Free Lovesong by Alex Miller

received them from her mother, thatmysterious discontented woman who had been Sabiha’s
other
grandmother. Houria sang for Dom. For the two of them. For the life they had made together in Paris. And sometimes she hummed a tune, not quite breaking into song, but humming to herself.
    Sabiha was in the middle of washing up the pile of pastry trays and mixing equipment when Houria came into the kitchen and put the coffee on. Houria’s spiky grey hair was standing on end, still wet from the bath, her plump cheeks rosy, her beautiful dark eyes bright with wellbeing. They had both been up for hours before her bath, baking the biscuits and sweet pastries for John to deliver in the little three-wheeler he had bought last winter, when the cold was keeping a lot of their customers away and the baking business had begun to go downhill. Orders had picked up once they had the van and customers no longer needed to come to the café to collect their pastries.
    Sabiha kept her head down when Houria came in, scrubbing at the hard pastry residues on the trays in silence, going at it as if the job needed all her strength and concentration, burnishing corners that had retained their oven stains for years. Houria dried a couple of trays for her then poured their coffee. ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘That can wait. Come and have your coffee.’She carried the two bowls of coffee through the bead curtain into the dining room.
    Sabiha straightened up and stood a moment at the sink, her hands at rest in the water, as if she might not follow Houria. Then she snatched up a tea towel and wiped her hands and went out through the curtain. John had set the big iron gas fire going an hour ago and the small dining room was cosy. They sat at their usual table, the sleet rattling against the window, beads of ice melting as they slid down the glass. Early risers hurrying by along the narrow street, heads bent against the weather.
    Sabiha held the bowl of steaming coffee close to her lips with both hands, her elbows on the table. She was looking at the people going by on the street and feeling guilty about John out there in the terrible weather delivering the day’s orders, making an effort to be cheerful with their customers and hating every minute of it. She was regretting having been quite so grim with him in the middle of the night. She longed for them to be close and loving. She felt Houria’s gaze on her and turned from the window. ‘We were awake half the night arguing about the same old thing,’ she said, answering Houria’s unasked question. ‘It’s not interesting.’ She drank her coffee.
    She had asked John that day in Chartres, holding his hand in hers, a girl then filled with astonishment and apprehension,
What will we do?
It was she who had foreseen this. She should have persisted that day. She should have stood her ground and insisted they make a real decision about their lives, instead of meekly accepting John’s and Houria’s reassurances that everything was sure to work out for the best. John must have known even then that he had no intention of staying in France for the rest of his life. Of course he knew! She blamed herself however. And these days she
did
stand her ground. Too firmly perhaps. Too inflexibly. She knew at times she was unfair to him. It was always he who had to give way in the end. She knew herself to be a changed woman, and was not always happy with the way she was these days. She had understood that strength and determination were needed from her if their marriage was to endure. She was wishing now that she had been more loving and gentle with him this morning before sending him off into the fierce weather in that ridiculous little van of his.
    Houria said, ‘If Dom had asked me to go to Australia with him I would have gone.’ She snapped her fingers. ‘Just like that.’ She laughed. ‘What an adventure that would have been.’
    ‘I’d never see my father again if I went to Australia. Or you.’
    Houria