Page 102 of The Mismatch

It was on Christmas Eve that she realised why her mum seemed to have moved on so quickly from the event that had shaken Soraya. She had a new reason to hate her husband.

It all began to unravel in the early evening when Soraya heard a light tap on her door. She was binge-watchingSex and the Cityon her laptop, relating to Carrie during one of her frequent break-ups with Mr Big. Oliver had lent her the box set as a holiday parting gift.

Her body tensed at the noise, and she felt like a caged animal once more. One that kept willingly returning to the same cage despite knowing the dangers. She clutched herblanket tightly around her, as though it could protect her from whatever awaited her. It wasn’t that she thought her dad would come in for round two, but behind that door could be any member of her family, each with the ability to derail her already delicate mental state. She was fragile, that much was obvious, or so she thought, and one further push could break her.

The door inched open and her mum appeared. She was wearing floral trousers and a baggy T-shirt. Her expression was a mixture of excitement tinged with sadness.

‘Are you up?’ she said, stepping into the room, closing the door softly behind her.

‘No, I’m asleep.’ Soraya rolled her eyes and sat up straighter.

‘You’re a funny girl, ey?’ her mum said before sitting down on the side of the bed. In her hand she heldOne Day, a book Soraya had lent her, which she put down on the bedside table. ‘The ending was so sad, I’m not sure I’d want to read it again.’

Soraya made a small sound in response, despite the fact thatOne Daywas one of her favourite books. She didn’t want to discuss it now, nor defend it against her mum who always wanted happy endings in every book she read.

She noticed her mum peering at her, a forlorn look on her face. ‘What’s up?’

‘Why are you so moody?’ her mum said, placing a hand against Soraya’s cheek.

She moved away.

‘Have you forgotten what happened when I was last here?’

‘Of course I haven’t. What can we do? Your dad is … you know how I feel about him. We’re stuck with him.’ Her mum shrugged as though she had just said something mundane, and not heartbreaking. ‘You’re a good girl, OK? Don’t let him get you down.’

Something about the sadness in her mum’s eyes made Soraya soften beneath her touch.

Her mum smiled briefly before saying, ‘What do you know about this website Match something?’

She’d expected her mum to say many things but enquiring about a dating site was not one of them. ‘Why?’ Soraya tried to keep her voice neutral, but a smile threatened her composure. Despite her mum’s old-fashioned ways, she would ask about the most random things.

‘I thinkhe’son there!’ she said.

‘Oh,’ Soraya said. ‘I thought he was seeing that girl?’ She didn’t add that Amir was most likely seeing many different girls anyway.

‘Not your brother,’ her mum said quickly. ‘Your dad!’

She explained that she had been suspicious of her husband’s increase in internet activity, the blue glow of his laptop screen always shining on his face in the middle of the night. So when he had gone into town she’d checked his laptop – a task that disgusted her. His laptop was always sticky and there were crumbs in between each letter on his keyboard. Usually her mum resolutely refused to touch it. On the odd occasion she had to move it from the sofa, she wore gloves.

‘And open on his laptop was Match.com,’ she said, leaning closer to Soraya for dramatic effect. ‘Your dad istalkingto women on Match.com!’

Soraya took a moment to process these words. She wasn’t quite sure what she could say in response. ‘Right,’ she said, pausing again. Then, ‘Are you sure?’

Her mum ‘tsked’ impatiently. ‘If I bring you his laptop, will you find his messages?’ In some ways, her mum was the most intelligent person Soraya knew, mastered subjects she couldn’t even begin to understand, but like many people of her generation, she was not particularly tech-savvy, naïve about how expansive the internet was.

‘I guess so.’

Soraya had never seen her mum move so quickly. She returned minutes later with the laptop. She held it away from her body, careful not to let it touch her clothes. Under her armpit was a pack of Dettol wipes. She put it on the floor and gave the interior and exterior a wipe before placing the laptop on Soraya’s bed.

Her dad didn’t have a password on his computer. Perhaps he thought his lack of hygiene was a big enough deterrent to his wife and children, and until now it had worked. Soraya opened the website and it automatically logged into his account. She clicked the mailbox button at the top, and her heart dropped at what she saw.

There were at least thirty messages from her dad to other women.

‘Maybe it’s not actually him,’ she muttered to herself. She clicked on his profile. What she saw made her triple-take.‘Oh, God,’ she said, smirking and grimacing at the same time. ‘He’s using Amir’s pictures! And has his name down as Hamid Nazari.’

‘That bastard,’ her mum said, standing up, hand on hip. They both knew it wasn’t Amir on the site, the bio section screamed her dad. The bad grammar, the pictures chosen (family photos in which he cut out everyone but Amir) and the fact that it was his computer, made that clear. But it left one question.

‘Why, though?’ Soraya said. ‘What’s he hoping to achieve? It’s not like he could actually meet them.’