“Taste this,” my father said, thrusting a teaspoon at me as I walked into the café. “Does it pass your vibe check?”
“Dad!” I gasped, batting his hand away.
“Careful, Vas,” my mother warned with a smirk as she walked out of the pantry with a red pepper in each hand. “Mara has her big date with Nico later, so she doesn’t want to get kadhi down her.”
“Oh yes! The big date.” My father grinned, putting the teaspoon into his mouth and sucking it.
“You got a date, Mara?” Max asked, suddenly next to me.
To say I was mortified was putting it mildly. I shot a look over my shoulder at the door, then said a little prayer that Max would be gone before Nico got there because worrying about whatever my parents were going to say was enough to contend with. I couldn’t cope with Max launching into one of his rants about 5G as well.
Mercifully, he just ordered a green tea to go and ambled out again.
As soon as the door closed behind him, I turned to my parents and scowled.
“It’s not a date. We’re just going to Resident to see a band. It’s no big deal.”
But they just stood side by side behind the counter, looking utterly unrepentant.
“No big deal.” My father nodded, and I wondered if he knew that I’d spent an hour trying on everything I owned before borrowing May’s first-date black denim skirt, which, she insisted, was foolproof.
I don’t know about foolproof, but I should have worn tights because it was too short. On her it looked cool, but on me it wasn’t much more than a belt. So I already knew that I would be spending the evening tugging it down, which I really didn’t need on top of everything else. Seeing Nico and watching every word in case I said something to break her brain was stressful enough without having to worry about showing her my ass as well.
So I just needed my parents to be, you know, not my parents for half an hour.
“Mara and Nico sitting in a tree,” my father sang, confirming that was impossible.
“Wait. Is that mine?” My mother pointed the knife she was holding at my Run-D.M.C. T-shirt.
“Yeah,” I muttered as she went back to chopping the peppers.
I only borrowed it because it went with the red-and-black-striped cardigan I’d bought the day before because it reminded me of Nico’s favorite sweater.
Perhaps I shouldn’t wear it, I thought. What if it triggers something?
But if I didn’t wear it, there would be nothing to cover my skirt.
“So what are the rules?” my father asked as he turned to stir the kadhi.
“We have to pretend we’ve never met her, right?” my mother asked, without looking up from the peppers.
“For the record”—I raised a finger—“coming here was Nico’s idea. I would never have agreed if she hadn’t insisted.”
“Why? We’re great liars.” She looked up with a theatrical gasp. “The best. Remember when we told you how great your hair looked after you had those awful layers a couple of years ago?”
My father nodded solemnly.
“Plus,” she added, “Nico will love us.”
“Of course she will,” he said over his shoulder. “We’re cool, right, Mads?”
“The coolest.”
“You’re really not,” I told them as I adjusted my skirt.
My mother pointed the knife at me again. “Well, I am, at least. You’re wearing my T-shirt.”
I ignored her as my father turned to face me again. “Exactly. Plus, we know about YouTik and TokTube.”
“Stop it,” I said through my teeth, heat rising in my cheeks.
“We’re down with the kids, Mara. Your mother has a crush on Harry Styles.”
It was her turn to nod solemnly. “He’s very beguiling.”
This is why I came early, I thought, hoping they’d get it out of their system before Nico got there.
“Beguiling,” my mother repeated, in case I hadn’t heard her the first time. “He’s on my list.”
“What list?” I asked, even though, after fifteen years, I really should have known better.
“My list. You know? From Friends. The list of five famous people I’m allowed to shag and your father can’t get mad.” She stopped chopping the peppers and looked up at the ceiling, her right eye closed as she tilted her head from side to side. “Harry Styles, Keanu Reeves, Jason Momoa, Dave Grohl, and Ranveer Singh.”
“Your mother is all about the hair.” My father grinned, fluffing up his dark curls with his hand.
“Oh my God!” I turned to look at the door again. “Please don’t say any of this when Nico gets here.”
When I turned back, my father shrugged as if to say, What?
Then carried on stirring the kadhi.
“Listen,” I hissed. “Nico is going to be here any second and I need you to not do this.” I waved my hands at them. “I know it’s actually physically impossible, but can you, please, for once, just be chill?”
“I’m chill.” My father turned to face me again, his arms out. “Right, Mads?”
“The chillest. You’ll see.” My mother waved the knife at me, then pointed at the door. “When Nico leaves here, she’ll be like, Oh my God, Mara. You’re so lucky. Your parents are, like, so chill.”
“With good hair.” My father pulled his Blue Steel face.
