Page 14 of People Change

He laughs, until he realises she isn’t joking. The bags of charcoal are put on the floor, and he weighs up what she is saying in his mind. While he is no longer laughing, he has the glimmer of a smile in his eyes. ‘I can tell you’re still as strange as ever, but okay. I’d like to be friends, so no school talk.’

They begin walking again and turn into the alcohol aisle, and Kian picks up a pack of beers, attempting to balance it atop the bags of charcoal. Shirin offers to hold the beers, which he reluctantly takes her up on.

‘Okay,’ she says. ‘Can I break my own rule for one second? Have you been following everything with Rob?’

Kian stands straighter at this, perhaps a reflex, and narrows his eyes at her. ‘How do you mean?’

‘Just the fact that he’s a celebrity now.’ She looks away at a bottle of wine and the recommendation card underneath, paying far too much consideration to a bottle of Shiraz that she will not be buying.

‘I try not to pay attention to it,’ he says, his voice strained.

‘It pisses me off,’ she says, still looking at the card. ‘And no one gets it. He even got a book deal. He’s crossing into my space.’

Kian puts the bags down between his legs and places one hand on Shirin’s shoulder. It surprises her, so she turns to him suddenly, her lips parted, about to question what he’s doing. ‘I get it,’ he says gently. ‘But we can’t let it bother us. We’re both doing our thing; what he’s doing doesn’t matter. It shouldn’t matter.’

She is so conscious of his warm hand on her shoulder, of how all her nerves are hyper-aware of it. She looks up at him. ‘When did you get to be so wise?’ she says, one eyebrow raised.

He pushes her jokingly. ‘I don’t know – I guess I just grew up,’ he says. ‘We both have.’

She nods, though she’s thinking she’s not all that different from when she was a teenager, not really.

The Author Party

‘How are you?’ Shirin’s dad asks over the phone.

She makes her way unsteadily down the bus stairs, balancing her mobile between her ear and shoulder. ‘I’m okay, how are things with you?’ she says.

He sighs deeply. ‘It hasn’t been a good week.’

She leaves the number-8 bus at Shoreditch and begins her journey along the busy road, dodging people as she goes. ‘Really, how come?’

A drunk man staggers towards her and Shirin quickly jumps out of the way and onto the side of the road. She mutters something under her breath before continuing at a brisk pace.

‘I’ve been feeling so anxious. I can’t sleep at all – only a few hours a night. Karen is annoyed at me, too. She doesn’t get that it’s my anxiety, that I can’t help it. I wish I could feel better. I wish Allah would just let me be better. I sometimes ask Allah: Why me? Why me?’

She can feel her breath quickening, her mind a fog, as it always is when these subjects are broached by her dad. Before her parents’ divorce, her dad did not believe in anxiety or depression. When Shirin was at university, in her second year, her world was black and white and grey, and she oftenthought about how she would kill herself, though she did not tell anyone this. When she came home for Easter, she spent most of the break in bed, eyes wide, all day. She often overheard her dad saying to her mum that he did not understand why she acted the way she did; that she had everything and was still, allegedly, unhappy.

‘Maybe have less caffeine and see if that helps?’ she suggests. ‘You always feel worse when you drink coffee. Have you been drinking it again?’

‘Yes, but it’s not that,’ he replies. ‘My counsellor says my mind is too busy, that I need to take care of myself. But Karen’s always complaining about everything I do. And your mother doesn’t even want to talk to me.’

Shirin feels her mind drifting elsewhere. They have had this conversation many, many times before. He rants and tries to get her attention, though she does not know how she can help him. She listens and gives advice, though she is not a therapist, and she is not the person to come to for mental-health advice, when she herself is struggling. She is his child and wishes so deeply that she were not always required to parent both her parents.

For the first four years of her life Shirin’s Maman and Baba Bozorg brought her up in Tehran. Her mum and dad moved to Italy when she was two for a brief period, before settling on England. They left Shirin in the care of her grandparents while they travelled around Europe to see more of the world, and to find the perfect place for them to go to university and to ultimately settle down. Objectively, she knew that being raised by her Maman and Baba Bozorg was no bad thing. While hermum and dad quarrelled, and sometimes more than that – with full-blown arguments that Shirin thought would mean they’d finally leave each other – her grandparents provided her with enough love. She was never left wanting, never unsettled with them. Her parents wanted parenthood to be a part-time endeavour, and their resentment that it was not was palpable, growing up. Now, while she might understand their perspective, her relationship with them continues to be both strained and distant. At twenty-six years old, she has no desire to remedy it.

Her dad quickly moved on from her mum leaving, with Karen. He was strict with Shirin, so she wouldn’t be someone like Karen when she is older, and now he is engaged to her. Karen has two children with two different men, and both of them live with their dads because they do not like her, and she swears that said children are ‘little bastards’. Karen is thirty-eight and her dad is sixty. Karen is very obviously only after her dad’s money – and he isn’t even wealthy, which makes it all the sadder for them both. Shirin is not sure how they met, though she imagines through online dating. Or perhaps at their local shopping centre. Her dad wanders the shops when he has nothing to do, especially after her mother left. She imagines Karen in their family home, watching TV on their sofa, sleeping in the bed her mother slept in, her children in what was Shirin’s bedroom when they visit, and it makes her heart beat quickly, angrily.

‘Sorry, I’m on my way to a work thing, so can’t really talk right now. But take care of yourself, okay? Just take it easy?’

There is a short pause before he replies. ‘Fine, okay, darling. Take care.’

When the call ends she feels guilty. She always feels guilty. If she indulges the conversation, she feels guilty that she did not set her dad straight about his behaviour, or that she isn’t on her mum’s side. And if, like now, she doesn’t indulge the conversation, she is a bad daughter who is leaving her dad all alone. Even though he has a counsellor – and Karen. It is Shirin who is all alone, but because she does not shout like him, no one hears her.

All that remains is irritation now. Her heart beats out of time, her fists are clenched. She shakes her hands as she walks, takes a deep breath and quickens her pace. She cannot remember the last time her dad pressed her for more information about how she is feeling. And she is sure he does not know what she does for work, in London. He does not care about her as an individual, but sees her as an extension of himself, like a growth that he needs to tend to occasionally, with phone calls like this. He does not see that she too has a life, has problems, has feelings.

Though while her dad calls to vent, her mother does not even reply to her emails. Shirin hasn’t heard from her in a week, though she posted an Instagram story of herself with friends in a café in Tehran yesterday, so Shirin knows she is okay.

As she approaches the venue in Old Street, she texts him: