It was the famine after the feast. The Defense was filed, Project Arrow was quiet. Everyone tells you to enjoy the downtime while you can. The wheel of fortune would soon turn. I went into full productivity mode for a week: changing up the furniture in the flat, booking holidays for the summer. I started reading again! My food didn’t arrive on a motorbike! I addressed the last ten items that had been languishing at the bottom of my to-do list for the past six months. Consolidated my pensions, researched savings accounts with high interest rates, took trousers to the tailor, renewed my passport, framed pictures. I tried to capture the elusive wellness: gratitude journal, ten-step skin care, hot lemon water, wardrobe clear out, overnight chia pudding, habit tracker, podcasts during the commute, dry-brushing, avo toast. All this to chase a tinny sparkle of self-satisfaction that fizzed out moments later to reveal the worming edginess underneath. The immediate, screaming desire to dissolve away from my body, leave it in a puddle on the ground, as soon as I laid eyes on any brown-haired man with Josh’s build.
“I’m still getting absolutely ruined by work,” Adele barked as I handed her the coconut latte I’d picked up for her. Our love language of daily caffeinated surprises.
“How come?”
“Arrow, of course.” Adele swiveled in her chair to face me. “Gabby is so pissy with me, I spent all night on my laptop shooting off bullshit emails.”
“What’s been going on?” I tried the most nonchalant tone I could muster. I’d signed and returned the Contract of Employment to join Arrow and was waiting on the final countersigned version before resigning. As blasé as Genevieve was about robust paperwork, the lawyer in me required the comfort of it. I intended to remind Genevieve, but, as soon as the Defense was filed, she’d sent a team-wide email stating that she would be spending time “detoxing” in Cannes and only in an emergency was she to be bothered. I knew better than to annoy my future employer before I even started at her company.
“Just admin bits.” She looked up at me coolly. “I assume now that you’re the case favorite they’re not giving you the grunt work anymore.”
“Whoa, Del,” I said.
“Sorry,” she muttered, “that was the exhaustion talking. I’m just so tired.”
“Does the coffee help?”
“Mmm.” Adele sipped her coffee and spoke with pensive guruism. “Coconut milk really is better in a cappuccino than a latte.”
“Why would you”—I looked up and challenged—“say something so controversial, and yet so brave?”
Adele sprayed her coffee all over her desk, narrowly missing her keyboard, as she snorted with laughter.
“Seriously, thank you for speaking your truth,” I carried on with a grin. “You’re an everyday hero.”
“What can I say—I’m a woman of the people.” Adele slowly drank, regaining her energy. “Are you and Kit doing anything fun for the weekend?”
She asked tentatively. We hadn’t spoken about him much since the infamous dinner party. The following Monday, after a morning of deafening silence, Adele had said so, are we gonna address what happened the other night? I admit my reaction was unwarranted. I snapped back Del, I am handling it. I’m going through a lot and I don’t need you judging me at every turn. Adele gawped at me before saying I would never judge you, J. I apologized.
“Not really. Kit, Ollie, and Leo are going for a boys’ trip to Dorset. Leo is still all cut up about his ex, Suzie.”
“For fuck’s sake!” I jumped as Adele yelled at her screen.
“What’s happened?”
“Will’s given me more work.” She scrolled through his email. “This is seriously going to take me all day and night. Jesus, Will, buy a girl dinner first if you’re going to fuck her like this.”
I twirled the wooden spatula around my coffee, breathing to pacify my anxiety. Project Arrow owned my life. Why was Adele getting staffed on the project and not me? Why was I being dropped from calls and emails when I hadn’t handed in my notice yet? Had she usurped me? Or had Genevieve told Will about my offer to go in-house and he was transitioning me off the case? Or was it because—
“I know what you’re thinking.” Adele’s voice grounded me.
“What?”
“Dude, I can see your cogs turning—and I’m telling you, don’t let your mind go there.”
“It’s just… odd.”
“Honestly, buddy, you’re good. I’m getting staffed on the US side, don’t worry.”
“You don’t think it’s—”
“I agree it’s odd, but like I said, the New York office is also working on this. Try not to read into it too much.”
