Kismet

by Luke Tredget

  Hamza laughs and offers the pack to Zahra, who shakes her head and looks away, her arms crossed tightly against her chest; Anna wonders why she followed them out. Then her cigarette is lit and she is lost within the sensations of the first pull: the crackling sound, the orange glow, the heat in her throat, the rippling grey cone she exhales. It would seem that the cigarette she had in Chinatown last night has paved the way for her enjoying them again, since this one is delicious.

  ‘You really kicked off there,’ says Hamza.

  ‘Yeah … He touched a nerve, I suppose.’

  ‘Don’t get me wrong, I was right behind you. I still haven’t decided on my first career.’

  ‘That’s because you’ve got money,’ says Zahra. ‘Your dad’s money.’

  ‘And you’re a pauper?’

  ‘I’m dependent on a wage, as is Anna. Without it I couldn’t pay off my mortgage. People get priced out of London all the time.’

  ‘Please! You’re a lawyer, for Christ’s sake. Don’t make out you’re financially precarious, it’s offensive to people that actually are. It’s just an excuse to never take risks.’

  ‘You can be dependent without being precarious. If I quit my job and opened a cafe or started making jewellery and it went tits up, I’d lose my flat. It’s as simple as that.’

  ‘Well, I see things differently. And by the sounds of it, Anna does too.’

  ‘Anna is just seeing a haze. She’s drunk.’

  ‘Hey! I’m not drunk.’ But at that moment, as if prompted by their words, a dizzying energy swirls up through her, and Anna has to shuffle her feet to find a new balance.

  ‘Babes, you’re smashed,’ says Hamza. ‘You’re even more wasted than Keir. But we can straighten you out. Here, take this.’ He hands his cocktail to Zahra and pulls a tiny plastic bag from the coin pocket of his skinny jeans.

  ‘What?’ says Zahra. ‘Really?’

  ‘Of course. It’s her thirtieth. And she asked me to.’

  Zahra turns her scowl to Anna, who shrugs. She can faintly remember asking Hamza to get drugs when she was still planning the boat party; the memory has the porous and dubious quality of a dream. Hamza has a dab and hands the bag to Anna, who holds it up to her eye – from close range the contents look like a sample of dirty snow.

  ‘This isn’t a good idea,’ says Zahra, placing her hand on Anna’s forearm.

  ‘Relax,’ says Hamza. ‘It’s a pure mellow high, nothing speedy. And it will sober her up.’

  ‘That’s the oldest lie in the world!’

  ‘Stop saying I’m drunk, both of you. I’m fine. I’ll just have a bit.’ Anna prises open the baggie and licks her little finger. She tries to take a small dab, but her finger is a crude instrument, and when she transfers the crystals to her tongue the chemical bitterness is revolting; she snatches and gulps at Hamza’s cocktail to wash it away.

  ‘You can put the girl in Kilburn,’ says Hamza, returning the baggie to his pocket. ‘But you can’t put Kilburn in the girl.’ He flicks his cigarette into the road and steps back through the gate, and Anna feels a sharp tug on her sleeve.

  ‘I want to talk to you,’ whispers Zahra. ‘Alone.’

  Hamza turns at the door and, seeing them both hovering by the gate, lifts one eyebrow knowingly and disappears inside.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ says Zahra, her eyes blinking up at Anna from behind their glasses, as if searching out the answer to her own question.

  ‘Nothing’s wrong. You’re the one being weird. What was all that about Keir saying your kitchen took two weeks?’

  ‘Ignore Keir. You know how proud he is. But listen, what is it? You seem so … fraught. You’re not eating anything.’

  ‘I had some nuts in the pub.’

  ‘And how are you feeling about … you know? About Pete?’

  ‘Fine,’ says Anna, looking down at her new boots. ‘I mean, it’s going to happen, isn’t it?’

  ‘That’s all you feel? Fine?’

  ‘Uh-huh,’ says Anna, weakly, still looking at the ground, suppressing a sudden desire to tell her about Geoff. Zahra tuts and takes both of Anna’s upper arms in her hands, shaking her a little.

