I Can't Think Straight (7 page)

Leyla looked at her. ‘Anything?’

‘Yes.’

‘How did you manage to be engaged four times?’ she asked quickly, then laughed at Tala’s rolled eyes. ‘I mean, you seem so decisive.’

‘Well, I’m not proud of it,’ said Tala. ‘The first one – well, I was very young, and had no idea what I was getting into. The second one produced tonnes of dates. Which is great, and I love dates, but I didn’t love him. The third one ticked all the boxes – good family, Christian Arab, intelligent, handsome. But it just didn’t click.’

She looked to Leyla for understanding and received it in the glance back.

‘What about you and Ali?’ Tala asked. ‘How’s that going?’ They had slowed to a halt now, under the protective, enclosing branches of an oak tree. Beyond them, the river flowed with a soft sigh. Tala watched Leyla as she hesitated. Her eyes were clear, her skin almost translucent in the pale light.

‘He’s nice. I like him a lot.’

Tala nodded. ‘But does it click?’

‘Not the way I imagine it should.’

Tala felt a sudden impulse to brush away a long strand of dark hair that had fallen across Leyla’s face. But she kept her hands in her jacket pocket and watched as Leyla pushed it away herself.

‘Maybe we expect too much,’ Tala said, suddenly. She felt Leyla watching her, trying to catch hold of her eyes to read what lay in them, but Tala remained intent on looking at the sky where thunder now lay crouched and grumbling. The smell of the coming storm hung in the air, metallic, strange.

‘Come, we should go,’ Tala said. ‘It’s going to rain.’

Chapter Five

Leyla spent the drive home from the park veering between elation and uncertainty and it was the elation that was causing the uncertainty. She had just had lunch and a walk in the park with a friend. She should have been thinking of something else entirely by now, or at best reliving a couple of moments, not thinking over every nuance of every word and look that she had exchanged with Tala. In fact, she should be thinking of someone else entirely. Ideally Ali, or someone like him. But it was not Ali who was captivating her and this fact was one she had only just acknowledged openly to herself as she turned into her driveway and got out of the car. She had not had time to begin to consider the implications of the fact that she found the cadences of Tala’s accent beautiful. Or that she was constantly surprised by the incisive articulation of the thoughts behind those brown eyes. That every time they exchanged a glance of communication her stomach fluttered. Or that, without even meaning to, she had already begun to lie to her parents in order to see Tala. There was a familiar pattern here, this much Leyla was forced to admit. She had been the victim of a series of silent yearn-ings throughout her late teens and early twenties. Some of these had lasted a few days; the majority had lasted a period of months and a couple for even longer. What they all had in common was that the attraction was usually hidden, forever unspoken, and always unrequited. Although she had tried to think up other reasons why this had always been the case (for example, that the object of her desire was often married), she had now and then admitted the truth to herself, usually in the depths of the long Surrey night, under cover of the forgiving darkness – and the truth was that every one of these attractions had been to other women.

The fact that most of these affairs remained locked away in her own mind, occasionally struck her as a little feeble, but she found it easier to keep it all inside her than to try and disseminate it to those around her. And grasping this particular reality would be like taking hold of a cobra by its grinning face. The consequences would be so far reaching; the debris after the explosion would splinter into every part of her life and hurt everyone she knew. Not that this potential meltdown was a reason to lie to herself, she knew, but up until now, it had happened that all the women she had liked in that way were unavailable, uninterested or entirely unconscious of the situation and this had largely removed from Leyla’s shoulders the burden of deciding what to do in the event of an actual relationship. She had no idea how one met women that might be open to such a union without responding to internet postings, or sifting all one’s acquain-tances according to various unreliable stereotypes. And if she did that, it seemed too ridiculous that Ann Framer, her friend in the last year of school, should potentially be classified in the wrong box because she was good at tennis and liked cats. What she wanted, what she one day hoped for, was a simple, mutual attraction. A moment of understanding. An overwhelming impulse that revealed the hidden passion to be right and true.

‘You want the good news or the bad news?’

Leyla jumped, then sighed, relieved to be greeted by her sister, despite the fact that Yasmin seemed highly irritated.

‘What’s the bad news?’

