She’s heading home. Just like she wrote that she would be.
She’s trying not to think about it too much. The diary is now safely in her bag, which she clutches in her lap. She hasn’t told the girls about it, or anyone else for that matter. She doesn’t want to jinx it. Because here she is, officially discharged days early. It’s undeniably weird.
This morning, the doctor said he was happy for Anika to head home. They gave her a bag of medications and dressings, and sent her on her way. Well, there’s one other element she’s kept to herself – Dr Elachy’s reminder that they would need to closely monitor her bloods and repeat scans to ensure this hasn’t beenmasking anything more serious. But in the same way writing in the diary seems to have worked in her favour, Anika figures that not mentioning what the doctor said will keep it from being an issue.
When the cab drops them off at her flat, their giggles float up the staircase as Shameeka and Tina help Anika gingerly up the stairs, pushing the door open to a few takeaway flyers, a bank statement and inevitably two ‘missed parcel’ cards for some vinyl she’d ordered online. As she makes her way through to the sofa in the living room and sighs down onto it, the whole space feels brand new. A wave of relief crashes over her along with a fresh sense of gratitude for simply being – being on her battered old couch surrounded by her records and her books, with her bed in the room beyond and her own clothes in easy reach. Tears rise in the corners of her eyes and some slip out before she can catch them. Wiping her cheeks quickly, she hears Shameeka call to her as she walks down the corridor from the kitchen.
‘Babe, we need some serious restocking in that fridge,’ Shamz says, appearing in the doorway and grimacing as she holds up a no-doubt gently moulding carton of half-eaten yoghurt. ‘I’m going to pop to the shops. Can you think what you’ll need? Or you know what, just message me a list, yeah?’
Shamz heads to the shops, and Tina comes in and starts to arrange every single cushion Anika owns into a cocoon around her. Anika smiles at her friend gratefully. ‘T, I don’t suppose you could help me take these down?’ she asks, fingering one of the stray twists that are emerging from the crochet beanie she stuffed them in to.
‘Course!’
Tina’s fingers make quick work of the removal while Anika sits in comfortable silence, and they both periodically blow away the flying strands of hair and stare at the TV until Shameeka returns and unpacks noisily. Soon there’s a pile of unravelled twists onthe floor like a nest of snakes and Anika’s hair is in a halo of twisted-out springs around her head. She reaches up, letting her fingertips massage her scalp, enjoying the sense of release.
Time for a fresh start.
Anika sits propped up in bed later that evening staring at the next blank page in her resurrected diary. She’s been looking at it for a full five minutes, but again there’s nothing she’s aiming for in the next day or two other than sinking into her sofa and watching television. She’s not in a great deal of pain and she’s actually looking forward to having some time to just be. For the moment, simply having survived seems like enough.Manifesting doesn’t need to be on the agenda tonight. Just chill.
Almost on that command, her eyes start to droop. As Anika closes the diary, her father’s ring glints on her finger, reminding her that Nella is due first thing in the morning. Reaching over to switch off her bedside light, Anika smiles wryly to herself. Her mother prides herself on her punctuality and will no doubt be bright and early.
As she drifts off to sleep, her mind catches on the memory of a rare day when Nellahadbeen running late. She was dragging ten-year-old Anika to a family gathering, this one at Aunty Joyce’s in Clapham. Aunty Joyce was a new name to Anika – she wasn’t sure she’d ever even met her before, but it was hard to keep up with all the cousins and aunts. Her mum told her Aunty Joyce ‘had something for them’ as she urged her daughter off the bus that summer – that something, Anika later deduced, being money to help them out. Nella propelled her down the posh streets with their delis and boutiques and fancy houses, and Anika could tell that you had to be well off to live round there, but her mother never liked to make it obvious that they were lacking.
There was another reason why Nella was so eager to get themto their destination quickly. The pieces only clicked into place when, coming towards them, Anika suddenly spotted a familiar tall frame in a flat tweed cap. Her dad had a new house. In a new area …
Her mother’s jaw tightened. She saw him, too.
