The Darkening Hour (21 page)

I think of Anita again, reminding me I must stay in control, that I’m paying Mona to do what I want her to do.

‘I’m having six people for dinner next Friday. You’re to make the dining table look beautiful. You’re to serve drinks and canapés and your lamb tagine.’

‘So I can’t take some days . . .’

‘You must buy the meat from Waitrose. I don’t want you getting that stuff from the butcher’s.’

She blinks. Speaks quietly.

‘It’s cheaper at the butcher’s on the High Street. It’s very good there – I know good meat. And the butcher can do the bones for me.’

‘I don’t want you buying things for me from the High Street. I can’t risk my guests getting food poisoning. You go to Waitrose, I’ll draw you a map. And you can make some
of the bread you made that Saturday, as well,’ I say. ‘Organic flour. You might as well get some of the stuff today, I’ll write you a list.’

After dinner, I go on the internet and Google maids’ uniforms. I should have guessed that the first images to pop up would be of women in sexy French maid outfits.
Demeaning and ridiculous. Max’s clichéd fantasy comes to mind. These outfits are exactly the opposite image to the one I want to create for Mona. I scroll down until I reach some plain
uniforms. I buy three of the least appealing I can find, and will offer them as a gift to Mona to wear while she’s in my house. I want her to understand that she’s at work, that she
dresses appropriately when she’s cleaning for me and caring for Daddy.

My status on the radio may be in question but I am, after all, Mona’s employer – and I intend her to remember it.

‘Ummu,’ I whisper into the phone, ‘I can’t come home. There is some important work Dora needs me to do.’

‘Oh well. I thought it might be difficult. Don’t worry, Mona, we’re coping. As long as you keep sending the money.’

‘Have you had your scan?’

‘It’s tomorrow. The doctor says I may need treatment afterwards, depending on the results. I’m sorry, Mona, this is all costing more than I imagined.’

‘If I could find Ali,’ I blurt out before I can stop myself, ‘he could provide for us. We wouldn’t be in this situation! If he’s got citizenship, you could come
over too – hospitals are free here. And we could all be together!’

‘Ali Ali Ali!’ she says. ‘I told you to forget Ali. A man who leaves his wife and child and doesn’t get in touch . . .’

‘Ali is my oldest friend as well as my husband,’ I say. ‘He would never just leave us. I will find him. I’m making enquiries.’

‘Yousseff had some news,’ Ummu says then.

‘
What?!
’

‘Yousseff. Says he had some news of Ali. Says he’s living in London for sure. He doesn’t know exactly where.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me this?’

‘Because Ali hasn’t told you himself. It makes me wonder if he wants you to find him.’

‘But perhaps he can’t. Perhaps he’s in some kind of trouble and can’t contact me. Perhaps he’s waiting for me to help him.’

‘If he’s in trouble, Mona, you should stay away.’

‘I don’t mean in trouble with the law. I mean perhaps he’s not been able to get work, has no money, is living rough somewhere. Perhaps he lost his phone or had to sell it
– I don’t know, Ummu. There are lots of things that happen to people when they come to find work – tragic things, you know that. He may be being exploited somewhere: you remember
the things Rachida told us, about immigrants getting picked up. I’m afraid for him.’ My heart’s racing. ‘Please ask Yousseff to give you all the information he’s
got.’

Ali in London! Closer than I dared to imagine! He could be round the corner. My imagination starts to work. You never know in a city like this, you can go for years without knowing who is living
right next door to you.

Sayed’s words come back to me:
Everyone round here . . . all the guys at the cab office, they’s all from somewhere else. Some is legal, some is illegal
.

I’ll ask him to make enquiries for me. The thought that I can do something definite to find Ali at last fills me with the kind of hope I haven’t felt for weeks.

The street’s bright and cold this late-November morning, and it smells of something sweet and smoky, masking the usual toxic odours of cooking fat, diesel fumes and stale
alcohol.

‘Ah, look, roasting chestnuts,’ says Charles. ‘Let’s buy a bagful and take them home to eat by the fire. Follow my stick.’

