Free I Can't Think Straight by Shamim Sarif Page A

six or eight fillets, but would the saving be worth the difference in prestige when she produced a beautiful dish of masala fish?
    ‘I’ll take it,’ she said. She felt an immediate elation at having made a decision – the right decision – before doubts again assailed her. Perhaps the fish was too showy. After all, she was contributing food to a post-funeral gathering, for in their community it was traditional that no food was prepared in the house of the deceased. She would be taking this enormous, gleaming salmon to a house where a death had just occurred. A subdued house, a house of mourning, a house where simple food should be the order of the day. She now realised that she had just spent fifty pounds to purchase a fish she couldn’t use. One that her family would now have to eat, when she could have fed them with four fillets at a cost of two pounds and ninety nine pence each. Dazed, Maya accepted the plastic-wrapped fish corpse and pushed her trolley over to where the toilet rolls were.
    ‘You see,’ Yasmin’s voice chimed in behind her. ‘If you ordered online, you wouldn’t need to schlep loo rolls around. They could just deliver them.’
    Maya ignored her and looked gratefully at the toilet rolls. These, at least, were on special offer. One pound off a pack of nine. So that if she bought around four hundred rolls of toilet paper, she could recoup the price of the fish. Why did they make trolleys so small? She felt like weeping. Every day, life was full of such uncertainties, such decisions, such disappointments. Without her faith in God and her conviction that there was an afterlife where there was peace, she could not have survived the daily pitfalls of existence. Without her faith that He had an ultimate plan for her in this life, that He had made her buy the fish for a reason, she would simply cave in and give up. Something within these last thoughts made her stop dead.
    She stopped piling toilet paper into the trolley and considered. He had made her buy the fish for a reason. And that reason was suddenly completely clear. The funeral was for a member of the Surti family. They were rich. Obscenely wealthy, in fact. Of course she should prepare the fish for them. The dead man had undoubtedly been used to such dishes, had probably demanded them daily from their cook (they had three, she had heard). It would be exactly right, extremely appreciated, and perfectly impressive. Maya smiled.
    ‘Mum?’ Leyla said, switching off her mobile as they queued at the checkout. ‘I’m going to Oxford this weekend.’
    ‘Oxford? Why Oxford? Oxford’s where you go to get a degree, not to get away.’
    Leyla said nothing, just looked mutely at Yasmin, who sighed and started unloading the trolley.
    ‘It’s only an hour away. Why do you have to go for a weekend?’
    ‘So if it takes me three hours I can spend the night?’ Leyla snapped.
    ‘Who are you going with?’ Maya asked Leyla. Now Yasmin cast a sly glance across at her sister who folded her arms crossly.
    ‘Nobody. A friend. They have some work there.’
    A knowing smile began to crease over Maya’s face. ‘Ooh. Ali!’
    ‘No, not Ali. Does everything have to revolve around him?’ Leyla’s voice held pure irritation now.
    ‘I don’t understand,’ Maya said plaintively.
    ‘What is there to understand?’ Yasmin interrupted. ‘She has a friend, she’s invited her to Oxford for a weekend. I don’t see the problem.’
    Neither could Maya, when the situation was laid out in this way, but she refused to be upset for no reason. If it took all day, she would find one. She turned to Yasmin who was staggering under the weight of the wrapped salmon.
    ‘What do you have in here, Mum? Moby Dick?’
    ‘Just be careful with that fish, young lady. It cost me an arm and a leg.’
    ‘And it might eat everything else in the trolley,’ commented Yasmin. Leyla smiled at the joke, but was disconcerted to find that under her surface smirk, Yasmin’s eyes were