Then Zahra stood and walked up the stairs, straight-backed. When she came to the top, she reached for her coat hanging on the rack, and Maryam saw the slump of her shoulders. Everything was in that slump—the disgrace that lay ahead, the empty days, the shame-filled nights, the end of the whole life she had so carefully planned for herself.

  “Za!” she called out, but Zahra didn’t look back. She opened the door and walked out, into the sound of revelry.

  The phone played a happy tune. It was Layla, calling to see how the evening was going. She would be listening to the ringing phone, imagining Zahra and Maryam sipping wine, laughing, swapping stories of childhood, the meal they’d cooked waiting to be devoured, the ornaments put away until they brought them back out next year for another Christmas together, much like the one before and the one before that. Maryam let the phone ring and ring, elbows braced on the breakfast bar, head in her hands. A monster.

  LONDON

  2020

  Spring

  The trees were abundant with leaf once more, the dogs frolicked as though it were any other spring. People walked, purposeful, veering away from each other and nodding in thanks for this new act of courtesy. The dogs were considered safe by some, so several hands reached out, hoping to brush against silken fur. The rarity of touch. A tall woman was walking swiftly down the path that cut from north to south; a smaller woman made more languid progress along the east-to-west path. They arrived at the same moment where the two paths met.

  It had been months since they’d last seen each other, but neither acknowledged the other. The east-to-west path had come to an end, so it only made sense for the second woman to turn onto the north-to-south one. Strides adjusted. The path was broad enough for two women to walk alongside each other while still staying apart. And so they walked. Through Primrose Hill, across the street, along the zoo enclosure where the giraffe house was closed, and down through Regent’s Park.

  Ambulances wailed, clouds drifted past the sun, the cricket pitches were deserted. A child fell and bloodied her knee; her mother implored passersby not to stop and help. They walked and they kept on walking. Out of the park, along Park Crescent, down the eerie emptiness of Regent Street, and past Eros’s statue where two lovers kissed in defiance of everything, in celebration of everything, and farther on they went toward the bronze lions of Trafalgar Square, and beyond they would keep going, beyond to the Thames itself, and perhaps then they would turn, perhaps, or else not. All the while they kept looking ahead and didn’t speak. There was nothing to say, and nowhere else to be.

  Acknowledgments

  Alexandra Pringle, for the magic of the last twenty-eight years.

  Victoria Hobbs, Faiza S. Khan, Rebecca Saletan, and everyone at Bloomsbury, Riverhead, and AM Heath who has played a role in the life of this book.

  Lynn Akashi, Tahmima Anam, Therese Chehade, Asad Haider, Suzy Hansen, Maha Khan-Phillips, Zain Mustafa, Dermot O’Flynn, Anna Pincus, Elizabeth Porto, Gillian Slovo, Pam Thompson, Karachi Twitter, Alex von Tunzelmann.

  And all my childhood friends.

  About the Author

  Kamila Shamsie is the author of several previous novels, most recently Home Fire, which won the Women’s Prize for Fiction, was longlisted for the Booker Prize, and was a finalist for the International Dublin Literary Award, the Costa Novel Award, and the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature, among other honors. She was raised in Karachi and lives in London.

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  Kamila Shamsie, Best of Friends

 

 

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