The market swirls about me. The bales of purple and orange and gold fabric seem brighter, the saris, the sparkling piles of watches and mobile phones. Everything looks pretty in the light
– even the nuts and bolts and rolls of tape in their gleaming blue baskets. I look longingly at the stalls of sweets and toys. Oh, to have the money to buy something for Leila! But
there’s no need to fret. Soon I’ll be back with Ali, and Ummu and Leila can come and join us!

A picture of Ali comes to mind, swinging Leila into the air when she was tiny. And I can feel Leila now with my whole body, the weight of her tied onto my back as I go about my chores, or in my
arms as I feed her. Her body sprawled wetly against mine as we bathe together at the hammam, the warm dense doughiness of it.

How her eyes would have shone, if she could have seen these stalls of toys, as if the world did after all possess some magic dust that could bring to life everything she’d ever wished for.
I pick up a toy London bus, turn it over in the palm of my hand, picture Leila pushing it over the floor on her tummy, humming to herself gently. She deserves to have these things. I never wanted
my child cast into an adult role so soon.

I remind myself, however, that Leila finds it easy to be overjoyed. She might not have many toys, but she can be mesmerised by a pregnant spider spinning its web, by the jewel-like seeds set in
the flesh inside a pomegranate. She finds the magic around us, in the everyday, in stones made shiny under the water.

Sayed’s at the counter in the newsagent’s, scanning an old woman’s shopping at the cash register. I wait for her to pay up and leave. Charles sits and looks
at the papers, allowing me a moment to myself.

‘Sayed,’ I say in a low voice, ‘I need your help.’

‘Sure. What is it? You need documents? I can get passports, at a cost. Or you want me to send money?’

‘No, it’s nothing like that. I need you to keep this secret.’

‘Don’t worry, man. I know the score. Tell me.’

‘I’m looking for this man.’

I pull Ali’s photo from my tracksuit pocket and hold it up for him to see. Ali with Leila, his arms around her, their eyes squinting into the sun.

‘He’s in London, and I need to find him. He’s a medical student. He believed he could get work here.’

‘Does he speak English?’

‘Yes, well. He always talked of coming to London. I’ve been told he’s here but I’m afraid something’s happened to him because he hasn’t been in
touch.’

Sayed examines the photo. ‘What’s his name? He’s a medic, you say? I’ll ask around. See what I can do.’ He grins and looks at me, waiting for something. Then I see
what he wants.

‘Here.’ I hand him five pounds, five pounds out of the money Dora’s given me to spend on the food from her favourite shop, Waitrose.

He rubs his thumb and finger together. ‘You expect me to help you for a fiver?’

I look at the money in my purse. Hand him another five pound note.

‘I’ll do what I can,’ he says.

We leave the newsagent’s and I push Charles up the street to the 99p shop where he bought his chocolate that first day I was here. I can get exactly the same stuff Dora
wants from Waitrose for less than half the price here.

If this leads to something it will be worth a thousand pounds – and anyway, then I won’t need Dora or her money any more.

Later, I ask Leo if I can check my Facebook page on his computer. My hopes soar as I see that there’s a message from Amina, my friend who works for Dora’s
ex-husband. Has she heard news of Ali? I click on the message and it pops up. But what I read, instead of throwing any light on my situation, casts a shadow over everything.

‘Gosh,’ says Sally, standing in the hallway, looking around. ‘I can see you have help. Blimey, Dora, it’s made quite a difference – the house
looks pristine!’ Sally’s an old friend from my Blackheath days. We’ve known each other years, and kept in touch, as she still lives locally.

‘Are you saying it didn’t before?’ I ask, smiling, taking her coat.

Mona’s cleaned the house from top to bottom, and everything gleams. I’m feeling positive. My applications for the new presenter posts are in, one a move up, one a replacement of my
current position, and though I’ve heard nothing, I feel certain they’ll be well received. I’ve more experience than most of the likely applicants, and Rachel has always held me in
high regard.

Sally’s partner Bob is behind her holding two bottles of wine, one white, one red. As they stand there, Gina arrives brandishing more wine. Then Rachel, with her partner Martha. It’s
going to be a drunken evening – for them. I’m going to stay sober, keep my wits about me. Ensure I’m seen in my best light.

