It’s been over a year since he moved here from the asylum centre, and it’s better, it’s undoubtedly better, but the room is cheerless and he has never found the will to improve it. He thinks of their flat in Tehran, the family things, the rugs and pottery, the roses she grew on the balcony, high above the trees on Khorasan, and wonders what she would think of these sad cream walls, the dark blue bedclothes, the two pots that constitute his kitchen.
Two photos are all he has left: two photos from a life built together; all that managed to make it to the end of his journey. A formal shot of their wedding day, the two of them so young, side by side on an ornate throne, their hands entwined, as they waited to take their place at the sofreh-ye aghd and begin their feast. The other, his favourite shot of her, is wrinkled from travelling all the way here next to his heart. In it she leans, in western clothes – palazzo pants and a crisp white blouse with a frilled lace collar that stood up all the way to her earlobes – on a white balustrade by the Caspian Sea, a stiff breeze blowing her thick hair into her eyes as she turns and smiles at him. Roshana, free of the chador, is taking the risk of being observed to feel the air on her skin, her soft brown lips, her strong features, her elegant hands. The gold earrings she wears in it, her wedding ring, all gone and nothing left. He’s carefully framed the pictures, preserved them from harm, and still, four years on, he cannot look at them without a wrench in his heart.
I must live, he thinks. There is no alternative. I won’t be here, trapped in this waiting limbo, for ever. One day my application will reach the top of the pile. Day by day that day moves closer, but then what shall I do? What is there for me? No book I write, no speech I make, no plans, journeys, demonstrations will ever bring you back. If we’d had a child, Roshana… They say the pain fades with time, but time does nothing but make the ache sink deeper. I miss you. Oh, I miss you. If you were here with me…
Cher can sleep anywhere; it’s a skill she’s had to learn. She came home soon after dawn, climbed under her single sheet in the morning coolness and dropped off immediately, and the cat slunk in to join her as she slept. She sleeps, and sleep heals, but in sleep they also come back. You can escape anything, she has found, except when you’re dreaming.
She mutters in her sleep. Her frozen muscles strain to run, strain to fight. Sometimes, when she wakes in the early afternoon, she is sore and aching, as though she’s run a marathon.
A slight breeze stirs her thin curtains and cools her boiling forehead. Inside her head, she’s back in the attic. She’s found her way into the Landlord’s cupboard again, and climbed those stairs, and she’s in among the dust-motes and the shrouded furniture. Only this time, her nanna’s furniture is there. She can see the old familiar shapes, and wants to weep: the Welsh dresser with its display of mismatched china, cast-offs of dinner services that have passed out of Big House fashion, the squashy settee with the shiny flowered fabric that Nanna kept for best. The little varnished pine table that sat against the wall in the kitchen, where Cher ate every meal, the wall clock with the painted convolvulus on the face behind the hands. The Venus bird bath from her nanna’s bungalow garden, the goddess cradling a conch shell in her arms rather than stepping half naked from it, the collection of whimsical pigs that cluttered every surface.
And Cher is hiding, under a dust sheet under a table, because she’s heard her father’s tread on the stairs and it’s where her nanna’s told her to hide. Don’t come out, she’s said. Don’t come out for anything. I’ve called the police and they’re on their way. Just don’t come out.
Cher lied to Collette on Friday night. She does know who her father is. And she knows where he is, as well. He’s in jail for killing her nanna.
Oh, no, she mouths silently into her stuffy bedroom. Oh, no, no, no. Not again. Not Nanna. Oh, save me. Her hands creep up to cover her face and, in her sleep, she rocks.
They don’t even bother to talk, in her dreams, now. When Cher was twelve, there was plenty of talk. There was shouting from her father and pleading from her nanna. There was his name, over and over again. Danny. Oh, Danny, don’t do this. Come back when you’ve not been drinking and maybe then you can see her. But in the years that have passed, each time she relives it, the overture gets shorter. Now it goes straight to the main event. Her nanna’s black shoes, the little heel, the crossbar strap, and his trainers, grey from the rain outside, striding across the parched floorboards to stand in front of her.
And then the noises. The dull, hard crack of fist on face. And over and over, her nanna’s heels raised off the ground, kicking helplessly as he holds her like a punchbag. Her nanna saying his name over and over Danny, oh, Danny, no Danny, Danny please. Cher pokes her fingers all the way into her ear canals, but still she hears when the punches turn crunchy, and when they turn pulpy. And then the feet stop kicking, and she sees the ankles crumple as he drops her. Her nanna slides down on to the kitchen floor, and her face hits it with a wet slap because her arms have no strength to break the fall. And she’s not her nanna any more. She’s a weird mask of blood and broken bone, and all her teeth are gone. But still, as he pulls his foot back to kick – the trainers spattered red now, blood soaked deep into the laces – she raises a finger to her broken lips and gazes at her with her broken eyes.