He knocks, respectfully, on the door, and she rushes to let him in. He’s clean and shaved, his black hair slicked back and smelling of shampoo, his breath of toothpaste. He smiles at her, and she feels a strange liquid sensation in her guts. Suddenly, she feels shy in front of this man who’s touched every inch of her, who’s been so far inside her she thought they would actually combine. She lets him in and crosses the room in front of him, looking at the floor. Then he comes to her and puts his arms round her, kisses her face, her eyelids, her mouth, and she feels safe, like a child.
‘I brought some things,’ he says. ‘It’s not much, but…’
He hands her a cotton shopping bag with some strange script across the front. Farsi, she assumes, though it could be Arabic for all she knows. Inside are pistachios, halwa, a jar of what looks like home-made amba, little pots of sumac and black paprika, and a container of olives. She smiles at the gift.
‘So funny,’ she says. ‘You say it’s not much, but they’d be paying a score for this lot in Clapham. I can’t believe you’ve got amba, just, you know, in your room.’
‘You know amba?’
‘Of course. I’ve been a few places in the last few years.’
‘Where did you have it?’
‘Israel,’ she tells him.
Hossein hisses in through this teeth, then laughs. ‘I didn’t know they had amba in the Great Satan.’
She looks at him suspiciously for a moment, then sees that he is joking. ‘Well, I didn’t know your lot were so big on Iraqi condiments myself.’
‘You have a point,’ he says, and sits down cross-legged on the bedspread. She sits beside him, so she can press her upper arm against his, so she doesn’t have to look full in his face. She’s not ready for that. Not while she’s longing to feel his hand caressing her breasts.
He taps an egg on the side of a bowl, rolls it between his fingers and peels. She takes a small handful of nuts and cracks them open, one by one. They’re wonderfully fresh, sweet and salty on her tongue. I can’t let this carry on, she thinks. I don’t know what he’s thinking, but I have to tell him.
‘Hossein?’
She closes her eyes for a moment and feels a wrench of sadness.
‘We can’t do this.’
He sighs and puts his egg down, uneaten. ‘I knew you were going to say that.’
‘But you understand, don’t you? You must see that…’
‘Yeah, I see. But that doesn’t mean I think you’re right.’
‘I can’t stay.’
He rubs his face like a kid, looks like he’s shut his finger in a door.
‘You should, Collette,’ he says. ‘You really should.’
‘Not after yesterday. Come on. You must be able to see that. It’s not safe. It’s just not safe.’
‘He doesn’t know where you are, Collette. We lost him. Don’t you remember?’
‘For now. But look, he’s got so close, I…’
‘Not so close. He was at the home. He must have been. We just weren’t looking. I’m sorry. I should have been a better bodyguard.’
‘It’s not you. It’s not your fault. But you don’t understand. Once they’ve got my scent, it’s only a matter of time. They found me in Paris, and Barca, and Tunis, and Prague… I’m so stupid. I should never have come back.’
‘But what about your mother?’ he asks. ‘Really, Collette. You’re going to leave now?’
A tear forces itself from the corner of her eye and runs down the side of her nose. She dashes it away, impatiently. ‘She doesn’t even know me.’
And now she’s crying and she can’t stop. Puts her hand across her mouth and looks away from him, and is grateful that he has the sense not to touch her. She doesn’t want sympathy. She wants gone.
‘I think about it, sometimes,’ he says. ‘Dying by myself. It’s the sort of thing you do think about, in a foreign country.’
‘I know,’ says Collette. ‘But most people do, you know, in the end. All the widows and the people by themselves, all the people who have accidents or end up in hospital before anyone can get to them.’
‘I was married, you know.’
She throws him a look over her shoulder. ‘No. No, I didn’t.’
‘Roshana.’
‘What happened?’
‘I don’t know. I think she died. I assume she died. She went out one day and never came back. That’s what happens. One day she was with me, and the next she was gone.’
‘I’m sorry,’ she says.
‘The awful thing is, I hope she was alone. Wherever she was. Because if she wasn’t, it’s probably worse.’
Now he looks away, and toys with the fringing on the edge of the bedspread, his mouth turned down and his eyes unfocused. That’s the thing, she thinks. I know we feel so close, so loved-up right now, but we don’t know each other. We know nothing about each other. Not really.
‘But I wish every day I had been with her,’ he says, eventually. ‘She was – for a long time I felt like the lights had been turned out.’
‘I’m so sorry,’ she says.
‘And that’s not your fault,’ he says. ‘But what I’m saying – I don’t know what I’m saying, Collette. Just that it’s a terrible thing, to die alone.’
‘I’d rather die alone later than die now.’
He puts an olive between his beautiful lips and chews contemplatively. ‘Okay,’ he says. ‘It’s not like I haven’t been there myself. Where do you think you’ll go?’
She shakes her head. ‘I hear Norway’s nice at this time of year.’
‘Bloody dark in the winter, though.’
She laughs. He finally reaches out and caresses the back of her neck. ‘Last night was…’ he says.
‘Oh, don’t,’ she says. ‘Oh, God, it’s not like I want to go.’
‘I know,’ he says, and puts his face close to hers. ‘And in another world, you know? I get it. Me too. I understand.’
His skin smells of cleanness and sandalwood. She looks down at his lips, half open, ready to kiss her, looks up at the golden eyes and the careworn lines beginning to settle around them. I think this is a good man, she thinks. I think the universe is having a laugh with me, showing me that there is such a thing.
‘But not today,’ he says. ‘Tomorrow I’ll help you, if you really mean to leave. And not tonight.’
‘No,’ she says, and takes his face in her hands. Kneels in front of him like Mary Magdalene. Kisses his mouth, breathes in the wonder of him.
Chapter Forty-Four
His disappointment is almost painful. He’s taken her clothes off – the shapeless skirt, the lace-edge shirt, the modest undergarments – and found that it’s hopeless. The God Girl has clearly lost half her bodyweight at some point, and lost it fast. If he were to delve into her viscera, he suspects he’d find a gastric band, or one of those balloons they inflate inside the stomach. There’s very little fat on her, it’s true, but her skin looks like a church candle that’s been left burning all through Lent. Like an altar cloth thrown down in the vestry, waiting for the laundry bag.
She’s hopeless. Useless. Nothing he can do, no ministrations, will ever make her right. She’s just an ugly white sack of blubber, an insult to his dreams.
It’s not even worth preserving her, if all he’ll want to do at the end is throw her away. He stands over the bath and glares at her reproachfully. She’s going off, rapidly, her buttocks and the backs of her thighs black with congealed blood, her pupils gone white. And she’s really starting to smell. He’s emptied the supermarket of Febreze and scent blocks, and stuck duck tape over the airbricks to stop the smell circulating, but he knows it’s only a matter of time before the people downstairs start to wonder where it’s coming from. He has to do something with her, this much he knows, but he’s not wasting his skills and time on preserving an object so uncomely. Why on earth did you attract my attention, he thinks, if you were going to let me down like this? I’m glad I don’t know your name. I don’t want to remember you.