Page 51 of People Change

‘It’s your life though,’ she said slowly, as though testing out his reaction to this hard truth.

He shrugged. ‘I mean, what job prospects would I have if I did Art at uni? I’m not gonna be an artist or anything. How many artists from Hull do you know?’

‘Isn’t David Hockney from Bridlington?’

‘I said Hull.’

‘Well, there probably are, but I’m not the one into art, so I dunno.’ Her tone was joking, and his lips curved up into a small smile.

‘It stresses me out sometimes, always having to be the good child,’ he confessed.

‘I bet,’ she said. ‘But you need to live your own life. Your brother will be out of prison soon, and it’s not fair for you to do things you don’t want to do – which can affect your whole life – just so they’ll feel a bit less bad about the situation. They’ll get over it if you do Art, trust me on this.’

‘Maybe,’ he said, not believing it.

She paused for a moment before saying, ‘I can’t wait till I can move out of here and start again.’

‘Where would you want to go?’

‘Maybe London or Manchester – somewhere big and different.’

‘Is that because you want to get away from Rob and that lot?’ It came out of his mouth before he’d processed what he was asking.

Shirin visibly gulped and looked away. ‘No, it’s not only that, or them.’ In the past, she had told him about her parents. How they argued and she was often caught in the middle. Once she’d told him that she thought she was an inconvenience in their lives, and Kian had told her that couldn’t be true. She’d replied that he didn’t know them like she did. He had noticed, though, that her parents hadn’t come to parents’ evening. When he’d asked her about it, she’d said they hadn’t wanted to go, and that the only family member who really cared about her was her grandmother, who lived in Iran.

‘I just want to start afresh, reinvent myself and work at one of the big publishing houses as an editor and read books all day. That’d be the dream,’ she continued.

He didn’t think he had seen Shirin with such a dream-like expression on her face before.

‘Well, I like you as you are, so I don’t think you need to reinvent yourself,’ he eventually said.

Her eyes were soft as they locked with his, until hers moved towards his open backpack, to the sketchbook that was barely visible. Then he felt himself go still, all funny, like he had been doing something wrong – or maybe that was a reflex from hiding his drawings from his parents for so long.

Sometimes he’d sit here alone with his sketchbook, before Shirin arrived, and he would attempt to draw the bridge, or the greenery, with mixed results. He was getting better, but his shading needed work. It was embarrassing doing it whenthere were people his age there, so he’d only really do it if he could be bothered to come early in the morning. He had done some light sketching before he’d met Shirin here. He was venturing into drawing portraits of people now. It had begun as cartoons that he would doodle at the back of his workbook, and now he’d moved on to more realist sketches.

‘Can I look at it?’ she asked.

He hesitated, wasn’t sure if he could say no, so he said, ‘Er, okay.’ He handed the sketchbook to her slowly, wondering if somehow he could not show it to her, but she took it from him readily and began flicking through. The majority of the drawings were of the Humber Bridge, or greenery; a few of Mehdi that he thought were a bit shit, and he told her this.

He had attempted to draw Mehdi just after he’d been sent away, but it was hard to imagine him exactly as he was. Kian had found the most recent school picture of him and had copied that, but it was missing something. The smile was stilted, fake. It was so alien from what he knew his brother looked like smiling. The way his eyes crinkled, his lopsided, broad smile; not this close-lipped, barely there, can-this-be-over smile. Though even this version of Mehdi was long gone now.

‘They’re really good – what you on about?’ Shirin had the most recent sketch of Mehdi open, and her fingers lightly traced over it. ‘So beautiful,’ she whispered.

He felt his face getting hot, began to give a step-by-step critique of his work and what could be better about it.

‘You need to learn how to take a compliment, mate,’ she said. Thematemade him laugh, and then she began to laughtoo. ‘You know, if you ever want to drawme, I’d very happily be a model.’

‘Seriously?’ he said.

‘Hell yes.’

‘Right now?’

‘Why not?’ She smiled, adjusted herself so that she was sitting cross-legged in front of him, and raised her chin dramatically high. ‘Go on then.’

He took the sketchbook from her and retrieved a pencil from his backpack. He sat so that his knees were raised to support the sketchbook as he began. They sat there for the next two hours, talking about not much, but also everything. She asked if she could keep the drawing when he was done, and he said she could. He thought it’d be weird if he said he’d like to keep it, which he would have. In the end, though, she forgot to ask him for it, and he didn’t remind her. It was the best sketch he had done, though he wasn’t sure if the sole reason for that was because Shirin Bayat was his subject.

A Portrait