After the End(87)

“My mother.” Her eyes shine. “She’s moving to the UK. She’s coming to live with me.”

“From Tehran?” I surprise myself with the knowledge. It was Pip who held the details of everyone’s lives in her head; Pip who thought to ask about relatives, and to check in after holidays.

“You’ve got a good memory.” Leila smiles. “She’s been unwell, and I’ve been worried for a long time—she has lots of friends in Iran but no one who could care for her on a regular basis.” She sighs. “It hasn’t been easy, but they’re finally letting her come.”

“Congratulations. She’s lucky to have you.”

“I’m the lucky one.” There’s an influx of passengers through Arrivals, and she turns, then takes a sharp intake of breath and calls to the man she’s with. “Nick—there!”

“I’ll leave you to it. Good to see you, Leila—I’m glad you’re well.”

I turn back as I reach the exit, in time to see a short, curvy woman in a midnight-blue head scarf run up to Leila as fast as her two enormous suitcases will allow. She holds Leila’s face in two hands, squeezing her cheeks and kissing her forehead, before turning to the gray-haired man and doing the same to him.



* * *





Guess who I just saw?” I’m glad to have something to launch into, to remove the awkwardness that might otherwise have fallen between Pip and me. I’m here to collect my things. At least, as many of my things as will fit in a suitcase and come in at under fifty pounds.

“Who?”

“Dr. Khalili.” After the house sold, Pip had everything moved to storage. We sold the furniture neither of us wanted, and now it’s just the personal stuff—the books, the vinyl, the photos. Souvenirs of a life before we got together, to take forward into the two lives we’re building apart.

“I could take photos of it,” Pip suggested. “Ship over the stuff you want to keep.”

“I’m not sure I’ll know till I see it,” I told her, when really what I meant was I want to see you again.

Pip’s hands tighten on the wheel. “Dr. Khalili was at the airport?”

I would have got the train, only Pip was working today, and it seemed churlish to refuse the offer of a lift.

“What was she doing?”

“Waiting for her mother. Doctors are allowed out of the hospital, you know.”

Pip gives me a side-eye. “I know. It’s always weird, though, isn’t it? Like seeing teachers at the cinema, or a nun on a roller coaster.” She drives in silence for a while, then says: “I wouldn’t want to see her.”

“No?”

Pip chews her lip. Signals, then moves into the next lane. I lean my head back and watch her reflection in the rearview mirror. I used to love watching her put on makeup before a night out, brushing color into the sockets of her eyes until they were dark and smoky. She’d meet my gaze in the mirror and poke out her tongue, or pout freshly painted lips. I swallow.

“I think I’d find it too hard,” she says now, and it’s a moment before I realize she’s still talking about Leila Khalili. “I find it upsetting even thinking about her, to be honest.”

“Sorry—”

“It’s fine. Just that . . . if I saw her face, it would take me right back there, you know? Like when I—” She breaks off abruptly.

“Like when you look at me, you mean?” I say softly.

She doesn’t answer. In the rearview mirror, tears find their way along the tiny lines at the corners of her eyes.

Dividing our possessions is predictably awful, but we don’t argue. In fact we are bizarrely polite, each insisting the other take a vase we were given as a wedding present from someone neither of us can remember. No, you have it. No, really, I couldn’t—it’s yours.

Pip stops and looks at me, the vase in her hands. “You don’t even like it, do you?”

“I hate it.”

She bursts out laughing, then she weighs the vase between both hands and looks at the brick wall at the back of the storage unit. “Dare me?”

“You wouldn’t.”

In answer, she hurls the vase like a Russian shot-putter. It shatters instantly, and shards of shiny green porcelain ricochet in all directions.

“Better?” I ask.

She nods slowly. “Yes, actually. You try.”

We look around at the remaining pile of belongings.

“The tea set?” It isn’t a terrible tea set, by any means. We acquired it from Pip’s parents, and in all the years we were married, we never used it once.

“Who uses a tea set, anyway?” Pip says.

I take that as a yes.

I do the first three cups slowly, the second three like machine-gun bullets. Pow pow pow. Then the saucers, then the plates, then finally the teapot. Pow.

“Wow.”

“Feels good, doesn’t it?”

We smash mugs too small for a decent cuppa, and glasses left over from long-gone sets. We smash a clay photo frame sporting a squirrel, and a whiskey decanter engraved with someone else’s monogram, that Chester gave me one Christmas.

“Why have we kept so much crap?” Pip says, as she jettisons an eggcup that came free with the tokens from sixteen boxes of cornflakes.