The queue was colourful with students in their own choice clothes, waiting to be served from the pile of brown envelopes at the dining hatch. Isobel already had her results, having checked them online. They’d agreed she wouldn’t phone until Florence had hers too. Somehow, parental permission for Florence to receive hers remotely had been forgotten, so here she was with the others, just after 10am.
She took the envelope politely from the head of year, not screaming or snatching as if it might explode, which every third or fourth pair of hysterical Year Eleven girls seemed to do. There wasn’t as much at stake for her. She could always resit. But she wanted to get them under her belt. For Dad. And because it would make it easier. Give her more time to manage things at home, if she could space them out.
Holding it by the edge, so her fingers didn’t make it damp, she passed the groups of students who wouldn’t dream of undergoing this experience alone. They counted down to opening, screamed, jumped, hugged, cried and skipped about, in unified displays of elation which did not reflect their true emotions, ranging from unsurprised self-satisfaction to the private sickness of dismay.
She hadn’t reminded her mother it was today. When she’d left, Mum had been up already, still in her pyjamas, typing madly in the loft. Dad would remember later and phone when he got back to work.
There was one person who cared what was in her envelope at this moment. Benjamin had texted her. He’d meet her outside the gate.
When she saw him, lolling by a tree, dressed in the uniform his school required before relinquishing results, he’d already opened his envelope. It was carelessly ripped across, and bits of buff paper littered the soil around the base of the beech tree.
‘As I expected,’ he said unconcernedly, moving his arm back and forth so that the envelope swung from side to side between his fingers, then bending it in half and stuffing it down his inside pocket. ‘Didn’t quite make the top grade this time, and obviously a mark for the second paper is conspicuously absent. But from you, Florence, from you I am expecting far greater things.’
She looked around, to check no one else was watching.
‘Open it then,’ he said, not comprehending her self-restraint. ‘I can’t believe you haven’t even had a tiny peep inside.’
Florence was inwardly taken aback that he hadn’t been able to wait. She peeled back the sticky flap in case she needed the envelope again. Then she opened out the forms inside and started to process them. He practically snatched them from her hand and whisked through all three sheets.
‘You did it!’ he whooped, carrying out an instant analysis.
No stars for Florence but three solid As, testimony to her lineage, her perseverance and perhaps a little bit of luck.
‘Aren’t you happy?’ he said, incredulously.
She couldn’t stop a little twitch of a smile pulling at her lips. ‘I need to text Isobel,’ she said, ‘see how she’s done.’
‘Sod Isobel,’ he said. ‘Isobel can wait. Scream and shout a bit first. You ought to celebrate. I’ll blow your trumpet for you, if you won’t countenance it.’
He started addressing the tree behind him. ‘This lady,’ he began, as if performing a street act using a volunteer from the crowd. ‘This lady has today achieved three of the finest grades in all of her early examinations and deserves the warmest of warm rounds of applause from all of you passers-by.’ He presented her to the trunk, to the amusement of one or two shoppers and students who had broken away from their groups.
Florence laughed and blushed, still trying to message Isobel as he pulled her round to face the tree. ‘Stop it!’ She giggled. ‘I promised.’
‘I don’t care two hoots about Isobel. I care only about you. And you, Florence, Florens, Florio,’ he stopped fooling about now and took her by both hands, ‘you have done incredibly well. Seriously,’ he said. ‘I’m unbelievably impressed. I mean, not that I didn’t believe you could do it, but given the difficult circumstances you told me about, I mean not having as much time as you wanted, and the various filial distractions, the nature of which I am not unfamiliar with myself, and even though you were clearly at a very strong – even unfair – advantage in the first mathematics paper, having, I understand, not one but two of the eponymous electronic aids in your pencil case, even taking into account all these things, and it’s not that for a moment that I considered a less-than-perfect performance an option in any way, but the fact is…’
He garbled to a halt. Then, in public, in his school uniform, leaning upwards slightly to reach, he kissed her gravely, right upon the lips. There was a wolf whistle from a boy she’d known from primary school, looking for something more uplifting than his exam results, which were just as expected and already screwed up in a litter bin just up the hill.
She ignored it coolly, feeling deeply pleased inside, and held tight to Benjamin’s hand as they walked off back towards the park.
*
The four brothers clung together for another reason, under the corrugated concrete ceiling, on the diesel-stained concrete floor. Maalik had seen the others first, as they had dropped, unsteady from the deep steps of the night bus, just as he had done two months before, their tired white eyes roaming the depot, rejecting the heaps of fetid blankets where beggars slept in the August heat and imagining likeness into the faces of all the passers-by. He had seen they were losing faith – convinced it was the wrong bay, the wrong day, that after all the time that had elapsed since he was supposedly in Italy, the plan was too ambitious to have come to pass – that he would turn out not to be any of the strangers they now scrutinised.
He’d seen immediately it must be them. Seen the two older versions of his boyhood self and the third one, Osmo, who must be his half-brother, born long after he had gone. And now Bashir had recognised him too, searched for and found a face like his, projected five years on.
