even lie and tell me how good they were. Instead, the pictures were folded up and binned while my father would sit with me and read me bits from the Encyclopaedia Britannica, extracts that even he didn’t understand. He was preparing me for a career in law, or ‘love’ as he mispronounced it.
His career choice for me was not based on any longstanding family tradition. He was a bus driver and I think he just wanted to give me the best possible start, and make sure I would not have to face the instability that he had suffered. That’s why when the encyclopaedia man came round when I was young and sensed the aspirations my father had for me, he blatantly incorporated me into his sales pitch by saying that the books would set me on course for a high-flying career. My dad bought the whole set, which he could clearly not afford, taking on extra jobs like mending television sets so he could buy the entire set and receive the latest volume, year after year.
At sixteen, when I expressed a desire to go to art college he went ballistic and didn’t speak to me for weeks. When he did it was to say, ‘Nina, I have not sacrificed the life so you can do the hobby, the lawyer is a good profession. Not that I am pressurising you, not that I came to the England to give you the good education and work every hour and make sacrifices.’
Put that way I could clearly see his point. So I did an art A level without him knowing about it – just in case, by some miracle, he changed his mind. He didn’t and so I went to university to study law.
Whitter and Lawson was where I did my training, and I worked incredibly hard so that they would give me a job after I had finished; at least that way I could be around artists and connect with their world. Everyone around me said it was impossible, there were hardly any Indian lawyers representing artists and it was a place where contacts mattered. People said that I would need a miracle to be taken on by the firm but I busted my gut and worked every single hour I could, going out of my way to prove everyone wrong.
I remember making promises that I would do a whole series of things if I got the job, like give away ten per cent of my future earnings to charity and buy a Big Issue weekly. To whom these promises were made I couldn’t really tell you; maybe just to myself. So I should have known that the first visible signs of wanting out was crossing the road, making out like I hadn’t seen the Big Issue man when he was blatantly waving at me. But I pretended, pretended that I was lucky to have a job and make lots of money and be in that world. My dad always said this was what life was about – working hard, being disciplined, making money, surviving in a ‘dog eating the cat’ world. But then my best friend Ki died and none of that made sense anymore. An uneasiness began to set in.
Felicity, the PA, called me to say that Boo Williams was waiting for me in reception.
Ki disintegrated rapidly at twenty-five. She had felt a lump in her leg while she was away travelling but decided it was nothing. By the time she came back it had spread throughout her whole body. There was nothing anyone could do. I pretended it would be fine; didn’t even see the head scarf and the dribbling mouth and the weight loss. She whispered lots of things to me and I made a whole heap of promises to her. I’m not sure exactly what I said, I wasn’t really there so couldn’t remember any of it. Not until that moment, the moment I sat at my computer thinking about how I’d not taken responsibility for anything.
What I had promised her was that I would live my life passionately and do all the things I really wanted to, not just for me but for her.
The day she told me about her condition she dropped it in like it was something she forgot to mention on a shopping list. Ki had got back from Thailand a couple of weeks earlier, and we had spent virtually every day together since. That day we were off to Brighton, and her dad was in the driveway cleaning his car.
‘It’s hot weather, na?’ he asked.
‘Good, isn’t it?’ I replied.
‘Makes me want to go and visit some bitches.’
I looked at him as Ki came out. He continued, ‘Na, beta, saying to Nina we must visit some bitches.’
‘It’s beaches, Dad, beaches. Yeah, we’ll visit loads and we’ll make sure we do it soon.’
I remember thinking that comment was strange as she normally took the piss out of his mispronunciations.
‘Yours is into bitches, mine thinks I’m into porn,’ I said walking back in with her.
‘What?’
‘I didn’t realise that the Sky box downstairs was linked to the one upstairs, and I was flicking through it and lingered on a few porn channels and this lesbian talk show.
She looked at me.
‘It was just out of interest, didn’t know I was interrupting Mum and Dad watching their Zee TV. Then in the morning I heard my dad tell my mum to talk to me, to have a word, maybe marriage would straighten that out. So she just left a couple more CVs on the table.’
‘When will you tell them about Jean?’
‘Soon,’ I said.
‘Tell them soon, Nina, it’s not worth the wait. Do what makes you happy. You’ll make sure you’re happy, won’t you?’
I looked at her. Where did that come from?
‘I’ve got cancer, Nina, and it’s bad. Phase three, that’s what they called it. Don’t think they can do much with chemo but they’ll give it a go.’
She said it just like that, like she had bought some new trousers from French Connection and had forgotten to tell me.
She hadn’t told her parents. Outside, her dad was blissfully ignorant; bucket in one hand, sponge in another, cleaning his shiny silver car and talking about bitches, unaware that shortly his life would change forever.
I deluded myself that chemo would sort it. I knew if I bargained hard and made a whole series of promises, it would be all right. Right until the last minute I believed that. Even when she died, I held on to her, not letting go. Her dad had to pull me off her.
The phone went again. ‘Ms Williams is waiting for you in reception, Nina.’
‘I heard you the first time,’ I snapped.
My colleagues turned and looked at me. I never lost it. No matter what, I was always calm. Calm and reliable Nina, who worked twelve hours a day if necessary. Calm and dependable Nina, who did what was asked of her; who went to the gallery openings that nobody else in the firm wanted to go to.
I got up and went to reception to meet Boo. She was dressed in black and wore bright red boots, the colour of the dried tomatoes she had put into Venus de Milo’s sockets.
‘Sorry to have kept you waiting.’
‘Quite,’ she replied.
And that was it, the word that tipped me over the edge.
‘Quite,’ I mumbled.
‘Yes, I’ve got better things to do with my time,’ she replied.
‘Like make apricot statues?’
Felicity looked up from behind the reception desk, shocked.
‘I don’t like your tone, Nina,’
