squeak in the elevator shaft and rumble of a distant boiler room. She needed to decide what to do next, but her mind kept returning to Mo. When she thought about the fact that he no longer existed, his body blown to bits, there was a small lurch in her stomach. She hadn’t seen him trigger the explosives strapped around his chest, but she had seen him mowing down people at a bus stop with a machine gun. She had imagined that he would look powerful and sexy, like the hero of an action movie, but instead he looked like a monster, pitiful and pitiless. She felt resigned to his death: it was his destiny, just as her destiny was to escape. Her memories of him, now, were a closed chapter of her life: a polished stone that she could tuck away in a pocket of her mind. He had been seven years older than her. A man, not like the boys she knew at school. His eyes were melted chocolate, and there was a serious set to his lips, which transformed, incrementally as the sunset, to a smile when he saw her. He worked at her local Tesco, and just to hear his voice she would find things to ask about. ‘Is this baking powder gluten-free?’ ‘Can these items be combined in the 3 for 2 deal?’ She remembered his voice, storing it away so that later, alone, she could imagine him confiding his love to her in deep, reverential tones that hummed through her. On an ordinary day before school, she When Emily left Samira’s flat, texted him an invitation to meet she headed for the stairwell. her in the back row of the Odeth Samira lived on the 15 floor so on. She had sat in the dark shivering for the first half hour of the it gave Emily a lot of time to film, certain that he wouldn’t think as she went down a floor, come. Every time someone ensat on a step, went down a few more floors, and sat down again. tered the screening room, her For the moment, the stairwell felt heart tightened and beat furiouslike the perfect hiding place: qui- ly in her ears. The moment she let up her guard, he appeared et, apart from the occasional
man in her life. He certainly didn’t go to her mosque. ‘Where is the girl?’ ‘The girl?’ Samira’s palms moistened. ‘The girl, the girl—spotted face, big hair—where is she?’ ‘She left.’ ‘You’re sure she left? Can I trust you, daughter?’ ‘Yes. She’s gone.’ ‘Fine.’ He grabbed her wrist tightly, and brought his face close enough for her to smell his sour breath. ‘You don’t call the police. You keep quiet.’ Still holding her wrist firmly he pulled out a mobile and dialled with one hand. Samira twisted her arm in a useless attempt to escape his grip. He spoke quickly in Urdu to the person on the other end. ‘Gone. You guys work outwards in circles around the building. I’ve already sent Ahmed and Amal to her parents’ house.’ There was a pause. ‘It’s her friend. She’ll keep quiet. I’ll stay here with her.’ Having succeeded in getting behind the man without escaping his grasp, Samira deployed, for the first time in real life, one of the moves she’d learned in her self defence course: the lighting fist to the sacrum. Instantly the man fell to the floor, gasping in agony. Samira raced for the phone and called 999.
40
beside her like a spirit, sliding his arm around her shoulders and pressing his firm lips and warm mouth against hers. She felt all the blood in her body rush from her head to her feet, and she let go of everything, not caring if anyone else in the room could see his hand sliding under her clothes. From that day, she desired everything that would draw her closer to him, religion included. She liked the certainty of his beliefs and rituals, never having had any herself, apart from fish and chips on Friday nights. She liked the feeling of being right while others were wrong, a comforting impression as her grades had started going down earlier that year, just when she needed to keep them up. As her dreams of going away to university faltered, the life she dreamed about with Mo provided purpose. It would be different from her parents’ humdrum, jokey marriage: something more sacred and mysterious. And if he wanted to die for a cause, she thought, she would die with him. It would be a romantic way to go, voluntarily annihilating themselves in their prime, avoiding the old age of the over-twenty-fives: their sordid compromises and narrow lives. Stretching out across the steps between the 12th and 13th floors, Emily thought that it might be easiest, after all, to wait for the police to find her here. She would explain that Samira had nothing to do with it, and that would be that. They might still poke around the family’s flat, ask their friends and relations a few questions, but of course, Emily thought, the innocent have nothing to fear.
Gold Dust