Chapter Thirty-Four
Today is destined to be a very bad day. I know this as I stare at the ceiling, my body tense and aching, and it isn’t even dawn yet. If I were poetic, I suppose I could say my sheets are tangled with memories, the shapes of us lingering there. In reality, nights of tossing and turning will make your bed an uncomfortable mess. I’ve barely left it this whole weekend, preferring to lie here torturing myself, replaying it all in my head: the bombshell that pretty much detonated our relationship. His carelessness. Our differences. How can something that means so much to me, mean so little to him?
So, my bed is a mess, my head is fucked-up, and my body feels like a slinky toy a dog chewed up.
And still, I revel in my misery, a sadistic kind of wallowing, in a bed that smells of Kai. Of his cologne. Of sex.
If I had any self-respect, I’d change the sheets. Maybe stop hugging his shirt.
His watch lies on the nightstand, shoes discarded on the bedroom floor. In a pique of anger, I use my heel to viciously kick one under the bed.
I’d half expected him to call yesterday, maybe using his watch as an excuse, so I’d showered and slipped on a pretty sundress. Practised my indifferent face just, you know, in case.Crushing self-sabotage. I’d crawled back into bed in my dress, a Saturday evening alone, fuelled by self-pity and sponsored by copious amounts of fermented grape juice. The kind that Kai probably wouldn’t even classify as wine. My liver aches as a consequence.
Dragging my legs from the twisted sheets, I force myself into movement and totter into the kitchen on sustenance starved limbs. After coffee—black—the milk, like my relationship, has soured, I shower in some pretence of normality and shove on some clothes before calling a cab.
If anyone at work asks why I’m so early, I’ll tell them I peed the bed.
You see, I need to leave early, before Rashid arrives to take me to work. Or not as the case may be. I don’t know where I stand in terms of Kai, and more frighteningly, I don’t feel ready to find out. So I tell myself I need to leave before Rashid arrives, ignoring the fact that I lack the composure to find out that he won’t.
My overnight bag sits on the floor next to my desk and at the front of the class. I’ve decided to spend the night with Niamh. I plan to tell her about my unexpected visit from Shane, watch her rant and rage as she supplies me with comfort.And probably more wine. Preventing me from thinking about Kai. Hopefully. Somehow I need to move on, make peace with it all. I kicked him out. Wanted him gone. I’m pretty sure this is what’s calledthe end, despite how this makes me feel now.
A morning spent in the classroom leaves me feeling like I’ve been wading through mud, then lunchtime approaches and with it my weekly playground duty. The prospect doesn’t much improve my mood. I leave the classroom with a bottle of ice-cold water in my hand, despite Sadia’s dubious protestations that cold water makes people ill. Give me anything other than ice-cold water in this heat and I’ll bring back liquid hot enough to brew tea. I refuse to drink room-temperature water and I don’t care if it does give me a sore throat.
The heat is oppressive, and my thoughts borderline obsessive, as I stand wilting in the shade. I try very hard to focus on the job at hand—I’m in charge of children for God’s sakes—but images of that night continually flood my mind. Kai’s cool response to Shane at the doorstep, the humiliation I’d wanted to hide. His eyes, hot with disgust, as he’d held Shane by the throat. None of it makes me feel positive. I feel weak. Foolish. And more than a little bit shit. And I told him to leave, which is the icing on the cake. I’m such a fucking idiot.
Like a murder of crows, my fellow teachers huddle at the end of the quad, their blackabayaatbillowing in the hot breeze. I imagine their cawing. Talking about Kai, about me, about our “dalliance”. In fact, I’d put money on their doing so if gambling wasn’t illegal here in the UAE.
‘Sadia, where are the girls?’ The classroom is empty as I return, the hot air from the open door besting the air-conditioning, refusing to help me cool down. ‘Aren’t we due in the library now?’
‘You are not at the meeting with Miss Arwa?’ Sadia lifts her head from a pile of books with a frown. ‘She exchanged the lessons with Miss Maha— the library for the PE? You should now go.’ She closes the door she’s manoeuvred me back through, but not before adding, ‘Hurry, you are too much late!’
But we don’t have a meeting scheduled. Unless . . . no. I suppose you don’t get advance warning of being sacked.God. That must be what this is.But sacked for dating Kai, ornotdating him? I wonder which.
I can’t say she didn’t warn me this would come to no good, but somehow I hadn’t envisioned...this. Archaic reasoning, sure. Bizarre even, but what defence do I have? Rules are rules, no matter how ridiculous they sound. Social mores to be abided by in the UAE, almost as though set in stone: no talking to men you aren’t related to; no passionate embraces in public or where people are likely to take offence; no overt clothing; no flashing too much flesh.
And no dating the boss’s son.
And I’m still in my probationary period.
Feckin’ feck. What am I going to do? The only thing I can, I suppose.
Take a teaspoon of cement and harden the fuck up.
At Arwa’s office, I knock once and enter, my eyes glued to the floor as I close the door. Leaning back against the handle, I attempt to gather my defence, because I’ll be damned if I’m going to make this easy for her.
Raising my eyes slowly, the silence in the room makes my ears ring. It stretches out between us and I have no idea what to think, let alone whatto do. Right at this moment I want to launch myself at him, but I’m not sure whether that would be to throw my arms or my hands around his neck. Hug or strangle? The desire for each is almost the same until I remember. Sacked for not dating him, it seems.Maybe he’s here to serve his own revenge.
Of course, in the place of Arwa, Kai leans back in her chair, booted feet propped on her large, black desk. As he examines the fingernails of his left hand, another masculine watch peeks from beneath the cuff of his shirt. Seems an expensive watch is replaceable. As expendable as the girl in his bed. So he gets to sack me. I hope it’s satisfying for him.
Who am I kidding? I hope he swallows his own tongue.
I raise my chin, determined to keep these thoughts from playing across my face, hoping to play it cool and aloof.
‘Please, sit.’
It takes me a moment to assemble his words into an invitation, synapses working on other things. Stepping away from the door, I pull out the chair opposite, the mortuary slab of a desk separating us. Watery sunlight filters through the window behind his head, fighting its way through a sky of sandy-brown clouds. I realise I haven’t noticed the weather at all today, beyond the heat, and for the first time since my arrival, the sun isn’t out.
‘I thought it best to meet on neutral ground.’
