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Authors: Rosy Thornton
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Asylum and Immigration Act.
And please can I keep Declan? He’s so pretty!
Becs xx
42 Gledhill Street
Ipswich
17 April 2005
Dearest Petey,
I feel like I’ve been busy recently, though I haven’t exactly done much, to speak of. I suppose it’s just that I don’t seem to ever just sit and watch telly any more. Last night that Nasreen came round again, the girl I told you about from the hostel, for another session with Margaret and the Biff and Chip books. I made us all a pot of tea when they were finishing, and went and joined them in the sitting room. Nasreen has hers without any milk. Luckily she mentioned it before I’d done the cups, because I still always put the milk in first – do you remember how you always teased me about it when we first met, because you said it showed I was posh. What a joke! Mum and Dad were really proud when I got the job at the bank, but they’d still have laughed at the idea that a daughter of theirs could ever be posh. I just started doing it because then you can see better whether the tea has brewed enough, when you start to pour it in.
Anyway, we sat and chatted, and Nasreen is lovely. She’s shy and her English is a bit shaky, but she has a really pretty smile. She always wears a scarf, but it’s not one of those black ones that hide half your face, it doesn’t even cover all her hair, she wears it back a bit on her forehead, and her hair all loose and escaping at the back. It’s not even a special scarf, just an ordinary flowered one – I think Sarah at work has got one nearly the same, from Debenhams in the sales after Christmas. And her hair is wonderful – so black it’s almost purple or blue, and catching the light, so that it made me think of the word ‘lustrous’ out of one of my romances. I think she must put scent on it, because when I leaned over to pass her her tea I caught a waft of something sweet, like Turkish delight or cinnamon or that orange flower water Dora puts in her chocolate buns. Maybe there’s no wonder that the men in the east think their women should cover up their hair, to keep that beauty all for themselves, I thought.
Well, then Nasreen started telling us why she’d left her country. It was me who asked her, I think Margaret had never liked to, but I suppose I was curious, why someone should leave their home and friends and come somewhere so different when she’s so young (eighteen, she said). Snuffs went and sat next to her on the settee and put her head on her lap while she was talking. She always seems to pick up on it if someone is sad (you know what a comfort she’s been to me without you here). It seems Nasreen had a boyfriend that her family didn’t approve of. Gjergj, his name is apparently – she wrote it down for us because English people can never spell it – and I said, how funny, that’s like my husband, his middle name is George, and that made her smile. Apparently it was because she is Muslim and he is a Christian. ‘Albanian Orthodox’ is what Margaret called it, I think – she seems to have been reading up on Nasreen’s country. I’d never heard of it – I thought there was only Russian Orthodox and Greek Orthodox. Poor Nasreen must have been really scared. She says she thought her brothers would actually hurt her, or Gjergj, and that’s why she ran away. Isn’t it awful what families can do to one another, sometimes? And of course English families can be just as bad. There’s another young girl in Margaret’s hostel, really bad with her nerves she is, because her father abused her when she was little.
Me and Margaret have been swapping books. I’ve got her on to my old Nevil Shute novels, and she’s lent me a book called Ruth – it made me think of your sister. But terribly sad, it is, it’s about a girl who has a baby and she’s not married and the man abandons her. It’s by that Mrs Gaskell. (I wonder why she’s always ‘Mrs’? You never hear anyone saying ‘Miss Austen’, do you?)
And please can I keep Declan? He’s so pretty!
Becs xx
42 Gledhill Street
Ipswich
17 April 2005
Dearest Petey,
I feel like I’ve been busy recently, though I haven’t exactly done much, to speak of. I suppose it’s just that I don’t seem to ever just sit and watch telly any more. Last night that Nasreen came round again, the girl I told you about from the hostel, for another session with Margaret and the Biff and Chip books. I made us all a pot of tea when they were finishing, and went and joined them in the sitting room. Nasreen has hers without any milk. Luckily she mentioned it before I’d done the cups, because I still always put the milk in first – do you remember how you always teased me about it when we first met, because you said it showed I was posh. What a joke! Mum and Dad were really proud when I got the job at the bank, but they’d still have laughed at the idea that a daughter of theirs could ever be posh. I just started doing it because then you can see better whether the tea has brewed enough, when you start to pour it in.
Anyway, we sat and chatted, and Nasreen is lovely. She’s shy and her English is a bit shaky, but she has a really pretty smile. She always wears a scarf, but it’s not one of those black ones that hide half your face, it doesn’t even cover all her hair, she wears it back a bit on her forehead, and her hair all loose and escaping at the back. It’s not even a special scarf, just an ordinary flowered one – I think Sarah at work has got one nearly the same, from Debenhams in the sales after Christmas. And her hair is wonderful – so black it’s almost purple or blue, and catching the light, so that it made me think of the word ‘lustrous’ out of one of my romances. I think she must put scent on it, because when I leaned over to pass her her tea I caught a waft of something sweet, like Turkish delight or cinnamon or that orange flower water Dora puts in her chocolate buns. Maybe there’s no wonder that the men in the east think their women should cover up their hair, to keep that beauty all for themselves, I thought.
Well, then Nasreen started telling us why she’d left her country. It was me who asked her, I think Margaret had never liked to, but I suppose I was curious, why someone should leave their home and friends and come somewhere so different when she’s so young (eighteen, she said). Snuffs went and sat next to her on the settee and put her head on her lap while she was talking. She always seems to pick up on it if someone is sad (you know what a comfort she’s been to me without you here). It seems Nasreen had a boyfriend that her family didn’t approve of. Gjergj, his name is apparently – she wrote it down for us because English people can never spell it – and I said, how funny, that’s like my husband, his middle name is George, and that made her smile. Apparently it was because she is Muslim and he is a Christian. ‘Albanian Orthodox’ is what Margaret called it, I think – she seems to have been reading up on Nasreen’s country. I’d never heard of it – I thought there was only Russian Orthodox and Greek Orthodox. Poor Nasreen must have been really scared. She says she thought her brothers would actually hurt her, or Gjergj, and that’s why she ran away. Isn’t it awful what families can do to one another, sometimes? And of course English families can be just as bad. There’s another young girl in Margaret’s hostel, really bad with her nerves she is, because her father abused her when she was little.
Me and Margaret have been swapping books. I’ve got her on to my old Nevil Shute novels, and she’s lent me a book called Ruth – it made me think of your sister. But terribly sad, it is, it’s about a girl who has a baby and she’s not married and the man abandons her. It’s by that Mrs Gaskell. (I wonder why she’s always ‘Mrs’? You never hear anyone saying ‘Miss Austen’, do you?)
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