“And funny.” My mother cackled. “Vas, shall I tell her about the time I—”
“No!” I roared, checking the door again. When I looked back, I lowered my voice in case Nico walked in. “She doesn’t want to hear about that time you did acid at Glastonbury and tried to get on stage with Babyshambles. Or that time you gave Amy Winehouse a tampon in the toilets at the Dublin Castle. Or”—I raised my voice again before she could interrupt— “that guy you snogged at uni thinking it was Gavin Rossdale.”
OK. Fine. I admit it. Nico would have loved each of these stories because they’re actually pretty cool.
But not when your mother is telling them.
“Ah. Gavin.” She sighed dreamily, then turned to my father. “I’m adding him to my list.”
He didn’t seem bothered, though. “Fine. But someone has to go.”
“See ya, Styles,” she said, pretending to drag the knife across her throat.
“Extra-hot latte to have in,” someone said, making me jump.
“Sure,” my father said as my mother went upstairs to look for the order book. “Any particular milk?”
“Normal. But listen.” Their sharp blonde bob shivered as they held up their hand. “I want to make sure that you understand what I mean by extra hot because no one seems able to get it right.”
Because making it extra hot boils the milk so it won’t foam properly and tastes like shit, I thought.
But my father was more gracious than me.
“Got it,” he said with a tight smile. “Extra hot.”
“Ten pounds says they send it back because it tastes like shit,” I muttered when they went to find a table.
“Ten pounds says it’s not hot enough,” he countered as he grabbed a cup.
Sure enough, a few minutes later the customer strode back with a face like thunder.
My father winked at me as they slammed the cup down on the counter and we waited to see who’d won.
We were both wrong, though, because they said, “This is too hot!”
I was so stunned, I thought I’d misheard. “Is the milk scalded?”
“How on earth would I know? I can’t taste it because it’s too hot!”
My father looked at me, then shook his head as he walked toward the pantry chuckling to himself.
“Excuse me! Where are you going? I’m talking to you!” the customer called after him. “Do you mind telling me what’s so funny?”
I tried not to laugh because I wished—I wished—my mother was there.
They were lucky she was upstairs, though, otherwise no one would be laughing.
“It’s not funny. It’s just—” I had to press my lips together for a moment to stop myself from giggling and pissing them off even more. “You insisted on an extra-hot latte, but it’s too hot. You have to see the irony in that?”
They stared at me, phone in hand as though they were ready to call the police.
“And?” they said, blonde bob full on swinging now. “It is too hot!”
I looked down at the cup on the counter between us because I honestly didn’t know what to say to that.
“Just let it cool down,” I heard someone say.
I looked up and there she was—Nico—staring at the customer as if to say, Are you serious?
“Hey,” I said with a smile I knew was too loose to be considered remotely cool, my skirt and cardigan and whatever my parents were going to say to embarrass me immediately forgotten.
“Hey,” she said back.
Now I think about it, her smile wasn’t particularly cool, either. Especially as I could see the gap in her front teeth. But she didn’t seem to care, her cheeks pink as she peered at me from under her stiff black eyelashes.
“Um. Excuse me,” the customer barked, looking between us.
I’d forgotten they were there and felt something in me deflate.
“I cannot just let it cool down.” They turned to glare at Nico, a tiny blob of spit settling on their bottom lip. “When I pay for something, I expect it to be right and this isn’t right. I want another one.”
“Another one?” Nico blinked at them. “You do realize that in the time it took for you to come over here and complain, your coffee probably cooled to the perfect temperature. Whatever that is.”
My father emerged from the pantry then, carrying a massive meat thermometer.
“Is there a temperature you prefer?” He held it up. “Fifty-seven point two degrees perhaps?”
The customer gasped, hand on their chest. “Well, if this is how you treat all your customers, I shan’t be coming back.”
“Be sure to tell your friends about Malakar’s! Home of the extra-hot latte!” He saluted with two fingers.
My mother did the same as she emerged from upstairs with the order book to find the customer marching out of the café. “Don’t forget to leave us a review on Tripadvisor!” she called after them.
When I turned to Nico, she looked delighted as I sighed and said, “Yeah, so these are my parents.”
“You’d better get out there,” my father warned, waving the meat thermometer at the window while I tried to make Nico the best latte she’d ever had.
(For the record, I tried to talk her out of caffeine, but she wasn’t having it.)
I turned to see what he was pointing at and found Max by her table, his face red as he frowned earnestly.
“Oh no!” I gasped.
I grabbed her coffee and got outside as Nico tilted her head at Max and said, “So planes are just flying around”—she raised her hands and turned them in a circle—“spraying biological agents all over us?”
“Yeah, man.” He nodded, his blue eyes wide. “They’ve been doing it for years.”
“Who’s they?”
