I Can't Think Straight (14 page)

‘Are doubts supposed to be rational? Is love?’ he replied with a sage smile. ‘I think you need to trust your instincts, Tala. I’m all for rationality, but there are times when you know in your heart – in your gut – what to do. Even if you can’t justify it in your head.’

Tala was shocked and now regarded him with suspicion. ‘You’re telling me to break it off?’

‘No!’ he said, alarmed at his aim being so clearly articulated.

‘Yes, you are.’

‘You’re telling me you have doubts…’ He cut himself off, nipping his petulance in the bud and laced his hands together, giving the impression of deep thought. ‘It’s not wrong to go against the grain, Tala. If you marry Hani, I’ll be the first one dancing at your wedding. But if you don’t, I’ll support you every step of the way.’

Abruptly, Kareem stood up. ‘Anyway, I should be going. I don’t want to keep my brother waiting.’ He paused to look into her eyes once more with a nod of understanding. ‘If ever you want to talk about anything, I’m here. Okay?’

Tala nodded, hesitantly, and tried to appear grateful, but she was too caught up in her own racing thoughts to pay attention to form.

She heard the ringing tones of Kareem’s steps walking briskly out and through the hallway to the front door.

Tala looked away, out of the windows, at the garden. Her own family, except perhaps Zina, were evidently aware of her doubts – she had spoken quite openly to Lamia about them – but not one of them had stepped forward to talk to her seriously, to offer support or advice, except for her brother-in-law, and his concern was so uncharacteristic that Tala was certain he must have some ulte-rior motive. She felt alone, marooned in the centre of a seamless stream of parties and dinners. People were whirling past – people whom she had known for all or most of her life and who apparently cared about her – and they laughed and talked and argued about politics and ate and shopped and congratulated; but not one had paused and looked into her eyes. She wanted a lifeline, the reassurance that someone, somewhere understood her, but there was none to be found. Again, she thought of Leyla, and the focus, however fleeting, awakened a yearning within Tala. Leyla would understand, of course, but Tala could hardly picture her features any more; the girl already seemed to belong to some past life; in fact, she might have been nothing more than a dream, an enveloping, pleasurable, warming dream that had passed too quickly and left Tala gasping in the icy reality of wakefulness.

Chapter Ten

It was the third time that Maya had called up the stairs the alert that breakfast would be ready imminently, and still there was no response from any of them. Leaving the eggs spitting in the pan she stomped up the first five steps to listen. Her husband was in the shower, of course, having waited for her first call to actually tear himself away from the business news and clean up. Yasmin had showered half an hour ago, but all that emanated from her room was loud music; and Leyla..who knew any more, what was going on with Leyla? Something had changed her since she had stopped working with her father in order to finish editing her novel.

Although she was pleased Leyla had found a publisher, Maya had expected that to be the end of the writing for a while. All that sitting in front of computers fretting about words could not be good for a person, Maya felt, and although being proved right was always a comfort, her vindication was tempered by fear - for Leyla was proving a handful now, unhappy and angry all the time, and frankly, Maya felt too old and tired to be dealing with an overgrown adolescent.

The eggs were overcooked by the time she descended and crossed the wide kitchen to place her hand on the frying pan handle once more. She looked at their wilted brown lacy edges and the rubber solidity of the yolks with dismay. Throwing them out was not an option. Maya had grown up starved for eggs, eating her breakfast at a lop-sided wooden table in India surrounded by too many brothers and sisters and a father who kept faultless account of the paltry, weekly allocation of six eggs that lay in their box on a shelf far above the stove. Even now, the sight of a soft, fresh yolk breaking across her plate stirred up suppressed desire within her and also a species of panic – that the oozing, liquid gold would be thinned to non-existence unless she could quickly round up the spreading edges with her bread and lift the captured yolk to her mouth.

Sam was downstairs already, the master of the two minute shower, and to Maya’s satisfaction, Leyla followed behind him. She looked tired, even though she went to bed early and was sleeping half the day as well. She was wrapped in a thin dressing gown, her feet bare on the cold kitchen tiles.

‘You’ll catch a cold. Where are your slippers?’ Maya asked.

‘Is there any juice?’ Leyla asked.

‘Yes,’ said Yasmin, breezing in. ‘If you like an old vintage.’

Leyla grinned at her sister, whose hair was wet from the shower.

The freshness of her scent cut through the spice-laden atmosphere of the kitchen.

‘I’ll go get some fresh juice,’ Yasmin said. ‘I need a proper coffee anyway.’

‘Not with wet hair. You’ll catch pneumonia,’ Maya counselled.

