she hoped there was plenty...
‘Please go out and invite him in.’
* * *
Wondering if this was a quirk of democracy in this country or because the woman didn’t want to be alone with him, Malik went, returning with the driver, who’d protested he was quite okay and happy to wait without food.
But already aware that he was dealing with a stubborn woman, Malik had insisted.
He found the woman in question bent double over a large chest freezer, pulling out various plastic-wrapped containers and muttering to herself.
‘We’re having shepherd’s pie,’ Nimr announced. ‘It’s my turn to choose and it’s my favourite.’
Malik looked at the boy he knew yet didn’t know and felt pain stab into his heart.
‘Oh, yes?’ he said. ‘Do you make it out of shepherds?’
The boy laughed.
‘No, silly! Mum makes it with meat, and puts potato on the top, and it’s yummy and you don’t have to cut it up so it’s easy to eat.’
Malik smiled at the boy, feeling a weird kind of pleasure that the child had offered him this small confidence.
‘Ha, knew I had one!’
The triumphant cry from the freezer had them moving into the kitchen where their pink-cheeked hostess, apparently fully recovered from her faint, had emerged from the freezer in triumph.
Seeing the two men, the driver trying to hide behind the door, her cheeks went a deeper pink.
‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I tend to cook a lot on my days off, and I always make different sizes of each dish for when Joe’s here—’
‘And when Joe and Aunt Jane both come,’ Nim finished for her, turning to the visitors to hold up four fingers. ‘That’s four, you see, and tonight it’s four too.’
Perhaps embarrassed by her son’s delight in the visitors, his mother had stripped layers of plastic from the frozen dish and set it going in the microwave. And with her back resolutely turned to the two men, she was peeling carrots and cutting chunks of broccoli off a large green head.
Wishing it was my head, no doubt, Malik thought, as she slashed the knife down.
Her shoulders rose as he watched and he knew she was taking a deep breath.
After which, she turned towards her visitors and said quietly, ‘It will be half an hour. Would you like to wait in the living room? Perhaps you’d like a glass of cold water?’
‘Thank you,’ Malik said, then aware of the driver lurking behind him, remembered his manners.
‘This is my driver, Peter—’
‘Cross,’ their hostess finished for him, stepping forward and, to Malik’s surprise, giving the man a hug.
‘Oh, sorry, Peter, I hadn’t realised it was you I made fall out of the car. How’s Susie?’
The man held up crossed fingers.
‘So far, so good, Lauren. You know how it goes.’
‘I do indeed,’ Lauren told him. ‘Now, a glass of water, each of you?’
‘That’d be lovely,’ Peter said, and well aware that he’d lost what little conversational control he might have had, Malik agreed, following the other man back into the living room.
It was Nimr who brought the water, two tall glasses balanced on a round tray.
Malik took his, thanked the boy, and wondered what on earth one said to start a conversation with a four-year-old.
Not that he needed to worry, for the boy sat down on the sofa next to the driver and, easily adopting the role of host, turned to Malik to explain.
‘Susie’s my best friend at kindy. She’s been sick. She wears cute hats because she’s got no hair. No one minds she’s got no hair anyway, and when she first had no hair we all shaved our heads, even the girls, to show it was okay, but she wears the hats because she likes them.’
Malik turned to Peter, who was smiling at the boy.
‘Leukaemia?’ he asked quietly.
A nod in reply, and, although knowing many of the childhood variants of leukaemia had a high rate of recovery, Malik didn’t want to probe too deeply.
Particularly as the earlier conversation and the man’s crossed fingers now made sense. Susie must be in remission at the moment, and Malik knew only too well the tightrope parents walked at such times.
‘And we have rabbits at kindy too,’ Nimr announced. ‘Sometimes in the holidays some of the kids get to take them home but Mum says we can’t because she has to work and Joe can’t be expected to look after a rabbit and me.’
Malik hid a smile. The boy was obviously repeating his mother’s words, but his aggrieved tone left his listeners in no doubt about his opinion of this edict.
‘Do you have rabbits?’ he asked.
Malik shook his head.
‘No rabbits, but we do have many interesting animals where I live, and many dogs that are tall and run very fast and are called saluki hounds.’
Nimr seemed to ponder this information for a moment, then said knowledgably, ‘Hound is another name for a dog. I like dogs, but—’
Malik was pretty sure he was about to hear Mum’s opinion of keeping a dog when they were called into the kitchen for dinner. Considering it was little over an hour since she’d fainted in the gateway, Sister Lauren Macpherson had done a sterling job.
The small wooden table had a blue bowl of flowers in the middle of it and four places neatly set, with water glasses in front of each place.
Nimr had gone in front of them and lifted a tall, plastic jug of water from the refrigerator.
‘See how strong I am,’ he said, holding it a little higher.
‘But not quite strong enough to pour,’ his mother said, as she saved the tilting jug and filled the water glasses.
‘Maybe when I’m five,’ Nimr said, climbing onto what must be his accustomed chair.
He was a confident young man, Malik realised, and polite as well. His work as a paediatrician had brought him into contact with countless children, and he’d learned to appreciate the ones with good manners and the quiet confidence he sensed in the boy.
And something very likeable.
He tried to think back to when he and Tariq had been children, but suspected that Tariq had probably not been likeable even then.
Lovable, yes!
He,
