Desh Read Free Page B

Good times, though, good times.
    Around five Aila came home to find her brother lugging plastic bags, her mother crying in the lounge room and huge jars of coins of the table. “All right, I give in. What’s going on?”
    Mazid dumped the bags, one by one, on the table. “The landlord’s been. He wants the restaurant rent by Monday.”
    â€œWe talking one month or two?” said Aila.
    â€œThree.”
    â€œI knew it. So now we’re counting coins? Ma, this isn’t going to help. We need thousands, not tens.”
    Nessa wiped her eyes. “It all adds up. Your father still has the first five pound note he earned in this country.”
    â€œSo you keep telling me. Maz, have you called him?” He nodded and went back upstairs, while Nessa retrieved a clutch of battered envelopes from inside the kitchen. Aila sat at the table and stared at envelopes stuffed with notes. “Where did all this come from?”
    Her mother remained standing. “I’ve been saving since the day I was married. All the change from the housekeeping? I kept it, and every bit of money I found lying around, in pockets or on the floor. I kept those as well. A man can only save what his wife doesn’t spend,” she added, as though answering a judgement of some kind.
    â€œThis is completely and utterly Dad’s fault. He knows the landlord wants cash. He should get his act together and not put you through hell every time the rent’s due.”
    â€œShow some respect. Just remember he’s come from nothing and built up a business on his own.”
    â€œNot quite, he has my salary now.” She raised an eyebrow, in defiance.
    Her mother glared. “That is his property.” Aila slumped against the table, holding out one arm. She poked the belly of a bag and watched the coins resettle. Here was a wife who measured her devotion coin by coin, year by year, while her husband just accepted this as the God given right of a Bengali man. If she had her way, the rules would be rewritten.
    Her thoughts were interrupted by deep grunts and groans from behind. Mazid had found a catering bucket so full of coins it took all his strength to pull it out from under the sink in the kitchen and drag it across the carpet. “Holy moley, little Bro.” She helped pull it over and the three of them faced the huge pile sprawled over the mahogany table, while her mother rubbed Mazid’s back. “Well, that’s that then. Let’s get stuck in,” she said.
    Aila counted and her brother made towers of coins. They worked their way from one corner of the table towards the middle and neither really spoke. She kept counting, almost soothed by the monotony of the task, and Mazid sorted ten, twenty and fifty pound piles and labelled each with post it notes, in his methodical way and apart from the light of the television behind them, the room had grown dark.
    They’d managed to count £580 by the time X Factor started. Aila stopped to listen for a moment, and, recognising the Michael Jackson tune, began to hum along to an old favourite. Her brother turned to watch and joined her.
    â€œThey don’t see you as I do.
    I wish they would try to.
    I’m sure they’d think again if they had a friend like Ben.”
    â€œLiiiiike Ben.”
    The studio audience applauded. Mazid drummed the table, “Rats, rats, rats. This is getting us nowhere.” His concentration had broken.
    Aila rubbed her face. “You know Shaf’s Dad’s just sold three of his restaurants for more than a million.”
    â€œThat doesn’t help. I need a break,” said Mazid.
    So they decided to go out for a while. If they went for a drive, Aila thought they might as well get some of the coins changed at the Sainsbury’s nearby. That way they could say they got more money than they would, for Nessa’s sake.
    As it happened, Sainsbury’s wasn’t that simple. Aila had to