Page 33 of People Change

The windows between the carriages are open, and the Tube shrieks as it moves, getting increasingly intolerable. They are unable to talk due to the noise, so Mariam shuts her eyes, her hands rested on her lap, like she is about to sleep.

Shirin looks across from her and sees someone holding open a newspaper. There is a picture of Rob Grayson. Atop the picture is the headline:

ROB GRAYSON DONATES ALL PROCEEDS FROM UPCOMING SHOW TO HOMELESS CHARITY

She stares at the page, the words in the article too small to read, though she squints to try and make them out anyway. When the person across from her gets off, he leaves the newspaper behind. She reaches for it, even though she knows it will only anger her.

The piece goes into great detail about Rob’s charitable acts, mainly tackling homelessness and poverty. He is called an ‘inspiration’ and his upbringing as a working-class boy from Hull, who knows what it’s like to struggle financially, is mentioned, as it always is. The charitable work he is doing is good and worthy, but that doesn’t make him a good person, not like the article would want the reader to believe.

The piece quotes Rob saying, ‘Britain needs to help their own people. The government have failed so many rough sleepers and families living in poverty, and I urge everyone to donate and do their bit.’ There is no mention of his comments online about England letting in too many refugees,or of his sketch that laughed at migrants dying in waters as they attempted to flee their countries. Of course not.

Shirin nudges Mariam, who jolts into alertness and looks down at the paper in her hands. ‘Does this sound racist to you?’ Shirin shouts over the screeching train tracks. She angles the newspaper so Mariam can better see what she is referring to.

It takes her a moment to read the piece, and then Mariam says, ‘Maybe? I mean, he is racist, so he probably does mean “own people” to mean white people, so yeah. Are we surprised?’ She takes the newspaper from Shirin’s hand, folds it and places it on the empty seat next to her. ‘I love how he’s being lorded as a man of the people. He’s rich – he gets paid for one show what we’d only dream to get in a year.’

Shirin thinks: If only Mariam knew everything. If she’s outraged as an onlooker at Rob’s fandom despite the vitriol he spews, imagine if she knew what he did to Shirin and Kian all those years ago. She always thought the bullies and racists from school would grow up to be unsuccessful and pathetic – like Jordan, who’s now in prison – not celebrities who continue their hate speech on a public scale, who have adoring fans and an abundance of wealth. It’s like with every passing day he’s becoming bigger and bigger, and she is forced to just accept that she will see his face around – and thereby forever be confronted with a time, a moment, she wants so desperately to forget. But she can’t. That is, unfortunately, not how life works. So she finally replies to Kian’s message.

If you’d told Shirin a year ago that Kian Rahimi would be sitting in her damp living room drinking a cup of tea from herKiki’s Delivery Servicemug, she would not have believed it. But here he is. She apologises that the room is ugly, and cold, and he says it’s neither, and not to be silly.

They only have one sofa. It is a strange maroon colour and faux-leather. When Shirin first moved in she attempted to make it cosier by adding a cream fleece blanket on the seat cushions. Her brain is whizzing between different things, because she is not sure how it got to this – how Kian ended up at her flat at 9 p.m. on a Thursday.

He removes the beanie atop his head and shrugs out of his borg jacket, which he folds and places on the arm of the chair. There is something so satisfying in how well he dresses now. She is superficial in this way.

‘I’m sorry if I seemed dramatic in my text,’ she says to him.

His lips curve marginally at the sides. ‘You didn’t seem dramatic.’ He puts the mug down by his feet, without drinking it. He turns to her and leans a little closer. ‘I was surprised you texted me though. You’ve been ghosting me since Millie’s birthday.’

Shirin lets out a little light-hearted gasp at this. ‘I wouldn’t say ghosting …’

‘Okay, you didn’t reply to my message. Is that better?’

‘I just said things I shouldn’t have. I was drunk.’

‘I gathered that,’ he says. ‘It’s okay. I get it.’

‘You do?’

He nods. ‘I think we always suited being friends.’

‘Really?’ The conversation is not going in the direction she hoped it would, but she has only herself to blame. ‘And that’s why you came round then, when I said I was upset about Rob – because we’re friends?’

She notices the way his eyes go doe-like and less focused, how he bites his bottom lip. She notices this and so she isn’t expecting him to say, ‘Yeah, exactly that. I was heading east anyway when you messaged, so popping round was no bother.’

‘You were?’

‘Yeah, Salma lives round here.’

‘Oh,’ she says. ‘You’re still seeing each other then?’

‘We’re exclusive now, yeah.’

She nods. It has only been a week. Of course their relationship escalated that quickly. ‘I bet you have loads in common,’ she says. ‘Lots of art chat.’

He leans back, scratches his forehead and lets out a long breath. Like he is relieved he has told her. Like he thought she’d be upset or something. ‘I forgot how much you deflect sometimes,’ he muses.

She looks at him like he has shoved her. ‘I don’t deflect.’

‘You do – you’re allowed to be upset about Rob. It’s shit. But come on, you don’t care about Salma. It’s obvious you don’t like her.’