Glory soon realized she had taken her leisurely days at Faith’s house for granted. There, her only obligations had been a bit of babysitting, cooking and acting as a sounding board for Faith’s trains of thought and complaints. But at her mother’s house there was no polite Polish lady who came once a week to clean, and Celeste had no appreciation for Glory’s kitchen experiments. She took it upon herself to critique Glory’s most basic creations. The texture of her rice was too this or that, her stews had too much onion, not enough Maggi, and since her chicken was not boiled and fried and baked, it was undercooked and flavorless.
“When are you going to get a job?” Celeste had taken to asking this at the most irritating moments.
“When one falls from the sky,” Glory mumbled through a clenched jaw.
“Pardon?”
“I’m still looking,” Glory lied, louder than before.
“Well, I need you to go to Catford to collect something for me.”
“Catford? Today?”
“Yes,” her mother replied with a look that said, it’s not like you’re busy doing anything else.
“Or if you need that time to look for a job that’s fine. The clock is ticking, the sooner you get a job, the sooner that everything else will fall into place, I’m sure—a husband, a house, some children.”
Glory had to grind her molars to stop herself responding.
“So, do you want me to move out? I thought you wanted me to move back home but now it sounds like you can’t wait to get rid of me!”
“Me? No,” Celeste said, a pained expression on her face. “I just want the best things for you. I see how your generation is just waiting, waiting—waiting while life passes them by!”
But Glory was only waiting for her mother to get better so that she could get on with her own life, and she told Julian as much on the phone one morning.
“Have you decided what that life looks like yet?” he asked, his voice echoing through his speakerphone.
“Where are you? I can call you later—the line’s really bad.”
“Ah, classic Glory. Answering a question with a question.”
“You haven’t known me long enough to be talking about classic Glory.”
“You’re acting pissy today. Don’t worry, I’ll come and rescue you, Cinderella.”
“Don’t patronize me! And I can rescue myself. You’re just too busy for me these days,” Glory said, dropping her voice in an exaggerated sulk.
“Sorry, I’ll make it up to you. I don’t know where I can find a pair of glass slippers, but I’ll get you some new creps if that’ll cheer you up. What size are you?”
“Seven. Are you driving?” Glory asked, hearing the unmistakable tick-tick-tick of the indicator.
“Yeah, I don’t think they make glass slippers that big anyway.”
“You’re rude.”
“Sorry, Bigfoot.”
“What size are you?”
“Ten, but I’m a man. Aren’t girls supposed to be like size four or five or something?”
“Girls, maybe. Women on the other hand—”
“Yo, Glory? I need to just . . . Let me call you when I’m back on ends in a bit. OK?”
“Err, OK then,” Glory said, her attitude returning, but Julian had disconnected the phone before she could say bye.
She kissed her teeth, checked the time and left her room to go and check on her mother. She pushed the bedroom door open wide enough to tuck her head around the door.
“Mummy?” she whispered into the gloom. “Mum?” The room was still and quiet.
Once upon a time it had been Celeste who was pushing her head through Glory’s bedroom door on a Saturday morning, rousing her violently and ordering her to Peckham to buy tinned tomatoes or spices for the rice she was cooking for so-and-so’s party later that day. Now Celeste met every social invitation with disdain and excuses.
Glory went downstairs feeling listless. Saturdays in London were so boring. Lará’s invitation crossed her mind, but then the landline rang. In contrast to the low hum of mobile phones on silent mode, the noise of an actual phone ringing felt intrusive. Glory waited to hear the springs in her mother’s bed shift as she rolled over to reach for the handset by her bedside, but there was no movement above.
“Hello?”
“Faith?” Victor said.
“No, it’s Glory.”
“Is Faith there?”
“No, she’s not.”
“Where’s Mum?”
“Sleeping.”
“OK.”
She could hear shouts in the background, a raucous noise that reminded her of school playgrounds. They let it fill the space between them for a while.
