Nicola Barker - The Yips

Milah scrambles to her knees and lifts the black robe to waist level. Underneath the robe she is stick-thin and wears a vest and a pair of fashionably baggy jeans. She yanks down the waistband and shows Valentine a neat, blue ‘tramp-stamp’ depicting a couple of small dolphins (standing, tail to tail) on her lower back.

‘I love dolphins,’ she explains, mournfully, ‘but I regret having it done now. I try and keep it hidden from my daughter. It’s important for a mother to set a good example …’

Valentine places the tray down on the sofa, then unfolds the small, occasional table and transfers the tray on to it. She is angry about the photos but struggles not to show it.

Milah drops her robe and clambers to her feet. She heads back to the sofa, leaving the photos on the floor, moving through them without much care.

Valentine immediately crouches down and gathers them together.

‘I had a portfolio once,’ Milah sighs, plumping herself down again. ‘I loved art. But when I think about how much I loved it now — how passionate I was — it just seems so strange; almost unbelievable. When you love something that much — with such a high level of intensity — it can almost become a kind of burden, a worldly attachment, a distraction from what’s truly important.’

She pauses for a second, thoughtfully. ‘I suppose Karim feels that way about his healing work with the disabled. He thinks it’s charitable. He thinks it’s a gift from God.’

‘He was amazing with Mum,’ Valentine concurs. ‘As soon as they met he had her eating out of his hand. I’ve never seen her so completely at ease with a total stranger. It was incredible.’

‘He’s enormously wealthy,’ Milah continues, ignoring Valentine’s interjection. ‘Independently wealthy, but he inherited all these strange ideas about service from his mother.’

She glances over towards the door, then lowers her voice, furtively. ‘His mother ran a chain of brothels in Calcutta,’ she confides, with a shudder.

‘It must be a little tricky …’ Valentine starts off.

‘I mean if you decided you wanted to dispense with his services for any reason,’ Milah continues, pointedly, ‘it wouldn’t be a problem for him, financially.’

‘So how did the two of you meet up, originally?’ Valentine tries to change the subject.

‘My boyfriend’s grandmother had a stroke …’ Milah starts off, then puts a hand up to her cheek. ‘ Ow . My jaw’s really hurting,’ she groans. ‘My lip’s still completely numb. I refused any anaesthetic until halfway through, but then the pain got so bad …’

Valentine straightens up from her portfolio, shocked. ‘You refused anaesthetic for root-canal work?’

Milah shrugs. ‘I’m one of those people who likes to know exactly what’s happening to them. No sugar-coating. I like to feel what’s going on — be totally aware. My family all think I’m hyper-controlling …’ — she flaps her hand, dismissively — ‘but it’s really just hyper-sensitivity. I’m an empath.’

She glances over at Valentine. ‘D’you know what that means?’

Valentine nods. ‘I have a fair idea.’

‘I’m just amazingly sensitive,’ Milah continues. ‘Like my ears are very sensitive, for example.’

She points to her ears (which lie concealed beneath a shiny layer of black cloth). ‘Sudden noises can really spook me. I’m like a wild zebra, or a deer … Sometimes the sun dips behind a cloud and I get this massive shock. Like a real jolt. And the wind really freaks me out. I’m just mega-mega-sensitive.’

She ponders what she’s just said for a minute, then adds, almost as an afterthought, ‘In fact I find the burqa really helps with that. The burqa is like Allah’s love embracing me, it’s like I’m folded up in his love. Everything just bounces off it. I’m totally safe in here, totally focused and at peace.’

Valentine has stopped packing up her photos and is now listening intently.

‘I suppose it’s the same for you with your clothes and your make-up,’ Milah suggests, sensing this interest, ‘even the tattoos. It’s like they’re a shield. And the real, vulnerable you is just hiding behind them.’

Valentine ponders this hypothesis for a second, slightly unnerved.

‘I guess I tend to see the hair-dye and the tattoos and the antique fabrics as me,’ she eventually responds, ‘the best part of me. The perfect part.’

‘The bit you can control.’ Milah nods.

‘Exactly. And the rest is just … just …’ She struggles to find the right word.

‘A mess,’ Milah helpfully contributes.

‘… just … just slime .’ Valentine goes one step further, her earlier veneer of joyous ease and calm suddenly shattering. ‘Just a big pile of nasty, stinking —’

‘Like in Doctor Who ,’ Milah interjects, enthused, ‘when they open up a Dalek and you peek inside and there’s just this big, ugly pile of pathetic, throbbing goo …’

‘That’s it!’ Valentine’s both shocked and delighted by this comparison.

‘I used to feel that way too,’ Milah confides. ‘It was horrible. I felt so vulnerable. Everything flooding in. Nothing to stop it. No centre, no core .’

‘Just this big, black, angry hole …’

‘A bottomless pit.’

‘Which you could fall into at any minute.’

‘And that hard, angry voice just barking away at you, telling you how stupid you are, how ugly and ungrateful, how everyone despises you, how you deserve to be despised …’

‘You had the voice too?’ Valentine’s astonished.

‘Oh yeah.’ Milah nods. ‘All the time. I couldn’t look at myself in the mirror. Couldn’t meet my own eyes. I felt so ugly and tired and used-up and fat … I just thank Allah — every minute of every day — that I reverted back.’

‘You …?’ Valentine frowns.

‘I reverted back to Islam.’

‘You were raised a Muslim?’

‘Nope.’ Milah shakes her head. ‘It’s like a figure of speech. My parents are both atheists. They grew up in Pakistan but they were raised as Christians. I went to a Catholic school in Portsmouth. With Islam you don’t “convert” you “revert back”.’

‘I don’t understand …’ Valentine’s confused.

‘You revert back to an original, natural belief,’ Milah explains, ‘back to your original nature — who you always were underneath. You start again. The slate is wiped clean. Allah is the original Old Testament God. Ours is the original, Abrahamic faith.’

‘But wearing that thing isn’t …’ Valentine points to the burqa .

‘The full burqa isn’t a requirement, no. A woman should be modestly attired and her head always covered. The burqa is a preference. It’s my choice. It’s like my way of showing Allah — and my husband, my family, the wider community — how much he means to me. It’s like I’m at once obliterated by my love for him and also embraced in his love — protected by him.’

‘I’d love to …’

Valentine is about to say ‘obliterate the bad bits’.

‘Try it on?’ Milah completes her sentence for her.

‘Uh …’ Valentine blinks, anxiously. ‘Isn’t it very hot?’ she asks (by way of sidestepping the issue).

‘Not really.’ Milah is already pulling off her burqa — first the niqab that hangs over her head and shoulders. ‘Obviously you have to move around really carefully because you lose a big chunk of your peripheral vision. And it can be difficult not to trip over on the fabric until you’re fully accustomed to walking in it.’

Next Milah removes her abaya — the lower, robe part of her outfit — and offers it to Valentine. Valentine’s gut instinct is to refuse — point-blank — to put it on, but she is momentarily disarmed — and distracted — by the extraordinary sight of Milah now completely exposed: her extreme youthfulness comes as a shock, for one thing; her natural grace, her lovely neck (her dark hair drawn back into a neat bun), her gappy teeth, her boyishly lean figure …