9

‘Do you want a biscuit?’

‘Erm –­’

‘Go on. Take a couple.’

Her mother places a large silver tin on the tiny table in front of you, an assortment of biscuits stacked over each other. You take a pair of chocolate digestives, and dip one into your cup of tea. The biscuit softens and one half plops into your Earl Grey.

‘What’s on at the moment?’ her mother asks no one in particular, pointing the remote at the television. Flicking through the channels, she settles on the Winter Olympics. You both watch four humans skitter around a racetrack, carved from solid blocks of ice, in a svelte vehicle shaped like a long smooth pebble.

You are here, at her house, for your hoody. You were meant to meet just before she returned to Dublin, but in this city, much will conspire to prevent meetings and appointments. It was a Sunday in February, and you both watched train after train cancel, before giving up. So now you’re here, without her presence, which is heavier in her absence. You’re here, in her house, for your hoody, which you expected to pick up and depart, back to your home, where it is just you, where the quiet is beginning to hum and buzz in a way you can hear.

When you came in, her mother welcomed you, and asked if you wanted a cup of tea. You watched her elegant yet determined shuffle, head down in concentration rather than dismay, opening cupboards, retrieving the biscuit tin.

‘Ridiculous sport,’ her mother says. The screen has changed. A woman slowly launches a ­stone-­shaped object across the ice, letting go of the curved grip mounted to the top. Two more women, armed with ­long-­handled brushes, scrub at the ice as if they are trying to rid a stain. An invisible path is cleared and the object glides silently across the ice, entering a target zone with a white bullseye.

‘Of course, hold on.’ You hear her shuffling elsewhere in the house; when she comes back to the living room, she lays your hoody across one of the chairs.

‘What have you been doing today?’

It’s Saturday night. Elsewhere in the city, people are rebelling against their weekly duties, filling up pubs and bars and dance floors. Whatever warmth was teased earlier in the winter must have been delusion. You spent the day indoors, the morning slipping by at your desk where you flicked through a book of ­images – Roy DeCarava’s The Sound I ­Saw – and you wrote a little, not much, but something, you wrote something. The rest of the day, a blanket draped over you, poring over the pages of a ­novel – Zadie Smith’s NW.

‘I love her writing,’ her mother says.

‘She’s my favourite writer. NW is the book I return to most.’ Perhaps that is how we should frame this question forever; rather than asking what is your favourite work, let’s ask, what continues to pull you back?

Last year, on a summer’s evening, you presented your battered copy of NW for Zadie to sign. A brown headwrap, gold hoops swinging from her ears, and something like knowing on her face, despite admitting earlier in the evening she was perpetually unsure. Her presence was peaceful, slow, ­sage-­like. She could see you were a little awkward, a little ­overwhelmed – your friend will swear you were close to ­tears – and steered the conversation.

‘Where’s your family from?’

‘Ghana.’

‘Ah. My mother married a Ghanaian, briefly. You’re wonderful people.’

‘What happened? Your mother, I mean.’

‘Some things aren’t meant to work out.’

You spoke some more, and you ­tried – and ­failed – to explain what the book meant to you. That there were many similarities between your ­south-­east London and her ­north-­west.

‘South-­east – where?’

‘Catford.’

‘My grandma lived in Catford. I spent a lot of time there growing up.’

You smiled, while she signed your book, unable to say any more. Unable to tell her you have read her book many times and will do so many more. To tell her where your breath catches, where your eyes widen. That illustrations of desire slipped into the comfort of a paragraph did not go unnoticed. You want to say when you read her essay about this ­novel –

The happy ending is never universal. Someone is always left behind. And in the London I get up ­in – as it is ­today – that someone is more often than not a young Black man.

–­ that you understood.

Her mother’s interest is piqued when you mention writing.

‘What are you writing, fiction?’

‘I dunno. Kind of. It’s just to supplement my photography, really. Trying to find another form to tell stories with. But yeah, I spend a lot of time with novels.’

‘So,’ she says, crossing one leg over the other. ‘There are really only two plot devices when writing: a stranger comes to town, or a person goes on a journey. All good work is just variations of these ideas.’

You ponder this when you leave. But what of NW, the book in which no one wins?

And what of the life you lead? Who is the stranger? Who is the familiar? And what are their journeys?

You didn’t know whether to hug her mother when you were leaving but rode an instinct, wrapping long arms around her quickly, not lingering. She smelt of petrichor and a place you might grow to call home.

Waiting for the bus in the darkness, you pull on the hoody. It smells like her: sweet like the torn petal of a flower, sweet like lavender plucked from its stem while in summer bloom. You put your headphones on and load up Kelsey Lu’s EP, Church, an album full of orchestral loops designed to reach towards a quiet ecstasy. You could be anywhere right now, your eyes closed, enveloped in her presence, which is heavier in her absence. But you are home, amongst the melody, slipping into percussive breaks, breathing easy.