‘I’m going to mix it up a bit, so as we go round the table I’ll shout a name and you describe that person. Go.’
Amira’s heart was pounding as Will yelled, ‘Mark!’ at her. ‘The news,’ she said impetuously. ‘Because he’s authoritative and . . .’
‘Boring?’ Mark interjected when she hesitated, raising a laugh.
The next round was capital cities. She felt her stress levels rising ever higher as her turn came closer. While Sarah next to her splutteringly described Rachel as Copenhagen because she was ‘expensive, clean and organized’, Amira was casting a frantic eye around the table, trying to come up with witty one-liners, but her mind was blank. The two cities that had lodged in her head – New York and Paris had both been used. Panic rose up inside her as Will nodded in her direction and said, ‘Faster now,’ and then, ‘Paula.’
Amira’s gaze swung across the table towards the departmental deputy who was looking hot and uncomfortable in her voluminous beige top. ‘Montreal,’ she blurted out. Will gestured to her to hurry, clicking his fingers in rapid succession – snap, snap, snap – and without pausing to think, she added: ‘Because she’s big and a bit dull.’
There are some silences that start out as one thing and mutate gradually into quite another, as if the silence itself has caused a subtle shifting of tectonic plates beneath the earth. This was one such time, where what had begun as a pause, pregnant with soon-to-be-released laughter, changed to discomfort and finally, as the meaning of what had been said sunk in, to shock. Amira’s hand flew to her mouth.
‘Oh my God, Paula. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean . . . It was just the first thing . . .’
‘It’s fine,’ said Paula, but her face had the set look of someone trying not to cry. Her surprisingly small fingers were gripping so tightly to the handle of her coffee cup that Amira could see the blue threads of her veins through the translucent skin of her plump wrists.
‘I wasn’t thinking.’
There was nothing Amira could say. No excuse. The words had come from a part of her she hadn’t even known was there. She’d always been so careful of other people’s feelings. Even when she was drunk she didn’t let rip like some did. But now something was pricking like the rough ends of dried grass at the edges of her mind. Times as a child when she’d got into a temper and said or done things she afterwards couldn’t remember, and would emerge from her bad mood as if from a dream to find her beloved father shaking his head with such sorrow in his moss-green eyes. ‘Oh, Amira,’ was all he’d needed to say in his lilting voice and she’d be instantly filled with shame – much as she was right now.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said again. But by now the others had moved on and someone else was talking and it seemed the moment had passed – until Rachel leaned in towards her, her perfume crawling into Amira’s nostrils full-bodied and overpowering.
‘Spot on,’ she whispered, and giggled in a way Amira found more disturbing than her usual frostiness. It was as if she’d borrowed the giggle from someone else, or stolen it.
‘Montreal was inspired!’
Rachel moved her hand and for a moment Amira thought she was raising it for a high five, but instead she touched her fingers to Amira’s dress where the fabric stretched tight over her ribs.
‘Nice frock,’ she murmured and Amira went rigid as Rachel’s knuckles brushed the underside of her breast, but were gone so quickly she thought afterwards she must have imagined it. She glanced up in time to see Paula turning her head and knew she’d been watching. She waited for Paula to look at her so she could mouth another apology, but the older woman kept her gaze averted.
I’m sorry, Amira repeated inside her own head.
27
Anne
My house is a new build so everything is perfectly squared off. No alcoves or fireplaces or hidden places where cobwebs can build. No high ceilings to which the heat gravitates, leaving sofas and chairs exposed and icy, no gappy floorboards through which the wind can whistle on winter evenings. Everything in my house is grey or white or oatmeal, everything has a place. The surfaces are clean and clear, not cluttered with every manner of ornament and relic of everyday life – postcards, ticket stubs, receipts, photographs, candle stubs, light bulbs, felt pens, their lids long lost. My house is nothing like my mother’s.
Unlike her I live a life filled with purpose. I have a job that I take very seriously. I go out to dinner once a week with my daughter. I have friends. I even exercise. Every evening when I get back from work I put on jogging pants and do a three-mile circuit of the neighbourhood. Not exactly running but very brisk walking. I never cheat. I never allow myself a day off because it’s raining, or because I have a sore throat or a pile of essays to mark. I pull on my trainers and plug in my headphones and do my three miles. And then I come home and shower and change and then, and only then, I allow myself a beer or a glass of wine. Just the one, mind. I am the kind of person who believes in delayed and earned gratification because if I allowed myself to waver, if I cut myself some slack, who knows where I might end up. I might turn into my mother. I might turn into Noelle Egan.