Hideous kinky - By Esther Freud Page 0,22

have a big house with servants. But now they live here.’

The woman looked at us with gentle eyes. She knelt down and touched the fraying edges of my trousers.

‘Take them off,’ Bea nudged, in response to the woman’s murmurings.

My ears were full of the pounding of the fight behind the door. The echo of it rose and fell in waves. She pulled me up and began carefully to peel away my precious trousers, lifting each foot as she slipped them off. I did nothing to help. She sat me on a stool and washed the cut with water and a soft cloth. She smeared it with bright red cream that looked like blood. I smiled at the gore of it.

‘Come through,’ she said with her eyes. Bea and I followed her into a smaller room. A baby was sleeping on a bed piled high with cushions, on to which we climbed. From this windowless room only the occasional shout drifted in from outside. The lady brought us glasses of milk and coils of bright orange pastry filled with honey, so sweet it stung your mouth. I lay back on the bed and closed my eyes, flickering my lids against a haunting of my mother’s bleeding hands.

I was being carried through bright sunlight. I struggled against strong unfamiliar arms.

‘Put me down.’ I kicked, and a dark face swam into my vision. Smiling at me.

‘Bilal.’ I clung to him, my arms twisting round his neck. We were on the landing outside our room. A quiet lunchtime breeze murmured through the hotel – the smell of food behind closed doors. My mother was walking just behind, holding Bea by the hand and carrying my trousers in the other.

‘Good afternoon,’ she said, as if by chance she hadn’t seen me for a long time.

Lunch was spread out on a cloth on the floor. Bilal set me down and admired the red gash on my knee. ‘It really, really hurts,’ I said, knowing he knew it didn’t.

Linda was changing Mob.

‘Did you get the nappies back?’ Bea asked.

‘Only one.’ She pointed to a tattered rag soaking in a bucket. ‘They were using it as a dishcloth.’

’They’ve been stealing Mob’s nappies to wear as turbans,’ I told Bilal.

He laughed as if he knew the story. Then I remembered the gash in my trousers. I pulled them on and looked mournfully at the ruined knee. ‘Do you think I look like a boy?’

Bilal ruffled my hair. It was growing thicker and longer as predicted, and the orange of it was not so bright as it had been. Bilal heaped his plate with bread and tomato salad. He turned to Bea. ‘So you are a schoolgirl now?’

Bea nodded.

‘A schoolgirl who would like a holiday? A holiday on the Barage?’

‘But I’ve only just started.’

Mum scowled at her. ‘You’d like to go to the seaside for a few days. Surely?’

‘I’ll fall behind.’

‘She might get hit with a stick,’ I chimed in, longing to go.

Bea looked hard at her plate.

‘I’ll think about it,’ she said.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

We packed, the food we’d bought into a cardboard box. Packets of rice, chick-peas, tomatoes. A round soft cheese in hard paper. Pomegranates, and a mound of tiny oranges. Mum dressed us both in loose caftans for the long, hot journey to come.

‘We’ll have breakfast on the bus,’ she said hurrying.

Linda had taken a job typing poems for a blind poet she’d met in the Djemaa El Fna. She and Mob were staying at the hotel. We waved goodbye to Ayesha, the beautiful lady in the gold caftan, and the two nappy thieves who smiled and waved as if life were too short to bear grudges.

Bilal carried the box of food, on top of which sat a saucepan, a bowl and a sharp knife. His bag rattled with cups and a tin-opener. Mum carried the tartan duffle bag, borrowed from Linda, and Bea and I had a blanket each. We walked in procession through the streets.

As our bus pulled out of Marrakech, Bilal took a square of green corduroy from his pocket and straightened it carefully on his knee. ‘A patch for your trousers,’ he said.

‘But I didn’t bring them with me.’

Bilal winked in the direction of the duffle bag. He took a mesh of silk embroidery thread and borrowed a needle and a tiny pair of scissors from Mum. I leant against Bilal’s arm as he sewed, remembering only now and then to look out of the window, at the flat orange countryside that was gradually