Page 67 of People Change

Hull

Shirin is back in Hull, at her dad’s house, in her old bedroom. The single bed feels smaller than it used to, and when she tried to sleep last night, her body kept sliding off the edge. So she slept with her back pressed up against the wall, and it was bizarrely comforting. Her phone pings constantly with messages from Mariam or her former colleagues, updating her on news articles covering the walkout.

The walkout wasn’t exactly front-page news, but it did feature on some online news sites.The Booksellerhad it on their home page, with a picture of Mariam and Shirin holding their placards high and proud, with the headline:

HOFFMAN EMPLOYEES WALK OUT FOLLOWING ROB GRAYSON ACQUISITION

Shirin wrote a long feature article about the protest, about publishing prominent fascists in general, forHuffPost. It went viral. Shirin’s DMs are flooded with people writing to convey their support for her, as well as people who think she is scum and should go back to her country if she doesn’t like it here. She responds to the latter by either liking their messages ortaking screenshots and posting them to her feed with no caption. One of the people writing the vile messages works for American Express and people are calling for his employer to sack him.

The actual events during the protest were a blur. Now, when she tries to recall it, she can only remember snapshots. Like the sheer size of the crowd. People she had seen in the kitchen, who she never thought would care enough about something like this, stood among them, shouting even louder than Shirin and Mariam. Them waving the placards Mariam had made them in the air, which said ‘DROP ROB GRAYSON’. Another colleague’s sign said ‘WHY ARE YOU PUBLISHING A RACIST?’ Ross had a megaphone – though it is unclear where he got it from – and he was shouting, ‘To the left, to the left, send Rob packing!’ It didn’t quite have the ring to it that he thought it would, but they went along with it anyway.

Passers-by, mainly tourists and office workers around London Bridge, stopped and observed. Some held their cameras up to video the protest. Southern and Thameslink staff occasionally came out of London Bridge to join in the chanting, too.

Shirin had never been to a protest before. Let alone been at the front of one. She had always wanted to, but something about being so present, in a crowd, had always made her nervous. With Mariam by her side, though, her nerves were alleviated, and the power and rage of the group radiated within her and propelled her to continue.

Two days after the walkout she informed her landlady that she’d be leaving her flat and told her to keep her depositin lieu of her month’s notice. A van and a storage unit were booked, all her stuff quickly boxed up and moved.

She isn’t sure why she didn’t leave sooner. Both Hoffman and her flat. Once she changed one thing in her life, it was surprisingly easy to let everything else go. Lilian responded to her email resignation with a simple:That seems best.

And that had been it. Shirin knows Hoffman Books will swiftly replace her with another person of colour, eager for a chance to shine in the industry they love, and the cycle will no doubt continue.

In the middle of the day, when Karen and her dad have gone out for a walk, Shirin is watching daytime TV. She is surprised by how different she feels now. She did not realise the weight of everything she was carrying. Though she still feels a sense of emptiness, like without all the heaviness from before, she is realising how unfulfilled she is. Her medication is working at least, and she is trying out the mindfulness app that she rolled her eyes at when both Kian and her doctor had recommended it. She switches the channel to watchWho Wants to Be a Millionaire?and spends the day blocking trolls from her social-media accounts.

Phoebe pops round later that afternoon. Shirin’s dad and Karen are back in the house, and earlier Karen made a pointed comment about Shirin staying intheirhouse. ‘How long do you think you’ll be here for then?’ She was unpacking her Asda shopping, huffing each time she lifted one of the bags from the floor to the kitchen table, to sort the groceries into the cupboards. Shirin had offered to help, but Karen had told herto not be silly and that she wouldn’t know where anything went anyway. Shirin wanted to say that actually, she’d lived in this house longer than Karen had. That the kitchen looks exactly the same as it did when she was a child. The cabinets white and shiny, the countertop black marble.

‘Not long, just until I can find a new job.’

‘Right, okay, love,’ Karen had said and had continued unpacking. Shirin had gone into the living room to find that her dad had changed the channel to Sky Sports. He lay on the sofa, like he did when her mum was here, his bare feet dangling off the end.

Now Phoebe is standing by the front door, and Shirin takes her keys from the side table and goes out with her. They go for a walk, which reminds her of being fifteen again, and how they’d meet halfway between their houses and go on long walks, stopping off at the takeaway to get cheesy chips to share. She always imagined that when she was an adult she would feel so different – like she had her shit together and knew what she was doing. It’s rare she says this aloud, because she cringes at people talking online about how hard ‘adulting’ is, but she has to agree: it is hard. You never really feel like an adult, and now she has reverted to being a teenager, living in her single bedroom, in her home town, jobless.

Last night she retrieved one of her old journals from when she was in sixth form, from a shoebox at the back of her wardrobe. Recurring among the pages was Kian’s name. She wrote of how she longed to message him again, but thought he wouldn’t want her to, convincing herself that it was better,easier, that they didn’t speak. She relates to her younger self now, thinking the same thing, eleven years later: that she misses him, that she wishes he was here, that things were different.

‘So you just quit then?’ Phoebe asks her now, as they cross the road. Anlaby Road is a long stretch. They’re doing the walk Shirin used to do to go to primary school and, if they walked even further along, secondary school.

‘Yeah,’ she says.

It’s hard to talk to Phoebe now – they are detached from each other. It is a sad feeling losing a friend. Their conversation is stilted. There is a gulf between them, though she isn’t sure if Phoebe even recognises why this is. The heatwave is over and it’s feeling like March again, though the trees are gaining leaves; spring is on its way. Shirin wraps her arms around herself, hoping that doing so will insulate her body heat within her jacket. Phoebe is wearing a thin blazer, like it’s not chilly. Perhaps it is the true Northerner in her that means she can take it.

‘Aren’t you meant to be at work?’ Shirin asks. It’s Tuesday afternoon.

‘I’m “working from home”.’ With her fingers, Phoebe puts air quotes around the words. ‘And I wanted to see you. I’m sorry I didn’t pop round on the weekend. I was at a friend’s hen-do.’

Shirin shrugs and says, ‘That’s alright.’

At Shirin’s resigned tone, Phoebe gives her a pointed look. ‘What’s up with you? Things are weird – you’re not talking as much.’

‘The last few weeks have been a lot,’ Shirin says.

Phoebe makes a guttural sound, a cross between a sigh andurgh. Shirin looks up and, rather than appear annoyed, as she imagined Phoebe would look, sadness crosses her face. ‘I’ve been thinking about the café, and I feel really weird about it. I didn’t mean to upset you. I just sort of snapped. If it’s any consolation, I was on my period. But sometimes you make everything about you. And I really do think you need to let go of the past. I’m not saying this to be a dick – I’m saying it as a friend.’

It takes Shirin a moment to replay Phoebe’s words in her head. Back then, she would have nodded along, murmured something like,Yeah, okay, because Phoebe had apologised at least. But Shirin has been through too much now. She is not the fifteen-year-old girl who longs for a better future, accepting bad treatment, even if it’s masked as something else. It’s one thing to let go of the past, but to do so you need to accept it, not flippantly brush it away as Phoebe always encourages her to do.

‘Phoebe, with all due respect, this is not okay,’ she says through gritted teeth. Her legs continue walking, though they stop when Phoebe’s do.

‘What?’

‘I’ve given you so many chances now, but you’re not a good friend to me. Or maybe we just aren’t good friends to each other. I was bullied, abused, and you were there while it happened, and you are gaslighting me by pretending none of it was real, that I have no right to be upset.’