“What don’t I know?”
“About Jeff and Sarah. About them having a bit of slap-and-tickle.”
Rukshana was horrified. “They’re not having an affair. He’s married with kids; he’s got a photo of them on his desk, he’s always going on about his family.”
“Oh, Rukshana, puh-leeze — you can’t be that naive. They’re carrying on, everyone at the bank knows that.”
“I didn’t know that.”
Kelly hesitated. “Well, people didn’t like to tell you gossip, what with you being a Muslim and everything — they thought you wouldn’t like it.”
Rukshana was disgusted. She loved gossip. Kelly went on to tell Rukshana what everyone knew. “It’s been going on for months. They think it’s a big secret, but of course everyone knows. That’s why he fixed it for her to get the job, to keep her sweet. Then he advised Personnel to get rid of you, so in case you sued them about missing the promotion, they could say you were just bitter because you’d been fired. That’s what everyone’s saying happened.”
“That’s what everyone’s saying?”
“That’s what everyone’s saying. He was on your interview panel, wasn’t he? He goes up to Personnel every five minutes, doesn’t he? Every lunchtime at noon, Jeff and Sarah meet up. He goes out and waits a couple of streets away, and then five minutes later she follows and they get a cab to some Holiday Inn, where they do their dirty business. Then at two o’clock on the dot, he comes back, and five minutes later, she arrives on her own so no one will guess that they’re at it. I mean, can you imagine? It’d take a lot more than a promotion to persuade me to shag that fat ugly bastard. Talk about lie back and think of England. Rukshana? You’ve gone very quiet. Are you still there?”
Rukshana was still there. She was just very, very angry.
RUKSHANA DIDN’T DO anything the following day because she was still too angry; she wanted a clear head when she decided what to do next. Twenty-four hours later she was still too angry but had decided to ring a couple of lawyers anyway to see if she had a case against the bank. They were a bit skeptical but thought she might be able to do something on discrimination grounds. They were less sure about Kelly’s preferred option, that Rukshana sue Jeff for being a lying, cheating, disloyal, fat ugly bastard who’d taken her job away. Rukshana was glad the lawyers didn’t advise that. She didn’t want to sue anyone; that wasn’t what she was after.
She couldn’t relax. The only person in the house during the day was her granddad. He was in his eighties. He got a little confused sometimes, but on other occasions he was very sharp. Whatever — she didn’t feel like chatting. She tried doing a little housework to calm down. That didn’t help, but she did it anyway. In Farah’s room, she picked up the clothes her sister had scattered around after she’d come in from a party the previous night. Rukshana held a miniskirt against her hips; it really was immodestly short. A few months ago, their cousin had come from Pakistan to visit and had shared a room with Farah; what a culture shock it must have been for her. Their cousin refused to leave the house without wearing a burka, so when she went out, she was covered in black, only her eyes visible to the outside world. When she returned to Pakistan, she’d left one of her burkas behind, and it was still sitting on a shelf, possibly meant to serve as a reproach to her wayward cousin. Rukshana picked it up.
From the bedroom window, she could see the towers of the City, London’s financial district, looming over the rooftops; down below those towers was the bank where Jeff and Sarah were having a good laugh at her expense. She looked at the clothes in her hands and then out over the city, and she bit her lip.
Rukshana knew what she was considering was a serious criminal offense and that she’d go to prison for several years if she was caught. She’d have to get everything right and not make any mistakes. There were a lot of things that could go wrong, and there was her family to think about. Then she thought about Jeff appearing from his office and telling her how outrageous her sacking was and how he wasn’t putting up with it. She gripped the clothes tightly in her hand. Every single day she spent staring out the barred windows of a prison cell would be worth it. Jeff was going to pay. She smiled and whispered to herself:
“It’s on.”