“How are you doing?” she asked finally.
The flat buzz of a tannoy obscured his response.
“Huh? I missed that.”
“I’ve got to go. Not got much credit.”
“Oh, OK.” Glory’s throat closed up. “It’s good to hear your voice?”
It came out like a question, laying the ground for him to reply “same here” or similar, but he sounded like he was already in the process of putting down the phone, his voice melting into the noise behind him.
“Yeah, bye.”
Glory hung up and flopped onto the sofa, switching on the TV and idly flicking through channels, trying to stop Victor’s indifference from darkening her mood. Her brother’s grudges were legendary, but they came from the same bloodline—if she wanted to, she could be as stubborn as him.
The day Victor was sentenced an old school friend sent her a private message on Instagram, a picture of the front page of a tabloid. Victor’s mugshot in a row with his co-defendants. The only message the silly girl sent was “OMG!” and the heartbroken emoji. Glory didn’t reply.
But, remembering the shame that descended on her in that moment, she was filled with guilt. If that’s how she had been feeling thousands of miles away, how did her parents feel, still waking up and walking through a community who had no doubt devoured and dissected their public disgrace?
In hindsight that would have been a good time to leave America. She would have been able to support her brother, spend time with her father and avoid the beginning of everything going wrong. But Daddy never pressured her to come home, lulling her into a false sense of security, and when her mother did not take kindly to Glory’s excuses about work commitments, she thought she was being dramatic.
“Glo-ry!” She had shouted each syllable down the phone. “You don’t think that we have suffered enough? You want to punish us by staying away? I did not kill my own mother, o! But this daughter of mine wants to bury me!”
But in the end, it had been Daddy they had ended up burying.
Glory settled on a Saturday afternoon cooking show. When Faith arrived at the house, unlocking the front door and half pushing, half dragging her squabbling toddlers through, she found her younger sister on the living room sofa making mental notes about the qualities of different types of sweet peppers.
“Victor called looking for you.” Glory didn’t look up from the TV or bother to greet her sister.
“Why did he call you looking for me?” Faith asked, ushering the twins to the foot of the stairs to remove their coats and shoes.
“He called the house phone and I picked up. He thought I was you.”
“Oh. How is he—? Esther, darling, don’t lean on your brother like that please!”
“Wouldn’t know. He didn’t want to talk to me.”
“Did he say that?”
“He didn’t have to.”
“Maybe his credit was low, nothing to worry about— Esther!”
“Who told you I was worried? Anyway, what’s new with you?”
Faith removed her own coat, hung it on the banister and pushed Glory’s feet from their place on the sofa, taking a seat next to her.
“Michael’s gone to Croatia for a stag party. It’s his colleague’s thing. He’s trying to be seen as one of the lads but it feels like we’re getting a bit old for all of that, to be honest. I heard Croatia’s the new Ibiza.”
“That workplace takes up all his time during the week and now it’s taking up his weekends as well? Babylon t’ing!” Glory said, passing the remote to Faith.
“Yeah, well . . .”
“Bit ridiculous though, isn’t it?”
“That’s just the nature of the job.”
It sounded like a line fed to Faith by Michael himself, and if it hadn’t been so obvious Glory might not have asked her next question.
“Do you trust him, though?”
“Of course!”
“At least someone does,” Glory mumbled into her nail. But the comment was out before she could consider what she was saying.
“Esther and Elijah, why don’t you two go upstairs and see if Grandma’s awake?” Faith waited until they had clambered up the stairs and were creaking across the landing before she continued.
“You don’t like Michael,” she said eventually. “Why don’t you just tell me the real reason why?”
Glory finally tore her eyes away from the TV.
“Remember when you got pregnant—the first time? He abandoned you then and it feels like he’s abandoning you now.”
Faith’s pregnancy had landed like a grenade in the middle of her second year at university. But in the face of accountability, Michael—then in his third and final year, with his mind set on law school and training contracts—broke up with her. After Faith miscarried, he continued to keep his distance.
