Ханиф Курейши - Best British Short Stories 2020

I thought about it every day but when I told it, gaps inserted themselves. The order became confused. I left home and moved to a bedsit in London where I spent every night circling job adverts in Loot. I stopped dancing because classes were too expensive. Something had to change but I didn’t know who could change it, I told John. And then a business card came through the letterbox. It was from a real psychic called Nebula. I called and made an appointment. I went to Nebula’s place in Camden. She stood in the hallway, vest top sliding down her shoulders, cargo pants falling off her skinny hips. She led me through beaded curtains that kept on swinging and knocking against each other as we walked down another corridor. There were laminated pictures of ethereal, pastel women on the walls. She took me into a small, dark room with a white plastic table and two chairs, which looked like garden furniture.

Nebula sat me down, drew my arms into the centre. She closed her eyes, squeezed my fingers. We held hands until the table started shaking and she began digging her nails into my skin. The whites of her eyes became so big it was like they’d been boiled. You’re cursed, she said. I need £50 to lift the curse. That was the exact amount that I had saved from my dole for next month’s rent. I don’t have £50, I said. She sighed, got up and switched the light on. Started opening one cupboard after the other, leaving them ajar. We were in a kitchen but there was no food anywhere or anything that might be useful: no plates, no cups, just a polystyrene container with dried noodles hanging from its lip. When she turned to me, she had an armful of green candles. She bundled them towards me: Take these, burn as many as you can, she said.

I went back to my bedsit with the candles in a carrier bag. I drank three cups of lumpy instant coffee and lit each candle, watching until they burnt to nubs. I fell asleep before the last one. The next morning Barbara called me on my phone and said that she had a job for me. I had applied for so many that I didn’t know who she was or what she was talking about, but I said I’d take it.

I didn’t tell John about the fire. When I stopped talking, he was sitting upright, staring at the door. It was past midnight. You should speak to someone, he said. About what? I asked. The curse, he said. By someone, he meant a professional. Not him. After a few minutes, he got up and started looking for his trousers. I need eight hours of sleep every night, he said. I always need eight hours, whatever happens. He laid out his trousers on the bed before going to the bathroom, clutching his white pants in his fist. His peeing was loud, as if he were pouring water out of a bucket into the toilet. It went on for ages. He came back into the room and sat down next to me. His underwear sagged below his rounded stomach. I wanted to reach out and stroke the soft hairs tufting in the dough. There’s no such thing as a psychic, he said. Just charlatans. I know, I replied. I wondered what it would be like to be Cherri, and whether he patted her head in the same way.

John stopped pretending to be a stranger. He said that he wanted to see me in person only, me as me. In the meantime, Barbara was away and I was in charge of the school. I had never been in charge, not in seven years of assisting her. I paid the rent on the hall, I checked in with parents, I updated our website. My anxieties were being stealthily replaced by new ones, like when people’s homes get made over on weeknight television by well-meaning friends and neighbours. What if I stayed in one place? What if I pursued my own dream of dancing in front of adults?

There was a week left before the finale. I went to the little room at the back of the building where I liked to get ready after class. It had been a dressing room when the building was a theatre. Everything was stripped out but a small table and a mirror with lightbulbs around it, the kind you imagine an actress would use in a melodrama. There were framed posters on the wall for amateur performances of Grease and West Side Story. Boxes of abandoned props stacked against the walls. I felt the emptiness of the whole place behind the door, as though I might step out into nothing. I started taking my day make-up off, putting my night make-up on. I was seeing John that evening. There was a knock, as I began swiping my cheeks.

I had watched the last girl leaving, waited for the clang of the front entrance shutting behind her. There should have been no one left. Cherri’s snot-bubble voice came through the door: are you there? Can I come in? I thought you’d gone, I said. I opened the door. She stood, coat draped over one arm, milky thumbprints on her glasses. Dad says he’s going to be late, she said. She wriggled onto a patchy velvet stool in the corner. We had never been alone together for any length of time since the first day of the summer school.

In the mirror, I watched her twist around and look at the boxes. Are you getting dressed for something? You look so beautiful, she said, digging her fingers under a glove. I like to be ready for anything, I replied. I didn’t want her to think that she had to wear make-up to look beautiful. But it was important to be prepared. Beauty on the inside is fine, but it’s not going to last for ever, I said. The world can make you feel terrible about yourself. I glued on my lashes. Can I ask you questions? she said. I made a noise that could not have been construed as either yes or no, in an attempt to politely deter her. I had been careful not to pay too much obvious attention to Cherri, but I had not thought that she was paying attention to me.

Do you have secret children, Vashti? Where would I keep them? I said. I believe that it’s immoral to do anything but adopt. She opened her mouth, and kept it open, staring blankly at me. When I started to explain, she laughed. The game was to say things that shocked her. Vashti, do you have a secret husband? Because you’re old. Not old like my stepmum Fiona. Or like my mum was. But oldish. My lash glue was starting to drip onto my cheeks. There were no windows in the room, no air. I pulled the lashes off. It’s the twenty-first century and you will no longer learn anything meaningful by asking women these questions, I said. If you want to know someone, in a deep and substantial way, you ask them things like – do you make your bed every day? Do you read your horoscopes every day? Do you believe in them? I paused for breath. Did you practise psychokinesis as a child? My voice started to shake. Write those down, I told her.

I don’t know what psychokeenis is, she said. Psycho-kee-nee-ses, I said. It’s the power of moving things with your mind. That’s not real, she said. Is your father on his way? I asked. The glue was webbing my fingers together, I was starting to feel hot. Her phone buzzed. She shouted: He’s here! and threw up a little fist in the air.

I’ll come with you. I’m old enough to go on my own, she said. You don’t know who’s out there, I said. I hiked up my thin tights, arched into my heels. Cherri rolled her gloves back up. We left the dressing room. She put her hand in mine. Outside, the air was shimmering, the horizon smeary like a dirty window. In the distance, I could see John leaning against his car. His hair was pouffed out and he wasn’t wearing his leather jacket, just a suit jacket like most businessmen his age.

John looked up as I smiled at him. He grimaced but maybe he was just tired from franchising all day. He waved weakly, glanced at Cherri before getting back into the driver’s seat. There’s your dad, I said. She scanned the road, finally noticing the car. How did you know which one it is? I just guessed, I replied. Aren’t you going to say hello? she asked. I should return to the school, I said, knowing that it would be wrong to go any further.