Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Epilogue
Also by Tasneem Abdur-Rashid
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Copyright
Chapter One
I never ran for the Tube. It wasn’t worth getting sweaty and flustered when another would come approximately two minutes later. That day, though – the day that completely changed the course of my life – I ran, trying not to curse my parents as I did. I had been late for work two days in a row that week and I couldn’t turn it into a hat-trick. I had a new boss who didn’t know I was pretty amazing at my job and that it wasn’t a biggie if I was occasionally late, because I always got the job done. I was at the stage where I had to prove myself all over again, despite being there for two years and smashing all my performance reviews.
Showing up late for the third consecutive day would make me look like that incompetent brown girl. The one who only worked until she reached her true goal in life – to get married and have kids. I wasn’t being paranoid. Nicola, an ex-colleague, actually said that to me when we met. Not in so many words, of course, but the sentiment was there, beneath the casual, ‘Ah, you’ll probably be off getting married and having kids soon, won’t you?’
It wasn’t even my fault I’d been late. Not really. I knew I was too old to blame my shortcomings on my parents, but it really was because of them. On Monday, as I was about to leave the house, Ma made me throw out the kitchen rubbish, recycling and food recycling. As I went to open the compost box, everything spilt out onto my feet and ruined my shoes completely. I had to clean up the sticky, soggy and stinky mess from the front path, wash my feet and hunt around for my only other pair of black ballet pumps before I could leave the house again.
On Tuesday, I was putting my jacket on when my dad started lecturing me about how I was getting old and how I needed to find a husband, how they didn’t grow on trees and I needed to be proactive, blah blah blah. An argument ensued, I lost track of time and there you had it, I was late once again.
That day, it was completely my fault. I forgot to set my alarm, woke up late and had to leg it out of the house without a shower or doing my makeup. Flying onto the semi-full carriage, I threw myself into the nearest available seat, panting heavily and trying to catch my breath. The fact that running for the train winded me said a lot about my fitness. It was something I was planning to work on . . . one day. Today my only goal was getting to work on time.
‘Hey, you dropped this,’ a voice said quietly. Startled, I looked up at the man who’d had the audacity to speak to me. He was sitting across from me and he held out the newspaper I’d dropped in my haste. Who did that on the London Underground? You were supposed to avoid eye contact at ALL COSTS. Speaking to a stranger was borderline harassment.
‘Thanks,’ I replied warily as I grabbed the paper from TubeGuy while trying to avoid his gaze. He was obviously a weirdo. A free newspaper was hardly something I couldn’t live without. There was a discarded one on the seat right next to me. What did he want? The last time a stranger started up a random conversation with me on public transport, he ended up trying to convert me to Mormonism.
Arranging my expression into its most authentic RBF, I hoped that my lack of enthusiasm would discourage any further contact. I didn’t have time to make friends. I needed to spend the first ten minutes of the Piccadilly Line journey to Hammersmith doing my makeup. I couldn’t show up to work completely barefaced, not with a new boss watching me.
Obviously, I realise that men go to work without makeup all the time and no one thinks they look unprofessional and this is another manifestation of the patriarchy and all that. And it’s true. But for me, makeup is a shield. A mask. A barrier. Without it, I feel exposed. I wish I was the sort of person who is comfortable in their own skin, but I’m not. In fact, I’m in a constant state of discomfort.
Trying my best to ignore TubeGuy and everyone else around me, I placed the newspaper on my lap and planted my giant tote on top of it so I could fish out the products I’d thrown in that morning. Up until this low point in my life, I’d always thought applying makeup on public transport was a bit cringe. It wasn’t that hard to schedule an extra ten minutes at home to save yourself the embarrassment of trying to fill in your eyebrows in front of everyone . . . or so I thought. Ha. Served me right for being so judgy.
I hated drawing attention to myself, but I hated the thought of Sheila condemning me even more, so putting aside my fear of public ridicule, I began with a quick dab of concealer under my eyes and on a couple of blemishes, evened out my complexion with some pressed powder and managed to apply mascara without stabbing my eyeball.
As I worked on making myself presentable, I could feel TubeGuy watching me. Feeling like a zoo exhibit, I tried to block him and everyone else out as I hastily brushed on a bit of blusher to add some life to my sallow complexion and went straight to lip gloss next, because I couldn’t risk lipliner and lipstick on a moving carriage. It was bad enough as it was, trying to put makeup on when I could only see a tiny part of my face in the compact mirror. The lighting wasn’t great either, so there was every chance that I had made myself look like a geisha.
