us and I fold my arms across my chest. The guy is scratching his shaggy head, perhaps impressed, or taken aback, by my sharp intuition. At least that’s one thing I can be proud of.
‘So how does me being scruffy make you think I’m a flashy businessman?’ he asks. ‘Don’t I need a suit? A poncey briefcase?’
I tut, roll my eyes. ‘No, they’re fake businessmen.’
‘Y’what?’
‘The ones with the real money go to meetings in their scruff.’ I start to walk towards him, but the guy flings out his arms signalling for me to keep my distance. ‘They’re the owners of the companies – or their dads are – which is most likely your scenario. Am I right?’
‘Spot on.’
‘You’ve got so much money you don’t need to care about your image. But you want to be seen driving an awesome car, because you can.’
He twists around to look me right in the eye. He has pale grey eyes, like unpolished diamonds. There’s a flicker, a glint. ‘You’re some sort of expert in this field, are you?’
‘I know a thing or two.’ I shrug.
‘Can you stop talking now?’
‘Because I’m right?’
‘Because you’re giving me a fucking headache.’
I know a thing or two about businessmen. My papa is one.
The kind who wears the smart suit and carries the briefcase and always wants a better car: he’s somebody else’s bitch. He spends his time complaining about how many hours he’s worked compared to the CEO who drives around in his BMW and never shows up on time to meetings; never dresses appropriately.
‘Why don’t you just quit?’ I once asked. I was about sixteen. The newly shaped Khoury family were out eating dinner together – a rare event – whilst on a long weekend in Sri Lanka, a short flight away from our residence in Dubai.
‘He can’t quit, Zara-Baby,’ Marina, my papa’s wife, said.
No matter how many times I asked politely for the hyphenated ‘Baby’ to be dropped from my name, Marina, a six-foot-tall Russian blend of beauty and severity, chose to ignore me. So I just died a little inside every time I heard it. Thank God I didn’t spend much time with Marina or I would’ve been fully dead by the time I was seventeen.
‘He has responsibility. He has family now.’
‘He’s always had family,’ I said.
I could never bring myself to think of Marina as my stepmom. Still can’t. It’s not because of anything tragic. My own mom is alive and well, living in the States, busy painting watercolour landscapes of lighthouses and baking cookies. No, the real drama is more excruciating, more soap opera. Marina is only seven years older than me.
‘Can’t you just get another job, Papa?’ I asked.
He sipped his beer, sucked on a marinated prawn.
‘Zara-Baby, life is not easy,’ Marina said, just as Sammy started to throw a tantrum. I stood up, on instinct wanting to take my baby brother into my arms, cuddle him and give him his bottle, sing the song about the dog called Bingo. But before I could get to him, my papa told me to sit back down and clicked at Lulu, our Filipino maid, who was eating dinner at the table behind us. Marina took Sammy from his highchair, his chubby legs kicking away, and kissed his forehead before passing him to Lulu.
‘Goodnight my precious Sammy-Baby,’ Marina said.
‘Night, Sammy Bear,’ I said. ‘Night, Lulu.’
‘Listen, Zara,’ my papa said, wiping his mouth with the napkin. ‘You don’t understand because you haven’t had to work hard for anything. You’re going to have to find a good man to marry who will take care of you. And if you don’t manage that, what are you going to do?’
‘I’ll take care of myself.’
‘How?’
‘I’ll get a job.’
‘Doing what?’
‘I’ll try different things, see what makes me happy.’
‘Wrong.’
‘Okay, well, maybe I could illustrate books, you know, for kids?’
Marina laughed, sipped her wine.
‘And I’d like to eat croissants and sit on the cobbles of Montmartre writing my memoirs, but hey, I live in the real world,’ my papa snapped. ‘Zara, some people are born into money. Some have to work for it. Now, you might think you were born into money—’
‘I don’t.’
‘Don’t interrupt me. People like us, we have to work for it. The nice villa we live in, your school fees – and don’t get me started on what it cost me to send you to that boarding school – it’s my job that pays for all that. Without my job, what would you do?’
I could feel a mosquito tickling my