shook her head again and looked serious for a moment.
‘We’re both awake, Amu.’ She laughed. She used the Arabic word for uncle, and Atif realized he liked it. He pushed the covers back and sat up.
‘So you know who I am?’ he said.
This time she nodded.
‘Of course I know. Daddy’s got a picture of you in his phone. And me … but lots more of me,’ she added.
‘Of course he has,’ Atif said. ‘A pretty girl like you.’
Tindra looked different in real life, far more animated than in the digital prints with which he had lined his mother’s little room at the nursing home. The girl was wearing a washed-out nightdress with a picture of some cartoon character he didn’t recognize. It looked as if she’d tied her hair up in two untidy ponytails herself. You’ve got your mum’s skin, Atif thought. But your dad’s eyes.
‘Amu, can you make pancakes? Daddy always makes pancakes when he’s home. With jam and sugar.’
Atif got up from the sofa and stroked her cheek. He liked the way she frowned slightly when she asked for something. Adnan had done the same thing when he was little.
‘Of course I can, sweetheart. I taught your dad everything he knows.’ Atif regretted the words as soon as they were out of his mouth.
Tindra had already eaten three whole pancakes by the time Cassandra appeared at the door of the kitchen.
‘Good morning,’ Atif said.
‘Mmm …’ She bent over and kissed Tindra on the head. Atif glanced at her. He had known Cassandra before she and Adnan started dating. Back then her name had been Malin, someone’s plain little sister, slaving away in the city’s bars to earn enough money for a pair of silicone breasts and a few other physical enhancements.
Then she had changed her name, appeared in a couple of episodes of some forgotten reality show, and picked up some work as a glamour model. Car shows, VIP events, nightclub appearances, and a bit of associated activity. In those days she had been very attractive, if you liked nightclub blondes. Adnan evidently did. He had been a bouncer at a few fashionable clubs, where he helped fend off drunk blokes who got too keen. He was good-looking, and every so often had plenty of money. And he was funny. He could entertain a whole room when he was in the mood.
Having a girlfriend whom other men would drool over suited Adnan, and when Tindra was born his world must have looked pretty much perfect. But that was several years ago now, and Cassandra’s glitzy glamour had started to fade. Wrinkles at the corners of her mouth from smoking, sallow skin, tired eyes. One of the rectangular false nails on her left hand was missing and the dark roots were clearly visible in her blond hair.
‘Sorry we can’t offer you anything better than the sofa.’
Cassandra came and stood beside him at the stove as she fiddled with a pack of cigarettes.
‘No problem. Like I said, I could always check into a hotel instead,’ Atif replied.
She shook her head, lit a Marlboro, and blew the smoke toward the stove hood.
‘Tindra really wanted to meet her uncle.’
‘How’s she taking it?’ Atif said, nodding toward the table, where the little girl was setting about her fourth pancake.
‘She’s only six.’ Cassandra shrugged. ‘How much do you remember from when you were six?’
More than I’d like to, Atif thought to himself.
‘By the way, I’ve got a job this evening. Don’t suppose you’d be able to babysit for a few hours?’
‘Of course,’ Atif replied. ‘No problem at all,’ he added. ‘Are you managing okay?’
‘Money, you mean? Well, what do you think?’ Cassandra shrugged again. ‘Did Adnan ever tell you about the gym he wanted to open up, over in Gläntan? Or the fact that he was plowing all our savings into it?’
Atif slowly shook his head.
‘It’s been a long time since I spoke to Adnan.’
‘Well, as usual, he managed to make a mess of it,’ Cassandra said. ‘He got impatient that the building work was going so slowly, and borrowed money to speed things up. The gym turned out brilliantly in the end, but by then Adnan had already been bought out. You know what he was like, charming as hell, sociable, but patience was never one of his strong points.’ She pulled a face that looked almost like a smile.
‘Adnan was full of great ideas that never quite happened,’ she went on. ‘Always on his way toward something, without ever really getting anywhere, if you know what I mean?’ Her voice was hard, or at least harder than it needed to be. ‘But I’ve got my own income, and we’ve got friends who can help us, so we’re okay.’
‘I see. Are there many people coming tomorrow?’
‘Of course, that’s what I was going to tell you.’ Cassandra dropped her cigarette in a half-full cup of coffee on the draining board, in which other yellow butts were already floating. ‘We had to push the funeral back a couple of days. To begin with the cops didn’t want to release the body. Then the undertaker had other bookings and it clashed with my work. I did try calling you, I spoke to that bloke Faisal again, your boss. But you’d already left.
‘You’re welcome to stay,’ she went on. ‘But it’s okay if you need to get back. Like I said, we’re managing.’ She pulled out another cigarette and offered him the pack. Atif shook his head.
‘You’ve given up?’ she said.
Atif didn’t answer. He was thinking of his return ticket, the job he’d been forced to leave unfinished, his neat little house, and the starry sky above his small garden.
Tindra was humming a song as she struggled to finish the last of the pancake. Atif looked at Cassandra again, thinking that he didn’t like her tone of voice when she talked about Adnan. The way she said the body. He wondered what sort of friends were helping her.
‘It’s okay,’ he said. ‘I can always change my ticket.’
Atif was on his way back to the building when he saw it. A big, dark-coloured Audi, parked a bit farther up the street, but it set his alarm bells ringing straightaway. He hadn’t been out long, ten minutes max. He’d locked the front door securely and hadn’t even bothered to put his jacket on.
He had tucked Tindra up in bed about an hour ago, kissing her forehead gently before switching on the old CD player and pressing Play for her favourite story, just as he had been instructed to do. Then he had settled down in the living room and zapped through a number of television channels, full of commercials, before realizing that the bag of paperbacks was still in the rental car over in the parking garage. He didn’t think it would take more than five minutes to fetch it. Tindra was fast asleep, and Cassandra wouldn’t be home before midnight.
The cold was biting into him, making him hurry even more. But when he saw the dark Audi parked there he slowed down and almost stopped. The car hadn’t been around when he came out, he was quite sure of that.
