The rest of the week plodded by. The mundanity of my routine didn’t give me comfort though. Something had shifted on Wednesday and I felt restless. My mind kept wandering to Noah and his notebook and the list he’d painstakingly curated. I wanted to know what else was on it, but I stopped myself from looking because it felt too intrusive. Aside from the quick glance with Lucy, it lay untouched on my desk at home, surrounded by my own books, stationery, makeup and other things that I had no place for anywhere else in my bedroom.
Home was a three-bedroom terraced house on a side road off Turnpike Lane in north London. It wasn’t the most glamorous of locations – far from it, with all the litter, knife crime and growing number of discount shops. But the station was a five-minute walk away, all the halal grocery shops and takeaways were even closer and you could get to nicer areas pretty quickly. I wondered if Noah lived in one of those nicer areas. He was already on the train when I got on, so he must live somewhere between Wood Green and Cockfosters.
On Friday night I met up with my bestie Dina, who I’d been friends with since Year 7. The only Muslims in the class, we instantly connected over our abstinence from pork and intense love for James Blunt. We had been glued together ever since and even went to the same sixth form and university, although she studied Biomedical Sciences and I went for Law. After we graduated, we were forced into spending time apart since we were on different career paths on opposite sides of London. And then she got married to her university love, Mohammed, had a baby and our weekly meet-ups became more of a monthly thing, depending on her childcare situation.
‘Guess what?’ Dina said the moment we sat down in our favourite local steakhouse with an adjacent shisha lounge. Not that we ever did shisha. The one time we tried, I got so dizzy that I thought I was going to throw up. Dina actually did throw up. She didn’t make it to the loos in time before her dinner expelled itself from her smoke-ridden body. Nowadays, we just ate good food, caught up on the week’s/month’s gossip and then split an indulgent dessert. Our idea of excitement was having an After Eight at half-past seven.
‘What?’ I asked obligingly. Dina was always starting conversations with ‘Guess what?’ The answer could range from ‘I tried this new place for lunch’ to ‘My cat is dying of cancer’. I knew this from experience.
‘I’m pregnant.’ She looked at me eagerly, her green eyes dancing and her loosely wrapped hijab billowing around her face as she bounced up and down in her seat.
‘OMG, CONGRATULATIONS!’ I squealed, grabbing her hands and squeezing them tight. ‘I can’t believe it! Sami is going to have a sibling! How are you feeling? How many months are you? How is Mohammed? Is he crazy happy?’
‘Slow down,’ Dina laughed, squeezing my hands back, her cheeks pink. She proceeded to tell me that she had had the twelve-week scan a couple of weeks before and continued explaining every change in her body in minute detail. I listened to it all, nodded and smiled in all the right places as I tried to keep up with all the medical terminology.
Our starters arrived – crispy calamari and chicken lollipops, like always – and she dug right in, the massive smile on her face revealing her newly installed braces. Yes, she missed the boat at fifteen, but evidently, that boat was able to come back twelve years later.
As Dina carried on chatting away about the baby, Sami and Mohammed, the restlessness inside me began to grow. She said they were going to go for a 3D scan the next day. That was when we were supposed to go shopping for autumn clothes. It was starting to get a bit chilly and I was still wearing all my spring and summer clothes. I didn’t bother mentioning it. She had obviously forgotten in her excitement and saying anything would be pathetic under the weight of such amazing news.
After we had analysed the scan pictures to death, trying to figure out the sex of the baby, I filled Dina in on my own life.
‘Are you telling me you’ve only flicked through the book and haven’t read all thirty of his plans?’ she demanded, her eyes wide with bewilderment.
‘How can I? This is personal stuff, Dina. I can’t just read all the intimate plans he has.’
‘Doing a course and reading a book is not intimate! You need to read the rest of it! And even better – you should actually do the things on his list!’
‘What’s the point?’ I scoffed, taking a bite of the calamari.
‘There’ll be clues to help you find him! Not just to see him again, but to return his notebook. Look, you already know about the three triathlons he’s looking into. All you have to do is show up.’
‘Who says I want to find him? He’s so different from me. He’s a fitness freak and I don’t think he’s Muslim. But you’re right, I should try and give the book back to him.’
‘Didn’t you say he mentioned Arabic?’
‘Yeah, but he’s probably an Arab Christian.’
Dina rolled her eyes. ‘Right, cos there are sooo many of those around in our ends. What if he is Muslim and what if you need someone different to encourage you to experience new things? Maybe the whole point of you finding this list was for you to do the things on them.’
