Mahira Hassan muted the television when she heard a noise at the front door. It was late – much later than she had planned to stay up that night – but her sons’ non-appearance by 11 p.m. had triggered a familiar anxiety that she was unable to rid herself of. Late nights inevitably meant trouble, at least where her oldest son Syed was concerned.

She stood from the sofa at the sound of stumbling in the hallway. One of the boys slammed the door shut behind him and Mahira hoped they hadn’t woken Faadi, who was upstairs in bed. Padding across the living room in a pair of slippers, she went to the doorway and watched her sons as they removed their shoes in the hallway, neither of them noticing her standing there. Syed shoved Jameel, laughing unreservedly as his brother fell against the radiator.

‘You’ll wake Faadi.’

Syed turned, surprised to see his mother still up so late. ‘Very sorry, Mother.’

There was no apology in the words and Mahira tried to ignore the sarcasm with which they were spoken. Behind Syed, Jameel straightened himself, still fighting to remove the shoe from his right foot. When he turned to look at her, he made no attempt to hide the bruising that patterned his left eye, angry and swollen.

‘What’s happened now?’

‘Nothing.’

‘It doesn’t look like nothing.’

Syed sighed and stepped past his mother, heading into the living room. He scanned the room for the remote control before unmuting the television and sinking back into the sofa, apparently without a care in the world.

‘Jameel?’

‘It was nothing,’ he repeated with a shrug. ‘No big deal.’

‘Let me take a look at it at least.’

Reluctantly Jameel followed his mother through to the kitchen. He sat at the table while she searched the freezer for a bag of peas, wrapping it in a clean tea towel and handing it to him. ‘It’ll take down the swelling.’

He pressed the bag to his face, but it wasn’t enough to conceal his reddened, bloodshot eyes or the watery glaze that was fixed upon them. Mahira had seen those dilated pupils before; knew all too well what they meant.

‘Are you going to tell me what happened now?’

Jameel ran his free hand across his closely shaved head. His mother hated this look on him. It made him appear to be someone she knew he wasn’t, not really.

‘It was just some idiot.’

‘Who?’

‘You wouldn’t know him.’

‘I might.’

With a sigh, Jameel moved his hand from his face and put the bag of peas down on the table. ‘Gavin Jones. They call him Spider.’

Mahira knew him: he used the shop fairly regularly, mainly for cans and cigarettes. He had a tattoo of a spider’s web that circled his elbow. He had never given her any problems. ‘Are you going to report it?’

Jameel shook his head. ‘Don’t make a big deal about it.’

‘If he did this to you, then you need to report it.’

It occurred to Mahira that Jameel’s reluctance to report the incident to police was perhaps a suggestion that Gavin Jones wasn’t entirely to blame for whatever had happened that evening.

‘Fights don’t start themselves,’ she said.

‘Bloody hell.’ With a scrape that echoed around the kitchen, Jameel pushed his chair back and stood. ‘He said something, all right?’

‘Said what?’

‘Something racist.’

‘Okay. What did he say?’

‘I don’t know, Syed heard him. Now just leave it, will you?’

She watched him stride to the living room, wondering when her middle son had become so much like his older brother. It was unfair of her, she thought; he had a way to go before he really became like Syed. How long would it be, though, before the gradual changes in his attitude and behaviour amounted to the whole: a new, different son to the one she had known these past nineteen years?

Jameel had always looked up to Syed, always wanting to be just like him. For his own sake, and for all their sakes, Mahira hoped it wasn’t going to happen.