Page 20 of The Mismatch

‘You’re my good girl, you know that?’ He rubbed the top of Parvin’s head, and then looked at Soraya. ‘You are too, don’t feel left out!’ He came over to her and she held her breath. He ruffled her hair too, a bit too roughly, but probably not intentionally so. He pulled it, too, in the act.

‘Ow!’

‘You’re such a moody girl,’ he said. ‘What are you girls doing today then?’ He stood in the middle of her room, like a boulder she wished she could remove. But for once he was in a chatty mood.

As in all situations, Parvin knew exactly what to say and do.

‘We’re going to town, and I’m going to buy Soraya lunch to celebrate her graduating.’

‘Oh, yeah! My youngest daughter the graduate.’ Soraya felt a faint hope expanding in her like a balloon. ‘What are your plans now then? Are you applying for jobs?’ And then it was popped with a needle, confusing her. In some ways itwas worse than disappointment, this feeling. She didn’t have time to fully form a hope before it was snatched away from her.

‘Don’t you want to congratulate me?’ This was what Amir and their dad often called Soraya’s ‘backchat’.

‘Congratulations,’ he said, going over to her again to pat, or rather whack, her on the back. ‘You know what, girls? Lunch is on me, wherever you want to go.’

‘Maybe Jamie Oliver’s then,’ Parvin chimed in, excited by her father’s offer.

He rummaged inside his trackie bottom pockets and produced two twenty-pound notes, which he gave to Parvin. He didn’t have much money, so would regret that later. ‘There you go, take your little sister on a girls’ day out and enjoy yourselves.’

Another popped balloon.

Whilst Soraya would rather go for lunch with Parvin than with her dad, she wondered if it was too much for him to want to spend time with her. That was why she and Oliver bonded so heavily when they first met: they both had dysfunctional families. Families who pressured them into acting a certain way, and then were vocally disappointed when their creatures didn’t turn out as they were expected to.

‘Thanks, Dad!’ Parvin jumped over to give him a half-hug, not wanting to risk inhaling the stench. And this was how she and Soraya were different. Parvin’s takeaway from this would be that their dad paid for them to go out for lunch, a nice thing to do. But all Soraya could think was that he wastoo lazy to spend time with them, to attend her graduation, or even to make up for that by going out to lunch with them. Instead he preferred to pay them off. With money he didn’t have. And perhaps Parvin was fine with that, but Soraya knew she never could be.

**

When Soraya had finished binge-watchingThe O.C. in the early hours of the morning, she made her way down the two flights of stairs to the kitchen for a snack. As she made it to the ground floor she saw that her dad was in the living room watching TV. She took the door straight into the kitchen, instead of walking through the other room in front of him.

She could hear the TV narrator talking about a murder that had occurred. His voice was classically American, ominous, unremarkable.

Opening the fridge to get out a bottle of milk, she realised her dad hadn’t called out from the living room. She put the milk bottle on the counter and walked to the door connecting the two rooms, a box of cereal in her hand. Her dad was lying on the sofa with his back to her. His headphones were plugged into his laptop. Soraya forced herself to stand there for a moment, trying to understand what she was seeing playing on the screen. At first all she saw was flesh. Breasts. Normally when Soraya caught him watching porn, she would quickly look away. Shake her head. Mutter something under her breath along the lines of ‘disgusting’. But today she willedherself to understand what he was watching. On his screen was a girl going down on another girl.

His clothes were all on, his hands still by his sides. This made the whole sight stranger. He was a passive onlooker, observing. It seemed he took no pleasure in it. But then, perhaps he wasn’t an expressive person. Soraya didn’t really know him that well.

She also wondered, as she always did, why? Why in the living room? Why in their public space, when he had taken a bedroom that wasn’t his anyway and made it his own? Couldn’t he watch porn there?

‘Ridiculous,’ she said under her breath, following her own ritual unthinkingly.

And he continued watching, completely unaware.

So Soraya returned to the kitchen, poured the milk and cereal into a bowl. Returned the items to their respective places and headed back to her room, turning off each light as she went.

It wasn’t anything new.

She left the bowl of uneaten cereal on her bedside table and took a shower. She turned the dial so the water was hot, almost scorching. She got in, held her breath as the water stung against her bare skin. She breathed through gritted teeth, focusing on nothing but the water.

When she shut the water off, she wrapped herself in a scratchy towel and went back to her bedroom, not sure why she had done that. But it helped her feel a little cleaner.

By now the cereal was soggy and unappealing.

CHAPTER 9

Soraya

London, 2014

Soraya met Magnus in one of the nicer bars in Brockley, one she had never been in before. She wore a black turtleneck jumper tucked into a midi-length baby pink skirt, and silver cut-off Doc Martens. Over this she wore a black duster jacket and a silver mini backpack. It was an outfit she’d deliberated over for an hour, until she forced herself out the door because, despite living only fifteen minutes away, she was already late.