“What?” I ask.
“Nothin’，” he says. “You just don’t know Mum like I do, Mads. When I went to Ghana to check up on things, she was movin’ a bit mad.” I look away from the camera. “Yeah,” James says, “I can tell you don’t wanna hear it and that’s why I don’t say nothin’。 Anyway, listen, I gotta go, but I’ll come to the house soon, yeah? Bye, Mads.”
“Bye, James. Love you.”
“Love you too, sis.”
I put my phone down and turn off the light.
James says he knows Mum better than I do, but I’m the one who saw her phone messages the last time she was here; messages about missing and loving each other to and from an unsaved number beginning in “+233.”
Maybe that’s what James saw in Ghana. I’m glad I had the excuse of looking after Dad to avoid that trip. It’s easy to throw a phone back onto a bedside table and pretend as if nothing’s changed—maybe harder if you see it with your own eyes.
I think of what Mum may be doing right now. If she’s alone. Betraying Dad seems a cruel act on her behalf, but although I’ve never been one of those children to saint their parents, I can’t think too badly of her. She’s still the mum who let me climb into her bed and skip a day of school when I had the scariest of nightmares; the mum who would come into my room and pray for me every hour when my period pains left me bed-bound; the mum who would brag to anyone listening about having the well-behaved, responsible, A-grade gift from God.
It’s fine. Really.
Just another secret to keep.
Chapter Three
I spend Sunday morning cleaning Dad’s room; it takes me twice as long due to my residual back pain. It’s now less of an ache and more of a constant pinching; I called the GP for an appointment but the soonest available was Tuesday afternoon, so I take paracetamol in the meantime.
I mop his wooden floor and change his bedding. I wipe down the room windows, tackle the toilet, and rinse out the bucket Dawoud uses to wipe Dad with when his legs are too weak to make it upstairs to the bathroom. Months ago, I put in a request with the council to have one built downstairs, but we’re still waiting to hear back.
I head off to church a couple of hours later and Shu calls me on the way. Which is unusual because Shu only accepts text messages and considers spontaneous phone calls a personal attack.
I met Shu at Birkbeck University. She walked into our lecture （English literature, which she eventually dropped for international business） late and rather than stand and find her friends, she took the empty seat next to me. Her black hair was longer then, but she still has the same high cheekbones and gap in her front teeth, the same fondness for oversized jumpers, and she still can’t leave the house without three necklaces layered on.
“Hey, I’m Shu—you got a spare pen?” was her opening gambit.
“Maddie,” I said, handing her one.
She looked in her bag, then back at me. “Got any spare paper, too?”
I soon became the girl she sat next to in lectures when she forgot her laptop. I was easy to find because I always sat at the front of the middle block, right at the edge so I could be the first to avoid the conversational mass when it was over.
“Why you always in a rush to leave?” Shu once asked.
“I try to avoid being swallowed by the crowd.”
“Where do you go?”
“If I haven’t got another lecture, I go home.”
“That’s sad.”
“I don’t disagree.”
“You live in London?” she asked. “You sound kinda posh.”
“Thornton Heath. You?”
“Hackney—know the area?”
“Not well, but it’s nice to properly meet you … Shu?”
“Yeah, short for Meixiang-Shu.”
After multiple well-meaning attempts on my part, she looked me dead in the eye and said, “I appreciate the effort, but your pronunciation is shit—just call me Shu.”
Shu and I used to be much closer, but now she has a steady girlfriend—Lydia—and a new high-powered city job that demands more hours than she’s technically contracted for. And with Dad needing Maddie-imposed round-the-clock care these days, I don’t see her much.
“Glad I got you before church,” Shu says. “I’m about to view another place.”
“Oh, yeah.” I use a finger to block my other ear as I walk down Tottenham Court Road. “How’s the flat hunt going?”
Shu moved out of her parents’ place as soon as she turned eighteen, literally. Shu was born at 3:57 P.M. and at that exact time on July twenty-fifth, she stood up in her room, grabbed her bags, said, “Fuck this place” and walked out. Shu can be a little dramatic, but she left for good reason. When she came out to her parents, they said they loved and accepted her, but things weren’t the same between them again. That’s as much as Shu would tell me. Now her tenancy’s coming up at her flat in Hornsey and she doesn’t want to renew. She can afford a place on her own but she’d rather save for a mortgage deposit and last I checked, Lydia wasn’t ready to take the co-resident plunge.
“I’ve got two more tonight.”
“What about the Camden flat you liked?” I ask.
“I had to turn it down. The girl I’d be sharing with was too pretty.”
A man with a worryingly lifelike parrot on his shoulder edges past me, but it’s central London on the weekend, so I don’t bat an eyelid. “You’ll have to walk me through that reasoning, Shu.”
“She won’t admit it, but Lydia’s got a … what’s the British way to say it? My gran would say ‘sticky eye.’”
“Wandering eye?”
“Yeah, maybe. Anyway, I don’t want to feel insecure in my own home when my girlfriend’s round,” she says. “If only you were ready to move out, then we could find a nice two-bed place and have a good time from the start. You know to take your shoes off when you come in and I already know why your hair’s a hundred times shorter after you wash it.”
I stop in the street. “Are you saying I’m not threateningly pretty?”
“When you make an effort, yeah, but I got nothing to worry about ’cos you’re so innocent. When Lyd was looking at your chest, you told her where you got your jumper from.”
“I thought she liked the button design.”
“She did not.”
“Maybe she did.”
Shu sighs, which means she’s rolling her eyes. “Are you ready to move out or what?”
I pause outside the church building. A warm, jealous pang hits my chest as I briefly think about what it would be like being responsible for only myself, for spending my time however I want. I immediately feel guilty and shake my head; it’s not Dad’s fault he needs me.
“I like being at home. I don’t think that’ll change any time soon,” I say.
Shu knows Dad has Parkinson’s, but she’s unaware of how serious it is. She regularly asks how Dad is and I always respond “Fine” and she hears the silent “… you know, considering,” but she doesn’t ask for specifics. Not because she doesn’t care, but because she’s just as private as I am—maybe more so. I think she asks herself, if the roles were reversed, would she want someone asking all the time? The answer is no.