Nelson Lapo hadn’t been alone. He was walking alongside a young-looking brunette woman with a shoulder-length bob, her white T-shirt and navy linen slacks so at odds with Nella’s embroidered dress and headwrap. Anika felt like her heart was rattling her ribcage as she watched them approach. Nelson’s fingers were entwined with this woman’s, and the woman was also clutching the hand of a tiny brown boy. He couldn’t have been more than two years old, the remnants of an ice lolly staining the front of his pale-green T-shirt. Anika looked to her mother for some suggestion of what to do. She knew instinctively that she shouldn’t just call out to her father, wave, greet him like she so desperately wanted to. Anika’s dad, the woman and the boy were only a few feet away, but at first none of them seemed to notice Anika and Nella among the other pedestrians on the busy pavement. But then Nelson looked over, locking eyes first with Anika, and then her mother. The brunette woman, oblivious, let go of Nelson’s hand to turn and fuss over the little boy, pausing to crouch in front of him for a moment, then pulling him up off the ground to settle on her hip. She beamed at the boy, a smile which she then turned towards Nelson. There was the horrible wrench of her dad’s gaze turning away from her, returning his attention to them. He said absolutely nothing.
As they walked away, Anika asked why he ignored them and her mother looked lost for a second before her expression hardened. Her lips pressed into a line before she answered.
‘Anika … We must only worry about what we ourselves can do. Not others. We must do what we are able to helpourselves.There is no point in being worried about anybody else. Us? We will be dignified. OK?’ The look in her mother’s eyes burned into Anika, reiterating her point. Nella watched until her daughter nodded.
A moment later, she took Anika’s hand and they moved off to find Aunty Joyce’s house on the next tree-lined street. But that look on her mother’s face stayed with Anika.
It said:We hold things in. We do not let them see us crumble.
Tuesday 11th July
A loud buzzer awakens Anika from the deepest depths of sleep. Blinking at the welcoming orange light now slanting into her bedroom, she realises she’s slept through until the next morning. Wincing, she levers herself out of bed and hobbles to the door, glancing at her phone to see that the time is 8.09 and she has three missed calls from her mother. She makes her way to the door to buzz her in.
‘Ehn, Anika, should you be getting up to answer the door?’ Nella asks as she bustles up the stairs and into the flat with zero sense of irony.
‘I thought I’d given you a fob and key?’
Her mother doesn’t seem to hear her as she heads into the kitchen and begins unpacking Tupperware boxes into her freezer. Anika regards her with a complicated affection, some latent feeling from last night’s dream.
‘How are you feeling?’ Nella asks, dumping several small plastic bags full of Salone-style coconut ‘cakes’, sesame snaps and small, hard, cinnamon-flavoured chin-chin doughnuts onto her kitchen counter. Anika reaches for those eagerly and begins to crunch. Her body craves fats and carbs and nourishment, and she’s relishing the freedom of it. Listening to her physical needs is a new feeling.
Nella straightens up and smiles. ‘Go and sit down. I’ll finish unpacking this food.’
Anika obeys, and, a few moments later, her mother comes into the living room, giving a gusty groan as she lowers her ample bottom onto the sofa beside her. She holds out her hand and Anika drops some of the chin-chin she’s still munching into her mother’s palm. Nella leans back to regard her, assessing.
‘My daughter,’ she says, looking at Anika with a weight of lingering worry. ‘Thirty years old, heyyy!’ she adds after a moment, grinning now. Anika returns her smile, but she can predict where this is headed. ‘Now what we need is to find a husband, eh?’Of course.‘Wetin ’appen wi dat boy?’
‘Len?’ Anika sinks back into the cushion-cocoon still padding out her side of the sofa and purses her lips. She’s barely thought about him. ‘He’s not on the scene any more. To be honest, Mum, I think I’ll focus on,’ she gestures to her midriff, ‘sorting allthisout for now, then have a think about allthat…’
The only man in Anika’s life is the one whose voice melts her every time she listens to it on the radio and she’s happy to keep it that way for now. But then the idea of the diary hits her again. Could she try adding somemanifestation in there?
