If you could see Howard now like I can, you’d really laugh. I mean it. He’s about forty-three and he’s got on a squeaky leather jacket and jeans with the arse round his knees and these trainers with soles that look like mattresses. He looks like he’s never bought anything new. Or if he has, when he gets it back from the shop, he throws it on the floor, empties the dustbin over it and walks up and down on it in a pair of dirty Dr Martens. For him dirty clothes are a political act.
But this is the coup. Howard’s smoking a roll-up. He’s got this tin, his fag papers and the stubby yellow fingers with which he rolls, licks, fiddles, taps, lights, extinguishes and relights all day. This rigmarole goes on when he’s in bed with Ma, presumably on her chest. I’ve gone in there in the morning for a snoop and found his ashtray by the bed, condom on top.
Christ, he’s nodding at me as I write! It’s because he’s so keen on ordinary riff-raff expressing itself, especially no-hoper girls like me. One day we’re writing, the next we’re on the barricades.
Every Friday Howard comes over to see Ma.
To your credit, Howard the hero, you always take her somewhere a bit jazzy, maybe to the latest club (a big deal for a poverty-stricken teacher). When you get back you undo her bra and hoick your hands up her jumper and she warms hers down your trousers. I’ve walked in on this! Soon after this teenage game, mother and lover go to bed and rattle the room for half an hour. I light a candle, turn off the radio and lie there, ears flapping. It’s strange, hearing your ma doing it. There are momentous cries and gasps and grunts, as if Howard’s trying to bang a nail into a brick wall. Ma sounds like she’s having an operation. Sometimes I feel like running in with the first-aid kit.
Does this Friday thing sound remarkable or not? It’s only Fridays he will see Ma. If Howard has to collect an award for his writing or go to a smart dinner with a critic he won’t come to see us until the next Friday. Saturdays are definitely out!
*
We’re on the ninth floor. I say to Howard: ‘Hey, clever boots. Tear your eyes away from yourself a minute. Look out the window.’
The estate looks like a building site. There’s planks and window frames everywhere — poles, cement mixers, sand, grit, men with mouths and disintegrating brick underfoot.
‘So?’ he says.
‘It’s rubbish, isn’t it? Nadia will think we’re right trash.’
‘My little Nina,’ he says. This is how he talks to me.
‘Yes, my big Howard?’
‘Why be ashamed of what you are?’
‘Because compared with Nadia we’re not much, are we?’
‘I’m much. You’re much. Now get on with your writing.’
He touches my face with his finger. ‘You’re excited, aren’t you? This is a big thing for you.’
It is, I suppose.
All my life I’ve been this only child living here in a council place with Ma, the drama teacher. I was an only child, that is, until I was eleven, when Ma says she has a surprise for me, one of the nicest I’ve ever had. I have a half-sister the same age, living in another country.
‘Your father had a wife in India,’ Ma says, wincing every time she says father. ‘They married when they were fifteen, which is the custom over there. When he decided to leave me because I was too strong a woman for him, he went right back to India and right back to Wifey. That’s when I discovered I was pregnant with you. His other daughter Nadia was conceived a few days later but she was actually born the day after you. Imagine that, darling. Since then I’ve discovered that he’s even got two other daughters as well!’
I don’t give my same-age half-sister in another country another thought except to dislike her in general for suddenly deciding to exist. Until one night, suddenly, I write to Dad and ask if he’ll send her to stay with us. I get up and go down the lift and out in the street and post the letter before I change my mind. That night was one of my worst and I wanted Nadia to save me.
*
On some Friday afternoons, if I’m not busy writing ten-page hate letters to DJs, Howard does imagination exercises with me. I have to lie on my back on the floor, imagine things like mad and describe them. It’s so sixties. But then I’ve heard him say of people: ‘Oh, she had a wonderful sixties!’
‘Nina,’ he says during one of these gigs, ‘you’ve got to work out this relationship with your sister. I want you to describe Nadia.’
I zap through my head’s TV channels — Howard squatting beside me, hand on my forehead, sending loving signals. A girl materialises sitting under a palm tree, reading a Brontë novel and drinking yogurt. I see a girl being cuddled by my father. He tells stories of tigers and elephants and rickshaw wallahs. I see …
‘I can’t see any more!’
Because I can’t visualise Nadia, I have to see her.
*
So. This is how it all comes about. Ma and I are sitting at breakfast, Ma chewing her vegetarian cheese. She’s dressed for work in a long, baggy, purple pinafore dress with black stockings and a black band in her hair, and she looks like a 1950s teenager. Recently Ma’s gone blonde and she keeps looking in the mirror. Me still in my T-shirt and pants. Ma tense about work as usual, talking about school for hours on the phone last night to friends. She tries to interest me in child abuse, incest and its relation to the GCSE. I say how much I hate eating, how boring it is and how I’d like to do it once a week and forget about it.
‘But the palate is a sensitive organ,’ Ma says. ‘You should cultivate yours instead of —’
‘Just stop talking if you’ve got to fucking lecture.’
The mail arrives. Ma cuts open an airmail letter. She reads it twice. I know it’s from Dad. I snatch it out of her hand and walk round the room taking it in.
Dear You Both,
It’s a good idea. Nadia will be arriving on the 5th. Please meet her at the airport. So generous of you to offer. Look after her, she is the most precious thing in the entire world to me.
Much love.
At the bottom Nadia has written: ‘Looking forward to seeing you both soon.’
Hummmm…
Ma pours herself more coffee and considers everything. She has these terrible coffee jags. Her stomach must be like distressed leather. She is determined to be businesslike, not emotional. She says I have to cancel the visit.
‘It’s simple. Just write a little note and say there’s been a misunderstanding.’
And this is how I react: ‘I don’t believe it! Why? No way! But why?’ Christ, don’t I deserve to die, though God knows I’ve tried to die enough times.
‘Because, Nina, I’m not at all prepared for this. I really don’t know that I want to see this sister of yours. She symbolises my betrayal by your father.’
I clear the table of our sugar-free jam (no additives).
‘Symbolises?’ I say. ‘But she’s a person.’
Ma gets on her raincoat and collects last night’s marking. You look very plain, I’m about to say. She kisses me on the head. The girls at school adore her. There, she’s a star.
But I’m very severe. Get this: ‘Ma. Nadia’s coming. Or I’m going. I’m walking right out that door and it’ll be junk and prostitution just like the old days.’
She drops her bag. She sits down. She slams her car keys on the table. ‘Nina, I beg you.’
2
Heathrow. Three hours we’ve been here, Ma and I, burying our faces in doughnuts. People pour from the exit like released prisoners to walk the gauntlet of jumping relatives and chauffeurs holding cards: Welcome Ngogi of Nigeria.
But no Nadia. ‘My day off,’ Ma says, ‘and I spend it in an airport.’