Sunjeev Sahota - The Year of the Runaways

She wrote a second note when two days later the same thing happened. She left it on the kitchen table, along with her weekly payment, and when she returned from work that evening both were gone. She opened the fridge. Another pointless new carton. She buried her face in her hands.

Jessica handed Narinder an envelope — her wages in cash. ‘I do hope you’re enjoying it with us?’

‘I am. I really am,’ and she meant it. She never felt more part of the world than when she was working.

She walked home with her coat buttoned up and a hand at her throat, scrunching her collar closed. Again, she saw Tochi up ahead, going past their turn-off. She still didn’t know why he did that. Once she was in the kitchen, she went through the beads and up to her room, taking off her coat as she went. She splashed some water on her face from the basin in the bathroom and returned downstairs. She chopped an onion and set it to stew on the stove, adding a cube of the garlic-ginger mixture she’d learned to make in bulk and keep chilled in ice trays. Then she wiped the counters down with a new disinfectant she’d bought, hoping this one might at last rid the surfaces of their black streaky skin.

She heard the scrape of the side gate, footsteps. She froze, watchful, but it was only him, coming past the window and now through the door. A blue carrier bag hung from his fingers and this he lifted onto the counter and she watched him place the bread and eggs to one side and then take out the carton of milk and step towards the fridge. Anger propelled her forward and she snatched the carton from his hand and threw it to the floor.

‘Why are you being like this? Why? Have I become so worthless?’ Her eyes were white-wide, beseeching. She pressed a finger to her chest. ‘What have I ever done to you? To anyone? I want to know. Why is this happening to me?’

He picked up the carton from the floor and put it on the shelf, next to hers. She’d moved to the cooker.

‘There was a raid,’ he said. ‘Here.’

She turned round. ‘That was months ago.’

‘Three months ago.’

She didn’t think she understood. ‘And Randeep— What? He’s been deported? But I’d have been told.’

‘All I know is there was a raid. Sometimes they keep an eye on the house.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘He might have come back here too soon.’

‘But he’s got a visa.’

He took a few slices of bread and began to butter them.

‘Are you going to leave now?’ She realized she didn’t want him to.

‘If you stay quiet — if you quit the tantrums — they won’t come again.’ He took a dented, grim-looking tin from the cupboard — pilchards — and slopped it all into a pan.

‘I’m making a fresh sabzi,’ she said. ‘I can make enough for two.’

‘No.’ Then: ‘Thank you.’

*

A new girl had started at Crunchy Fried Chicken, replacing Kirsty, but for some reason to do with babysitters she could only work the late shifts. Tochi had been moved to earlies, finishing each day at 4 p.m. He’d argued with Malkeet over it, saying they didn’t need anyone else and he’d been coping fine with the double shift.

‘But I need someone who can banter at night,’ Malkeet said. ‘Someone who doesn’t look like he wants to kill half my customers.’

A week on, he was still angry about it, about the cut in his income. He hauled the five-litre canister of oil into his arms and, to shake the dregs from the bottom, banged it against the steel fryers, hard.

‘Very mature,’ Harkiran said.

Then Tochi topped up the oil and chucked in the chips. But he’d forgotten to lower the temperature and the splashback was considerable. He managed to look away in time and felt only his forearm scald.

‘You idiot!’ Malkeet said, turning the gauge. He fetched a tube of soothing cream from the toilet room. ‘See what happens when you do things in a temper? Turn round. Lift your T-shirt.’

‘It’s fine,’ Tochi said.

‘Your back got splashed to fuck. How can it be fine?’

‘I said it’s fine.’

His arm, however, was hot and sore and red, as if a whole world of heat was trapped inside it. For a moment, he thought he felt his back tense, his body remembering. He took the cream home and applied it again, then found a bandage and sat at the table and wound it crudely up from his hand. He tried tidying the ends in, but as soon as he stood up the whole thing unravelled. He was looking for a safety pin under the sink when she walked through the door.

‘What happened?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Can I help?’

He carried on searching, knocking aside her stupid cleaning bottles.

‘Do you want a pin?’

He stopped. ‘Don’t put yourself out.’

She fetched several from her room and told him to sit while she took the bandage and started at his elbow and worked tidily, carefully, down to his wrist. He checked, but she didn’t seem to mind touching his skin. Maybe she didn’t know. Or didn’t care. In any case, each time he felt the soft scrape of her fingertips, he had to concentrate hard on the door straight ahead.

She used three pins to keep it all in place and said he should change it every day. ‘But I can do that.’

He nodded.

‘So you left work early?’

‘Yes.’

‘I see you sometimes. Walking home. Except you come a different way.’

He said nothing.

‘Is it quicker? Your way?’

‘Quicker?’

‘I mean, why don’t you just turn off the main road nearer the house?’

‘I used to.’

‘You don’t any more?’

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

He sighed, impatient. ‘Because of the police.’

She thought on this, in case she’d missed something. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen any police round there.’

‘Perhaps because you don’t need to worry about them.’

‘Can I ask where you see them?’

‘Are you calling me a liar?’

She didn’t respond, and he seemed to regret the accusation.

‘Near the school,’ he said.

‘The school?’

‘That’s what I said.’

She felt a smile coming to her lips. ‘Do you mean outside the school?’

He looked across.

‘At about four o’clock?’

‘If you’ve got something to say, tell me.’

She explained what a lollipop lady was, that it had nothing to do with the police and was no reason for him to walk so far out of his way.

‘Honestly. You don’t have to do that.’

He nodded. He seemed embarrassed.‘Thank you for telling me.’

The following afternoon, at work, he pulled her crumpled notes from his pocket and asked Harkiran to read them for him, and when Narinder got back from work that evening she opened the fridge and saw that he hadn’t bought his own separate carton of milk, and had instead drunk from hers.

Avtar felt a little fresher that evening as he sat down to eat. He’d washed in the toilets of the club, feeling a bit silly as he watched himself digging into his armpits with pink soap from the dispensers. He removed the steel plate covering the food bucket. There was still maybe half an inch of watery dhal left, enough for tonight. He’d top up at the gurdwara tomorrow. He spun the bread wrapper open and extracted two slices. Afterwards, he put the empty bucket in the corner and moved to the back of the Portakabin and lay on the bunk he’d made. Through the window, Leeds wore its evening lights: yellow office windows, a nightclub called Flares flashing crazily. He’d hitched a ride here straight from Jagdish’s, three weeks ago now. He’d hoped the building work might have started up again. It hadn’t. The foundations were still exposed. The cranes and scaffolding, the mesh sheeting and aluminium tunnel, none of it had changed. He should count himself lucky, though, because the very next day he’d found work cleaning a club called Parachute, for a young mussulman on the make. God was still looking over him. And he’d get his visa renewed soon, with his second year about to begin. Yes, it wasn’t all bad, he told himself, as he drew his knees up and brought his face down to meet them.