Page 27 of The Mismatch

Her dad’s snores were louder, echoing around the room.

‘Eh!’ someone yelled in exasperation. Neda and Rabeh sniggered under their covers.

A small kick. The snoring stopped.

‘Wha—’ her dad said, confusion thick in his voice. Everyone was silent, pretending to be asleep. He shook his head, scratched it, and then turned over. Everyone had a smile on their face, happy for the momentary quiet.

She felt a tap on her shoulder. Rabeh. Neda could only see the outline of her face, but thought her sister was smiling at her. She held her pinkie finger out to Neda. ‘Your secret is safe with me, OK?’

Through sleepy eyes Neda wrapped her pinkie around her sister’s a tad too tightly. ‘Promise?’

‘Promise.’

CHAPTER 11

Soraya

Brighton, 2014

‘These English people kiss anyone,’ Soraya’s mum said, raising her hands in exasperation.

The familiar drumming chorus of theEastEnderstheme tune came on.

‘Who wants a cup of tea then?’ Her mum got up to fill the kettle as theCoronation Streetmusic began. ‘Hey, pause it,’ she yelled. Soraya’s dad complied.

With the TV paused, the hum of the kettle brewing was loud in the background. Their living room and kitchen had an archway separating the two rooms, but it was essentially one large room with two doorways accessing it from the hallway.

The family were not fans of the minimalist look; they threw nothing away. The living room was cluttered with books, papers, broken printers, and numerous Iranian vases. And a plethora of Persian carpets. The rugs overlapped each other on the floor, and three hung proudly on the walls. When Soraya was ten years old she saw them installed there when she came home from school one day. Horrified, she had asked her mum, ‘Why?’

‘I saw someone do it on TV, and theirs aren’t evenrealPersian carpets,’ her mum had replied.

‘What’s your plan now, then, Soraya?’ Amir asked. He was sitting on the floor, his back against the sofa their dad lay on.

‘Um, get a job?’

‘Have you been applying?’ their dad asked. As he spoke a piece of pistachio he had been chewing flew out of his mouth.

She hadn’t told the rest of her family about her failed interview.

‘I only just graduated,’ Soraya said.

‘You’ve had all summer to apply for jobs,’ Amir chimed in, and then he smugly added, ‘I got my first job two weeks after my last exam.’

‘A job you hate,’ she replied.

‘A job that means I’ve saved enough for a deposit on a house,’ he retorted. Amir worked as an accountant, not because he was particularly talented in mathematics but because it was what their parents wanted.

‘Soraya did a creative subject though, it’s different,’ Parvin said.

‘We told her to study medicine, or even law, but she didn’t listen,’ their dad said.

Soraya clenched her fist, letting her fingernails dig into her palm. She pressed harder until it hurt. They thought she was like them: intelligent. Like her mum who taught biomedicine at Sussex University. Like Amir who got a First in accounting. Like Parvin who, despite only working part-time for a travel company, earned £70,000 a year, tax-free, in Bahrain, which allowed her to alternate her time between there and England. Soraya struggled with education, always had, and wanted so badly to find a subject she was naturally talented in.

Failure hung over her. She had applied to eighteen jobs in total, received twelve rejection emails, and the others hadn’t responded to her yet.

‘Do you need help?’ Soraya asked her mum, walking into the kitchen.

She was pouring hot water into a teapot; the sweet aroma of spices, predominantly cardamom, filled the air. Not allowing it to brew properly, her mum poured the tea into mismatched mugs.