Something to Tell You: A Novel by Hanif Kureishi

Author:Hanif Kureishi [Kureishi, Hanif]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Literature
ISBN: 9781416588184
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2008-08-19T06:00:00+00:00

PART TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY

“Oh, my darling Jamal, it’s been so long, kiss me and kiss me again.”

“Better keep your hands on the wheel, Karen.”

“I can drive one-handed. You know there’s a lot I can do one-handed.”

I said, “I didn’t know you were coming to George’s this weekend.”

“You didn’t? But I haven’t been out for absolutely ages.”

“You’ve been hiding at home?”

She said, “Things haven’t been good. They’ve been bloody rotten and down on me. Can’t we stop for a drink?”

“No.”

“Just a little one in a country pub?”

“It’s a different decade now, I’m afraid.”

“Haven’t we become too sensible?”

“The world has, but I’m sure you haven’t. It’s terrific to see you, Karen.”

“Is it? Is it really, Jamal?”

Karen was driving me to Mustaq’s.

Miriam had become determined to live her own life, even though she still felt guilty about leaving the kids and the house. Nonetheless, she and Henry were looking for the opportunity to get away together. As there was a club they were reluctant to miss on Friday night, they would come to the country after lunch on Saturday morning. I could have waited for them or gone down on the train.

It was a surprise then, when my old girlfriend Karen Pearl, the “TV Bitch,” offered me a lift. I wasn’t aware that she knew Mustaq, but it turned out that over the years he had appeared several times on her TV shows. Now and again she went to his house to recuperate from her life.

She turned up outside my place in a tiny red car, which roared when she pressed the accelerator. She’d asked her husband to buy it as compensation for leaving her, which he considered a more than fair exchange. If I was already anxious about seeing Mustaq and answering his inevitable questions, being squashed in a small space with Karen while being hurled down the motorway certainly made me breathe more rapidly.

“I am delighted and totally chuffed to be getting away,” she said. “You?”

I felt unnaturally close to the road; Karen played loud music, mostly ABBA, and, for my benefit, Gladys Knight as well as the Supremes, while smoking the entire time, as we always used to. Twice she opened the roof to demonstrate how it worked.

“Groovy top.”

“Isn’t it? We’re so old now, Jamal. My two girls are growing up,” she said. “It’s all slammed doors and lost mobile phones. But we have a grand girly time—like being back at boarding school. Otherwise, contrary to your corrupt view of me, I don’t have much of a laugh these days. Tom”—her ex-husband—“has taken the girls, along with his more or less teenage girlfriend, to Disneyland, Paris. As they are all of the same mental age, they’ll have a great time.”

“You having anyone?”

“I’m an untouchable,” she said. “This will make you laugh—I know exactly the kind of thing which will appeal to you.”

“Tell me.”

“Well, a few weeks ago I thought I’d give myself a treat. I tried it on with a potential toy boy. I’d heard that’s what all the old girls were doing.

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