Page 16 of People Change

Eventually she exits the cubicle and takes time washing her hands, relishing the quiet, the warm water and expensive soap lathering her hands. She smooths down her dress, which is black and tight on her waist, flowing down to her calves. The straps sit in a Bardot style, and she wears a blue crystal Swarovski necklace she was given for her twenty-first birthday by Hana. She observes her blonde hair, which she has clipped back with crystal hair-grips, away from her face. She wonders for the first time whether her dyed hair is her way of assimilating, whether it even suits her. And then she thinks of Kian, who said he liked her hair – who she might beseeing again – and in addition to the confusing stirring of many conflicting emotions, mostly negative, right now is another one at this thought: excitement.

At 10 p.m. Mariam yawns into her cranberry juice. Shirin has both elbows on the standing tables, her body away from the dance floor that has formed. Mariam gets her phone out and scrolls through it, before pausing, putting her glass down and tapping Shirin’s hand. ‘Oh my God,’ she says. ‘That small man is at it again.’

Shirin stands a little straighter and says, ‘What small man?’ Mariam is five foot ten; in her eyes, most men are small men.

‘That shite comedian Rob Grayson.’

Dread in the pit of her stomach appears so suddenly that Shirin is theatrically breathless when she asks, ‘What now?’

Mariam hands Shirin her phone, and Shirin scrolls through a tirade of tweets attacking various people. He is far-right in his views, and says that England has turned to dirt because of all the foreigners who have entered and stayed. It is not what he is saying, necessarily, that is most surprising, but the overwhelming agreement with his words under each post. He says Shamima Begum, the girl from east London who left England for Syria after being groomed, should not be allowed back in the UK, that she should rot in Syria. People reply with crude memes, and it is not new, but it is still shocking to see the way people who look like Shirin and Mariam are so othered, as though they are not human beings. It is not just white people in agreement with him, butsome Black and brown Twitter users are proclaiming that ‘enough is enough’, as though he is not attacking them, too.

Rob’s comments are in response to calls for his book deal with a major publisher to be revoked – he says he will not back down. A quick scroll through and Shirin discovers he recently performed a racist comedy sketch about migrants, which began all of this. As she scrolls, new tweets come in thick and fast. He retweets supporters saying that freedom of speech is a human right, not seeing the irony of such a statement, given the context. He retweets supporters from America who say they need to stick together. Though against whom?

It shouldn’t all be shocking – but it is. Shirin wants to think Rob hasn’t changed since school, but that wouldn’t be true. He is more overt in his racist views now, whereas back then he was more secretive about it. Now he has hundreds of thousands of people agreeing with his poison, and that only makes a person bolder.

She returns Mariam’s phone to her, speechless for a moment. ‘Fucking hell.’ It’s all too much. They entered publishing because they enjoyed reading. They assumed their industry would be a gentler world, that they would not have to confront racists regularly, that they would help publish books that make a difference. But more and more she is noticing there is only talk about doing better and less action – which prompts the question: why is Rob being published in the first place?

‘At leastwe’renot publishing him,’ Mariam says, as though she can hear Shirin’s mind. Mariam mock-shudders – and she does not even know half of what Shirin knows about him. And Shirin is keen to keep it that way.

Cross-Country

Then

Kian had been at North Oak for two weeks when he finally spoke to Shirin, in the most unexpected of places: during cross-country running. They were to do two laps of the field, with both boys’ and girls’ classes mixed. The PE teachers stood at different points around the running course, faux-encouraging in their deep bellows as the students passed them.

Kian began at a steady pace, but while he was one of the best at Foxview, he was middling at North Oak. Halfway through the first lap they had to go up a mound, which he thought might finish him off. The girls’ PE teacher, a blonde Swiss woman with a mole above her lip and eyebrows that naturally cast downwards, told him to ‘hurry up’, clapping her hands as he passed her. He pegged it down the mound with a stitch in his side. Just before PE he’d eaten a cheese-and-bean baguette from the canteen. Knowing he wouldn’t be one of the first to finish wiped out any motivation he had to push himself.

Out of sight from the teachers, Kian jogged away from the track, towards a line of trees. He planned to lean against one of them to catch his breath and soothe the ache in his side. He was thinking he’d sprint the rest of the way, to not lag too farbehind, but for now he would give himself a moment to steady his ragged breath.

At first he didn’t see her. The ancient tree trunk was so wide it hid her from view. But when he looked behind him, at a certain angle, he caught a glimpse of her leg. Then he walked around the tree and she was there. Hair thrown into a bun on the top of her head, she wore a baggy blue polo top and long navy shorts. The other girls wore more form-fitting PE kits; hers looked like it was two sizes too big and made her look petite.

Shirin’s head whipped around to Kian, momentary panic plain on her face, until she realised it was just him. Dangling from her ears were the wires from a pair of pink headphones, which she slowly removed, her eyes narrowed at him. She didn’t say anything though, and he broke his frozen stance by saying, ‘What are you doing?’

She looked from side to side, like his question was stupid. ‘What does it look like I’m doing?’

He kicked a bit of bark in front of him, and it jumped over the grass two times before landing pathetically not too far away. ‘Why aren’t you running?’

She shrugged. ‘I needed a break.’

He frowned. ‘You’ll get a really shit time, though, if you stay here.’

‘Who said I care about what time I get?’

He was taken aback by the sharpness of her tone. From what little he had seen of her in the corridors, Kian had created an image of her in his head that was at odds with how she actually spoke. He thought she would be shy and timid,bullied, and not the kind of girl to be sacking off cross-country to listen to music.

‘Alright then,’ he said, about to turn round.

‘Sorry,’ she said. She reached into the waistband of her shorts, produced a lime-green iPod Nano, and paused her music. ‘Phoebe was meant to meet me here, but she must not have been able to get away from the teachers.’

‘What do you mean?’

Shirin looked off behind Kian, gestured for him to get closer to her and out of view. He took two steps forward, and she gently put her hand on his shoulder to guide him behind the tree. ‘I thought I saw Miss Kemp,’ she said, before finally looking him back in the eyes. ‘We worked out that if we hide here for a bit, we can pretend we’ve already done one lap and come out, when no one’s looking, to finish the race.’

‘That is so lazy,’ Kian said, smiling.

‘What they’re doing is cruelty; no one wants to do this. They get to relax while we struggle to breathe, going up the mound.’ She shook her head. ‘Nah, no thank you.’

Kian leant against the tree. ‘What are you listening to, anyway?’