The Secret Lives of the Amir Sisters: the ultimate heart-warming read for 2018

‘She’s not going to feel easy until I move back home. And let me tell you, Abba, that’s not happening.’

‘I know, I know.’ He paused as I saw him stop at the top of the stairs. ‘Erm, what is that?’

I’d turned around again without realising that Dad could see the sculpture.

‘Something I’m working on,’ I replied.

‘Hmm.’ He furrowed his eyebrows. ‘And this is what you’re doing in London? Making sculptures of women …’ he leaned in closer. ‘Animals? What is it?’

‘Never mind, Abba. Just give the phone to Amma so I can get the conversation over with.’

I don’t mean for my words to sound short or irritable but that’s just how they come out.

‘I’ll speak to you properly later, okay, Abba?’

He was still looking at the sculpture, worry lines spreading over his features.

‘Hmm? Okay, Babba.’

By the time he’d walked downstairs I heard Mum complaining about Naked Marnie who was apparently out again, basking in the glory of unexpected sunshine.

‘It is a free country,’ I heard Dad say to her.

‘What do you want then?’ said Mum, taking the phone from him and giving me a view of the kitchen walls again. ‘For us all to go out naked?’

‘No-one wants you to go out naked,’ he replied.

‘Hello?’ I said. I had a sculpture to work on, after all.

‘Yes,’ said Mum, putting the phone up to her sour-looking face. ‘I called you two, three times and you didn’t answer.’

‘I was going to call back.’

‘When? Next week? Next month? Next year?’

I didn’t see why, between Fatti failing and Jay calling, I had to be the one who faced her aggression. This is why I make a point of calling home as little as possible. What’s the point when you’re only going to get told off? I’m an adult, for God’s sake. I bet Jay doesn’t get this antagonism. No, the golden child is probably showered with all manners of kindness.

‘Poor Fatti failed again,’ said Mum without any prompt from me.

‘Hmm.’

‘You know how hard it is for her. She doesn’t have your confidence – you should help her but you don’t even answer your family’s calls.’

‘It’s not as if I’m loafing around, Amma. I’m working.’

She looked up at my dad, presumably, and decided to mirror his worried face.

‘But, Bubblee, what kind of work? Look how beautiful you are – such a small nose and light-brown eyes. You shouldn’t take these things for granted. Maybe you should think of getting a proper job where you are making some money. Maybe banking, hmm? Whenever I have a nice boy’s amma on the phone who asks me what you do, I tell her and I never hear from them again. If you had a normal job they would see you and then your beauty would do the rest.’

‘These aren’t exactly the type of people I want to know anyway, and you need to stop trying to find me a husband. I don’t want to get married yet.’

‘Your youth won’t last for ever. Already you’re so old for marriage.’

‘I’m twenty-eight, Amma. And Fatti’s older than me. Why don’t you bug her about marriage? I’m pretty sure she cares a lot more about it than I do.’

Mum shook her head and looked up at the ceiling. ‘Allah, what have I done to deserve a girl who answers back so much? A girl who doesn’t even speak to her own twin sister?’

Which was, of course, a complete exaggeration. I speak to Farah. When we’re in the same room. Which, granted, might not be very often, because I avoid it as much as humanly possible, but that’s for her sake as well as mine.

‘And why?’ Mum continued. ‘Because she married a man?’

‘A man who’s not her equal,’ I replied, feeling the heat rise in my cheeks.

Why does everyone find it so hard to understand? Why couldn’t they see that my twin sister deserved better than this prosaic, uninspired individual? Why does a husband have to be horrible, or abrasive, or neglectful to not be right for you? Of all the things Farah could’ve done with her life, achieved or aspired to, she decided to settle down and marry the first man that asked her. Forget the first man – her first cousin. And I bet it was all because he wanted to stay in England; coming here to study and then conveniently ‘falling in love’ with my sister, who then – naïve woman that she was – decided to fall in love right back. I mean, don’t even get me started on the notion of falling in love, let alone marrying your mum’s sister’s son.

Mum sighed and muttered something under her breath. ‘And when will you visit your family? Or do we have to wait for someone to die?’

‘Jay’s Amma,’ said Dad. ‘Don’t say things like this.’

I looked as Dad seemed to be putting grass in the blender. ‘What are you doing?’ I asked.

He turned around as he put the lid on the blender after adding a banana to the mix. ‘Making Mae a smoothie,’ he explained.

‘With what?’

‘She likes fresh things, you know. Says that supermarkets are no good, so I took some leaves from the hedges for an extra … boost.’

‘I only say what is true, Jay’s Abba,’ replied Mum, ignoring what was happening in her kitchen.

I mean, how can I take seriously the words of two people who refer to each other as the parent of their only son? Their only son who comes and goes as he pleases, hardly ever showing his face and exists more as an idea than an actual being. Not that he gets any flack for it because, of course, he’s a boy and the same standards don’t apply.

‘Maybe at Jay’s wedding,’ I said, straight-faced.

‘Bubblee,’ said Dad, abandoning the blender and taking the phone from Mum as he glanced at her. ‘Remember she is your mother.’ He looked from side to side as if he wasn’t quite sure of this fact. Or perhaps he was just looking out for a slipper that might come flying his way if he did anything but agree with her.

‘Yes, Abba. Thanks.’

He gave a short nod and winked at me before he ‘accidentally’ hung up on me. Dad will probably end up paying for that in rationed dessert servings tonight.

I exhaled as I sat on the edge of my chair and looked at my sculpture. It was difficult to concentrate, what with Mum mentioning Farah. I turned to look at a photograph of us on my wall; it was taken on our thirteenth birthday. We were so excited about being teenagers. We thought there’d be this shift where things would change and life would somehow be more exciting. And it was in some ways; I discovered art and how a painting could make you feel things that life somehow couldn’t; how there was beauty in the stroke of a brush or the curve of a shape; the way a drawing might speak a truth that reality only hinted at because it never stayed long enough for you to capture it. But art – it kept that feeling static in time, and you could re-visit it and be moved by it all over again, in a different way. I wanted to make people feel that way with my art. And I wasn’t about to give up until I succeeded. Farah never took to art. Or literature. I waited for her to talk passionately about something. I urged her to read the same books as me, but she’d be tidying up after Jay, or straightening out her room, sewing a button on someone’s jacket. Always busy but never with the important things. Never outraged at a news story, or delirious with joy when a dictator had been overthrown, or even about something stupid, like winning fifty quid on the lottery.

‘Oh, Farah,’ I whispered, picking up the photo, rubbing my finger over the frown on my face as if that’d wipe it away.

Why does no-one understand that I wanted more for her? After all, isn’t that what sisters are meant to do? Want great things for each other? I turned my attention to my sculpture again, pleased with what I was in the middle of creating. This was going to wow people. I just had to get it right. It would be spectacular. I shook my head at my family and their ways. No-one understands: there’s nothing great about mediocrity.

CHAPTER FOUR (#ulink_b83b0236-d202-5c83-b53b-0fc476cdfab3)

Farah (#ulink_b83b0236-d202-5c83-b53b-0fc476cdfab3)