fact, right now. Your brief and your family are here to pick you up.’
Shahid did not think it was possible for a thought, a feeling, so be so strong a physical sensation. He felt his heart race, his head fill with blood, he jerked upright and knocked the table, hard, with his thighs. The undrinkable tea spilled on the floor of his cell.
‘You’re joking.’
But the policeman was enjoying the fact of the cock-up so much that there was no possibility he was joking. The cock-up had confirmed his world-view, and in the process made him very happy.
‘Typical, that is. Whatever it is, whoever it most concerns, that’s the person they never tell. Don’t get around to telling. Typical. Classic. That’s this place all over.’
Shahid picked up his prayer shawl, his prayer mat, his Qur’an, his toothbrush, and his sweater. He pulled on his shoelaceless trainers.
‘I’m ready,’ he said.
‘Typical,’ said the policeman one last time, not to Shahid but to the air at large, still happily shaking his head. He led Shahid out of the cell, down the corridors Shahid was starting to know so well, and to the lift. They went down four floors to an office with a counter, on top of which Shahid’s tracksuit bottoms – the ones he’d been wearing when he was arrested – were sitting. The custody sergeant, a fat man with cold eyes, gave him a clipboard with a form to sign, and he signed it. Then the other policeman led him through a glass-metal-mesh door and there were Ahmed, Usman, Rohinka, Mrs Kamal and Mrs Principle, all of them jumping to their feet as soon as they saw him and all of them looking worried, happy, shiny-eyed. Then Shahid’s own eyes began to blur too.
‘Who’s running the shop?’ he tried to say, but his voice cracked halfway through and it came out as a sob, as Shahid burst into tears.
91
It sometimes seemed to Rohinka as if she got no sleep at all – literally none, ever. She knew that she must, of course, because if she didn’t – if she literally never went out, not for a second – she would by now have died or gone mad. But there were times when those two states didn’t seem all that far away. And as for the fact that she never slept, well, one sign of it was that whenever Fatima came into the room in the morning – any time from half past five – Rohinka could hear her coming. Perhaps it was only that she was so attuned to her daughter’s waking that the first footfall woke her from her shallow, expectant sleep. That was more likely, Rohinka supposed. Not that it felt as if it made much difference: either way, all day and every day, she was on the ragged edge of exhaustion.
She was always already awake by the time her daughter came in the room and began her patented three-step process for rousing her mother: first, for about a minute, simply stand beside the bed – very very close to the edge of the bed, ideally about a quarter-inch or so – and wait for the first sign of life. Second, begin to tap her mother on the shoulder with the flat of her hand, a cross between a tap and a pat, not violent, respectful even, but firm, insistent. Third, she would simply clamber over Rohinka, using her as a climbing-obstacle-cum-plaything like something at the recreation centre, and launch herself into the gap in the bed beside her. By that point there was no longer any mileage for Rohinka in pretending to be asleep.
Today was the same. She heard Fatima coming from the landing, her feet light but purposeful, in no hurry – she knew what she was doing. Mohammed, in his cot in their room, showed no sign of waking, as he tended not to do – a blessing, Rohinka supposed. At 5.30 a.m., one child was enough.
So today was the same as always. But today was different too, because today was the day that Mrs Kamal was taking a plane back to Lahore. Usman would be travelling with her, a trip with several overlapping agendas: he would help Mrs Kamal with the journey (though anyone less in need of help Rohinka couldn’t think of – still, her notional frailty had sometimes to be deferred to); he was himself claiming that he wanted to ‘chill out in Lahore for a bit’; and he had succumbed to his mother’s bullying to go and meet some potential marriage partners. Well, maybe it would work out for him. Usman had not been quite himself recently. Not that he spoke more, or showed more interest in the children, or anything like that, but he was less angry and more preoccupied. He had trimmed his beard and stopped irritating Ahmed by pretending to refuse to serve alcohol. Perhaps it was no more than that he was growing up a little.
As soon as Fatima came in the room and stood by the bed, Rohinka did something which amazed her daughter: she got up.
‘Mummy!’ said Fatima. ‘What are you doing?!’
‘Mamaji leaves today,’ said her mother. ‘There’s lots to do. You can help me.’
‘Shall I go and wake her up?’
Fatima, for all her indefatigability, her unstoppability, her take-no-prisoners approach to life, was very wary of her grandmother. (Who, predictably, doted on Mohammed.) She did not go into her room uninvited. It was tempting to let Fatima be Mrs Kamal’s early-morning alarm call; tempting, but probably not a great idea. Woken up in the wrong way, Mrs Kamal could start her last day in a bad mood and colour her departure for everyone. For a moment, Rohinka allowed herself to think about how nice it would be to get her home back: to get past that sense of always having somebody in your space. No one to encounter on a midnight trip to the bathroom, no one to hide birth- control medication from, no one extra to have to cook for or wash up after or do laundry for; it would be nice to have Mohammed back in his room, nice to just have their home back to themselves. Normality had never seemed more attractive. Only the four of them – even the thought felt like a long, relieving exhale.
‘Best stay with me. Or go downstairs and see what Daddy is doing.’
Fatima nodded, her expression serious: she had a mission. She moved around to her father’s side of the bed and got in.
An hour and a half later and they were all in the kitchen, good to go. Even Shahid, who under the circumstances could be forgiven for lying in and giving the occasion a miss, was there. He had been out of custody for three days and was still giddily happy – the main symptom being that he couldn’t stop talking. He had lost weight in jail, five or six kilos, and what with the fresh shave and haircut he’d had on getting out, was suddenly much more handsome. In fact he now looked like someone out of a film, a lean dark good-looking stranger with a past. If it had been him going to Lahore, Rohinka would be willing to bet that he wouldn’t come back single. Now he was sitting next to Fatima, coaxing her to eat her breakfast cereal by pretending to take huge mouthfuls of it himself, then flying it to her mouth making aeroplane noises. Mrs Kamal was sitting next to him, arranging her passport and plane ticket and other documentation on the table in front of her. On the other side of her was Mohammed in his high chair, barely awake. He was not cranky, but he was also not fully conscious, and he was making no attempt to eat or to interact with anyone: sitting there slumped sideways, chubby and skimpy-haired, he had the air of a Sultan recovering from a heavy lunch. Next to him his father too looked tired, and the coincidence made them look very alike; the resemblance, which Rohinka sometimes could and sometimes couldn’t see, was unmistakable. They looked like twins with a thirty-five-year age gap.
Mrs Kamal snapped her handbag closed.
‘It’s time,’ she said.
‘Usman’s brought the car round,’ said Ahmed. The two brothers would take their mother to the airport; Shahid had an appointment with Mrs Strauss the solicitor. They went into their farewells, and then came out in front of the shop, where Usman sat at the wheel of the Sharan with its hazard lights blinking. Ahmed loaded Mrs Kamal’s bag into the back of the people carrier. She had two suitcases and the biggest wheelie carry-on bag Rohinka had ever seen: with its handle extended, it was almost as tall as she was.
Standing in front of her mother-in-law, Rohinka felt a wave of the very last thing she had expected: affection. She had seen what Mrs Kamal had been like when Shahid was locked up, and would never forget it. She hoped Fatima and Mohammed would never be in trouble of that scale; if they ever were, she hoped she could live up to her mother-in-law’s example. But this wasn’t easy to put into words, and she made no attempt to begin. Perhaps she didn’t have to. Mrs Kamal stood in front of her, gripped her arm and said with an amused, knowing look, like a character actor taking applause at a curtain call:
‘Daughter. It has been eventful.’ And then Mrs Kamal turned to get into the car, saying, ‘And now time to see about that upgrade.’