‘You catch pneumonia from a germ, Mum, not from wet hair.’

‘Of course, you’re the doctor. Go then but if you’re lying in hos-pital tomorrow, don’t expect me to visit you.’

Maya sniffed and turned to the stove where she teased the eggs out of the pan as though they might escape if she removed the threat of the spatula.

‘I’ll visit you,’ Leyla said, deadpan, as Yasmin disappeared to the shops. She flicked on the kettle and peered into the waiting teapot which was big enough for five people but which held only one bag.

As usual, she thought savagely, her mother was intent on making everyone suffer the sipping of a weak, coloured solution for breakfast, while they sat in a forty thousand pound kitchen in a two million pound home, in order to save the cost of the extra teabags. She reached up and added more tea to the pot, then poured over the boiling water. She could feel Maya watching her from the corner of her eye, could sense the stiffening of her mother’s body at the perceived waste, and Leyla turned and regarded her with directness, daring her to make an issue out of a spoonful of cheap tea dust in a cheap bag.

Nothing was said, and Leyla made it back to the table without reproach. She sat down and looked at her cold, stiff egg. It looked exactly like a toy egg, made of flexible rubber, and out of curiosity, she leaned forward to smell it, but only her father’s sudden scent, diffusing across the round table, touched her nostrils. It was fresh and soapy, mixed with the ozone fragrance of his aftershave, and the grasping touch of his just-applied hairspray which caught you in the throat like a dry poison before suddenly letting go. It was the smell of morning, the smell she had grown up with, that had been her breakfast companion for so many thousands of days, and she was suddenly grateful for it, and the gratitude made her throat catch and her eyes fill with tears. She swallowed and tried to cover her emotion – these newly naked, uncontrolled feelings were embarrassing and ridiculous. She seemed to walk around all day on the point of tears – the lightest, most unexpected sensory touch could arouse her to crying.

Sam looked up as he ate, and noticed his daughter’s watery eyes.

The stress that the sight induced compelled him to finish the rest of his breakfast in two large bites. This had the dual effect of comforting him, while giving her time to recover, after which he was able to ask her if she was all right.

‘I’m fine,’ she said. She waited a beat, drawing on the well of bitterness within to aid her recovery. ‘It’s just the sight of this egg. I don’t like to see anything that’s suffered this much…’

Maya sighed audibly, and Leyla felt a fleeting shame, that she had swapped her unidentifiable sorrow for pointless and hurtful sarcasm. But it was too late. The comment was made, and she had at least regained control of herself.

‘Don’t have it if you don’t want it,’ said Maya manfully. ‘I’ll just throw it out to the birds.’

‘How can you give a bird an egg?’ Leyla asked quietly. It smacked of weirdness, of a kind of pre-cannibalism. ‘Birds lay eggs. They shouldn’t eat them.’

‘So now you are a bird expert,’ Maya said.

‘Ornithologist,’ Leyla muttered with quiet malevolence.

Sam was standing now, putting on his tie (he habitually brought it downstairs with him but only wore it after the danger of spilling his breakfast was over) and he shot his daughter a stern, warning look. This had the effect of making Leyla feel small and guilty at the same time, and without meaning to, she burst into tears.

Maya was intently dipping the point of her toast into her pow-dery, dried up yolk as if constant stabbing might somehow soften the unyielding egg, but even she had to look up at this. Sam was behind Leyla’s chair in a moment, placing his large, firm hands on the sides of her arms. She could feel his head turn, could sense the concerned, helpless glance that was passing between her parents.

‘What is it?’ he asked quietly. She took a breath that manifested itself as a hiccupped sob and then stopped crying. She looked down at her lap, at the thin material that covered her thinning legs. She was eating but losing weight. She had a publisher for her book, but took little joy in it. She was crying but knew she ought to be happy.

‘I don’t know,’ she whispered. It was a true statement, for she had not yet managed to admit that what was troubling her, that a ridiculous yearning for a girl she had spent only a few days with, was worth this kind of pain.

‘Do you want to see the doctor?’ Sam asked.

It was a clumsy attempt, but at least it was an attempt and she was grateful for it. She turned and smiled briefly, to reassure him, and he was relieved by this and quickly stepped away, a movement towards the door, the car, the secure, compact world of the office.

After two more days of watching his daughter exist within the house like a nervous, feverish spectre, Sam spoke at length over dinner one evening about how he felt he needed to hire more help at work.