He ignored her. “It’s psychological manipulation, man. They’re trying to control us. Keep us in line.”
“OK,” I said, putting Nico’s latte down on the table in front of her. “See you tomorrow, yeah, Max?”
Luckily, he took the hint. Not before he winked lasciviously at me, though, which made me shudder as he wandered off. When I looked down at Nico, I expected to find her slightly shell-shocked, but she looked amused.
“Well,” she said as she watched him disappear around the corner. “He’s very … um … Brighton.”
“Oh yeah. He’s easing you in with chemtrails, though. Wait for his theory about Paul McCartney.”
“Paul McCartney?”
“He died in a car crash in the sixties, apparently, and the surviving Beatles replaced him with a lookalike.”
“Sure.” Nico raised her right shoulder, then let it drop again. “Makes sense.”
Now the thrill of seeing her again had passed, I could really look at her and saw that something was different. She wasn’t wearing her pink coat, I realized. Rather a long, loose black kaftan embroidered with white leaves and flowers. It was the sort of thing the old Nico would have worn and it made me falter for a moment.
“This is nice,” I said, hoping I sounded curious rather than startled. “Is it new?”
“Yes! I didn’t have anything Resident appropriate, so I just bought it in Beyond Retro. Do you like it?”
She held out her arm to show me the black fringe and I smiled. “Very Stevie Nicks.”
“That’s so funny! When Mum goes to bed, I’ve been listening to one of Dad’s albums and last night it was Rumours. So when I saw this, I thought of Stevie Nicks. I can’t believe you thought the same thing!”
Her smile sharpened to a grin and there she was.
The old Nico.
Just for a second.
And it was all I could do not to weep.
“You’re so lucky.” Nico grinned as we walked to Resident. “Your parents are so cool.”
“Please don’t tell them that,” I pleaded, rolling my eyes.
But she just laughed.
“So, tell me about this band we’re going to see. What are they called?”
Her face lit up like the pier. “Cowboy Mouth. Except it’s not a band, it’s a dude called Franklin Welsh.”
“They’re a Patti Smith fan, I take it?”
“Patti Smith?”
“Cowboy Mouth is a play she wrote with Sam Shepard.”
Nico turned to me, clearly impressed, and I had to look away as my face flushed with pride.
“I love that you know that!” She stopped and turned in a circle, the fringe on her kaftan rising, then falling. “One day, I want to be cool enough to make casual references to plays Patti Smith wrote.”
The funny thing is, the old Nico would have known it was a nod to Patti Smith, so I shook my head as I acknowledged the irony. “I only know that because I just read my mother’s copy of Just Kids.”
“What’s that?”
“Patti Smith’s memoir. Or part of it, anyway. It’s about her relationship with Robert Mapplethorpe and moving to New York. The Chelsea Hotel. Warhol’s Factory. All of that.”
“I want to live in New York one day,” she said with a wistful sigh.
I almost laughed because the old Nico thought that wanting to live in New York was a cliché.
“And I love that your mother has a book like that.” When she sighed again, it wasn’t as wistful. “Do you know what my mum’s reading? The Body Keeps the Score, which is about the effects of traumatic stress.”
I tried not to pull a face, but I don’t think I succeeded.
“I wish she’d read something like Just Kids.”
“You should read it. I’ll lend you Mum’s copy. It’s great. Full of anecdotes about the people Patti Smith knew back then. One of the first songs she wrote was for Janis Joplin. The last time they saw one another, before Janis died, she asked Patti how she looked and she told Janis that she looked like a pearl. A pearl of a girl.”
When I was brave enough to look at her again, she was smiling. “I want to be someone’s pearl of a girl.”
It’s impossible to convey with mere words how quickly—and completely—my life changed with that smile. I could feel my heart in a way I hadn’t before. As though until then, it had been tucked in that shoebox under my bed with all those other precious, forgotten things and was now free. I remember telling myself to memorize every delicate detail because one day—today, apparently—I’d want to remember it all. The rise and fall of the fringe on her kaftan. Her cheeks, as pink as cat’s paws. That slow, secret smile I’d never seen before. That was just for me.
Just think. All of those tiny moments that had to align for us to see each other again.
If she hadn’t left her journal behind.
Or if I hadn’t stood outside that café by the library, looking for her, I would have missed her.
It was nothing short of magic.
I didn’t know until then that I believed in magic. And I shouldn’t have. I had no reason to. Not after everything that happened before. But, looking back on it now, I suppose even hoping things would be different this time—that she would be different, that we would be different—reflected a willingness to be disappointed.
Later, I’d promise Michelle that I wouldn’t get carried away. That I’d be careful. But as soon as Nico said it—I want to be someone’s pearl of a girl—I had already decided that it was worth the risk.