Maalik moved forward to end the torment with a great big generous step, and they ran towards each other in the artificial light, which lit up their features horribly, shining up the grease and dust layered onto their skin. Osmo was handsome underneath, as seventeen-year-old boys must be. Abroon was gaunt, permanently diminished without his other half. Bashir, once lithe and sporty, had grown like his eldest brother, toughened and thickened with hard-worked muscle, beaming against adversity.
They dropped their bags on the ground and crushed him, lifted him, slapped him on the back and squeezed him in a violence of happiness. Osmo and Maalik embraced indirectly, but with no less intensity, just as they had come to know each other – via the other two. The older three made no attempt to stanch the flow of tears, from ducts run dry with decades of hopelessness, until this night.
‘I never believed it,’ said Maalik. ‘I never believe I will see you again.’
‘You look a mess,’ said Bashir with a smile, which sent more tears into the sticky stream twisting down his cheek. ‘Squat and wrinkly. You lucky we spotted it was you. You’ve really let yourself go. Osmo, meet your eldest, our most decrepit brother. You see how ugly he is? You see how he abandoned us, the bastard? He is an old man now. He used to be almost as good-looking as you. Lashes like a little calf and skin like a piglet’s backside. He’s lucky we are still speaking to him after all this time.’ He punched his brother joyfully three times on the arm. Maalik accepted the fond abuse with a grin he could not suppress. How would his life in the UK have been different, he wondered, if he’d had such a welcome when he stepped off the bus?
They walked out as one into the city night – still drunk with incredulity – attached by arms around shoulders, looped through the handles of one another’s luggage, dragging the giant woven plastic bag holding all the northbound travellers possessed. They were a quarter of a century late, but the blood memories that bound them were still theirs to share.
*
They found a tiny back room restaurant, where the owner let them sit at his last table, the plastic still sticky from its final wipe, stools not yet upturned. Maalik bought them tea, emptied out a pack of pittas from his rucksack and pushed them all to eat.
‘Osmo,’ he said, extending a hand in feigned formality. ‘I don’t believe we’ve been introduced.’
‘This is our new baby brother,’ said Bashir, clapping Osmo on the shoulder. An image of Hanad, reaching out to eat the white sand, slotted cruelly in front of Maalik’s eyes, but he was not so audacious as to wish for that too.
‘He is really growing up very nice and strong,’ continued Bashir. ‘Walking already. Eating without mess.’ He took the chunkiest part of Osmo’s smooth black cheek between his thumb and forefinger, jiggled it left to right, then ruffled his thick brown hair from the back of his head to the front.
Osmo smiled resignedly, used to the ribaldry.
Abroon didn’t speak. He hadn’t spoken properly for twenty-five years now.
‘So…?’ said Maalik. Bashir hadn’t had time to explain everything over the phone.
‘Born just before we lost her, ten years after Father was… Father passed away. New stepfather Asad is very lovely. Very kind. Now he is also gone. So, Osmo, he is like a little mascot, a millennial.’
There was surprisingly little left to ask. The rest of the past was out of bounds and to ask how the journey had been, unnecessary, given the facts written in their faces as they stepped off the final bus. But the remaining question was important, and Bashir pushed forward to ask.
‘So, did you get them? The papers for this UK citizenship?’
‘I hope so,’ said Maalik. ‘I feel confident.’
‘Don’t you have the results?’
‘The first of July.’
‘Next year?’ Bashir said in disbelief.
‘No. First of July this year.’
‘So why didn’t you tell us? Did you pass?’ Bashir’s hope made him aggressive.
Maalik pressed his lips inwards against each other, then bit the bottom one with his top teeth.
‘You failed?’ The three faces were crestfallen.
‘No, no no. It’s not definite if I failed or if I passed.’ Maalik was swapping now between what Somali he could remember, his fluent English and bits of Italian and French which tripped onto his tongue when he was struggling to make it say something else.
‘What, then?’ Even Abroon was interested now, detached but attentive.
‘My phone was stolen. Two months ago in Milan.’
‘But you called us.’
‘I had to get a new one. That was the new phone.’
‘And?’
‘My details… the candidate number, my ID document number – it was all saved on the one I lost.’
Osmo screwed up his face.
‘I couldn’t check them,’ explained Maalik. ‘I couldn’t check the results online.’
‘But what about your teacher?’ Bashir was belligerent now. ‘You have a teacher, yes? This Mrs Gardenia you’ve been telling us all about. She knows your result, yes?’
His face dropped with realisation. ‘Don’t tell me. Her number was on the old phone too.’
‘I worked,’ said Maalik, trying to defend himself. ‘I worked four weeks to pay for new phone. Pot-washing, sweeping up in restaurants, even selling stupid plastic toys for children.’ He had become expert in propelling the tiny LED rockets up into the night in the squares and on street corners to make the tourists look. Made of flimsy fluorescent plastic, powered by twisted rubber bands, they broke into pieces and fell through the sky, almost as soon as the parents had parted with their coins.
‘And finally, I could pay for new one, up front, and then I work for another four weeks, to pay for ticket to meet you here. But they can’t give me same number. And they say they can’t transfer my contact details without some special code…’
He trailed off. Bashir shook his head.
