Finding Mr Perfectly Fine

Chapter 10

‘I can’t believe what you’re wearing,’ I chuckle as Yasmin and I leave the house on Saturday to meet the dentist. Mum and Nani are waving furiously from the gate, as though we’re off to our first day at school and we wave back genially, as if today’s meeting isn’t one of extreme magnitude.

‘Me neither,’ Yasmin admits with a laugh, linking her arm into mine, forcing me to match her long strides. ‘But what Mum wants, Mum gets!’

On my mother’s strict instructions, under my mac I’m wearing a white silk shirt and navy straight-legged jeans that I haven’t worn since 2006, which are so tight around the waist that I can’t do them up anymore. I’ve had to leave them undone and have covered the gaping gap with a brown belt. Brown leather boots and a white cashmere cardigan Mum pulled out from God knows where complete the look, along with Nani’s real pearls that rest daintily on my collarbones. My nana gave them to her when they first moved to the UK in the seventies and she’s treasured them ever since. My makeup has been laboriously fashioned to look like I’m not wearing any and I’ve doused in Mum’s Chanel No. 5. I look and smell like a Surrey soccer mum – her interpretation of what a dentist’s wife should wear on a leisurely Saturday. And nothing like me.

Yasmin doesn’t look like herself either and every time I glance at her, I suppress the urge to snort. In all honesty, the fact that everyone – especially my mum – thought my sister had to uglify herself in order to keep the attention on me, the older, less-pretty sister, isn’t funny, it’s pathetic. I’m not completely naïve; I know that I’m not as young or trendy as Yas but I didn’t think I was that bad. I’m still all-right looking. I’m still a decent person, still an attractive prospect. I think.

Not only is my sister’s face barren of a single swipe of makeup, she’s wearing one of Nani’s old-fashioned triangular white headscarves with a lace trim, the type people would buy from Saudi Arabia back in the nineties. She has pinned the scarf under her chin so that the two ends hang down over her chest. Not that you can tell she has a chest, under the baggy black jumper she’s wearing that’s about four sizes too big. Without her usual glossy bob on display she doesn’t look like herself, but together with the outfit, she could pass as my mother – or worse, Nani.

‘Are you OK?’ Yasmin asks me, examining my expression as we wait on the platform. She stands close to the edge which makes me nervous, especially because of the way she’s dressed. What if an Islamaphobe pushes her onto an oncoming train? I pull her away from the yellow line and explain that the fact that Mum thought she needed to dress like this is a really harsh reality check.

‘Z, you can’t let Mum’s warped view affect you,’ she replies as we get onto the train and grab two empty seats.

‘It’s a bit hard to ignore her,’ I say. ‘Especially when there’s some truth to it.’

‘The only thing that’s true is that you’re twenty-nine – and there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s our culture and community that’s the problem, not you. Next time anyone says you’re too old, remind them that the Prophet’s first wife was over forty when they got married. And she was way older than him.’

‘Yeah, like that’s going to change anything. You know how they love to pick and choose the bits of Islam that suits them.’

‘Well, they need to get with the times because no one cares about these outdated traditions anymore. When it’s my turn to get married, there’s no way I’m going to go through all this. I’m finding my own husband.’

‘That’s what I thought as well. And yet here I am.’ I lean back against the grimy seat and close my eyes; Yasmin, as emotionally intuitive as she always is, swiftly changes the subject to uni, and some drama with one of her tutors.

‘I’m sure she’s racist,’ she says, after moaning about how her presentation was far superior to her white classmates, but she got the worst feedback.

‘That’s a pretty serious accusation to make,’ I warn her. ‘Don’t throw that word around unless you have evidence, or your life could be over. You’ll become the girl who cried race.’

‘How do you prove something so subtle? You know when you just know?’

‘I do know. We all know. But knowing isn’t going to hold up in an investigation. You need something tangible, otherwise you need to keep quiet and work harder than everyone else. That’s the shitty reality of being a woman of colour.’

We arrive at Covent Garden and, as always, I’m thankful that we live so close to Central London. For a moment I wonder what it would be like to commute in from Rayner’s Lane – where Hamza lives – every day. I barely know anything about West London, other than that it’s where most of London’s Arabs live. Anyway, today is not the day to be thinking about Hamza.

But I am, because he texted me last night, which led to a phone call and a conversation that went on for over an hour. At first, the conversation was great. He’s attentive and his accent is really endearing, not at all like the one I put on for Jordan, which is so bloody cringey that I haven’t told my sisters about it. But then he started talking about work and he droned on, and on, and on. I also found out that his idea of a fun night is staying in and playing on his PlayStation .?.?. whereas mine is a night out on the town. How can a relationship last forever if I’m already experiencing a twinge of boredom – and it’s barely been a month? Not that it is a relationship. What is this process even called, the period of time you spend getting to know someone to see if they’re suitable for marriage? It’s not dating either. A ‘courtship’, perhaps?

There’s other stuff that’s niggling me about him as well, but I don’t know if I’m imagining it. Last night, while we were talking, he asked me what my career plans were.

‘Plans? Erm, I’m not really the type to have plans, per se,’ I said like a planless idiot. ‘Do you have plans?’

‘Sure do,’ he replied confidently, before explaining his five and ten year goals from manager to director and one day, partner. I felt tired just listening to it.

‘What about you?’ he asked. ‘You could do so much. Comms skills are totally transferable. Have you thought about leaving the public sector and going private? There’s more money in it.’

‘Yeah, my friend Layla’s always telling me to, but I’m happy where I am,’ I replied, stifling a yawn.

‘It’s not all about happiness though,’ he continued. ‘Don’t you want to earn enough money so you can save up for the future?’

‘I do save,’ I said a bit defensively. ‘I live with my parents, so I have no overheads. I save most of my salary and the rest I’m either eating or wearing.’

‘But you could save more if you earned more,’ he insisted and went on about mortgages and the property ladder, blah blah blah.

To be fair, I could see his point but given the fact that we’ve met twice and spoken once on the phone, I found his pushiness a bit overbearing. But then, I guess that’s what the arranged marriage scenario does – it accelerates relationships so that the conversations that would usually take place over a course of a year, happen in just a few weeks.

*

Stepping out of the dark Underground into Covent Garden is like stepping into another world. The pedestrian-only cobbled streets are full of tourists taking pictures with living statues and Londoners pausing to listen to the beautiful classical music that a string quartet is playing outside the market.