Elizabeth George: With No One As Witness

She climbed out and flipped the seat forward to gather up the first of the plastic carrier bags. She’d linked four of them over her arms and was dragging them out of the car when she heard her name called.

Someone sang it out. “Barbara! Barbara! Look what I’ve found in the cupboard.”

Barbara straightened and glanced in the direction from which the voice had chimed. She saw the young daughter of her neighbour sitting on the weathered wooden bench in front of the ground-floor flat of the old converted building. She’d removed her shoes and was in the process of struggling into a pair of inline skates. Far too large by the look of them, Barbara thought. Hadiyyah was only eight years old and the skates were clearly meant for an adult.

“These’re Mummy’s,” Hadiyyah informed her, as if reading her mind. “I found them in a cupboard, like I said. I’ve never skated on them before. I expect they’re going to be big on me, but I’ve stuffed them with kitchen towels. Dad doesn’t know.”

“About the kitchen towels?”

Hadiyyah giggled. “Not that ! He doesn’t know that I’ve found them.”

“Perhaps you’re not meant to be using them.”

“Oh, they weren’t hidden . Just put away. Till Mummy gets home, I expect. She’s in-”

“Canada. Right,” Barbara nodded. “Well, you take care with those. Your dad’s not going to be chuffed if you fall and break your head. D’you have a helmet or something?”

Hadiyyah looked down at her feet-one skated and one socked-and thought about this. “Am I meant to?”

“Safety precaution,” Barbara told her. “A consideration for the street sweepers, as well. Keeps people’s brains off the pavement.”

Hadiyyah rolled her eyes. “I know you’re joking.”

Barbara crossed her heart. “God’s truth. Where’s your dad, anyway? Are you alone today?” She kicked open the picket gate that fronted a path to the house, and she considered whether she ought to talk to Taymullah Azhar once again about leaving his daughter on her own. While it was true that he did it rarely enough, Barbara had told him that she would be pleased to look after Hadiyyah on her own time off if he had students to meet or lab work to supervise at the university. Hadiyyah was remarkably self-sufficient for an eight-year-old, but at the end of the day she was still that: an eight-year-old, and more innocent than her fellows, in part because of a culture that kept her protected and in part because of the desertion of her English mother who had now been “in Canada” for nearly a year.

“He’s gone to buy me a surprise,” Hadiyyah informed her matter-of-factly. “He thinks I don’t know, he thinks I think he’s running an errand, but I know what he’s really doing. It’s ’cause he feels bad and he thinks I feel bad, which I don’t, but he wants to help me feel better anyway. So he said, ‘I’ve an errand to run, kushi ,’ and I’m meant to think it’s not about me. Have you done your shopping? C’n I help you, Barbara?”

“More bags in the car if you want to fetch them,” Barbara told her.

Hadiyyah slipped off the bench and-one skate on and one skate off-hopped over to the Mini and pulled out the rest of the bags. Barbara waited at the corner of the house. When Hadiyyah joined her, bobbing up and down on her one skate, Barbara said, “What’s the occasion, then?”

Hadiyyah followed her to the bottom of the property where, under a false acacia tree, Barbara’s bungalow-looking much like a garden shed with delusions of grandeur-snowed flakes of green paint onto a narrow flower bed in need of planting. “Hmm?” Hadiyyah asked. Close up now, Barbara could see that the little girl wore the headphones of a CD player round her neck and the player itself attached to the waistband of her blue jeans. Some unidentifiable music was issuing tinnily from it in a feminine register. Hadiyyah appeared not to notice this.

“The surprise,” Barbara said as she opened the front door of her digs. “You said your dad was out fetching you a surprise.”

“Oh, that .” Hadiyyah clumped into the bungalow and deposited her burdens on the dining table where several days’ post mingled with four copies of the Evening Standard , a basket of dirty laundry, and an empty bag of custard cremes. It all made an unappealing jumble at which the habitually neat little girl frowned meaningfully. “You haven’t sorted out your belongings,” she chided.

“Astute observation,” Barbara murmured. “And the surprise? I know it’s not your birthday.”

Hadiyyah tapped her skate-shod foot against the floor and looked suddenly uncomfortable, a reaction entirely unusual for her. She had, Barbara noted, plaited her own dark hair today. Her parting made a series of zigzags while the red bows at the end of her plaits were lopsided, with one tied a good inch higher than the other. “Well,” she said as Barbara began emptying the first of the carrier bags onto the work top of the kitchen area, “he didn’t exactly say, but I expect it’s ’cause Mrs. Thompson phoned him.”

Barbara recognised the name of Hadiyyah’s teacher. She looked over her shoulder at the little girl and raised a questioning eyebrow.

“See, there was a tea,” Hadiyyah informed her. “Well, not really a tea, but that’s what they called it because if they called it what it really was, everyone would’ve been too embarrassed and no one would’ve gone. And they did want everyone to go.”

“Why? What was it really?”

Hadiyyah turned away and began unloading the carrier bags she’d brought from the Mini. It was, she informed Barbara, more of an event than a tea, or really, more of a meeting than an event. Mrs. Thompson had a lady come to talk to them about their bodies , you see, and all the girls in the class and all their mums came to listen and afterwards they could ask questions and after that they had orange squash and biscuits and cakes. So Mrs. Thompson called it a tea although no one actually drank tea. Hadiyyah, having no mum to take along, had eschewed attending the event altogether. Hence the phone call from Mrs. Thompson to her father because, like she said, everyone was really meant to go.

“Dad said he would’ve gone,” Hadiyyah said. “But that would’ve been excruciating. ’ Sides, Meagan Dobson told me what it was all about anyway. Girl stuff. Babies. Boys. Periods .” She pulled a shuddering face. “You know.”

“Ah. Got it.” Barbara could understand how Azhar must have reacted to the phone call from the teacher. No one she had ever met had as much pride as the Pakistani professor who was her neighbour. “Well, kiddo, if you ever need a gal pal to act as a substitute for your mother,” she told Hadiyyah, “I’m happy to oblige.”

“How lovely!” Hadiyyah exclaimed. For a moment Barbara thought she was referring to her offer as maternal surrogate, but she saw that her little friend was bringing forth a package from within the bag of groceries: Chocotastic Pop-Tarts. “Is this for your breakfast?” Hadiyyah sighed.

“Perfect nutrition for the professional woman on the go,” Barbara told her. “Let it be our little secret, okay? One of many.”

“And what’re these ?” Hadiyyah asked as if she hadn’t spoken. “Oh, wonderful . Clotted-cream ice-cream bars! If I was a grown-up, I’d eat just like you.”

“I do like to touch on all the basic food groups,” Barbara told her. “Chocolate, sugar, fat, and tobacco. Have you come across the Players, by the way?”

“You mustn’t keep smoking,” Hadiyyah told her, rustling in one of the bags and bringing out a carton of the cigarettes. “Dad’s trying to stop. Did I tell you? Mummy’ll be so pleased. She asked him and asked him to stop. ‘Hari, it’ll make your lungs all nasty if you don’t quit,’ is what she says. I don’t smoke.”