I glanced up then to find TubeGuy’s eyes on me like he was watching a movie. Looking around the carriage, I found that there were two other people gawking at me as well: an older man who really should have had better things to do than witness my glow-up and a middle-aged woman with flawless makeup who looked like she was smirking at me. I bet she had never found herself in such an embarrassing situation. I bet she was the type who sent all of her outfits to the dry cleaners to get pressed because she was too busy being fabulous to bother with trivial chores. I was still waiting for fabulous to come to me; until then, I would have to make do with ‘flabulous’.
If I had the guts, I would have said something like, ‘Would you like to take a picture?’ But I didn’t. Instead, I sent all three of the nosy-Nancys bad vibes and tried to block them out.
Then came the hardest part, which I saved for the end: taming my unruly and uneven brows. My right eyebrow behaved and it was a nice, tidy shape in a few seconds. But just as I began work on the left, the train jerked so violently that a woman standing in the aisle knocked into me, causing my hand to swipe a long, black line across my face.
‘Sorry,’ she mumbled, not very apologetically. She wasn’t even holding on to the handrail, of course she was going to bash into someone!
‘It’s OK,’ I muttered back, my face burning. I couldn’t bring myself to ignore her apology completely, especially not with at least three other people watching. I tried to rub the smear off, but I only managed to ruin the makeup underneath it as well. Now not only did I have a black smudge, but I also had a patchwork cheek too.
‘You were doing such a good job until then,’ TubeGuy said, loud enough for me to hear him over the noise of the carriage rattling through the tunnels. Ms Fabulous chuckled and I glared at her before looking at him, snarky reply ready to go. But then he grinned cheekily at me, flashing a set of perfect pearly whites. My rebuff died on my lips. This man was bloody fit. Like, seriously hot. Actor hot. No, model hot. Clear, smooth complexion. The right amount of beard. Luscious, light brown hair. Greyish-green eyes. I tried not to let my jaw drop. Maybe he wasn’t a weirdo after all?
‘Thanks, I think,’ I replied, trying to switch my face from astonishment to impassive, so that he wouldn’t realise how in awe of him I was. ‘Serves me right for not doing this nonsense at home.’
‘To be fair, you didn’t really need all that,’ he said and I raised my good eyebrow, confused.
‘What do you mean?’
He looked a bit sheepish then. ‘I just meant that, erm, you looked fine without it.’
This time, my jaw did fall ajar. Was TubeGuy flirting with me? I was so out of the game – well, to be fair, I hadn’t ever been in the game – that I didn’t realise what he was trying to say and I went and embarrassed him completely unintentionally.
‘Oh, thanks,’ I said. But as soon as the words left my mouth, I realised that it could be that he wasn’t complimenting me at all. He could have been insulting me. I began to backtrack, feeling like an idiot. ‘I think? Or are you trying to tell me that my makeup application skills are crap?’
It was his turn to look uncomfortable. ‘No! It was supposed to be a compliment. Not that my opinion matters, obviously. Or anyone’s opinion, really. Especially a man’s.’ Heat flared in his cheeks and I found myself smiling. How had my life become so exciting so quickly? Just that morning, as I got ready for work and threw on my usual, uninspiring workwear of trousers, top and blazer, I wondered exactly how and when my life became so . . . mundane.
I was twenty-seven years old, for crying out loud. Hardly geriatric. Yet my routine screamed OLD PERSON at me. Worse than old person. Because, unlike actual old people, I didn’t have a child or spouse to take care of. I didn’t have my own house and mortgage to think about. I was acting like an old person without the shackles of marriage, offspring and commitment. How had that happened?
But that day, as I looked into TubeGuy’s friendly eyes, desperately trying not to bite my nails from the nerves . . . suddenly, I didn’t feel quite so old. Maybe this was my moment to do something interesting for a change, live a little and engage with him instead of burying my head in a newspaper.
Only now that he had gone and complimented me, I didn’t know what to say in response. I wasn’t cool or witty. I didn’t have banter. I was the sort of person who faded into the background and I usually liked it that way. My days consisted of going to the same paralegal job I had for the past two years; my second job since graduating with a first-class degree in Law. My nights were made up of a combination of watching Netflix with Ma, reading or chilling with my family. And the most exciting thing I ever did at the weekend was meet up with my best mate Dina, or my cousins and go for a meal/movie. Both, if we were feeling particularly ambitious.
There was a reason why I had never dated anyone. It wasn’t because I was a devout Muslim or that my parents were too strict. They weren’t. In fact, Ma was always telling me to go out more.
‘When are you going to tell me that you’ve met someone?’ she had asked me a few weeks before.
