Page 31 of The Flowers of Bay C
‘Okay—’
‘You are all, look after number one, be your true self whatever it does to others, you are the most important person in your life. But I don’t see it like that so much. You say to me I cannot be happy in this marriage that was arranged for me, I say who are you to tell me what happiness is and that I do not have it? I have been married to Bilal for nearly thirty years now and I love him more all the time. He is the gentlest man I know. The best man I know.’
‘Woah!’ Jodie says again. ‘Where did that all come from?’ She grins over at me and Kat, and I wonder at her ability to bounce things off. ‘Anyway, actually, I was thinking about others. I was thinking about making Barbara feel happy.’
‘But if her happiness is then shattered because you do not mean what you say, then it will be no happiness at all.’
Jodie says nothing, opening and closing her mouth like a goldfish.
‘You said it to make yourself feel good, not to help Barbara, not in the end.’
‘I—’
‘Do not try to justify it.’
I sit on my bed, amazed at Amina. It’s like a light has been switched on, a candle lit where there was darkness, where there was a quiet woman hiding away in her bed there is now a formidable woman of strength.
‘I just wanted to help,’ Jodie says.
‘You wanted to feel like you were helping, no?’
‘Well, yeah, I guess, but also actually I did want to make her feel better.’
‘But you understand you have to mean what you say?’
‘I kind of do – mean it, I mean.’
Vivid lines cleave through Amina’s forehead. ‘But how can you?’
‘I’ll think about it, okay?’
‘It’s better that you just be kind to her without making promises.’
Jodie doesn’t reply.
‘You see,’ Amina says, hands on hips and face flushed, ‘sometimes you must think about what and how you say things to people.’
‘Well said,’ Kat says.
Violet trundles back into the ward behind her walker, the Dressing Gown of Doom soaking wet, her hair straggly and wild, bumping into Amina as she turns back to her bed. Violet staggers back, arms wide in alarm, as if she is afraid Amina will do something bad to her. Amina ignores her, sagging onto her bed and closing her eyes as if all the effort she put into standing up for herself has drained out of her, like water churning down a plughole.
‘Rude,’ Violet says.
No one replies.
‘Harold’s been in the toilet again,’ she says.
Chapter 10
Ahuge rat stares at me with slitted evil eyes, creeping up the bed towards me with its tail slashing to and fro, to and fro. I’m coming to get you, I’m coming to bite you, I’m coming to—
‘Shut up, you cantankerous old hag.’
A hissed whisper, from Barbara’s corner, behind tightly drawn curtains. A smothered giggle. ‘Never stops yakking on about mice and rats.’
‘Crazy old coot.’
I try to sit up. Try to grab the moment and make it make sense, but I am pinned to my bed and the words keep coming.