‘All this way,’ he said sternly. ‘Four months we take to travel here. And you have nothing, absolutely nothing for us.’
Maalik was filled with dejection at his catastrophic failure. He hadn’t even been certain it would make a difference in the end, but he’d clung to the hope that British citizenship would strengthen his case. He’d tried to understand the government guidance so many times. Bringing a wife over would have been easy. But there were no wives or mothers or sisters left, and whichever way he turned it, whatever trials they had been through, on paper his two full brothers were too old, too healthy, too independent. Only Osmo might be granted leave to stay based on his age, and that only if others could be proven unable to support him. But Maalik had read also that there were exceptions.
He’d almost memorised the wording:
Only a pre-existing family (husband, wife, civil partner or unmarried/same-sex partner, or any dependents under eighteen who previously formed part of the family unit upon asylum) are eligible to apply for entry clearance to the UK under the family reunion programme under the Immigration Rules. It is not uncommon, however, to allow family reunion for additional family members in some exceptional circumstance demonstrating compassionate reasoning as to why their case is to be considered outside of the Immigration Rules.
Surely the officials would have to help a British citizen on compassionate grounds? He met all the other criteria. Lived in the UK long enough. Never committed a crime. Passed the ridiculous citizenship test. Now all that was left was to prove his English language skills. And he’d been so stupid he didn’t even know if he’d done that.
He was a picture of deflation as he slumped over his tea.
They’d hoped that once he’d gone back to get things settled, they could travel on to join him. But after the impossible ecstasy of reunion, they must now retreat, live life in limbo, tread water again. Without the papers, the whole thing crumpled, was just a transient encounter, yet to fade away.
Bashir broke into a guffaw. Osmo started to snigger too. Even Abroon allowed a smile to flicker across his lips.
‘Unbelievable.’ Bashir was crying with laughter. ‘Like dressing up for the biggest event of your life and forgetting to put on your pants!’ His emotions were always extreme now, right on the edge. ‘You travel halfway across the world and you don’t even bring us the goods!’
He got up and lifted his younger brother from behind by his shoulders to a standing position too, pointing him towards Maalik.
‘Osmo,’ he said, still laughing, ‘take this technological dinosaur and his sorry device and get him sorted out.’
*
It didn’t take him long. The internet café five doors down was just coming to life, welcoming its all-nighters with a buzzing white fluorescence, softened by the ultraviolet light of the insect traps.
‘So, you don’t know PAC code?’ Osmo checked with his new brother. Maalik shook his head.
‘No problem.’ Swiftly, Osmo typed a spattering of key words into the search box. The keyboard was shiny with oil from a multitude of fingers and grubby with grey smudges built from their cast-off cells.
‘Android or iPhone?’
Maalik laughed, thinking of his car wash and his hostel work.
‘You think I’m made of money? Android.’
‘So, you have tried “find my phone” feature. You have this, right?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Maalik ruefully. ‘Maybe I do. Maybe not.’
‘You needed to set it up. If you had it, I think you would know. But you remember your email, don’t you?’
‘Oh, yes, yes. Email I have.’
Maalik typed it slowly into the box, fretting over the capital letters which kept jumping back to lower case. He panicked for a moment trying to recall his password, but it came to him after a second or two, and again he typed it, with as much precision as if he were diffusing a bomb, carefully alternating two fingers, one from each hand.
Osmo moved him aside and took the keyboard.
‘Look,’ he said.
Maalik looked. An array of emails, still in bold. English language learning websites; Home Office-related sites; an e-receipt for his coach ticket. But none from any individual, any friend he recognised.
Osmo took the mouse and clicked on “Contacts”.
‘Oh my God. All the names and numbers are in there.’ Maalik’s face brightened, then was disconsolate again. ‘But I can’t see my notes I made. I saved them on this little page like a yellow square. I still can’t check the result with no candidate number or ID.’ Then it dawned on him, and he caught up with Osmo’s train of thought.
‘Oh, I can phone her now! Of course I phone her. Maybe she has tried to phone me already, on my old number. Mrs Gardener, she can open the envelope and tell me everything.’
They had to borrow a Biro from the bartender. Maalik wrote down her number on the back of his used coach ticket, then dialled her straightaway. The mobile rang on the table, then went to answerphone.
Maalik left a long and passionate message.
‘Mrs Gardener? Sofia? I am so sorry it is so long I have not been in contact. I am in Italy all this time, but I have a few troubles. I have lost my phone. I’m so sorry if you have been trying to ring me on it. I have very important request for you please, to pick up, to collect the brown envelope, it has probably IELTS stamp on the top, from the hostel. This is very important you see. I find them. I have found them. I find all three of them. They are all alive and well. This is so important. Please, please you help me. You help me so much before. This is last piece. If result is good, I have everything I need to bring them home.’
He realised he was probably running out of time.
‘Please, please the envelope. Open it and phone me to tell me what is inside. New number is…’
He read it out carefully and repeated it again. Then he closed the call, reluctantly. He had no further digital options, only human hope.