  ‘It’s not fair, how this happened. It’s so shitty that you found the ring. No one should have this long to think about it. People should have two minutes, max. If I’d known that Keir was going to propose a month in advance I would have shat myself. And when I said you should get perspective, I didn’t think—’

  ‘I met someone,’ says Anna, the words just popping out. ‘On Kismet, the other week. An 81.’

  ‘An 81? What the fuck? What happened?’ Zahra’s face is aghast, and Anna glances up at the dimly lit window before gathering the energy to tell the whole story. But when she starts speaking she is surprised to find the story is over almost as soon as it has begun. She had only two meetings with Geoff, the South Bank and Somerset House, five or six hours in total, with no sex, no hotels – not even a shared meal.

  ‘You didn’t sleep with him?’

  ‘I don’t even know where he lives.’

  ‘And you’re not going to see him again?’

  ‘No way. I mean, I totally stood him up at the station. Not that he cares. He didn’t even text to ask what happened.’

  Zahra nods sadly, and they stand in silence for a time.

  ‘I’m sure he wasn’t really an 81. I think you were right – doing this behind Pete’s back screwed up my profile, matched me with creeps. He’s probably got a family in Surrey, or wherever.’

  Zahra nods and repeats the number 81 quietly, and says it still must have felt like a big deal. Then she looks up at the window and says they need to go in.

  ‘You should have told me.’

  ‘I know, but I’m okay now. It’s just been stressful. I feel better for talking about it.’

  Zahra rubs her arm and smiles.

  ‘You’ll be okay, I know you will,’ she says, before rising up on tiptoes and kissing Anna plumb on the lips.

  In the bathroom Anna splashes water on her face and sits on the closed toilet. She takes her phone from her pocket and reads a new text from Pete. It is a long message saying he hopes she’s alright, that he knows ‘how hard today must be for her’ and that if she wants he can cut the dinner party short so it is just ‘the two of them’. She puts her phone away and for a moment ponders the tomato plant that is being stored in the bath; it is a soothing sight and reminds her of the previous Sunday she had with Pete. Anna gathers herself and goes back to the living room, where Pete is serving the main course. She goes to him and interrupts by kissing his cheek, and he turns to kiss her fully on the lips. She senses the rest of the table watching, probably interpreting her gesture as an apology for her outburst, or at least a demonstration that she intends to play nice from now on. As she goes back to her seat she is drawn to the iPad, which is playing something by Corinne Bailey Rae, and sees it is a pre-packaged Spotify playlist called ‘Perfect Dinner Party’. Jesus Fucking Christ. She logs onto her profile and puts it on to random select, and Pete doesn’t say a word – he doesn’t care about the music, is just aware that it is useful to add ambiance, like a sort of carpeting in the air.

  No sooner is she settled back in her seat than a steaming plate of seafood pasta is set before her, creamy ribbons of tagliatelle with shreds of lobster and a powerful scent of lemons. She resolves to eat the whole dish this time, and ventures a first bite, washed down with wine, while trying to tune into the various conversations crossing the table. Keir and Toby are discussing holiday destinations and Ingrid appears to be explaining to Cecile how far she is along the process of becoming a British citizen. Through these two conversations, Pete and Zahra’s eyes lock again, and this time they begin talking – she asks him where he bought the seafood, and they discuss a fishmonger in Kentish Town. They begin naming other food shops in northwest London, and as always they agree on everything; all conversations between Zahra and Pete involve them discovering that they like exactly the same thin
gs, which is of course just a vicarious means of saying they like each other. Anna feels jealous again, and this time she remembers precisely when Zahra last came round. It was after the Notting Hill Carnival. Yes, that’s right. All four of them had gone, but Keir left early and Zahra ended up coming back to theirs. They stayed up drinking and eating takeaway, until Pete and Anna went to bed and left Zahra to pass out on the sofa. The next morning Anna had to go to work – since UK Bank Holidays count for little at the website – and she remembers the acute anxiety of leaving Pete and Zahra in the flat together, him upstairs and her on the sofa, both half-naked and hungover. The discomfort stayed with her all day, and she decided to be especially watchful the next time they were all together. But the next time never came. Just a few days later Zahra announced that they had begun tearing up their kitchen, and this building process seemed to absorb all her spare time, and amazingly she hasn’t been around since. Anna thinks of what Keir said about the knocking through only taking two weeks, and wonders if Zahra might have had a reason to lie but this thought is interrupted by Bean, who suggests it’s time for another Anna story. Cecile is selected, and she tells her anecdote while people continue eating. With her voice only just carrying over the sound of cutlery and masticating jaws, she describes when Anna took her out on a ‘big night’ during second year, and how, when it was time to get a taxi home, Cecile found Anna with another small brunette girl under her arm, who she thought was Cecile.

