Barbara swung round from the daybed where she'd placed her holdall. She saw not only her little neighbour but Hadiyyah's father, both of them framed in the doorway of her cottage: Hadiyyah with her brown arms crossed and one foot stuck out, as if she was about to begin tapping it like an aggrieved schoolteacher faced with a recalcitrant pupil. Azhar stood behind her, three plastic food boxes stacked in his hands. He used them to gesture with as he smiled and said,
"From last night, Barbara. We decided the chicken jalfrezi was one of my better attempts, and as Hadiyyah herself made the chapatis ...Perhaps for your own dinner tonight?"
"Brilliant," Barbara said. "Definitely better than the jar of Bolognese mince with cheddar on toast, which was what I'd had planned."
"Bar bara ..." Hadiyyah's voice was saintly, even in nutritional remonstration.
"Except ..." Barbara asked would it keep in the fridge as she was actually heading off for a day or so. Before she could explain matters further, Hadiyyah cried out in horror and dashed across the room, where she scooted behind the television set and picked up what Barbara had mindlessly hurled there. "What've you done with your nice A-line skirt?" she demanded, shaking it out. "Barbara, why're you not wearing it? Aren't you meant to be wearing it? Why's it behind the telly? Oh look! It's got slut's wool all over it now."
Barbara winced. She tried to play for time by taking the plastic containers from Azhar and stowing them in her fridge without allowing him to see its interior condition, which looked rather like an experiment in creating a new life form. She drew in on her cigarette and kept it clamped between her lips as she managed this manoeuvre, inadvertently spilling ash onto her T-shirt, which asked the world "How many toads does one girl have to kiss?" She brushed it off, making a smear, swore quietly, and faced the fact that she was going to have to answer at least one of Hadiyyah's questions.
"Got to have it altered," she told the little girl. "Bit overlong, which is what we decided when I tried it on, remember? You said it needed to be middle of the knee, and it's definitely not that. Dangling round my legs in a bloody unattractive fashion, it is."
"But why's it behind the telly?" Hadiyyah asked, not illogically. "'Cause if you mean to have it altered - "
"Oh. That." Barbara did one or two mental gymnastics and came up with, "I'll forget to do it if I put it in the wardrobe. But there, behind the telly ... ? Turn the telly on and what do I see? That skirt reminding me it needs making shorter."
Hadiyyah didn't look convinced. "What about the makeup? You're not wearing your makeup today either, are you, Barbara? I c'n help you with it, you know. I used to watch Mummy all the time. She wears makeup. Mummy wears all sorts of makeup, doesn't she, Dad?
Barbara, d'you know that Mummy - "
"That will do, khushi," Azhar told his daughter.
"But I was only going to say - "
"Barbara is busy, as you can see. And you and I have an Urdu lesson to go to, do we not?" He said to Barbara, "As I have only one lecture at the university today, we were going to invite you to come with us after Hadiyyah's lesson. A canal trip to Regent's Park for an ice. But it seems ..." He gestured at Barbara's holdall, still unzipped upon her bed.
"Hampshire," she said, and glimpsing Winston Nkata approaching from beyond the cottage door, which still stood open, "and here's my date."
Nkata had to duck to enter the cottage and when he was inside, he seemed to fill the place. Like her, he was wearing something that would be more comfortable than his usual getup.
Unlike her, he still managed to look professional. But then, his sartorial mentor was Thomas Lynley, and Barbara couldn't imagine Lynley ever looking anything but well put together. Nkata was in casual trousers and a pale green shirt. The trousers had creases that would have made a military man weep with joy, and he'd somehow managed to drive across London without getting a single wrinkle in his shirt. How, Barbara wondered, was that even possible?
Seeing him, Hadiyyah's eyes grew round and her face solemn. Nkata nodded a hello to her father and said to the little girl, "I expect you're Hadiyyah, eh?"