‘I don’t need to experience new things! I’m happy the way I am!’ I started getting defensive, my voice level rising as I stabbed at the steak on my plate.
‘You’re happy spending your days in a boring job, your evenings watching TV with your mum and your weekends eating out with me?’
‘Yes, I am! Because that’s real life, Dina. You do the same thing! Your routine is always the same.’
‘That’s because I have no choice! I’m a mum and a wife. But I’m sick of nothing interesting ever happening. I’m sick of the same old playgroup with the same old mums who look at me like I don’t belong with their bougie buggies and designer handbags. I’m sick of barely leaving the house without a baby. And when I do get some me time, all I do is go to the same old restaurant with the same old . . .’ Her voice trailed off as she realised what she was about to say. My cheeks turned crimson with humiliation and I stared down at the meat I had been massacring on my plate.
Dina’s voice softened. ‘Sorry, Maya. I didn’t mean it like that. Of course I love you and you’re my favourite person to spend time with. I’m just feeling a bit out of sorts. I’m happy I’m pregnant, I really am . . . but I’m also in a constant state of exhaustion and instead of things easing up with Sami starting nursery at three, I’m going to be doing it all over again. And I’m jealous of you! You can do whatever you want with your time but instead, you do the same crap over and over again! You take your life for granted.’
Later that evening, I lay in bed with my stomach grumbling because I’d lost my appetite after Dina’s careless remarks. It was still early, well before midnight anyway, but I didn’t feel like watching whatever Bollywood movie Ma and Baba had on downstairs.
I wondered if what Dina said was right. Maybe the whole point of my Tube encounter wasn’t about Noah, but about the list. My life was boring. I never did anything out of my comfort zone. There’s a fine line between comfort and complacency and I had the feeling that I had slipped into the latter. I couldn’t remember the last time I did anything remotely out of the ordinary.
And while I was wasting my life away, my best friend was moving onto another stage of her life. She was married and I wasn’t. She was a mum, I wasn’t. And once the new baby came along, she would have even less time to do the same boring things with me. She was constantly evolving. Maybe it was time I did the same.
Climbing out of my double bed, I turned on my lamp and rummaged around on my desk until I found The Notebook. I traced my fingers over the soft leather and the embossed initials before opening it.
The idea began to form as my eyes rested on Noah’s easy scrawl, imagining how he felt as he compiled his list. Did he google ‘cool things to do before you hit 30’? He didn’t seem the type. I bet it all came naturally to him.
I probably should have made my own bucket list, but then it would have been full of things I already liked and wouldn’t have pushed me to try so many things that were out of my comfort zone. Also, if I were being completely honest with myself, there was a little part of me that hoped that I might run into him at some point as well. I decided I had to do all the things on his list in the same order he had written them, so I could grow at the same pace as him. I could only assume that there was some sort of thought process behind the chronology.
A tingly sensation began to brew in my belly, something I hadn’t felt in years. The more I thought about this project, the more excited I became. Yes, doing everything on the list would be difficult, maybe embarrassing as well. But it was going to be fun! It was going to get me out of the house, trying things I would never have thought of. Then, as if that wasn’t enough, I decided to add another layer to the adventure: I wouldn’t peek ahead at the items. I would do them as and when I got to them. Each new item would be fresh and exciting.
Closing the book, I turned my lamp off and got back into my soft, warm bed and snuggled under the heavy duvet. The next day would be the beginning of a brand new me.
Chapter Four
The following morning, the excitement I had fallen asleep with had faded into a dull ache in my chest. My phone calendar alerted me that I was supposedly going on a ‘Shopping trip with Dina’ at 10 a.m. I doubted she realised.
It may have been just a missed date – insignificant in the grand scheme of things – but as soon as the baby came, she would have zero time for me. And I knew that I was being incredibly selfish, but I was scared. I was being left behind so fast that if I didn’t do something to catch up, then soon Dina would be out of sight forever.
‘Morning, Ma,’ I grumbled as I dragged myself downstairs and found my mum in our narrow, galley kitchen making breakfast for her and my dad. She was still in her cotton nightgown and her hair was pulled into a messy bun.
‘Have you made me breakfast too?’ I asked hopefully.
‘I didn’t think you’d be up so early, sorry,’ she replied. ‘But I can whip up something now if you’d like?’ I watched her deftly remove the sunny-side-up eggs from the pan and onto a pre-warmed plate with two slices of toasted sourdough, mashed avocado and some grilled cherry tomatoes, all the while keeping an eye on the Deshi tea that was simmering on the stove.