His conversation was directed ostensibly to his wife, although Leyla divined at once that it was aimed more particularly at her. Her father spoke in ringing, slightly over-enunciated tones, as though to ensure that every nuance of his unsubtle carrot was picked up, and Maya nodded and exclaimed in all the right places. The very idea of being once more imprisoned for nine hours a day in the beige-walled office, overlooking the tarred expanse of the car park turned Leyla’s stomach. If she was depressed now, she would only become suicidal if she was made to sit at the brown desk each day, working out percentages, reconciling receipts, checking the wording of policy documents….

‘It would only be temporary,’ her father was saying. ‘Until we find a new person to start.’ He was looking directly at her now, Leyla noticed.

‘What?’ she asked, slackly.

‘I need help,’ he said. ‘If you’re not busy.’

‘Busy?!’ Maya began, a snort of scorn in her voice, but she sub-sided at once beneath the look that her husband shot her.

Leyla did not know how to refuse. He was kind, her father, and his eyes met hers with such invitation. He was trying to help her, she realised. He was offering her his hand in the only way he knew how, a hand to pull her out of the treacle pool of her own self-pity.

‘Okay,’ she said.

He grinned, and helped himself to another chapatti. ‘Good. Tomorrow, eight thirty. We’ll go in together.’

A week of regular hours at work had not evolved into the hellish entrapment that Leyla had imagined it would. Time flew by in the early mornings, time spent completing the series of actions necessary to ensure that she arrived at her desk at half past eight each day.

She was aware of the sharp, taut touch of the shower on her head, the hot water pouring away in rivulets down her body. She tasted the crisp, rushed toast, the warm softness of too much butter on her tongue. There was the need to dress, to find proper clothes to wear and real shoes to replace the slippers with which she had shuffled through the house while writing. And then the car journey, the radio news of a world far beyond this one of hers, which was bound by closer horizons.

Arriving at work, she was surprised to find so much paper on her desk. It was the same work as always – the opportunities for inspiration were always bound to be limited – but the sheer volume of it caught her off guard, and she began to hold a private competition with herself each day, to see how far she could get.

And there were people at the office. Women who had worked for her father for years. There was talk and laughter and self-deprecating complaints and the quick fire touch of sarcasm on everything they said, and she had to match their tone or be lost in her own sealed world forever. And she found it difficult to smile at a joke or make an ironic comment and still nurture the depression that lingered within. It was hard to remember her dissatisfaction when she was caught between meetings, phone calls and emails and what eventually emerged from her remaining lack of enthusiasm for her work was not unmitigated misery but a new inspiration for writing.

As had happened so long before, ideas and words and unrequited feelings began to filter through the tracts of her mind that were not occupied with her daily tasks, like coffee dripping through a perco-lator. When she got home at night, she would spread out her paper and pens on the dining room table and write down the dribbling words, and as quickly as she caught those drops, more would come, until there was a trickle of sentences that she dammed to form the continuation of a new story. The slow pleasure and small pulses of intense excitement she felt at these times seemed very much like happiness. And while a small part of her was embarrassed that her apparent depression could have been brushed off so quickly, like crumbs from a dense, stale cake, she was sufficiently relieved that she worked hard not to look down and slip back into those depths again.

Chapter Eleven

At ten o’clock in the morning, Reema descended her mag-nificent hanging staircase with a blinding headache, which she was quite certain could be attributed to the injection of Botox into the last, feathered line on her forehead that she had insisted on the day before. With extreme irritation, she noted that the line was still there when she squinted into the depths of her antique bedroom mirror. She felt tense and tired and managed only a poor shuffle into the dining room, where her peripheral vision caught sight of Tala and Lamia seated for breakfast, before her eyes settled on a mirage of steaming coffee and a cigarette that lay shimmering on the table before her winged chair. When she sat down and found that, in fact, neither caffeine nor nicotine were ready for instant inhalation she sent up an ululating scream of protest to the hapless maid who stood hovering behind her. Within moments, the coffee was produced, and a freshly lit cigarette placed between her ring-encrusted fingers. She drew in long and hard, taking from the kick of dense, tarry fumes the same satisfaction as a diver coming up for air. Only then, as the smoke around her head cleared, and with the scalding, thick coffee raised to her lips, did she glance up and see that Omar and Kareem were also at the table with her. Rather more alarmingly, there was another man with them and as she took him in, as her brain began its slow, creaking shift into consciousness, she regretted her recent guttural howl to the staff, and her defeated trudge into the room. When there were guests, she made a point of sweeping into rooms. She produced a charming smile in an attempt to reduce the impact of her substandard entrance, but only when Kareem introduced his brother formally did she recognise Sami.