My only regret is that Max can’t be here to share the evening with us. One of the many drawbacks of my affair is that I cannot share special occasions with the man I love. Christmas, New
Year, Easter and holidays, he has to be with his own family. It’s at these times my yearning for him threatens to subdue any enjoyment I take in the occasion. Oh, I can smile, and talk and
laugh with the others, but Max’s absence leaves me melancholy underneath. My senses become heightened to other couples’ intimacy, the protective shell afforded by a relationship. I
yearn for that lovely post mortem where you can reveal your true thoughts about the people you’ve had to be polite to throughout the evening.

Without him, I feel raw and vulnerable.

It’s one of the reasons I’ve included Gina. Two single women provide solidarity for one another.

Mona’s laid the table we use at the far end of the drawing room with the white linen cloth, the antique embroidered table mats, and monogrammed white starched napkins that were my
mother’s. She’s polished the silver bone-handled cutlery and put long tapered candles in glass holders. The only things missing are the soup spoons.

‘Mona, we use the round spoons for soup.’

She’s in the kitchen, wearing the overall that’s arrived, blue polyester with a white collar, her head bent over the large pan that’s giving off that mouth-watering smell only
Mona’s capable of producing.

‘What?’

‘Soup spoons.’ I open what my mother used to call the ‘canteen of cutlery’; an antique walnut box where she kept the bone-handled knives, forks and spoons.

I lift the top layer. The soup spoons live in the bottom layer, cupping each other in their little velvet slots.

‘Where are they?’

She doesn’t reply, continuing to stir the soup. It’s happening again – the expressionless mask that descends when I question her.

‘Mona, I want to use my mother’s spoons for the soup. They’re not here. They’re not on the table. Where are they?’

She’s pouring the soup into a tureen as if she hasn’t heard me.

‘Mona! Have you seen them? The spoons.’

No reaction.

‘Dora!’ Gina is calling from the drawing room.

I give Mona a hard stare before I rejoin my friends, but she doesn’t look back.

My friends gasp and exclaim at the table.

‘You’re so lucky having Mona to help you!’ Gina says. ‘It all looks so beautiful.’

‘She’s an absolute star,’ I say.

‘Not meaning to be indelicate,’ Sally says, slumping down on the sofa in the bay window, ‘but doesn’t it cost a fortune having a live-in . . . what do we call her? She
isn’t a nanny, and I suppose she does help with your dad, but she isn’t a carer as such.’

‘A live-in help?’ says Gina.

‘A maid?’ offers Bob.

‘We don’t have maids in England these days!’ says Sally.

‘It’s coming back into fashion,’ I say, filling their wine glasses. ‘Those of us with jobs and families are overworked, but there are plenty of people like Mona desperate
for domestic placements. It works all round.’

‘Has she got a PhD?’ asks Sally. ‘Like the Eastern Europeans who come over to do our menial work?’

I wonder if she’s making some kind of point here.

‘In Mona’s case, no, she hasn’t,’ I say. ‘I know a lot of workers over here, doing stuff no one else is prepared to do, are highly educated. But Mona’s not
had that benefit. She’s delighted to have a job at all.’

I’m thinking about the spoons. What would Mona want with soup spoons? Yet they’ve gone! We’ll have to use the stainless-steel ones I don’t like. I think of her stony
expression when I asked her where they were, and wonder suddenly whether they were ever there.

Have I insulted her by suggesting she might have taken them? Her pride is formidable, and I don’t want to cross her. I haven’t used the cutlery since bringing it from Mummy and
Daddy’s house – it’s possible the spoons were already missing. There’s also my necklace – which Daddy quite possibly put somewhere ‘safe’ and then forgot
about. I need Mona too much to lose her by making any more accusations that might offend her, yet I can’t let her humiliate me.

When Mona appears with trays of briouates, the little Moroccan pastries I’ve told her to make, everyone gasps and exclaims again.

‘Did you make these?’ Sally asks, and Mona nods. ‘Well, Dora’s very lucky.’

‘Won’t you stay and have a drink with us?’ Bob asks.

I give him a look which he misses.

Mona smiles, and says thank you but no, and backs away. At least she knows the etiquette.