Home Fire(27)

“Well, he can fuck off and stay in the desert he chose, can’t he?”

“Please, Eamonn.”

“Please, what? Oh, god.” His thumb bit into the corrugated edge of the bottle cap, deep enough to draw blood. “Why did you get into the tube with the home secretary’s son that day?”

She took his hand and placed his thumb in her mouth, drawing his blood into her. He pulled away with a No.

“I got into the tube because I thought you were beautiful.”

“Don’t lie to me.” He slammed his hand on the kitchen counter, making the fruit bowl jump, making Aneeka jump.

In a voice so low he could barely hear it she said, “I got into the tube because I thought the home secretary’s son could help my brother come home and avoid charges.”

No pain had ever felt quite like this. “That’s what this has all been about?”

“No!” She tried to take his hand again, and this time he physically pushed her away from him. “I know you don’t have reason to believe me, but the truth is . . . the truth is . . .”

“Give me enough respect to avoid the ‘From the first time we kissed I fell in love with you’ line. Do that much for me.”

“You were hope,” she said simply. “The world was dark and then there you were, blazing with light. How can anyone fail to love hope?”

“A love that’s entirely contingent on what hope can do for your brother.”

“I couldn’t have done this, for all these weeks, if my feelings for you weren’t real. You’ll have to choose whether you believe that or not. No words I say here will convince you.”

“Get out.”

She went, without another word. He could hear her in their—his—bedroom, and could imagine too clearly her body as she unbelted the bathrobe and bent to open her drawer of silky underwear. He put on a shirt, walked downstairs with a dust pan and brush, and rapped on his neighbors’ door. He had accidentally knocked over the plants, he said to Mrs. Rahimi, surprised to hear how ordinary his voice sounded, and yes, it was fortunate he hadn’t fallen himself, and yes, she had warned him that he needed to build a proper terrace or this kind of accident could occur. Despite her protestations he insisted on helping her unprotesting husband clear up the mess on the patio. Even with his vigorous, concentrated sweeping it took longer than he expected, shards of pottery and clumps of soil everywhere. The kumquat plant was recoverable, Mr. Rahimi said, but the cactus, poor thing, was for the compost. There followed a conversation about the absurd smallness of the compost bin the council had provided, which Eamonn threw himself into with great verve. They moved on to kumquats after that—there was a Persian tangerine stew that might work very well with kumquats, Mrs. Rahimi said. Eamonn told her there was an old Notting Hill saying, “If you drop a tree on your neighbor’s patio, all the fruit it ever bears is theirs by right—particularly if that stops them from suing you.” Even Mr. Rahimi was won over by that, and Eamonn remembered how easy it was to be a social being, well liked, surrounded by uncomplicatedness.

Eventually Mr. Rahimi said he was returning to watch the test match, and would Eamonn care to join him. Eamonn said he would. He still hadn’t heard the sounds telling him she’d left the flat.

“When I first arrived in England as a student I decided I had to understand cricket in order to come to grips with the subtlety of English character,” Mr. Rahimi said, ushering Eamonn into the TV room. Holding a finger to his lips he withdrew two bottles of beer from a mini fridge, and handed one to Eamonn. “Then I encountered the figure of Ian Botham and discovered that the English aren’t nearly as subtle as they want the world to believe. You Pakistanis, on the other hand, with your leg glances and your googlies.”

Eamonn’s response to statements like that had always been, “I’ve never even been to Pakistan.” But he didn’t want to say that now.

Mrs. Rahimi walked in, took the beer bottle out of her husband’s hand, and replaced it with a glass of something yogurty. Mr. Rahimi said something in Farsi, his tone one of affectionate protest. They’d married over thirty years earlier, despite the disapproval of their families—a difference of class, more insurmountable than any other difference in his family’s eyes. Better you had married a Sunni from Iraq, Mr. Rahimi’s mother had said, the same mother who now spent months in London, telling anyone who’d listen how all her other daughters-in-law took such little care of her compared to this one, whom she’d treated so badly at first.

Eamonn stood up, apologizing. He had to go, he said. He was sorry, he’d forgotten in the warmth of his neighbors’ hospitality that he was expecting someone. He left the Rahimis sitting in front of the TV, Mr. Rahimi drinking from Eamonn’s bottle of beer, Mrs. Rahimi sipping from the bottle she’d confiscated from her husband.

He took the stairs two at a time, calling Aneeka’s name as he opened the door. When there was no answer he thought she’d left, but he found her sitting on the edge of their bed, still in the stained dressing gown.

He sat down next to her, for once not touching. She held her hand out to him. Within it, the phone with the factory-set picture for a home screen and security settings that ensured no one without the passcode could see who had called or texted. She tapped in the code and pulled up a photograph. A boy with headphones on turned toward the camera with an open smile and a thumbs-up gesture. He had Aneeka’s skin tone and her fine bones—but while hers made her look fierce, like a panther, his gave him a breakable air. His eyes were sleepy, his shoulders narrow. If he was standing in a room with his sisters, your eyes would go straight over him to Aneeka’s beauty, Isma’s gravitas. “That’s Parvaiz,” she said unnecessarily, and leaned into him. “That’s my twin. I’ve spent every day the last six months sick with worry about him. Now he wants to come home. But your father is unforgiving, particularly about people like him. So I’m not going to get my brother back. And I don’t really know what to do . . . half of me is always there, wondering if he’s alive, what he’s doing, what he’s done. I’m so tired of it. I want to be here, completely. With you.”