But such is the misery and magic of love.
You’ll break your own heart at the mere promise of it.
Nico didn’t stop talking as we headed to Resident, each step lighter. She asked about my friends and I did my best to describe them. Louise’s energy. Her incurable curiosity and how she was the only one who could corral us when we were going in five different directions. Nico asked if Louise was the ringleader, which she was. But not in a manipulative way, more in a way that made us do things we’d almost certainly say no to.
Which was no bad thing, now I think about it.
When she asked about Erin, I described her as devilishly confrontational, but made sure Nico knew that she was fiercely loyal. A quintessential sister who constantly took the piss out of you but wouldn’t let anyone say a bad word about you. And I told her that if Erin was our big sister, then May was the baby.
Unreliable and unpredictable, but also mischievous and mutinous.
“She’s wild sometimes,” I told Nico as we joined the queue outside Resident, “but my mother says that you should always be friends with the wildflowers because they know how to survive.”
She looked up at me with another slow smile. “I like that.”
“I wish I was more like May. She’s so brave and you have to be brave to be fifteen sometimes.”
“I never thought about it, but I guess you do.”
“I think about it a lot,” I confessed as the queue began to move. “How I should give as much as I take.”
She thought about that, then nodded and said, “Tell me more about Michelle.”
So I did.
I told her all of my stories again. How I was born two days early and Michelle was born two days late, in the car park of Gala Bingo. How we got chickenpox at the same time. How I broke my arm jumping off the climbing frame at Queens Park when we were seven because Michelle promised to catch me but didn’t. About the blue and white of the Hotel Riad al Madina and the blue and yellow of Jardin Majorelle and how the Hawa Mahal changes from pink to red to gold when the sun sets.
And I told her how the coconuts in Sri Lanka are bright orange and that Michelle and I didn’t want to leave. So we told our parents that we were going to live on the beach and survive on fish we’d caught ourselves.
Then I told her the story about us running away to see Beyoncé.
“I’ll never forgive her for forsaking Beyoncé for chana bhatura,” I told Nico, shaking my head when we were finally inside Resident and flipping through the records while we waited for Cowboy Mouth to come out.
“Understandable.” She nodded, then grinned when I pulled out the Velvet Underground & Nico album with the Andy Warhol banana. “But I can’t say definitively until I’ve tasted your dad’s chana bhatura.”
“Fair enough. I’ll get him to make you some and you can make your judgment.”
“I wonder if I have a Michelle?” she said then, her eyes a little darker.
I could hear the sadness flowing like water beneath the words as I realized that she probably did.
There must have been a group of friends sitting around a table in the library at Brighton College or messaging one another asking if they’d hear from her again.
I couldn’t say that, though.
“Listen. I love Michelle, but it’s dangerous. I can never piss her off. She knows all my secrets.”
“I don’t have any secrets.” Nico shrugged. “This is all I’ve got.”
It’s enough, I almost said, but someone in a Resident T-shirt suddenly appeared next to us.
“Nico!” they barked. “Where the hell have you been? I thought you were dead!”
I stared, as stunned as Nico looked as they walked behind the counter and began peering at the shelves of records.
“Here it is!” they said, pulling one out and holding it up. “That Sharon Van Etten album you preordered. It’s been here since the new year. And you missed the Ezra Furman instore. What’s going on? You love her.”
They looked so genuinely confused that I continued to stare across the shop at them as I asked myself how they could possibly not know what had happened to her. But then I felt Nico relax next to me.
“Sorry. I’ve been super busy,” she told them with a shrug. “GCSEs, you know?”
They seemed satisfied with that as they pointed the album at her. “You’re into Sufjan Stevens, right?”
She half nodded, half shrugged, then turned to me, her eyes wide as if to say, I’m into Sufjan Stevens.
We followed them as they strode back around the counter and headed to the middle of the shop. “Where is it? Where is it?” they muttered as they rooted through a stack, then pulled one out. “Here we go!” They thrust it at her. “Luke Sital-Singh. He went to BIMM, you know? If you don’t love it, the next one’s on me.”
I held my breath when they said BIMM, my heart gasping to a halt as I waited.
Waited for Nico to blink a few times, before something registered and it finally happened.
For the wall to fall and there, in the debris, she’d find herself.
The Nico who wanted to go to BIMM and preordered Sharon Van Etten albums.
But she just said, “Thanks.”
Then followed them back to the counter to pay.
They slid the records into a Resident tote, then nodded toward the corner of the shop, by the bookshelf.
“Go claim your favorite spot. Cowboy Mouth is about to come out.”
“I have a favorite spot,” Nico whispered, her eyes shining.