IT WAS A Thursday. Rukshana had everything prepared and all the timing worked out. She was wearing one of her sister’s short skirts, a low-cut top, and ballet shoes on her feet. In her shoulder bag were silver high heels, a pair of fashionably outsize Jackie O. sunglasses, and her cousin’s burka. Out in the hall was the family bike that she’d oiled and left ready. And she’d picked the day very carefully.
Her grandfather was a cricket fanatic. He was already in his armchair with various fruit juices and nibbles in easy reach, getting ready for the first day of the England-Pakistan match being played in London. Every ball would be shown on the TV, along with the replays and analyses. Rukshana knew her grandfather; he wouldn’t be moving from that spot all day. He might briefly go upstairs for a call of nature, but even that wasn’t certain. Where cricket was concerned, he had very firm bladder control. And there was a house rule — no one disturbed Granddad when the cricket was on. Knocks on the door went unanswered, the phone was left to ring, and any attempt to start a conversation was ignored.
When the first ball of the match was bowled, Rukshana looked up at the clock on the wall. It was half past eleven. She had thirty minutes to complete the first part of her plan.
“I’m just going upstairs to read a book.”
She was met with silence. Out in the hall she put on her cousin’s burka and wheeled the bike out onto the street. Very, very gently, she pulled the front door shut. She mounted the bike and began pedaling, the burka wrapped around her, only her eyes visible. She rode to the end of her street and turned onto the main road that led to the City.
On a typical day in London, you could see almost anyone dressed almost any way, but even so, a woman cycling in a burka was unusual. Truant schoolkids laughed as she flew by. Some drivers did double takes when they saw her, which were quickly followed by contemptuous stares directed not at her but at her burka. Rukshana almost wobbled on her bike, she was so shaken by the response to her clothing. She’d heard women in her family talk about how they were sometimes insulted and verbally abused on the street when they wore their burkas, but Rukshana hadn’t thought it was as bad as this. And — perhaps it was inevitable — one guy leaned out of the window of his van and yelled “Terrorist!” when she stopped at a traffic light. She threw off her shock. She began to feel mad and bad. She felt like an outlaw.
It took her twenty minutes to arrive at her destination, a quiet side street two blocks away from the bank where she’d worked. She parked the bike, locked it up, and checked the street. There was no one looking. She pulled the burka off over her head and put it in her bag before swapping her slippers for the high heels. She put on sunglasses. She used a mirror to apply some makeup and arrange her long raven-black hair so that it waved and flowed around her face. She smiled at her image. She looked fantastic, nothing like her normal headscarf-wearing self. She couldn’t help thinking that she could give her sister a run for her money in the looks department.
Unsteadily at first, but with growing confidence, she clip-clopped down the street on her heels and then turned onto the main road. With her new look, she might as well have been in a different country. The same sort of male drivers who had given her dirty looks when she’d been on her bike were now slowing down to admire her bronzed legs. When a man leaned out of a van’s window and shouted, “Oi, oi! Do you fancy a portion, sweetheart?” Rukshana avoided eye contact and kept walking. She wondered if it was the same man who’d shouted “Terrorist!” at her fifteen minutes earlier.
She walked the two blocks. On the left was the bank, and on the right was a small park where the staff sometimes went to eat their lunches. Rukshana took a seat on a bench that gave her a view of the entrance to the bank. She crossed her long bare legs and looked at her watch. It was 11:55 a.m. She’d made it. A bicycle courier walked past her wheeling his bike; he clocked her legs, and she heard him whisper “Asian babe” as he went by. She smiled and looked at her watch. It was noon. She looked over to the entrance and sure enough, just as Kelly had foretold, Jeff emerged from the bank and walked down the steps. He adjusted his tie and ran his fingers through his hair a few times before trotting off and turning down a side street.
Five minutes after that, Sarah too came out of the bank. She turned and walked down the same side street Jeff had. Rukshana shook her head and whispered, “Bastards.” Then she stood up, adjusted her hair again, and walked across the road. There were hundreds and hundreds of employees in this building, so she was sure she would get away with it. On the steps of the bank, she took a deep breath and said to herself, “This is it,” before
