Zulekha Forbes opened her curtains and peered out on to the back garden. For the first
time since she’d returned to England it wasn’t raining and the sun shone clear and strong
through the window of her old attic bedroom where she’d hoped to never sleep again.
She pulled up the sash. The panes were filthy, she noted, before reminding herself this
was not her problem any more. Leaning over the sill, she had a bird’s-eye view of her
father Tony’s thinning brown crown as he laid out plates and glasses on a trestle table. A
large ice-bucket and a collection of Pimm’s, lemonade and beer bottles stood on the
overgrown grass behind him. The lawn was decorated with a selection of footballs and a
trampoline, now rusting and hardly used, which no one had the energy to get rid of.
Zu stretched and yawned. It was tempting to go back to bed, but she knew she should
show willing. She turned back to the room, which was like a museum of her teenage self –
the self she’d hoped she’d left behind forever. Bob Marley gurned from the wall. In the
dressing-table drawer she’d found a dried-out pot of Clearasil. In the bookcase, her well-
thumbed Jacqueline Wilsons rubbed shoulders with the titles by Sartre and Camus that had
obsessed her during her A-level years when she’d been searching desperately and
unsuccessfully for answers to the chaos around her.
So much had happened in the intervening years, Zu thought, sitting back down on the
narrow bed with its brightly patterned duvet cover Mum had bought in Debenhams, probably
trying to make it up to her after some misdemeanour. It had come in a packet labelled
‘Santorini’, part of the ‘Greek Island’ range, she’d told her, which Zu had found wildly
exotic.
She dragged a comb through her hair. Last time she’d slept in this room her hair had
been spiky and short; a handful of impressive passport stamps later it now grew past her
shoulders, though she usually wore it tied in a messy ponytail. Her cousin Anjali, not to
mention her naani – or grandmother, to use the non-Hindi word – were always urging Zu to
put it in a neat French plait, but really, who could be bothered?
She sniffed: ghee, frying ginger, garlic and onion. Naani must be here and cooking
already then. From the twins’ bedroom came the thud, thud of their stereo. Zu had no idea
what they were playing; in her teens, music had been her obsession, but for years she’d
been far too busy to follow it properly. Instead she’d developed not only an embarrassing,
middle-aged fondness for classical, but also a sneaky affection for the cheesy Europop
that was played in bars all over the former Soviet Union. Roxette’s ‘It Must Have Been
Love’ was her favourite. When she was drunk she had even been known to perform a karaoke
version that she secretly considered pretty fine.
She dolloped Leela cocoa butter on to her arms and legs. It was one of the bestsellers
of her grandmother’s beauty range and, annoyingly, it was the only thing that worked on
Zu’s otherwise dry and itchy skin. Zu prided herself on happily using washing-up liquid
when she ran out of shampoo, meaning that most of Leela’s beauty range was wasted on her.
The little tubes of eyebrow gel and blusher had come in very handy though as gifts and
bribes to the Chechen authorities.
Her clothes were still in the suitcases where she’d hastily thrown them when she’d left
Chechnya ten days previously. Automatically she reached for her jeans and least dirty T-
shirt, but then she reconsidered. Better wear the pink sundress Leela had given her for
her birthday.
Zu didn’t really understand dresses. Sometimes she wondered if she’d have been more
girly if she’d been able to talk to her mother more – if they’d had the kind of
relationship where they’d done each other’s nails and hair, like her cousin Anjali and
Auntie Renu. Zu’s mother, after all, had loved to dress nicely when she was sober. You
knew she was having a bad day when the sweatpants and old shirts emerged and she didn’t
bother with the make-up.
Sometimes some guy Zu was having a fling with would urge her to wear skirts, going on
about what a tiny waist she had (her teenage self had been chubby from comfort eating but
several bouts of dysentery had long put paid to that). ‘Fuck off,’ Zu had thought, and
sometimes said it too.
She squinted in the dusty hand mirror she’d fished out of a bedside drawer. She
supposed she should wear makeup, again to keep Leela happy. ‘Zu!’ Leela’s forceful voice
came up the stairs. ‘Zu-lekha! Sweetie. Where are you?’
