Page 45 of People Change

‘It’s meant to take a while,’ Shirin soothes. ‘They just always make it sound easy when you’re a teenager, but it’s normal for it to take time. You’ve only been trying a few months—’

Phoebe waves her hands in the air. ‘It’s fine. I’m having a night off being good. I’ve been eating so healthy. I even lost a stone, because I read being overweight makes it harder.’

Shirin raises an eyebrow. ‘Phoebe, you’ve never been overweight.’

‘According to my BMI—’

‘Which is a load of shit, remember?’

Shirin puts her hand on her friend’s arm and massages it, because she doesn’t know what else to say, because this problem is so adult and she still, pathetically, doesn’t feel adult enough to handle it. Her present concern is that the man she likes is unexpectedly in the next room, whereas her friend is having fertility issues. She is not sure how their lives split off in such disparate directions. How different they are now. The things that bother Shirin on a daily basis – the way she is treated at work, and how it’s not like she once dreamt – feel alien and minuscule when she is not in London. And while she wanted this distance when she was in Iran, back in England now she wants her concerns to be recognised as real. She cannot imagine speaking to Phoebe about racism or representation, or any of the things she and Mariam would effortlessly rant about inthe canteen. It is like there are two completely different worlds and versions of herself – and it is only now that she can see that this is damaging to her sense of self. Because how can Shirin ever be, and accept, herself if she does not present the real her to the people she’s closest to?

In the end, ten people come to pre-drinks before they go to the club. A mixture of boys and girls Shirin vaguely knows from school, but who she did not stay in contact with, including Carmen, who is there with her fiancé, a hench man who works in IT. For the first half-hour she watches as Kian, George and another man chat animatedly at the dining table, a little way away from where she is sitting on the sofa. At certain points, though, she can see Kian glancing over at her, from the corner of her eye, and each time she finds herself holding her breath, not knowing what to do with her body. She is suddenly conscious that she has hands, and that there is really no natural place for them to go when she is sitting down listening to people speak. She rearranges them multiple times in a minute, from clasping them together, to twirling the hairband around her wrist, to laying them limply on her thighs. No position feels right. It is only when she cannot take this awkwardness any more that she tells Phoebe she’s going into the kitchen for another drink and stays there on her phone, franticly texting Hana, who likely does not care about the situation.

When Shirin asked Hana what she was doing for New Year’s Eve she was cagey and said she might have plans with people Shirin has not met before. They have names like Valentia andHamilton. Hana said she met them on a night out in Chelsea, and that one of their dads is a multimillionaire, that she visited their house and it was so big she didn’t have a phone signal in certain areas. She said all this like it was a good thing, a clear glint in her eye over FaceTime. Fairly quickly she mentioned, too, that one of them had connections in fashion, which would help her get a foot in the door. It’s hard for Hana, so Shirin understands her need to build this connection. But it still stings that she will be spending New Year’s Eve with them, people she barely knows, instead of with her best friend.

Hana texts her back with a picture of a glass of champagne in her manicured hand, raised in front of a window. It looks like a hotel room and she is about to type her reply when she notices something very significant in the window behind the glass of champagne.

Shirin:Is that the Eiffel Tower?? You’re in Paris?

Hana:It’s MAD. I’ll tell you about it when I’m back xxx

Shirin hears the kitchen door swing open, the quickwhooshbreaking her from her reverie. Her head whips up and it is Kian. He makes his way towards her, his face earnest until it breaks into a small smile.

‘You hiding in here?’ he says.

‘No,’ she replies quickly, before realising he was joking. ‘I was just getting a drink.’ She indicates her short glass with the clear liquid inside. There are bits of mint floating in it and she is not entirely sure what this cocktail is, but she can smell the gin from a distance.

He goes over to the countertop where she is standing, and leans over to pour himself a drink too. He takes a sip and purses his lips afterwards. ‘Well, that’s strong.’ She takes a sip, too, and pulls the same face.

‘Wow,’ she says. She can feel her insides getting ever so slightly warm and there is a sudden lightness within her. She has been so tightly wound, and it is only now she is a tad loosened that she realises it. She takes another long sip. ‘I thought you’d be in London.’

He straightens his back, and looks down at her, into her eyes, as he speaks. He seems to have no problem maintaining eye contact, but she needs to look away every so often as she finds his gaze too intense, even though she doubts that is his intention.

‘Yeah, that was the plan, but Connor mentioned a night out to Welly and it felt too nostalgic to say no, to be honest.’

In the recesses of her mind Shirin remembers Connor from school. He was an anomaly back then; he floated between various groups, teetering between popular and middling, though he was never unkind to the less popular kids. Because he was inoffensive, she has no particular opinion of him.

‘He’s here?’

Kian nods and says he’s wearing the striped top, and Shirin is surprised by how much some people have changed in the past ten years, so much so that they are unrecognisable. Despite this, though, she doesn’t think she and Kian have changed all that much. Phoebe certainly has; her hair colour has changed from mousy blonde at school to an auburn nowthat some would mistake for natural. Back then, too, she was very thin, and now she has filled out in a way that is healthier, less restrictive than in her younger years.

‘How long are you here for then?’ Shirin asks.

‘Until the second. I had actually planned to message you tomorrow,’ he says, his voice the sound of complete ease.

She runs her finger over the edge of her glass. Not in a particularly sexy way, but because she has noticed the rim is stained red from her lipstick, and she needs a distraction from what Kian has just said. When she looks up, she sees he is chewing the bottom of his lip, resting his hip against the countertop, arms folded. The tops of his arms strain against his T-shirt, making the fabric ride up, and she notices that he has a tattoo running up his arm. She can only see part of it because it’s cut off by his top. It is vertical, rather than horizontal, and looks like it’s words written in Farsi, the ink delicate and subtle against his tanned skin.

‘You were?’ she says. ‘You’d planned to message me?’

He smiles, a little embarrassed now. ‘Yeah. I wanted to see if you’d be up for meeting in London. I definitely didn’t think you’d be spending New Year’s Eve here.’

‘Why?’

He shrugs. ‘You never did before.’ He continues, ‘I mean … I’m glad you are here.’ He steps closer to her, and there is about a foot between them.

‘You are?’

He nods and they edge closer to each other.