  ‘What can I say?’ says Anna, as everyone claps and says well done to Cecile. ‘You’ve got one of those generic faces.’ Hamza makes the delighted squeal he does when a joke grazes the threshold of being rude, and then suggests they crack on with another story, since it’s almost 10 p.m. Zahra is selected again and this time agrees, on the basis that they clear the dirty plates first; Anna is surprised to have her half-eaten bowl taken away from her, until she notices that all the others are empty.

  Once the table is cleared and crumbed down and every glass is refilled, everyone nudges their chair back from the table and points it towards Zahra who, as if responding to the air of expectancy, stands up.

  ‘I don’t really like public speaking, but here goes. Right. Okay. Now. Some of you will remember the flat that Anna and I shared in east London.’

  ‘I remember the rats,’ says Hamza.

  ‘I remember going to dinner and using a Frisbee as a plate,’ says Cecile.

  ‘There was one sighting of one rat. But yes, it wasn’t the classiest residence. It was on an estate in Hackney, and let’s just say it wasn’t unusual for our route home to be blocked by police tape. But we had the best time back then. The very best of times. Some of you will also remember what Anna was like in those days. We were all wide-eyed and ambitious, but she was especially so. She didn’t have a proper job, just did temp work and spent her time writing blogs and coming up with ideas for inventions, projects. Her favourite one was the Community Shed.’

  ‘The Community Shed!’ exclaims Hamza. ‘I remember that fucker.’

  ‘The community what?’ says Toby.

  ‘The Community Shed,’ explains Anna. ‘It was going to be a community membership scheme, where people pay a monthly fee and get to use hammers and drills and ladders and whatever, all stored in an accessible location. Like Streetcar. But a shed.’

  ‘That would never work,’ says Keir, and Zahra slaps him on the arm and says she’s telling the story.

  ‘Anyway,’ she says. ‘Anna used to talk about this idea a lot. Even at the pub or during our parties – we called them parties; really it was just five or six people dancing around a laptop in the kitchen. The Minuscule of Sound, she used to call them. But Anna would always become euphoric. I remember one time she said our flat was the “centre of world consciousness”.’

  Zahra leaves a pause for some sniggering, and Anna points out that she was quoting Ginsberg. She remembers the precise moment she said those words, seven or eight years ago, and her physical sensations at the time: straining jaw, fluttering heartbeat, cold sweats. She realises she isn’t just remembering these; she is reliving them, right now. The drugs are starting to do their work, and she looks at Hamza, to see if she can detect any visible signs, but his eyes are locked on Zahra.

  ‘One night about six of us were partying in my bedroom until well into the morning. At one point Anna got up and left the room – to use the toilet, I assumed. But when Caz went out a while later, she returned and said that Anna wasn’t in the flat.’ Zahra is pulling faces and doing voices now – so much for not liking telling stories. Toby asks if he should brace himself for another tramp blow job, and there are a few seconds of laughter that stops suddenly. Everyone focuses on Zahra again – their candlelit faces remind Anna of children listening to a ghost story.

  ‘We went looking for her. She wasn’t smoking on the walkway balcony, and we walked around for a while until Caz was like: “Look! There she is!” And there she was, standing in the kids’ playground, three floors below us, talking to two young mothers with prams. We went down there, and as we approached we could hear her asking if they had a hammer, a ladder, a paintbrush. She was pitching the Community Shed.’

  A collective gasp goes around the table, and then everyone looks at her, their eyes wide in shocked delight.

  ‘She was doing what?’

  ‘While you were on drugs?’

  ‘What time of day was this?’