Adele was my sister. My soul mate. She could see into me, read every thought as it formulated, like the text ticking out of a typewriter. She also knew to pull me back from the edge of a cliff of anxiety.
Unknown number, now:
Hey Jade, how have you been?
Jade Kaya, now:
Who is this?
Unknown number, now:
It’s Josh—I thought this was the best way of getting hold of you. Do you want to grab a quick coffee today?
Jade Kaya, now:
Why would I want to meet up with you?
Unknown number, now:
I’ve heard about some of the things you have reported and I thought we should talk directly. I’d like us to talk face-to-face and find a resolution between us.
Jade Kaya, now:
Stop messaging me.
Unknown number, now:
Please Jade, we can talk about this and sort it all out.
Jade Kaya, now:
Stop messaging me.
Unknown number, now:
Why are you being like this? I don’t understand why you’re insisting on this witch hunt. Are you trying to ruin my life?
Number blocked.
I rapped on the door. A voice called from inside, ushering me in. I thrust myself into the room with tearstained cheeks, all professional decorum lost.
“Jade!” Sarah said. “Are you all right?”
I didn’t say anything. I triumphantly placed the phone in front of her and allowed her to scroll through the brief chain of messages.
“Sorry?” Sarah said. “I don’t understand?”
“It’s Josh—he’s been sending me all these messed-up messages, trying to influence me.”
She scrolled through the thread.
“I see.” Sarah looked up at me, nonplussed.
“Surely this will help your investigation? Is there any update? It’s been three weeks—”
“Yes, I was actually meaning to email you,” Sarah began. My breath was bated. “We’ve come to the decision that Josh will have restricted access to Firm property until the investigation has been concluded. So you won’t have to worry about seeing him or having to work with him.” She leaned forward. “Ensuring that you feel the office is a safe environment is our utmost priority.”
The fear of coming in and seeing him had kept me in a state of constant high alert. But I’d had no alternative. In a culture where face time was paramount, I felt trapped to stay in the office, being constantly visible, despite the acidic disquiet that slowly corroded me.
“His office pass was confiscated this morning, which possibly explains those texts you received,” Sarah said. “Thank you for bringing those to me.”
“No problem,” I whispered.
“Hang in there, Jade.” She reached forward and I stepped back. I didn’t want to be touched, but she didn’t seem to notice. “We will let you know when the investigation has come to a conclusion and we have decided on a course of action, all right?”
“Yeah. All right.”
I went to Morden for the weekend. It was a good time to see Omma and Baba, and in truth, I didn’t want to be alone in the flat. The nightmares continued. As each night approached and I knew I would spend the hours with images of Josh inside me, I wondered how I would possibly make it through to morning. I felt no safer than I had in my old flat, which made me mourn it often. On evenings when I was alone, I obsessed over the locks, checking checking checking five, ten, fifteen times to make sure I was secure within my walls.
“Hey Baba,” I said as I approached my parents’ driveway to see my dad muttering to himself.
“Hello, hayatim,” Baba said, not looking up from what I now saw was a pile of recycling. He unscrewed the cap off an empty carton of milk and placed it on the ground. With the sprightliness of a springbok, he jumped and crushed the carton under his feet. Without pausing, he reached for a pizza box and began tearing the cardboard into flat sheets.
“How have you been, Baba?”
“Your mother doesn’t compress the rubbish. So I have to stand in my pajamas and do it. Vallahi, no matter how many times I tell her!”
I patted him on the back, clearly not able to distract him from his recycling vendetta, and walked past him into the house. A huge pot was simmering on the stove, but I knew better than to lift the lid and investigate—that was a sure-fire way to get smacked by a wooden spoon on the wrist.
“Aga,” my mum called from the bathroom. “Come here.”
