with my hands on my knees, feeling floored. What was I doing, thinking about Noah, swiping Noah, when there was a man out there who I had been talking to, leaning my head on, having dinner with, attending the same Arabic class with .?.?. what was I, a two-timing floozy?
‘You are not a two-timing floozy,’ Lucy yawned down the phone when I called her in a panic. Her voice sounded gravelly and dry. I checked the time. Oops, it wasn’t six in the morning yet.
‘Sorry, did I wake you?’ I said as I continued to jog home.
‘You did, but I needed to get up soon anyway so it’s OK. But listen, before I go to the loo, please don’t do anything silly. You are not two-timing anyone. You and Zak aren’t a couple, he hasn’t said anything to you to imply that you should put all your eggs in his basket.’
‘Yes, but—’
‘But nothing. You owe him nothing. And now let me go before my bladder bursts.’
Hanging up the phone, I pondered Lucy’s somewhat logical reasoning as I slowed down to a brisk walk and made my way back home. I knew she was right, but knowing something and feeling it can be on opposite ends of the spectrum.
By the time I left work in the evening, Lucy had all but banned me from checking my phone for the rest of the night. Sheila was back in the office but not even the danger of her finding me on RateYourDate was enough to make me stop looking at the blasted thing. Noah still hadn’t responded to me and it had almost been twenty hours and three minutes. Not that I was counting, of course. Was he really so busy that he couldn’t check the app that he pretty much forced me to join?
I had to snap out of it though, because on Saturday I would be participating in Race for Life and I needed to focus. I had met my fundraising target ages ago and the months of training were all about to pay off. I had managed to do a 5K run the other week, so it shouldn’t be too difficult to do it all over again. I kept having visions of myself running like Rocky Balboa and had taken to listening to Eye of the Tiger during my training. I had to keep my head in the game.
Unsurprisingly, no one in my household thought to attend the race to cheer me on. I was relieved. The last thing I wanted was Ma going into paparazzi mode and taking a million pictures of me sweating like a goat and posting them on Facebook. She had only recently got into social media and instead of carefully capturing the best moments of her life, she was prone to posting anything and everything. She was also really into sharing dodgy conspiracy theories, which I tried to ignore. But then she would text me and tell me to re-share them because it was important that everyone knew that the government was putting hormones in the water to prevent fertility in women.
On Saturday morning I woke up early, did a Pilates workout to stretch my muscles and activate my core, had a banana and then forced Malik into dropping me off at the park, where Lucy was waiting for me.
‘Can’t you take the bus?’ he grumbled when he came down the stairs, his hair sticking up in all directions. ‘I’m not your personal taxi driver.’
‘You know I need to save my energy,’ I replied testily. ‘I can’t waste my strength now, not when I have 5K to run.’
‘It’s five bloody kilometres. It’s hardly the London Marathon.’ Malik had run the London Marathon a couple of years ago. The entire family – Chacha, Nani, the whole lot – had turned up to cheer him on. Gritting my teeth, I took my phone out to book a ride. I didn’t need my stupid brother ruining the day for me.
‘Whatever, I’ll take a taxi,’ I said, turning away from him.
‘I’m up now. Get in the car.’ He stomped off outside and I stared at his back, wondering why he was making such a big deal of it. He often moaned when I made him take me places, but never this much. I was tempted to ignore him and get an alternative ride anyway, but I forced myself not to. I needed positivity, not a fight.
The journey to the park was quick and silent but the atmosphere both in and outside the gate was anything but. There were women dressed in pink everywhere and friends and family holding pink balloons and banners walked alongside them. I couldn’t spot Lucy and wasn’t sure if this was the entrance she was waiting at.
‘Hold on, Malik, can you stop there for a second?’ I asked my brother and he complied silently, pulling over to the side and putting on the hazard lights. Taking my phone out, I called Lucy, who answered after a couple of rings.
‘Maya, hi! Where are you?’
‘At the park, which entrance are you at?’
‘Seven Sisters Road. You?’
‘I’m on the other side, I’ll be there in a bit.’
‘Can’t you walk the rest of the way?’ Malik said tersely and I ignored him, waiting for him to take me to the right entrance. I didn’t know what his problem was, but at that point, I didn’t care. I wanted to get on with the day and smash the race.
