Page 30 of People Change

Mehdi shrugged. ‘It is what it is.’ Smiled, but it didn’t show in his eyes. Sadness permeated there and it was a devastating sight. Like Kian’s worst fears were confirmed: that his brother was miserable because of him.

Their parents returned. His dad slid the chocolate bars over to Mehdi, who received them hungrily.

‘You’ve been learning how to pray, haven’t you?’ his mum said, to bring the dead conversation to life.

Kian struggled to focus on the people around him, his eyes downcast, looking at the shiny navy fabric of his trackie bottoms.

‘Yeah, I’ve been given time to think. There’s an iman who comes here every week. It’s pretty chill,’ Mehdi said in a muffled voice, his mouth half full.

The knot in Kian’s stomach had travelled up to his throat.

‘You’ve lost weight,’ Mum said to Mehdi, frowning.

‘Do they not feed you in there or something?’ Dad said, looking like he was ready to complain.

Mehdi laughed, waved his hand in the air. ‘I told you before, man, the food here is shit. They won’t get us halal meat, so we just eat veg and mash.’

‘But you always ate non-halal food at home,’ Kian blurted out. He didn’t understand. It hadn’t been that long. He could remember, not long ago, Mehdi devouring Big Macs, never once uttering the word ‘halal’.

‘Yeah, but that was before. I’m changed now.’

Kian leant back in his chair and let his mum lead the conversation. Mehdi was changed now. There was so much about him Kian no longer knew – and, sitting across from him, it felt like their connection was gone. He used to always know what his brother was thinking, but now it was different. While Mehdi spoke to their mum, Kian searched his face. He wanted to see if Mehdi blamed him, like he blamed himself for all this mess. How could he not?

Near the end of their visit, a boy at the other end of the room laughed a bit too hard and was told to quieten down.He told the officer to ‘shut the fuck up’ and things turned sour. He was handcuffed and taken out, shouting to his visitor that the officers were ‘pussies’ and that he wasn’t scared of them.

Mehdi leant in. ‘That guy killed his mum. He’s fucked up.’

Kian’s mouth opened involuntarily. ‘What? Seriously?’

Mehdi nodded. ‘Not okay up here,’ and he pointed to his head.

‘And he’s in here with you? Aren’t you scared?’

Mehdi’s expression was sharp and they locked eyes. ‘No, obviously not. I don’t get scared, K. I could take him.’

‘Enough of that,’ Dad interjected. ‘You don’t need to “take” anyone. Don’t say that.’

Mehdi continued to hold Kian’s eyes. It was like he was telling him something. That Dad knew nothing, that hedidneed to take people on. That was his life now.

Because of me. Fuck.

Spinning in Kian’s mind was the realisation that he had hoped, on seeing his brother, he would gather evidence that juvie wasn’t so bad, that his brother was doing okay. But instead his worst fear had been confirmed. Mehdi was in there with murderers. Mehdi had to fight people in there to survive. Mehdi had changed now. And it was all because of Kian. If he had handled himself differently, Mehdi would never have stepped in and made things so much worse.

Kian wasn’t sure if he could ever make things good again – or if he could ever forgive himself.

White Tears

Now

The Hoffman non-fiction team is seated in the largest meeting room, a space that is overbearingly corporate and rarely used. In the corner is a Nespresso machine that very few people know how to work, with assortments of individually wrapped biscuits that have gathered dust. Shirin thinks back to her younger self and wonders what she would think if she could see herself now. She might be proud – that is, if she could only see her future, and not hear the conversation going on around her right now.

It is not discussions about diversity and inclusion that Shirin has developed an aversion to, it is how often they are spoken about with little follow-through. It is the assumption that the few people of colour in a team should speak up about a company’s issues – and provide solutions – even though they are rarely listened to, because they are all assistants. It is the phraseWe need to do better, which people have adopted to cop out of actually doing better. It is the repeated conversations about the senior team being painfully middle-class and white, and then the company repeatedly hiring more white middle-class staff in senior positions (and, in turn, not promoting junior staff of colour).

Perhaps she might not have let herself get wound up by all of this if it wasn’t for the fact that Florence is now the lead on Shirin’s project with Abigail Underwood. At the acquisitions meeting for Abigail’s book, Florence, with her gratingly posh voice, dominated the meeting. It didn’t help that at the start of it, the MD – Allegra – forgot Shirin’s name. She said, ‘Welcome, Florence,’ paused for three beats, looked down at her piece of paper, and then said, ‘and Shirin.’ Shirin and Florence are now working together to put in an offer to Abigail’s agent, though Shirin does most of the work, while Florence is congratulated by their managers.

There are twenty people sitting around the table now. Shirin is next to Mariam, and they exchange glances as Allegra speaks. She tells the team that the results of their employee and consumer survey suggest that Hoffman is not a diverse or inclusive publisher.

As Allegra speaks she has a grim look on her face, as though the fact that the non-fiction team has not published a book by a non-white author for more than two years now is news to her; as though their attempts to fix the issue by asking white authors to write about Black British history is not part of the problem. It is strange to Shirin how senior team members act as though they are not aware of the issues in their company, when it is their literal job to oversee everything.