The Scars They Hide

Chapter Seventeen - Family Dinner

Chapter Seventeen - Family Dinner

Months before Lutfiyah went into labour, Sara had researched it all to death for her. She googled every question she had and joined all the Mum groups on every social media platform that she could. And then she would none-too-subtley email all this information to Lutfiyah until she had no choice but to read it.

Sara had appointed herself Lutfiyah’s research guru from the get-go and for some reason, she felt that that job title would remain with her for life.

So when Lutfiyah answered the door one day to find a delivery man holding a thick manilla envelope out to her, she wasn’t surprised. What she was surprised to find was the title written neatly across the folder inside: “Operation: Hot Neighbour”.

She only glanced briefly at the shockingly thick stack of pages before opening a drawer and stuffing it inside. Then, she picked up her phone.

“Hello, can you please put me through to Dr Sara Bi-

“Ah yes, she’s been waiting for your call. One moment please.”

“Fee, my dar-

“Don’t you dare, 'Fee, my darling' me! Sara, I told you not to do this!”

There was a heavy sigh and then the sound of shuffling pages, a chair scraping back followed by a door closing,

“Look, I didn’t read it, okay?”

She gave a sigh of relief. “Well, thank Allah for that. This is a human being, Sara. Not some project or fantasy adventure that we’re thinking of going on. We can’t just invade someone’s privacy like that.”

“Well, according to the man I hired, there wasn’t much privacy invasion going on. More just...sifting through news articles.”

Despite herself, Lutfiyah asked. “What are you talking about?”

“Apparently, at one point and time he was all over the news in the business world. So it seems like your man didn’t always do ’nothing’.”

“Nope. No no no. I don’t want to hear anything else. Look, I appreciate what you did only because I know the reason behind it but please, Sara, there are limits. If there is anything for me to know, I would like to find out the old fashioned way. Okay?”

Lutfiyah could almost picture Sara holding up her hands in defeat. “Okay okay, if that’s what you want. But at least keep the folder. You never know when you might need it.”

Many greetings and proclamations of love later, she finally put the phone down and went to get dinner ready. May would be home soon.

After that first time when she had walked in on Jane calmly perusing through a magazine, she had never allowed Jaafir to be alone with May again. It wasn’t that she didn’t trust him, it was just that she had heard one too many horror stories and she couldn’t take that chance.

Well, she couldn’t take that chance before. She didn’t know what it was about him, but her neighbour had made her more open to people and maybe she did feel like she could let May out of her sight for more than a few hours. Not that she would ever admit that to him. So after Jane had agreed, the two adults had taken her daughter to the park. Jane was more a supervisor than anything else what with the way May and Jaafir carried on. One would think they didn’t even remember Jane was there, poor woman.

Her eyes strayed to the drawer with the hidden envelope more than once but by the time the door opened and her giggling daughter stumbled in followed by her minder, she had managed to push it to the back of her mind.