‘Of course, yes. You heal first,’ her mother is saying. Nella rises from the sofa with another gentle huff to fuss some more, insisting on making Anika some tea. The show of care is well-meaning and she loves having her mum around, but, as she waves Nella off a little while later, Anika hears the echo of something in her mind.We must do what we are able to help ourselves.
It might be time to start taking back control.
Chapter Thirteen
Wednesday 18th July
Are you still watching?
The question strikes Anika as rude, even as she rolls into her fifth hour of streaming. She hitsyesand stretches over to switch on the lamp by the sofa as the vivid purples and pinks of the summer light outside finally begin to fade. It’s been ten days since she came home and it’s amazing how much better she’s feeling having time to just chill, but maybe she is beginning to get restless. As she eventually makes her way to the bathroom to get ready for bed, she strips off her T-shirt and inspects the neat scar starting to form on her abdomen, then glances at herself in the mirror. She looks thinner but also stronger – her muscles tighter, curves still somehow supple. There’s nothing in the reflection that she wants to critique, she realises.
‘You look … good,’ she tells herself. It’s like she’s begun inhabiting an alien craft – one chock full of potential if only she could figure out how to use it.
Getting into bed, she settles back on her pillows and picks up the diary. She takes a deep breath and on the next blank page, she enters tomorrow’s date.
Thursday 21st July
I’m pretty much back to fighting fitness and I’m gonna stay that way. Today I decided that if I’m going to have to go back to work soon I’m going to do it looking like a bad bitch, so I went to the hairdressers and the health and wealth of my curls is abundant. I went for a hot-pink dye job, but the bleach, colour and cut had no effect on their lustre. I’m looking fire, I feel great …
She reads over what she’s written so far, biting back a goofy smile. It’s notmassivelyfar-fetched. Anika decides to see if she can actually book in to the one place in Brixton she knows might be able to achieve the look she’s described, but it’s likely that by the time she calls in the morning they’ll be booked up for this weekandnext, so …
‘OK, manifestation or pessimism?’ she asks herself out loud. A makeover is something to aim for at least. Her external reinvention, if it works out, might also make a difference to how she feels inside. Then again, thingshavealready changed deep inside her. Something that was growing unseen and threatening was now gone.
What will arrive in the space left behind?
Thursday 19th July
Anika is almost scared to look. She’s deliberately kept her head in a book and her eyes averted from the mirror since the hairdresser unravelled the foils, had a junior wash out the dye, and then brought her back to the chair from the sinks. He’s been putting in serums and snipping errant hairs for a good half hour, and now she’s squeezing her eyes shut while he gets her to tip her head over for the diffuser hair-dry. A short while later, Kai, the stylist, sits her back up and finishes the last touches.
‘Oh, wow, I have outdone myself, if I do say so … myself.’ He chuckles, putting his hands on her shoulders. ‘Anika, sweetheart, I think you’re gonna want to take a look!’
She managed to get an appointment at the salon after a last-minute cancellation. Gradually, she lifts one eyelid then the other, peeking at herself in the opulent gold-framed mirror.
‘Holy shit,’ she whispers. Her hair is rich with tight, defined, bouncing curls that graduate from her natural dark at the roots into a vivid pink. She slowly reaches up to touch it. ‘Kai, you’re a miracle worker.’ A grin spreads across her face as she looks at her reflection. It’s hard to believe it’s her.
‘Don’t I know it, doll,’ he tells her with a wink, then undoes the hairdresser’s cape from around her neck and flicks it aside with a flourish. ‘Lustrous!’
Pulling out her phone, Anika snaps some photographs of herself in the mirror, and a selfie, too, as if she might require evidence later.
‘Jeez!’ Shameeka shouts like a female Giggs as she sees Anika approaching her outside the Ritzy a short while later. ‘Oh … my … God. Babe! Like, what the fuck?’ She waves her hand around her friend’s head, hanging her jaw open exaggeratedly.
‘You only live once, right?’ Anika says ironically, then grins and shrugs. ‘Hitting reset and that.’ She bends down to the pushchair Shameeka has beside her. Deon’s huge brown eyes peer back up at her, his adorable Afro shooting up into a peak above his head. He openly laughs and points at her new ’do, but she decides to take it as a compliment.
‘Yeah.’ Shameeka’s tone is more serious as they head across the road. She’s joined a new members bar on the roof of a nearby building. Anika always jokes that Shamz is the first to decry gentrification, but also the first to enjoy a bougie space. Her friend’s suede loafers flap a little as her slim calves peek out from the long, tan shorts she’s tucked a clean white tee into. As she realises she’s edging ahead with the pushchair, she slows down a bit. ‘Oh, sorry, Neeks, here’s me forgetting you’ve just had surgery—’
‘Actually, I’m feeling pretty good, you know. I didn’t expect it, but …’ She pauses, remembering her manifestations. ‘Well, either way, I’m not going to jinx it, but I’m not doing too bad.Can’t complain, eh?’
‘I wouldn’t blame you if you did, though, hon.’ She waves a fob at the nondescript door they’ve stopped in front of, and then they step inside and enter the lobby space – a small, chic area with exposed brick and dramatic artwork. Two tall white men both wearing fisherman beanies are flirting with the receptionist. They turn around and eye the women as they enter, Anika holding the door open for Deon’s pushchair. Shameeka’s eyes dare them to query if she should be bringing her child to this type of establishment, but Anika realises the two guys’ stares seem to be lingering onher.
‘Babe, hold the lift for us,’ Shameeka says over her shoulder, sniffing the air exaggeratedly as she signs them in at the reception desk. ‘D needs a change, asap.’
Anika grimaces into a smile. One of the men, with a reddish beard, is grinning openly at her as he leans against the far end of the reception desk while his friend moves towards the elevator button. She decides to seize the opening. ‘Uh, sorry, lads, are you all right if we hop in the lift first?’ She gestures to Shamz and Deon, and then towards the tiny lift. ‘Three’s already a crowd, right?’ A flicker of an eyebrow-raise accompanies this, and the man with the lumberjack beard grins at her as he steps aside with an exaggerated sweep of his arm. Anika stifles an eye-roll and says thanks, then Shamz steps inside the lift as it arrives on the ground floor.
‘Oh, my days, Neeks! Them man were ready to pounce on you!’ Shameeka says with a laugh as the doors slide closed. Anika isn’t sure that’s necessarily a good thing, but the injection of confidence is welcome at least. She smiles bashfully, looking at her reflection in the mirrored wall of the lift. Her skin is glowing against her blue sleeveless top and high-waisted denim cut-offs. She does look pretty good.
They manage to snag the last free table outside on the club’ssunny roof terrace, with the vivid azure sky slightly shielded by a wooden-slatted shelter. Shameeka lifts her son out of his pushchair, taking him swiftly to the toilets. When she returns with the toddler smelling markedly fresher, they order some fries and – on Shameeka’s insistence – vegan ‘calamari’ for the table alongside their drinks. Anika surprises herself with how hungrily she falls on the snacks when they arrive, as if she has newfound tastebuds. Even the faux fish tastes good. Shameeka hands a chip to Deon, who grips it experimentally in his little fist, nibbles it, then deposits it on the floor. His mother and Anika ignore the debris for the moment and sip their pressed-juice virgin cocktails. Anika relishes the feeling of the sun on her skin, slipping her birthday sunglasses on.
‘You know,’ Shameeka says. ‘I was thinking about what you said back there, about a reset – a new start.’ She lifts her own sunglasses up on top of her head. Anika takes off her shades again, too. She can sense her friend has something serious on her mind.