‘Ali – who you were supposedly out with today – called to ask if you wanted to go over and watch the rugby.’

Leyla closed her eyes. ‘Oh, no. Tell me you answered the phone?’

‘Well, see,’ said Yasmin. ‘That’s the good news. Dad did. AND – he didn’t tell Mum.’

Leyla tried to slip past and into her room, consumed by a head spinning mélange of fading excitement from her day with Tala and guilt at upsetting her father. But Yasmin blocked her way.

‘Not so fast. You owe me. Big time. Leaving me alone with the cousins from hell. And not even for Ali. Where were you anyway?’

Since returning from Nairobi, Yasmin had begun to suspect that her older sister was enjoying some sort of double life. Although that phrase might be an overstatement – what Yasmin had intuited was more of a hidden aspect, an interior world, as yet insubstantial and undefined. She took pleasure in the idea because for too long, Yasmin had been all alone in the vanguard of fights for liberty of action, thought and speech against her parents, while Leyla, it seemed, had been content to accept the terms of the small dictatorship without complaint, on the grounds that she had no compelling reason to re-volt. Despite being two years younger, it was Yasmin who had been the first to decline the offer of a place in the family business; who had left home and lived on her own in Kenya; and it was Yasmin who had first had a boyfriend. This apparent lack of need, the lack of desire, which Yasmin found in her sister – for privacy, for wider experiences, for men, had confused and annoyed her intensely.

Since her return, however, and even more noticeably in the past couple of weeks, Leyla had seemed more real – more like a person in her own right. The regular rhythms of their lives in the vast, old, Surrey house had not changed, but that afternoon’s amazing development, the uncovering of a lie from Leyla of all people, had sharpened Yasmin’s sense that her sister was changing. As uplifted as she was by this idea (for Leyla’s sake, as well as her own – and it would be so good to have someone to fight with her), she still did not want to let go of the fact that Leyla had knowingly abandoned her in hell for the entire afternoon. Yasmin led the way up to the third floor attic space which her father had converted into a larger room for her, complete with her own sitting area and small bathroom, while she was away. He had done this to ‘incentivise’ her to return (a crucial element in retaining key company employees, he explained, and he saw no reason why the principle could not extend to family members too), an attempt which Yasmin recognised as bribery, even as she accepted the offered space. They sat at opposite ends of a sagging blue sofa.

‘You’re having an affair with someone, aren’t you?’ was Yasmin’s opening line. She grinned. ‘And it’s not Ali. Is he English? Even better, is he black? Mum will die.’

Leyla tried to sigh but could only smile. ‘No, on all counts.’

Yasmin looked deeply disappointed. ‘Are you sure?’

‘I think I’d notice if I was having an affair. I just went to hang out with a new friend of mine. But you know you practically need a medical certificate to miss our family events.’

Yasmin’s sigh attested to the truth of this statement. ‘I need to get my own place,’ she said. ‘So do you.’

They considered this silently for a few moments. Neither of them had nearly enough money for a deposit on a flat. Nor would their parents sanction a move out of the family house without a marriage certificate.

‘Why don’t you just marry Ali? You’d be out of here at least.’

‘You know why I won’t just marry him,’ Leyla said sharply. ‘I don’t love him, and he doesn’t love me.’

‘Then why are you going out with him?’ Yasmin asked quietly.

There was no succinct reply to this question. The answer would always be unconvincing and was caught up in a complex tangle of issues, including the fact that Ali was fun to be around, that the relationship pleased her parents and gave her time to try and overcome her own natural leanings.

‘Who’s your new friend?’ Yasmin asked. Her gaze was sharper now and her back was straighter. Although Yasmin moved through life at a pace that seemed guaranteed to allow no reflection, she was in fact acutely sensitive to the motivations of every one of her family members. And at this moment, Yasmin recalled that Leyla had been playing the new kd lang CD almost non stop recently.

‘I met her through Ali,’ Leyla said, and she damped down the smile that unconsciously came to her face.

Her, thought Yasmin. Strike one. She would have to tread carefully and change tack if she was to probe this further.

‘Can I ask you something?’

‘Sure,’ Leyla replied.