  Zahra looks as if she is trying to suppress her own laughter, and holds out a hand to indicate she isn’t finished. ‘The two women looked totally confused. Me and Caz both took Anna by the arm and gently led her away, and out of the playground. We gave her a glass of water and put her to bed, and she kept saying they loved the idea, that they wanted to invest. “I was just spreading the love,” she said. Then she closed her eyes and said it a couple more times – “spreading the love, spreading the love” – and then she fell asleep. The end.’

  ‘You’re a maniac,’ says Toby, looking at Anna with a humorously bewildered expression, as if he now has to reappraise everything he thought he knew about her. Bean and Ingrid and Cecile – also strangers to this story – are looking at her with milder versions of the same expression, and then everyone turns to Zahra, who is still standing, and begins clapping. Zahra does a little curtsy, then lays her hand flat atop Anna’s head.

  ‘Those were the most fun years of my life,’ she says, patting her hand. ‘And I’m so proud of what you’ve achieved since then.’

  The applause moves up a gear, and is spiced with a whistle from Bean and a sentimental ‘ahhh’ from someone, probably Ingrid. They are all projecting warmth towards her, but she doesn’t receive it. Something about the story has left her feeling peeved. It is a story about her, apparently, but she felt shut out of it; or, more accurately, she feels trapped within it, her role limited to something comical and hapless.

  ‘Don’t you think it’s a good idea, though?’ she says, when the clapping dwindles and Zahra retakes her seat. ‘There’s definitely a gap in the market for something like that.’

  Everyone is smiling at her, but for some reason no one says anything – it is like she is a child asking a question relating to some fantasy world or endearing misapprehension, which is charming and cute but doesn’t require an actual answer. Worst of all is Pete, at the other end of the table, who is smiling contentedly, as if he finds Anna’s eccentricities wryly amusing, nothing to be taken seriously.

  ‘I’m not joking,’ she says. ‘Think about it. Every house on this street will have its own hammer, which it uses once every two years.’

  ‘A hammer costs £5,’ says Keir, slightly slurring his words.

  Anna is ready for this objection, and says: ‘Yeah, a really crap one, made in some Chinese gulag.’ But before Keir can respond, Toby interrupts and with unusual intensity asks Zahra whereabouts in Hackney their old flat had been; using her hands to draw a map, Zahra explains it was tucked in behind Mare Street, equidistant between London Fields and Victoria Park
. Toby makes a satisfied ‘ahhh’, and then Cecile asks Ingrid where that is in relation to her place. Ingrid does her best to explain, and is helped out by Pete, who then tackles questions from across the table as to the relative locations of other places in northeast London: Dalston, Homerton, Hackney Wick, Clapton, De Beauvoir Town. Toby then asks about house prices, and the whole group begins a lively discussion about which of these areas are affordable, which ones used to be and which ones never were; even Hamza is getting involved.

  Anna looks between them all in wonder. Not one of them considered her idea worthy of serious discussion, and yet when it comes to the prices of houses in areas of London they have no connection with – have probably never even been to – they are suddenly talking over one another in eagerness to share the latest opinions, rumours, statistics, theories. It would appear that understanding the housing market is of fundamental importance to them, on a par with having a stable and well-paying professional job, taking decent holidays twice a year, and – she imagines – having some kind of plan for where the inevitable kids will go to school. These are the building blocks of a successful and happy existence; anything outside of this, such as her ideas and inventions, is just a shot in the dark, something that should be out of your system by your mid-twenties.

  ‘Is Victoria Park Village affordable?’ says Toby, and Ingrid asks if he is making a joke.

  Anna looks about the table, between each of her closest friends and her boyfriend – soon to be fiancé – and marvels at how different they must be from her. All of them went to fancy private schools, and probably have hundreds of thousands of pounds waiting for them when their parents drop off, if not sooner, and have the backing to be whatever they want to be. And yet they all steer precisely the same course, more or less, living out their days as lawyers, teachers, consultants, seeming determined to consign themselves to grey mediocrity. They must be so averse to the bad things that can happen to people – unemployment, money troubles, parental disappointment, depression, loneliness, death – that they are not willing to take the slightest risk. In a word, they are scared. In another word, they are cowards.