She was fifteen now. Nia thought of her small face – you could always read it as easily as those Love Heart sweets with the messages printed on them – imagined those peachy cheeks full of almond croissant and retched suddenly, holding her hand tightly over her stomach.
After half an hour, she found a way to leave her shift early. It was unlike her, to cry sickness at work like this, but she couldn’t shake the nausea. The air was sticky and dingy when she emerged from Vesuvio, there was very little light on the street and Nia was muffled by the absence, as though it was oxygen that was missing, rather than illumination. Something was wrong with the street lamp. She stepped around a heap of glass on the kerb. Twinkling and sharp, the diamanté mass of crystals on the paving, lying next to a car with a crater smashed into its window. She walked quickly to the underground station, speeding up on seeing Sue, the regular sleeper on that patch. She was visible from a distance, arranging her dull navy sleeping bag and provisions near the tube entrance. Nia tried to get past without fishing through her bag for the coins she’d normally pass to her on the way home.
‘Oh, dear,’ Sue said, when their eyes invariably locked. She had a stripy woollen hat on and her ears were poking out from her long brown hair. She frowned and pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose, her pale digits in fingerless gloves. ‘Is it a difficult day today, love? No good?’ She had been sleeping on that bit of the street since before Nia had arrived and she had a routine for this particular hour before midnight – she’d often be arranging or replacing the big piece of cardboard underneath her bedding, at other times she’d be sitting cross-legged and smoking, acknowledging passers-by, occasional chat with some of them. If it was very late, she might have a can or two sitting near her rucksack.
Nia nodded, tears welling, feeling regret once she was in through the ticket barriers.
‘Sue, I’m sorry …’ she muttered, although it was to herself.
She had a scarf and another pair of gloves for Sue in her bag as it happened, had picked them up in a charity shop for a pittance. She usually gave her something like that once a week, she’d accept more than she’d reject, Sue, and they were relatively friendly. Probably, she made Nia think of her mum in some way, she didn’t overthink it, but she looked forward to seeing her. She knew her preferences by now, to get Sue a fruit salad rather than a doughnut if she was feeling flush when she went into Tesco, for example.
But that day she had spoken to her little sister; it was all laced up so tightly, Nia’s heart, and she didn’t want to look at her. She felt so lonely, and she knew Sue had it worse, but Nia didn’t have any space in her chest for it – all in all the whole thing was what her mother would have called a shit sandwich.
Shan
Thalai muzhuguthal. Literal translation: to pour water over someone’s head. Actual meaning: to cut off a relationship. Shan is soothing his confusion as he walks, soothing it through the repetition of this phrase, polishing it over like a piece of brass. He is thinking of Devaki and the many unsuccessful attempts he has made to get hold of her. He wants, of course, to believe that her silence is down to anger, rather than because she is dead. But if she was pouring water on their marriage, surely she wouldn’t do it this way?
Ava is always talking about finger strength when it comes to climbing – training your capacity to hold on to crucial crags of rock as you ascend. That is how it feels when he rifles through his past with Devaki – he is trying his best to grasp on to clues that will help him believe that she is alive.
It is true that as a couple, he and Devaki had specialized in awful arguments. He would leave the soiled furnace of their words when it was too overwhelming – and walk out of the house for hours – coming back to find that she was a wreck, shaking with the spent violence of a thousand tears. He was careful with her then, not always hiding his shameful pleasure at this: that she cared so much about the two of them, had cried so much. That she loved him the way he did her, with a rueful obsession, each of them destined to make the other bend in their direction.
She was the academic, the one with a permanent lab position. He was the one who couldn’t get a steady job at the university. And of course, there was Karu: the impulsive dreaming up of their child’s future was what united them most poetically, but also what divided them. She ran the house. She was so competent, so unequivocally beautiful, so kind when she felt it was right … just so exactly Devaki. Her only public flaw as she saw it, was her weight – she wrestled with her appetite, which fluctuated cruelly and held her hostage in its sudden, emotional, manifestations. Privately, there was her wildness: part of her allure, but injurious too. It inflamed every spat with acute urgency, as though they were about to go out to a firing squad if they didn’t get to the truth.
There was that saying – do you want to be happy in marriage or do you want to be right? He had come across it in one of those books sold on the footpath in Jaffna, amidst a raft of paperbacks that all seemed to be versions of How to Win Friends and Influence People.
Now, he wants nothing more than for them to be stuck in the worst fight of their lives, a shocking, seismic disagreement of international proportions. How wonderful it would be, if this loss of dialogue between them was just because she was full of silent fury. Radiantly alive, and full of fury. He would be happy with that.
He is inside and outside the world at once. Sometimes when he bathes in the morning, he is so spent by this simple act that he sits on the plastic flooring in the towel after he has dried himself, unable to get up and dress. He keeps his eyes open, craving the fevered salty melt that would surely come with tears. But there is nothing there. He just shivers instead. If he closes his eyes, he sees blood, and then comes the image of his son. If he is not careful, he will hear his son speak.
Crush and fade, slip and follow. He is making a concerted effort to walk away from the restaurant in a calm way, and to avoid thinking about the immigration van that he can see out of the corner of his eye as he leaves Vesuvio behind him. Very soon he is surrounded by people, due to a temporary market on one of the short roads between the restaurant and bus stop. Cheese, potted jams, breads and pickles – each stand is oddly specific with regard to contents, and customers are hovering over these goods as though they are precious stones.
There is a man behind Shan who shares his frustration at getting through the crowd, he is a Japanese man of similar build who is more resolute than him when it comes to keeping up speed. He moves along the street with an open book in one hand, directing the lead of his dog in the other, stubbornly continuing to read as he pushes his way through the mass. Stops his reading only to cross the road, and then resumes the curious, fervent task of consuming his book whilst walking. The golden-haired dog at his side accommodates its owner without complaint, bends in its body to stay on the pavement. Shan watches them disappear around the corner, admiring the man’s resolve. There is a lot to be said for such persistence.
Barely ten minutes go by before he receives Ava’s text.
Come back. They are gone. Elene say they drive away.
And there you are. It is oddly deflating to read it. There is even still time to make it back before his shift begins. He must go back, but he can’t feel relieved. What is there to stop them returning?