The Kindness Read Online Free

water, pointing to the white stick on the cistern and a blue line that was deepening from a hint of pale forget-me-not to a navy certainty. They both stared at it, hardly daring to speak, and Julia had to sit back down on the loo. He quickly did the maths on his fingers. ‘Paris!’ he said, and biting her lip she looked up at him and nodded.
    She broke away, urging caution when he knelt to hug her. She asked him to get a second test ‘just to be sure’ and when he ran back with it, out of breath, with the bag from the chemist in one hand and a bottle of champagne in the other, she was in the kitchen and, still wrapped in her towel, was sitting on the little stool beside the telephone, crying.
     
    The day disappears much like the ones that went before it. Firdaws sinks into the dusk until eventually he switches on the lamps. He manages crisps, heats up some sort of stew and finds the scent of the jasmine has grown stronger when he returns to his desk with a sturdy Duralex glass and the remains of a bottle of red wine.
    In their bedroom above, Julia would throw open the window to let in the scent. He imagines she’s up there now, her lustrous hair kinking and purling, Mira framed beside her in the golden square of light, holding out her arms, calling down to him: ‘Dadoo . . .’ to make sure he can see her there in her favourite pyjamas. He pours the wine.
    Soon he’ll go out for some air, find the dog and together they’ll cross the garden by moonlight. He takes a gulp from his glass, the smell of the jasmine giving him a headache already. He can summon the taste of the sleeping pill he plans to take. Upstairs the empty bed waits.
    He has nightmares about Mira falling. He’ll wake in a sweat, his arms grabbing at the air like a newborn. Then emptiness. No Julia, no Mira.
    He rolls a last cigarette, calls to the dog. Mira skips back into his mind, avenues of trees unfurling leaves and promises, the afternoon sunny enough that he can’t resist her pleas for the playground when he picks her up from nursery. Pigeons hanging around like boys at the bus shelter hoping for a few extra crumbs from her lunchbox, and Mira hurtling down the bigger children’s slide, her face screwed shut until he catches her. Blinking with shock, her eyes meet his and instantly she’s confident as she gauges that he is smiling. All will be well: ‘Brave girl,’ he says as she slips from his grasp. ‘Again, again.’ Running back along the concrete to the steps, a loose strap of her dungarees flying, grabbing her to secure it; she watches his fingers intently, always learning. Her funny skippy steps and his mix of pride and terror whenever she tries anything new. Swinging her straight up to the top just so she doesn’t have to work so hard climbing the metal steps, swooping her skywards and blowing a raspberry on her neck to make her laugh.
    All of this over and over until he glanced at his watch and realised that it was Friday and Julia would be back at Firdaws already.
    Mira looking down at him from the brink to where he’s ready to catch her: ‘OK Dadoo?’ – that’s what she called him and neither he nor Julia could bear to correct her. ‘Ready?’ Quite solemn. Seeing her from a new angle, from the crepe soles of her shoes up, no longer a baby. And then down she comes, a starfish hurtling towards him, and he braces himself ready to catch her.
    He set Mira on the foot of the slide to help her get a stone from her shoe, her sock a little sweaty as he straightened it. He slipped the shoe back on to her foot, bowing nobly, ‘Is your name Cinderella?’ And she giggled, told him: ‘Don’t be a silly.’ He showed her again how to thread the strap through the buckle. Her breathing grew heavy as she concentrated on the task and he held her foot steady.
    He reaches to the drawer, opens it a touch just to be sure it’s still there. It’s impossible to resist. He takes it out and holds it as he does every day. The creases across