Miraculously, Faith went on to complete her degree, landing a place on a graduate scheme. She was making her way in life when Michael came back and somehow managed to convince her to give him a second chance. While it was enough for everyone else, Glory could not forgive nor forget.
A muscle in Faith’s jaw jumped.
“You can’t hold the past against people. If I’m happy to move on, why can’t you?”
“You say he was there for you before when I wasn’t—OK, fine. But I can only judge him by what I’ve seen with my own eyes. I’ve lived with you both and he’s a ghost, Faith.”
A ghost that had somehow still managed to derail Faith’s life if anyone cared to ask Glory for her opinion. Faith had been a data analyst with an economics degree and now she was a trophy wife.
“I’m really not about to get into this with you, Glory, OK? Michael is not your problem, he’s mine.”
Faith got up from the sofa and made her way up the stairs.
Interpreting this exit as a dismissal, Glory shouted after her sister’s back: “Well, I’m going out!”
She got up, grabbed a coat from the bottom of the stairs and headed out of the door. She had no destination in mind, but walking off her frustration was a coping mechanism she’d learned in LA, which, as a bonus, had helped her to get to know her neighborhood.
On the advice of her therapist she even attended a few hiking meet-ups, and one of her favorite Instagram shots was her silhouetted against the dusky skyline at Griffith Observatory, taken by a Japanese teenager she had befriended on the Mount Hollywood hike. There was an awkward selfie of the two of them in front of the Hollywood sign from earlier in the day. That image had not made it on to Instagram.
On this walk, Glory settled for a few laps around the lake in Burgess Park, the movement distracting her from wasting even more time glued to her smartphone. Shamefully, she found that when the lives of others stopped being interesting to her, she would scroll through her own Instagram feed, finding a strange solace in each perfectly composed square filtered through golden light.
With each step, Glory’s thoughts began to order themselves. She needed a plan forward—a job, something to get her out of the house and away from her mother for a few hours a day. The digital agency life had less allure when the view from her office was likely to be the Gherkin and a gray London sky. Maybe, she thought, she needed to take a leaf from Julian’s book and start something new. Her current circumstances were the stuff rags to riches tales were made of, she had listened to enough podcasts to know that much. Faith had said something about a hipster restaurant when she had first arrived, but she knew nothing about running a restaurant, and food was something fun for her, turning it into a business would probably change that. But Julian had also mentioned the beauty salon thing. That could work.
Glory reached into the pocket of her coat to look for her phone, but instead she found Faith’s car keys. When the phone in the other pocket turned out to be Faith’s as well, she looked down and saw Faith’s coat instead of her own. Her phone was probably still on the sofa back home. She swore under her breath, noticing a WhatsApp notification on the lock screen. It was from Michael, and she could read the beginning of the message:
“I need you to forgive me. Call me when—”
Glory’s thumb hovered. She could find out what Michael had done now, but if Michael had pissed Faith off, Faith had had the opportunity to tell Glory earlier. Glory wasn’t about to fight a battle for someone who didn’t want saving.
She dropped the phone back into the coat pocket and headed home, taking a detour that took her past Pharaoh’s. The waiting area was filled with men and boys and both barbers were busy, with a third one joining the ranks for the afternoon ahead.
Glory hovered at the doorway, hoping one of the barbers would look up and see her and she wouldn’t have to announce herself to the whole shop. Eventually the previously idle barber looked toward the door.
“Is Ju— is Jay about?”
“Nah, doubt he’ll be back today,” the barber said, holding a razor between his teeth as he narrowed in on his client’s hairline with the buzzing clippers.
“Do you know where he’s gone?”
He paused from his task, looking up and glancing from Glory to one of the other barbers. This other barber made eye contact and shrugged.
“Can’t help you there, princess,” the formerly idle barber said.
Glory turned and left, feeling a few bored stares graze over her as she walked past the shop window.