Lará stayed glued to the bar for the rest of the evening, filling Glory in on intra-office scandals and inter-agency beefs, as Glory kept topping her up, alternating between spirits as a safeguard against detection. She needn’t have worried. As midnight sailed by the managers started to forget that they were also meant to be working and placed their own orders, although the waiting staff were still not allowed to drink themselves. By the end of the night, everything had descended into a merry chaos.
Lará eventually pulled herself away and headed home, and the staff began to clear the remains. The scene looked like the aftermath of a raucous house party and as Tannika stacked some chairs she picked something up from the floor, holding it out in front of her between her fingertips. It looked like a small square of tracing paper, but Tannika’s face was screwed up in disgust.
“It’s an empty cocaine wrap!” she said impatiently when Glory looked unfazed.
At the end of the shift they all waited outside the service entrance, exhausted and bleary eyed, some sparking cigarettes for warmth. As taxis pulled up the shift manager called out the names of who would be accompanying who. When Glory’s taxi arrived she squeezed inside with three others and they made their way to south London.
After forty minutes it was just Glory and one other young woman. Her head was lolling against the back window, leaving streaks of hair oil on the glass. Glory waited awhile, and when she felt the other woman was truly asleep, she pulled out her phone and made a call.
Julian picked up, his voice gruff and deep with drowsiness.
“You at home?”
“Yeah. What’s up?”
“I’ve just left work, I wanted to know if I could come by.”
“Now?”
“Yeah, now.”
“You locked out?”
“I just wanted to talk, I’ve had some exciting news. I wanted to tell somebody.”
“You can tell me over the phone.”
“You don’t want me to come around?”
“It’s late.”
“So?”
Julian huffed, it sounded like he was changing position, sitting up perhaps. He was probably on the sofa in front of the TV.
“So, what’s the news?”
“I found Mama Wawo, she was under my nose the entire time.”
“What, like, sitting on your top lip?”
Glory quietly laughed.
“No, it’s easier to explain in person. I’m not alone at the moment.”
“Come by the shop tomorrow then. Or I’ll swing by yours in the afternoon, we could go out or something.”
“Are you serious?”
“What?”
“Why don’t you want me to come to your house now?”
“Look, I fell asleep, innit. I’m about to go to bed myself. Let’s talk tomorrow when I’m properly awake, yeah?”
“Wow, you’re serious!”
“I am.”
“OK then.”
Glory hung up.
The taxi rolled over a speed bump and the dozing girl’s head hit the window with a dull thud. She jerked awake, looked around the back of the car and squinted through the glass before leaning back into the headrest and closing her eyes.
Julian knew how important it had been to find Mama Wawo. A conversation with this woman could change the shape of her family, the landscape of her personal history, but he didn’t even care. He was locked into his world, and Glory was feeling more like an accessory than a girlfriend.
She rang him back.
“You act really shifty, y’know? I don’t know why you can’t be straight with me!”
Julian sighed, moving the phone away from his face while he mumbled something.
“Are you with someone right now?” Glory asked, trying to keep her voice down.
“Chill the fuck out, Glory, you want to come here and start checking underneath the bed or something?”
“If you acted normal then I’d have no reason to worry, would I? I swear to God, it feels like I don’t even know who I’m talking to sometimes!”
“You wanna come here? Fine! Come around. Let’s talk!”
“You’re not listening to me.”
“I never am, am I?” Julian said in a voice thick with tiredness and resignation.
“Bye, Julian.”
Glory ended the call.
Glory stared angrily at her screen as a message came through:
“You always have to have the last word, right? Lol. Mature.”
“I don’t need this shit.” Glory began to type, but instead of hitting send she held down delete, leaving her text box blank and Julian’s final words unanswered.
When the taxi reached Glory’s house and she got out, she realized how tired she was. Her feet dragged on the short walk to her front door, but it wasn’t just her physical tiredness from work, the short back and forth with Julian had emotionally drained her. All the excitement she had felt just a few hours earlier talking with Lará had been swallowed up by his limp reaction to her news and her irritation at the nonsense that followed.
Tears threatened Glory’s eyes—whether it was exhaustion or frustration, she didn’t know. But what she did know was that it was Julian’s fault. She had been chasing smoke and running into brick walls but now she was the closest she had ever been to finding Hope and all Julian could do was . . .
“No,” Glory told herself forcefully. She hadn’t been flirting with the wrath of Faith and her mother to let Julian and his bullshit distract her when she finally had a real chance of getting to the bottom of this. She tried to regain the feelings she had felt as she poured Lará alcohol and listened with good humor to tidbits of gossip about strangers. She had felt like her life was finally aligning in a way that made sense. She could not afford to let anyone steal that from her, not even Julian.