kiddo," Barbara said. She went to the table, where she rooted in her bag for a packet of Players. She lit up and inhaled, wincing at the prick of pain in her lung.
"That's not good for you," Hadiyyah noted.
"So you've told me before." Barbara set the cigarette on the edge of an ashtray in which eight of its brothers had already been extinguished.
"I've got to shed this get-up, Hadiyyah, if you don't mind. I'm bloody broiling."
Hadiyyah didn't appear to take the hint. She nodded, saying, "You must be hot. Your face's gone all red," and she squirmed on the day bed to make herself more comfortable.
"Well, it's all girls, isn't it?" Barbara sighed.
She went to the cupboard, and standing in front of it, she yanked her dress over her head, putting her heavily taped chest on display.
"Were you in an accident?" Hadiyyah asked.
"Sort of. Yeah."
"Did you break something? Is that why you're bandaged?"
"My nose. Three ribs."
"That must've hurt awfully. Does it hurt still?
Shall I help you change your clothes?"
"Thanks. I can cope." Barbara kicked her pumps into the cupboard and peeled off her tights. In a lump beneath a black plastic mackintosh lay a pair of purple harem trousers with a drawstring waist. The very thing, she decided.
She stepped into them and topped the outfit with a crumpled pink T-shirt. Cock Robin Deserved It was printed on the front. Thus garbed, she turned back to the little girl, who was thumbing curiously through a paperback novel she'd found on the table next to the bed. The previous evening, Barbara had reached the part where the eponymous lusty savage had been driven beyond human endurance by the sight of the heroine's firm, young -- and conveniently stripped - buttocks as she delicately entered the river for her bath. Barbara didn't think Khalidah Hadiyyah needed to learn what happened next. She crossed the room and removed the book from her hands.
"What's a throbbing member?" Hadiyyah inquired, her brow furrowed.
"Ask your dad," Barbara said. "No. On second thought, don't." She couldn't imagine Hadiyah's solemn father fielding such a question with the same aplomb that she herself could muster.
"It's the official drum-beater for a secret society,"
Barbara explained. "He's the throbbing member.
The other members sing."
Hadiyyah nodded thoughtfully. "But it said that she touched his - "
"What about that ice cream?" Barbara asked heartily. "Can I accept the invitation straightaway?
I could do with strawberry. What about you?"
"That's what I've come to see you about."
Hadiyyah slithered off the bed and earnestly clasped her hands behind her back. "I've got to take back the invitation," she said, hurrying on to add, "But it's not a forever taking back. It's just for now."
"Oh." Barbara wondered why her spirits took a downward slide at the news.
Experiencing disappointment hardly made sense, since enjoying ice cream with an eight-year-old child was hardly an event to emblazon upon her social calendar.
"Dad and I are going away, you see. It's just for a few days. We're leaving straightaway.
But since I rang and invited you out for an ice cream, I thought I should tell you that we couldn't go till later. In case you rang me back. That's why I'm here."
"Ah. Sure." Barbara retrieved her cigarette from the ashtray and eased into one of the table's two accompanying chairs. She'd not yet opened yesterday's post, merely moving it on top of an old Daily Mail, and she saw that at the head of the pile was an envelope marked: Looking for Love? Aren't we all, she thought sardonically, and screwed the fag into her mouth.
"Dad said it was okay for me to come tell you. I didn't want you to think I'd invite you somewhere and then not be round to see did you want to go. That would be mean, wouldn't it?"
A little line appeared between Hadiyyah's heavy black eyebrows. Barbara observed the weight of worry settle on her small shoulders, and she reflected on the way that life moulds people to be who they are. No eight-year-old girl with her hair still in plaits should have to trouble herself so much about others.
"It's more than okay," Barbara said. "But I plan to hold you to the invitation. Where strawberry ice cream's concerned, I draw the line at letting friends off the hook."
Hadiyyah's face brightened. She gave a little skip. "We'll go when Dad and I get back, Barbara.
We're going away for a few days. Just a few days. Dad and I. Together. Did I already say?"