Page 81 of The Mismatch

Her heart skittered momentarily. He couldn’t, she thought. But the way he looked at her, he seemed certain.

‘Know what?’

‘You’re pregnant, aren’t you?’

She said nothing, looked down at her wedding ring. Spun the gold band around her finger while she thought of something to say.

‘Fucking answer me,’ her husband said through gritted teeth.

‘I think so, yes.’

He walked towards her, his face rigid. ‘Why didn’t you tell me? Did you not think I needed to know? And you say we’ll go back home. How? Now we’ve got a baby on the way and you want to finish your PhD. You’re setting down roots here.It doesn’t matter to you if I’m included in your plan, though, does it?’

Her head snapped up. ‘Hossein, don’t be like this.’ She struggled to find the right words. ‘I didn’t tell you because I didn’t know how to. We didn’t plan this. It’s come at the worst time …’

‘So, now you don’t even want my baby.’

‘No! Hossein, no. Don’t say that.’ She breathed unsteadily. ‘How did you find out?’

‘For someone so clever, sometimes you can be dumb. You left the pregnancy test in the bin.’

He didn’t clean the flat so she’d assumed he’d never look in the bins.

‘You don’t have to be unkind,’ she said.

‘You know what, Neda azizam, I will be however I want to be.’ He punched the wall, making her jump. ‘We’re fucking stuck here now. Even if we wanted to go back to Iran, everything there has changed too. Nothing’s the same.’

‘So why are you angry at me?’

‘I’m angry at everything.’

This was the first red flag from Hossein that Neda ignored. Three years afterwards his habitual discontent would develop into something much worse, something that would change their lives completely.

CHAPTER 38

Soraya

London, 2014

Soraya didn’t want to be at this party. She and Magnus needed to be low-key after all that had happened, not be seen out together. But she knew she needed to try and get things back to normal. That and the fact that Magnus had insisted she come.

They held hands on the way there, an act that made Soraya exceptionally paranoid that someone would see them, so she kept her head down as they walked. But when they got to the front door of the house where the party was being held and he’d pressed the bell, Magnus kept both his hands in his jacket pockets.

They were standing outside a slightly run-down semi; a family house until landlords realised how much young people would pay to live so close to the university. Some of its former smartness had worn off – the low brick wall that separated it from the street crumbling, the brown paintwork chipped in places.

A red-headed man opened the door. He wore a crested rugby hoody like Magnus’s.

‘Mate,’ he said loudly, grasping Magnus’s shoulder, before looking at Soraya, with an amused expression on his face. ‘This is her, then?’

She tried to smile but instead her mouth turned downwards rather than upwards.

‘This is Tommy,’ Magnus said.

‘I’ve heard all about you, Sarah,’ he said, peering at Soraya.

She looked behind her, already aware there was no one else there. ‘Sarah?’

Magnus shifted on his feet. ‘It’s Soraya,’ he said to his friend. ‘He’s drunk, ignore him,’ he whispered in her ear.