Well, that must be a first, I’m thinking, and I’m really quite shocked.
“He’s told his mum his chest hurts again and she’s let him stay home. He’s searching the Internet right now for refugee organizations,” says Kim, and she still hasn’t blinked.
Trumpet Steven playing hooky? Unbelievable. But I realize this is a big moment for Kim and say nothing. I try not to think much either, just in case.
Samir is excluded today and somehow it feels really weird without him. But it’s Lindy I’m after, she betrayed us and she’s not going to get away with it. At lunchtime I go looking for her.
“Watch out for her disgusting nail,” says Kim as she hurries to keep up with me, but right now I don’t care.
I find Lindy in the toilets and call out, “You told Terrence, didn’t you?”
“You what?” says Lindy in a bored voice but I can see she’s unfurling the nail.
“Leave it, Ali,” says Kim, pulling at my sleeve, but I can’t. It’s been going around and around in my head, driving me crazy.
“He turned up on the beach with Gaz and threatened us with a knife. You couldn’t keep it secret, could you? You had to tell Terrence about the hut. You set him on Samir just like a dog,” I snarl at Lindy.
She’s sorting out her gross hair in the mirror and pouting her lips like she’s some sort of supermodel. I feel the anger and irritation rising and I’m about to start on her again when she says, “I told him nothing. I don’t care about Two Percent or his so-called cousin.”
“So why was Terrence all the way down Hayling Island yesterday?” And I feel like slapping her smug face but Kim’s got me almost in a half nelson by now.
Lindy shrugs. “He’s got to go somewhere, the police move him on from town,” she says as she walks toward the door. “You need to get a life instead of hanging around with even more losers.”
Kim has band practice all afternoon until about six, so I walk out the gates after school on my own with Lindy’s words still going around in my head. I want to yell into her face, “I had a life, a perfectly good life, and then my dad skipped off, my grandpa died, my mum broke her leg and a completely illegal person turned up on my beach.”
I haven’t been to marathon training for a week and the coach has given up leaving messages on my cell phone. The last one said, 1 more chance.
I really miss training, but even if I win, I don’t need to get interviewed in the local paper anymore. Dad hasn’t disappeared and I’ve got his number, not that I ever want to speak to him again.
I don’t want to go home right now because if I do I expect I’ll just have another fight with Mum, so I decide to go around to Samir’s flat. We can go on the bus to the Island together to see Mohammed.
I ring the bell and have to wait a minute or two while Samir runs down. When he opens the door he says quickly, “Don’t ask about the photos,” which is a weird sort of welcome. Then he races up the narrow flight of stairs ahead of me and into the flat, which smells all warm and spicy.
“In here,” says Samir, and he pulls me into the kitchen.
A short woman, her head completely covered in a black head scarf, is laying out sheets of incredibly thin pastry onto a huge tray on the kitchen table.
She’s younger than Mum, in her thirties maybe, with the same light-brown skin as Samir, and she’s wearing a full-length dark blue dress, a black cardigan and red slippers.
“Hello, Samir friend, good, sit, sit,” and she gives me a huge smile and pushes me onto a stool.
“This is Auntie Selma,” says Samir, grinning. “Hello,” I say.
Auntie Selma speaks in rapid, heavily accented English, and it’s hard to follow everything she says. But she and Samir hoot with laughter when I carefully say shukran.
“Where’d you learn that?” says Samir in surprise.
“Guess,” and I give him a wink. Then I say, “What are you making?” I point to the jars of honey and bowls of mixture that look like nuts or perhaps garden gravel ground up quite small.
“Baklava,” says Auntie Selma, and she and Samir have to say it about ten times before I get it.
That was the word I got wrong the last time I came to Samir’s home. I thought they were making balaclavas for suicide bombers. How embarrassing. For a minute I can’t meet Samir’s eyes.
But that’s not the only thing I got wrong in the last few days. I didn’t realize that Mum and Dad have been speaking to each other for the last two years behind my back. That’s so like sneaky of them and then I have an awful thought. Maybe Mum thinks I don’t deserve to be in touch with Dad because I’m “running wild” or whatever.
Samir is telling me that baklava is a kind of very sweet Middle Eastern pastry. Auntie Selma makes it by the tray load for the Turkish restaurant on the high street. “They pay her,” he says, and I nod.
Every little helps, I think, like my paper route money. Although I’ve decided to quit so now I’m unemployed again. Can’t wait to tell Mum the good news. She’s bound to blame me.
Auntie Selma gives me two different kinds of pastries to try, and it’s the most fantastic melt-in-your-mouth stuff I’ve ever had.
“Take, Alix,” says Auntie Selma, and she hands me a spoon and a bowl of mixture. “Put here and here and we make together and make good, inshallah.”
I look at Samir and he says, “Inshallah, it means God willing.”
I try it out a couple of times and Auntie Selma corrects me until I get it right.
“Shukran, inshallah, I’m speaking Arabic,” and I laugh. Auntie Selma laughs too, and says, “Alix make good Iraqi girl.”
What would Auntie Selma think about hiding Mohammed? Maybe she would think we were crazy and tell us to go to the police. Is that what a good Iraqi girl would do?
We all work together for a while and it’s really great fun. Samir and me get sticky to our elbows and then Samir gets a bottle of cola out of the fridge and, handing me a couple of plastic beakers, says, “Let’s go next door. It’s too hot in here.”
He says something in Arabic to Auntie Selma and she smiles and waves us away. But as we leave the kitchen I suddenly think, What if Nasty Naazim is in the next room? I’m beginning to feel very nervous.