She was sitting cross-legged inside the tub. There were stains everywhere, and I saw an old takeaway box filled with box dye and immediately understood. We worked methodically as I applied the dye to the underlayers at the back of her head. We were fluent in a plethora of noises, customs, and hand signals. In English, if offered a drink, one would say “No, thanks,” or give a shake of the head. In Turkey, you moved your head upward, simultaneously raising your eyebrows and clicking your tongue against the roof of your mouth. Conversations were peppered with these clicks. Similarly, in Korea, when drinking with an elder, you turned away at a ninety-degree angle before taking a sip, to show respect. Home had a constant undercurrent of unspoken signals and cues that filled the gaps between language, forming a binding code of conduct. At Reuben, where each step was strategic, or with Kit, where everything was hyper-intellectualized, it felt relaxing to be able to make a noise and know that the people around me knew exactly what I meant.
After I was done dyeing Omma’s hair, I scrubbed the tub clean. I came out into the kitchen to find her draining the pot on the stove. She spun around to reveal a pot of hard-boiled eggs marinated in soy sauce, garnished with sesame seeds and verdant green spring onions. Mayak gyeran—drug eggs. My earliest memory of these sweet and salty, jammy-yolked treats was my Year 3 Easter Egg hunt.
“What’s this, Omma?” I had asked, seven years old. A gleeful smile spread across her face. I’d had soy-braised eggs a thousand times before, but my mum looked absolutely delighted with herself this time.
“Eggs,” she’d said, beaming, “for Easter.” There was a pause where I clearly wasn’t providing her with the response she’d expected. “You’re supposed to give children eggs for Easter, no? I’ve been marinating these for three days.”
I lifted myself onto my tippy-toes in my pink trainers and peered into the pot. There must have been over thirty eggs in there. She looked at her feet with a childlike disappointment that stung me in the chest, even then.
“Thank you so much, Omma,” I had said, accepting the pot with two hands, “but I feel really sick today, I don’t think I can go to the hunt.”
Over the weekend, we moved in sync around the house, restoring family factory settings. We made bulk batches of kimchi to be fermented in huge tubs in the garden, the smell of garlic wafting from my hands for days after. I helped file tax returns and appeal parking tickets. There was a pride in my doing these things for them, even though they were self-sufficient, because it was a manifestation of my profession. I know Omma had bragging rights about her lawyer daughter who sorted everything out for her parents. I went to the supermarket with Baba to pick up some things on Omma’s list. We were parking the car back at home when I spotted the couple next door coming out of their porch.
“Do you need to borrow,” Baba called to Iris as she ventured out into the drizzle, “… what do you call it? A… erm… rain-tent?”
“Hello, Yusuf!” Iris cooed, followed by Phil, her husband. “A what-now?”
Baba held his balled hand up to gesture. “A rain-tent!”
Phil leaned forward.
“Ahhh, I’ve got it!” Phil nudged Iris on the elbow and said something under his breath. “Yusuf, in English,” he said slowly, enunciating every syllable, “we call that an UM-BRELL-AH. Can you say it with me? It’s really easy if you think about it.”
“Excuse me?” I called out, my voice edgy. Baba glanced at me and flicked his right hand toward the ground: stand down.
“I’ve got one.” Iris tapped her canvas bag. “Thanks, anyway!”
“No problem, no problem,” Baba said, holding his palms together. Huge neighborly smile.
Watching a parent—a child’s first love and role model—be patronized ignited a protective instinct. One of the countless experiences that trickled and funneled down into the mold of the Dutiful Immigrant Child. A sort of reverse parenting where the child takes on the supervision of their parents, flanking them from an early age if they were being humiliated. And this responsibility to support never leaves.
“I don’t know why you’re so nice to them, Baba,” I muttered as I started lifting the shopping into the house.
“Why wouldn’t I be?”
“Dad!” I looked at him. “They had bloody UKIP posters taped to their windows!”
“Jade, you are too headstrong,” Baba said sagely, walking behind me with the shopping. “What is the point of not being nice to them?”
Baba opened the fridge and began putting the shopping away.
“Fight fire with kindness,” he said, gesticulating with a block of halloumi. “Inshallah, in time, they will see we are good people.”
“You shouldn’t have to prove yourself to anyone.”
Baba looked at me pointedly and I remembered the conversation we had in the Clapham Flat. You’re pretending to be something you’re not for him.
“And yet,” Baba said, “we do.”