When I reach Zahira, she is pushing Elyas in the toddler swing, just as she was the first time I saw her. ‘I hoped we might see you today. How are things?’
I stand beside her, watch her push. ‘Okay, thanks. Stephen’s away at a conference for the weekend and he won’t be back till tomorrow night, so I thought it would be good to get out of the house.’ I am gabbling slightly and I stop myself before explanations run away with me.
‘He’s gone away? So soon after your accident?’
I hear the surprise in her voice. ‘It’s a work thing. An academic conference. He tried to get out of it but he couldn’t. I’ll be fine.’
Elyas removes his hands from the safety bar, lifts his arms into the air.
‘Hands back on the bar, sweetie.’
Elyas obeys immediately, begins singing a song about two little dickie birds sitting on a wall, and even though I do not explicitly remember it, it seems to resonate with something in me. It is as though I have been transported to a different time, a different place, but I do not know where or when. And yet the more I try to pull it into focus, the hazier it becomes, as though a small, invisible hand is tugging on my arm, trying to show me something, but my legs are refusing to move, not allowing me to discover what it might be.
‘I tried befriending you on social media, but you’re impossible to find. Do you have a different username or something?’
I shake my head. ‘I’m not sure.’
Zahira stops the swing for a moment, reiterates to Elyas that he needs to hold on tight. ‘I looked everywhere – Instagram, Twitter, Facebook. Maybe you don’t do social media?’
I scour my brain, searching for a snippet of memory to help answer Zahira’s question. There seems to be something on the periphery of my vision, like a floater gliding across the edge of my eye, but each attempt to focus on it slides it further away from me. ‘I just don’t know. I’m sorry.’
Zahira shrugs. ‘It’s just quite unusual in this day and age. Not that I’m saying it’s a bad thing. There’ve been times since I split up from Elyas’s dad when I really wished I didn’t have access to quite so many details about his life.’
It is the first time Zahira has mentioned Elyas’s father, and I find myself stepping tentatively into the space left by her reference. ‘So you’re not still together?’
Zahira waves a hand in the air. ‘God, no. I realised he wasn’t the one when he missed Elyas’s birth because he was in a hotel room with his mistress.’
There is a matter-of-factness to the way Zahira says it, but the bitterness beneath is sharp, distinct.
‘I’m so sorry. That must have been awful.’
Zahira stops the swing, zips up Elyas’s jacket against the breeze, begins pushing him again. ‘It was pretty hard at the time. He gave me all the usual rubbish: said it meant nothing, that he’d just felt overwhelmed at the thought of becoming a parent, that he’d found the pregnancy difficult. He’d found the pregnancy difficult! I discovered the affair had been going on for six months and that was that. He moved out and I became a single mum.’
Elyas demands to be pushed higher and Zahira complies. I watch, thinking about how different her story is from the one I’d imagined. I saw an impeccably dressed woman, a devoted mother, a successful photographer, and made assumptions about the rest of her life based on nothing more than appearances.
‘So is he involved in Elyas’s life now?’ I feel my cheeks redden, wonder if it is too personal a question, but Zahira doesn’t miss a beat before replying.
‘He usually has him every other weekend, though he’s not entirely reliable on that front. But he’s always on time with maintenance payments, and given some of the horror stories you hear, I guess I should be grateful for that.’ Stepping back from the swing, she undoes the loose bun at the nape of her neck, reties her hair with nimble fingers. ‘My parents always warned me: be careful who you have kids with. Mortgages, joint bank accounts, marriages – you can extricate yourself from all of it. But have a child with someone and you’re linked to them for the rest of your life.’
Elyas calls out for her to stop, and Zahira halts the swing, lifts him out, and we both follow as he runs over to the slide. He waits his turn before climbing up, sitting proudly at the top like a king surveying his domain, and glides down.
Watching Elyas, the conversation with Stephen from earlier in the week replays in my head. We have not talked since about our inability to have children. It seemed so definitive that to discuss it further would feel like picking a scab. From what Stephen told me, we have done our best to make peace with our childlessness, have accepted that parenthood will not be a part of our lives. But watching Elyas now, I sense a deep uterine tug, cannot help but imagine that perhaps my acceptance was only ever skin-deep. Perhaps I simply became adept at masking my grief.
‘I’m afraid I’ve got to go in a minute. I’ve got some friends coming for dinner tonight and for some inexplicable reason I’ve decided to do an Ottolenghi recipe that requires about a thousand different ingredients.’
She laughs, and an image slips into my head: a dinner party, candlelight, food, wine, friendship. And then a guillotine slices across my thoughts and I wonder whether the image was a memory or simply a fantasy.
Zahira calls to Elyas, tells him he can have three more slides and then it’s time to go. She turns to me, hesitates. ‘Would you like to come back for a cup of tea? My flat’s only a couple of streets away. You’ll have to watch me chopping herbs, but it’d be nice to have the company.’
Something glides across my skin and I do not know whether it is appreciation or caution. We love living in London, but it’s not always a safe city if you haven’t got your wits about you. Stephen’s vigilance reverberates in my head, in a tug of war with the desire for friendship.
I glance down at my watch, see that I have been out for over an hour already. ‘I’d love to, but I don’t think I can. Stephen might phone soon and he’ll worry if I’m not at home.’
There is a fleeting quizzical expression on Zahira’s face. ‘Didn’t you find your mobile?’
I shake my head. ‘It was broken in the accident.’
‘But that was two weeks ago? Couldn’t you have got a new one by now?’ There is an inflection of curiosity in her voice, as though I am a puzzle in need of solving but have given her only the sparsest of clues.
‘Stephen’s ordering me one. He said it’ll take a few days to arrive.’
‘Won’t he just assume you’re out and phone back later?’
Again, the possibility skims before me like a kingfisher over a lake, but something pulls me back. ‘I don’t want him to worry.’
Zahira eyes me as though reading something etched on my skin. ‘That’s a shame. Another time, maybe?’
I nod, try to project myself into a future where I am sitting in Zahira’s kitchen, free from uncertainty as to whether it’s the right decision.
‘Will you be okay on your own this weekend?’ Zahira doesn’t wait for a response as she delves into the dove-grey leather handbag slung over her shoulder. She retrieves a pen and an old shop receipt, writes on the back of it. ‘That’s my number. Just in case you need it.’