‘Have you done this often?’ Yasmin asked casually. ‘Lied to Mum and Dad?’

‘Never,’ said Leyla, crestfallen. ‘I can’t believe I did it.’

Strike two, thought Yasmin. She’s already lying for this girl.

‘Is she nice-looking?’ Yasmin asked. Immediately, she realised this was far too obvious a strategy. Leyla immediately stiffened and laughed, and asked what kind of question that was. Though her obvious discomfort might in fact be a further clue. Never mind, Yasmin thought. She would leave it alone for now. There would be time to sniff out the details later. Maybe she would follow Leyla down to her room, pretend to look for a missing shirt or something. She was sure she’d seen a DVD of ‘The L Word’ lying around. That might be all the extra evidence she needed.

‘Anyway,’ Yasmin said, to break her sister’s awkwardness. ‘Congratulations.’

‘For what?’

‘Defying your parents today.’

Leyla gave a bitter half-laugh. ‘I didn’t defy them, I lied to them.’

‘Well, it’s a start,’ Yasmin said, determined to find a modicum of hope in the situation. ‘Now you just have to learn to do it with the truth.’

‘But they make it so difficult, don’t they?’ Leyla said, savagely. ‘I can’t bear the way they make such dramas out of every little thing. Every little deviation from their plans.’

‘Don’t blame them,’ Yasmin told her. ‘You’ve let them ignore you as a person for too long. If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s always to make sure your drama is bigger than theirs. If they shout, shout louder. If they sulk, sulk harder.’

‘I don’t want to have to play those games,’ replied Leyla, and she stood up.

‘Sweetheart,’ Yasmin said. ‘Life is a game. And if you don’t want to miss it, you better get playing.’

Leyla liked to think that it was this advice from her sibling that led her to be sitting alongside Tala the following evening in the warmth and darkness of a London theatre. On an impulse, Leyla had called to invite her new friend to see a play, and Tala had accepted with alacrity. The actors had been on stage for perhaps twenty minutes, and Leyla watched them moving about and talking, gradually realising that she had no idea what the plot was about, or who the characters were.

For all her senses, all her perceptions were trained on just one small part of her body, the side of her forearm, which lay on the armrest between herself and Tala. When the curtain had risen, she had sensed Tala’s arm raise also, had felt it shift onto the narrow, velvet bridge between them, and she had almost pulled her own arm away, to give her more room. But the touch of Tala’s shirt against her bare skin had thrilled her, and it felt wonderful to have that connection with the girl beside her and she had remained there, with as much nonchalance as she could muster. When the audience laughed at a line, she smiled also, though she had no idea of what had been said, and took the opportunity to cast a sideways glance at Tala. Tala turned to meet the look, then leaned to whisper in Leyla’s ear.

‘I forgot to ask – did you bring your stories?’

Leyla nodded and looked back at the stage, feeling her bag against her feet, the bag which contained two rolled up magazines which contained her short stories. She had been excited about giving them to Tala, had been just a little proud that Tala would see her name in print. But now she felt more than a strong misgiving that as soon as she read the stories, Tala would hate them. Every phrase in her writing that Leyla had ever been uncertain about began to haunt her. She wondered if the emotions they described were not trite and unreal. She coughed and tried to focus on the play.

‘Don’t worry.’ Tala’s voice was there again, unexpectedly, in her ear. ‘I’ll love them.’

At exactly the same time on the following evening, Leyla found herself in a fluorescent-lit supermarket aisle with her mother and sister, a setting that could not have been further removed from the softly-lit, enticing ambience of the previous night’s theatre with Tala. But to Leyla, as she spoke on her mobile phone, the unvarying rows of neatly stacked produce seemed fresh and glowing. Even in the last twenty-four hours, she had missed Tala’s voice, had longed to hear its particular inflections and intonations, had missed the sharpness and the softness that it could so easily and equally encompass.

‘You haven’t returned my calls,’ Tala said.

‘You left one message,’ Leyla said, smiling. ‘This morning. I was going to call you later.’

‘I hope that’s true.’

‘It is.’

Leyla glanced up at her sister, casually, and Yasmin caught the look, conquered her instinct to eavesdrop and quickly went off to choose a brie.