Things We Do Not Tell the People We Love by Qureshi Huma

Author:Qureshi, Huma
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Too Much

Amal had sent an email to Shaheen a day earlier, a few lines saying only that she would make her own way home from the airport and expected to arrive at six o’clock in the evening, signing off with her initials AMC above the formality of her email signature, which she had so excitedly set up on graduating – Amal Martha Copeland, BA Hons, English and Philosophy, UCL – instead of a kiss. Shaheen read nothing into this brevity for she had grown used to these short rare notes appearing sporadically in her inbox. It didn’t matter any more. Her daughter would be home for dinner for the first time in nine months. She told her colleagues at the radio network where she worked: Amal is coming home in a month. Amal is coming home in a week. Amal is coming home today. They had never been apart this long.

Shaheen had taken the day off work to prepare. Though the cleaner had already been earlier in the week Shaheen cleaned the house once more with a chirpiness unlike her, humming along to the songs on the radio, listening to the same talk show she helped to produce. In Amal’s room she laid fresh sheets and left a small brown box tied with a cream ribbon on her desk. It contained a thin gold chain with a tiny horseshoe pendant the size of her pinky nail, which she had purchased last year at a Christmas market in Muswell Hill, the first Christmas Amal had not been home, the sort of gift Shaheen knew Amal would like, the sort of gift she hoped would last for ever. She had filled the bathroom cupboard with expensive lotions, made sure to purchase the coconut-scented shampoo Amal liked so much. She glanced at the clock over and over.

She had booked a haircut for the afternoon not just in anticipation of Amal’s return but because she needed a cut and a colour and had the day off work anyway. It was nothing drastic, a few inches trimmed to bring her hair above her shoulders and slivers of pale grey strands painted chestnut again, but when she looked at herself in the mirror, she saw someone brighter than her years. She stopped at the organic food market near the train station on her way home to pick up all the ingredients she would need to make Amal’s favourite meal; mushrooms and garlic and a pot of thick cream to toss with fresh ribbons of tagliatelle, sharp bars of chocolate that she melted and folded and baked into brownies. She planned to cook the pasta after Amal arrived, perhaps while she took a bath. She waited. Amal must have landed by now. She would be on her way.

Shaheen could not wait to spend some time reconnecting with Amal again. There was so much she wanted to know; about Spain, about her course and her future plans, about whether there had been anyone special while she was away.

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