‘Coming, Naani!’ Zu ran downstairs, glancing into the boys’ room. Both were lying on
their beds engrossed in their phones; Rohan probably playing some game, Kieran on
Facebook. The room smelt sweaty; both were in the T-shirts they’d slept in. Zu remembered
them in the cute gingham pyjamas she used to iron because she wanted them to look as neat
and innocent as possible in the face of what was happening all around them. Shortly after
Mum died they’d rejected them as babyish and Zu hadn’t bothered trying to make them change
their minds.
‘Boys!’ Zu tried and failed to sound authoritative. She could coerce strangers to build
schoolhouses and repair roofs and undergo HIV tests, but with her own family she was
useless. ‘Could you start getting dressed, please! The party starts soon. Dad could do
with your help outside.’
‘Yeah, yeah, whatever.’ Kieran didn’t take his eyes off the screen.
Rohan yawned and swung his feet on to the ground. ‘Tell him I’m coming.’
‘Zuzu! I need you to help make the chapattis.’
‘Coming, Naani!’
Leela Sangar stood at the bottom of the stairs, resplendent in her best gold and blue
sari and matching sandals. She’d aged dramatically since her only daughter died eight
years ago, but at sixty-five she was still a splendid woman – less than five-foot tall but
straight as a lamp post, with a neat nose, huge hooded eyes and lustrous hair. She scanned
Zu thoroughly.
‘You’re wearing a dress. To what do we owe the honour?’ Before Zu could reply, Leela
clicked her fingers. ‘Come on. There’s still a ton to do.’
As usual, she was exaggerating. Everything was well in hand. The curries were sitting
under kitchen foil, waiting to be warmed up (golden rule of curry cooking – always prepare
twenty-four hours in advance to allow the flavour to emerge). Not that Zu ever made a
curry, or cooked at all if she could help it, for that matter.
The rice cooker’s red light was on. The bhajis stood ready to be chucked into hot oil
and the large ball of chapatti dough was waiting to be rolled out into round plates. Zu
knew she’d make a handful and then Naani would ttch at her cackhandedness and take
over. Apples, oranges, lemons, limes and a large bunch of mint sat on the table waiting to
be chopped up and added to the Pimm’s jugs.
‘How many people are coming?’ Leela asked.
‘About forty.’
Leela frowned. ‘Hmmm, not so many.’
‘This isn’t a wedding, Naani, it’s a small party to say goodbye to the boys. We can’t
fit more than forty people in the garden.’
‘We should have had it at my house.’
Tony poked his head round the back door. He was dressed in an open-neck lumberjack
shirt and jeans. Zu’s heart twanged with the mixture of irritation, protectiveness and
guilt her father always provoked in her.
On the surface, if you didn’t know his history, you wouldn’t feel sorry for Tony. He
was still a handsome man, albeit on the short side. At primary school Zu had been proud of
her good-looking parents. Mum had been so pretty, with her thick raven’s-wing hair that
she used to spend hours straightening before they went out. Her skin was flawless and she
never appeared to be wearing any make-up, though Zu knew she did, because she’d sat at her
feet watching her apply it.
Later, of course, it had all been so different: Deepika had spent her days in her
flimsy nightie, often not even bothering to cover it with her stained and torn dressing
gown. Her eyes were red, her hair matted and her breath stank. Oddly, Zu preferred it when
she was like that because she knew it meant Mum wasn’t going anywhere. It was worse when
she did put on smart clothes and makeup and went out because then you never knew when
she’d be back, what state she’d be in and who she might bring with her.
Zu shook her head. Even long dead, Mum was dominating her thoughts when she should have
been focusing on what was going on around her.
‘Crikey, Leela,’ Tony was saying. Zu cringed. Crikey! What decade was he living
in? ‘Are you trying to starve us or what? Why do you never bring enough food?’
Naani laughed and swatted him round the head. ‘Get away with you, silly boy.’
Rohan stood yawning in the doorway, in track pants and grey hoodie. ‘So what wants
doing?’