‘Pull up here, please,’ I told him when I spotted Lucy in her hot-pink vest and matching yoga pants, opening my window and waving at her. Why was it that when I wore similar bottoms they looked like leggings, but on Lucy they looked like yoga pants? Even with no makeup and her hair scraped back into a ponytail, she looked like a model for gym wear.
She was on her phone when the car came to a halt, so I called out her name through the open window to get her attention. When she looked up at me, she looked strange; bewildered, almost.
‘Thanks for the lift,’ I muttered as Malik all but shoved me out of the car and roared away.
‘Hey, Luce, you OK?’ I asked, giving her a hug. ‘You look like you’ve seen a ghost.’
‘I’m OK,’ she said quickly, giving me a strained smile. ‘You ready for the race?’
‘As ready as I’ll ever be.’
The Seven Sisters Road entrance to the park was grimy. There was pigeon poop everywhere, and the distinct stench of weed, wee and desperation. Still, nothing could quell the excitement brewing in me. I had been training for this moment for months and I was ready to put my stamina to the test. Fine, it wasn’t twenty-six miles like Malik’s stupid marathon, but it was worlds away from my fitness levels pre-list and I wasn’t about to let him or anyone else bring me down. The fact that there was a greater purpose to this than proving that I could run without fainting made it all the more worthwhile.
We followed the crowds of people to the starting point. It was mostly women, all dressed in pink. There were children, old people and everyone in-between, all coming together to raise money for vital research. The atmosphere was warm and supportive and all along the route, friends and family had set up deckchairs and picnic blankets to cheer their loved ones on. I felt a slight pang that I had no one, but then, neither did Lucy.
The race began and to be honest, it wasn’t really a race. There were people walking along the route that took us around the perimeter of the park like they were on a casual stroll. I wasn’t one of those people. When the buzzer went, I shot off like a firework and ran like my future depended on it. With adrenaline coursing through me, I focused on the finish line and ignored all the noise around me. There were no other people, strolling or otherwise. There was no Lucy looking panicky, no Malik getting pissed off, no Noah ignoring my swipe, no Zakariya dropping me hints, no Sheila harassing me, no Ma and Baba overlooking me, no Pinky and Pretty undermining me, no aunties at weddings making me feel ugly and useless.
There was just me and my feet pounding against the tarmac, the blood thumping in my ears, the wind rushing through my hair. Nothing else mattered.
I finished the race in thirty-four minutes, which wasn’t fast – there were plenty of people who finished before me – but I did have to wait fifteen minutes for Lucy to join me. While I waited, I did my stretches, took some pictures and talked to other participants. There were so many women there who had either survived cancer or had lost loved ones to the disease. Talking to them was humbling. In that moment, I decided to commit to fundraising for Cancer Research regularly and to participate in Race for Life annually.
Lucy finally managed to hobble across the finish line, gulping for air and clutching onto her side like an appendix had burst. It was pretty funny, seeing her with her face the shade of beetroot, strands of hair sticking to it, sweat dripping in rivulets down her neck.
‘W-water,’ she gasped, grabbing a bottle from a volunteer and downing it so fast that she spilt half of it over her pink vest. Collapsing onto the grass, she lay there spreadeagled and I sat cross-legged next to her while I waited for her to get her breath back.
‘How come you’re not suffering like I am?’ she said when her skin eventually paled from tomato soup to more of a candyfloss pink. ‘I think I have a stitch. It’s worse than a stitch. It’s like surgery. Except the surgery went wrong, because I was being cheap and went to Prague to do it. And now I have an infection.’
I tried not to laugh as I surveyed the hot mess that was Lucy Robinson sprawled out on the ground talking nonsense. She was usually so perfect and composed and the reversal of roles tickled me.
‘Luce, you know I’ve been running for months now, right? Training for this very moment? I think I could have managed 10K, you know. It would have been hard but I reckon I could have done it.’
‘I know you said you were training but I thought you were exaggerating,’ she moaned, rolling over to her front. ‘How am I going to get home?’
‘Don’t worry, I’ll ask my brother. He’s being a moody git today but there’s no way he’ll say no to a pretty woman.’
At this, Lucy sat bolt upright. ‘NO WAY. I’ll book a ride.’
‘Why? Because you look like a trainwreck? Who cares, it’s just Malik. And you still look good, sweat patches and all.’
‘It doesn’t matter. Don’t ask him, OK?’
‘All right, calm down, I won’t!’
True to her word, Lucy went home in a taxi, too exhausted to go out for a meal in Green Lanes like I had originally planned, so I plodded over to the bus stop. I was on such a high from the race that I didn’t fancy seeing my brother’s moody mug.
Checking my phone, I saw that Zakariya had replied to one of my Stories, congratulating me on completing the race.
‘Thanks,’ I typed out as I sat at the bus stop waiting for the number 29 to take me home. ‘I’m not gonna lie, I smashed it.’
ZAKARIYA: I wouldn’t expect anything else from you. How are you celebrating?
MAYA: Lucy got a stitch so she went home. I’m celebrating with takeout and a hot bath.
ZAKARIYA: Not all at the same time, I hope?
MAYA: Soggy doner kebab is the best, haven’t you heard?
Ma and Baba were out when I got in and so was Malik, so I did exactly as I had planned. I soaked myself in a hot bath with Epsom flakes until my skin shrivelled like a raisin and the water grew murky and tepid. I followed this up with a greasy kebab from my local Turkish takeaway and ate it in front of the TV while a mindless movie played in the background.
For the first time that day, I checked RateYourDate. As usual, there was nothing from Noah. I no longer felt a crushing sense of disappointment when I saw that he hadn’t responded to me, but I still felt a niggle of it. I kept telling myself that it was probably because he hadn’t logged in. Maybe he wasn’t checking the app intentionally, because he was already seeing someone?
Oof. The thought of Noah with someone when I was this close to meeting him again, when he was finally within my reach, was a tough pill to swallow. Like one of those huge Omega 3, 6 and 9 ones that always got lodged in my throat.
While there was nothing from the object of my desire, there were, however, hundreds of other men who had matched me.
I began scrolling through matches one by one. At first, I took the time to read the profiles properly, even when they were clean-shaven with weak jawlines. This took forever and I soon learnt to scan the profile and details quickly and only bother to read the bio if the rest was decent. It was almost like being in Yo Sushi; plates of maki flying by and I had three seconds to decide if I wanted to grab one or not:
Bashir. 28. 5’5. Indian. London. Blurry photo. Swipe left.
Alan. 38. 5’11. White English. Milton Keynes. Photo of a blond, stout man with skin that reminded me of mayonnaise. Swipe left.
Rayan. 32. 5’9. Pakistani. Southampton. OK-looking with a buzz cut.
Interesting. I clicked to read his bio, curious to know how he would introduce himself. Lookin for ma wifey n tingz. Been locked up but a changed man. Living with mumsy is a must.
I re-read the bio three times, trying to decipher what it meant. Was he trying to say that he was a criminal who had been locked up in jail? And after failing his DBS check, he still wanted a woman who would be happy to live with his mum? Was he serious?
Going on a dating app, I soon realised, was a bit like going on TikTok. You could get sucked into spending hours of your life mindlessly scrolling and in the end, you were no better off in life. Whenever I came across a profile that I thought was promising, the bio soon revealed that it was another wasteman looking for a quick hook-up or a stay-at-home ‘wifey’ to look after his elderly parents. And the ones in-between were the wrong age, wrong height or in the wrong geographical location. It was hopeless. Was this it? Was this what was available in the UK’s Muslim dating scene right now? I felt as though I had shown up to the buffet too late and all the good stuff had already been taken.
As I continued mindlessly scrolling, a message pinged through. Probably from some forty-three-year-old who had his own ‘business’ (code for unemployed), still lived with his parents in an overcrowded flat and couldn’t put a sentence together without three spelling mistakes.
Opening it half-heartedly, I didn’t bother to check the profile of the person who sent it and read the message itself:
NOAH: Hey Maya, Love your profile – we seem to be interested in the same things! Are you free to grab a coffee/drink sometime this week? Noah x.