I lay side-on, watching her sleep. She was peaceful now, purring softly through her nose. I woke earlier to the sound of her coughing and gasping and spluttering. The first time it happened, I thought she was having an asthma attack. But this was the third time that she’d fallen asleep here after a night off from the restaurant and I’d come to realise that it was normal for her.
The first time I woke her up, she reassured me that she wasn’t the least bit bothered by it, that it comforted her instead to feel her sister close. I’d heard the stories about the surreal, almost spooky, connection between twins, especially identical twins, but I was still creeped out that she relived her sister’s death night after night.
I raked my fingers through the hair that fell across her face and lifted it back. The covers were pulled up to her waist, leaving her bare breasts exposed. I’d never been with a woman long enough to become familiar with her body but I’d just about committed to memory every curve and contour of hers in the last few weeks.
I’d never known sex like this. It had always been rushed and mostly drunken and instantly forgettable. Not with Anna. I loved that she kept her eyes open. I loved that she didn’t hide her body from me by asking for the lights to be switched off. I loved that she talked dirty and that it turned her on when I did too. It had all been so unexpected and so great. She was a paradox – good girl out there and bad girl in here – and that just fuelled my addiction to her.
It was a Friday morning early in May when we first slept together.
We’d been fooling around before then, but I still hadn’t even seen her fully naked. The furthest she’d got was down to her knickers twice.
‘What are you so afraid of?’ I’d thrown my head back in frustration one day when she’d unzipped my jeans and reached her hand inside my underwear before withdrawing it just as I was on the verge of an orgasm from her fast and frantic stroking.
‘I don’t know,’ she replied tearfully. ‘I’m sorry. You must hate me for this.’
‘Of course I don’t hate you,’ I sighed. ‘I just wish you could relax and have fun without worrying so much.’
‘Sex isn’t about fun for me. It’s about love and commitment and respect and trust, and not having regrets.’
I was surprised at how much that hurt me. ‘Are you saying you’d regret having sex with me?’
‘Can I be very truthful?’
‘Sure.’ I held my breath.
‘I am afraid that I might catch a disease from you.’
I was glad she was looking down when she said that so she didn’t see my mortified reaction.
‘Anna, I’m clean. I give blood every three months. Would you feel better if I went and got tested for chlamydia and herpes as well? I mean, obviously I can tell I haven’t got them, but I’m happy to get a doctor’s say-so if that would help you feel more relaxed.’
‘Yes.’ She nodded, unsmiling. ‘Yes, it would help me. And the other diseases too please.’
‘But I just told you, I give – okay, consider it done. I’ll get tested for everything. That’s easy. What worries me is what you said about love and commitment and respect and trust. What do I have to do to prove all of that to you? I thought I was already ticking those things off.’ It was hard to keep the pain out of my voice.
‘You are ticking them off.’ She touched my cheek. ‘When I give myself to you, I want it to be wholly and without any fear. Knowing I won’t catch a disease helps very much with that. Thank you.’
‘All right then, I’m glad,’ I said. ‘But I need to get up, get busy. Because I’m ready to give of myself wholly and without any fear this minute after your bit of handiwork there.’ I nodded at my still unzipped jeans. ‘And I think I’ll go insane if you keep straddling me like that much longer.’ I gave her butt a light tap. ‘Yalla, up you get. Let a man get some air! Coffee?’
‘Turkish?’ She raised her eyebrows hopefully.
‘Never.’
I got checked out by a GP and I emailed her the report. But the next time we were alone sex still didn’t happen, so I started to fret. I worried that the pressure she was facing from the press, the public, her aunty, her conservative Egyptian community, may all have been enough to stop her. I was too nervous about her answer to bring it up again and she didn’t bring it up either. We kept going the way we had been, like fearful Catholic school kids – bending but never breaking the rules.
So four weeks ago on that fateful Friday morning, bang on 7 am, when I heard the front door being unlocked, I assumed she’d turned up, like she did every morning, to walk Bluey. The back door rattled as Bluey whined and threw himself against it to be let in. His love for Anna rivalled mine.
I grabbed the crutches but she called out, ‘Stay exactly where you are, Nicholas Harding!’
She left Bluey outside rather than opening the door to him as usual, and at the sound of clicking heels on the wooden floor instead of her soft-soled runners, I smiled to myself.
And then there she was, standing in my bedroom doorway – wearing one of my white business shirts with the Rangers logo embroidered on the pocket, which I hadn’t even noticed was missing. She had the sleeves rolled up and only the middle button done up. She’d paired it with black heels. She unbuttoned the shirt and let it slide off her shoulders to reveal a black bra that her breasts were practically falling out of and tiny matching knickers that sat deliciously low on her olive-skinned hips and showed off her toned abdominal muscles. Her hair had grown out since I first met her, and with half of it falling over her face she couldn’t have looked any hotter.
I sat bolt upright. ‘Jesus Christ, Anna.’ My voice came out strangled. ‘You’re so beautiful.’
‘Thank you.’ She smiled, lingering in the doorway. ‘I’ve been thinking that you have still not tried Turkish coffee. Every time I’ve offered you one, you have found an excuse, Nicholas Harding, isn’t that right?’
I chuckled.
She continued, ‘So I said to myself, this man is terrified of trying Turkish coffee. Let me do a little test. If he loves me enough to overcome this strange phobia and he agrees to drink it, then it must be real love indeed. And if the love he feels for me is strong enough that he is prepared to overcome this phobia, then this is a man I want to make love with. So, what do you think, Nicholas Harding? Do you agree to my little test?’ She cocked an eyebrow.
It was only then that I noticed the takeaway cup on my bedroom dresser. She must have put it there when she arrived.
‘Bring it here, I’ll skol that in one gulp.’
She laughed and walked over, holding the cup. I couldn’t take my eyes off the outline of her breasts as they bounced teasingly with each step. She placed the coffee cup down on the bedside table but quickly took a couple of steps back so that I couldn’t reach her.
‘Do you know what day it is today, Nick?’ she asked as I peeled the lid off the coffee. There was only two fingers’ worth at the bottom of the cup. It looked like soot and smelled even worse.
‘The best day of my life, I’m guessing.’
She grinned. ‘Yes, exactly. Today is the day you discover what real coffee tastes like. That is enough to be the best day of anyone’s life, the day they first bring Turkish coffee to their lips.’
I had one last look at the tar at the bottom of the cup, tilted my head back and chugged it back in one long disgusting gulp. It was like drinking an oil leak. The sediment stuck to the top of my mouth and the back of my throat.
I smacked my tongue against my lips. ‘Okay. There you go. I drank it,’ I croaked, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand and reaching for the glass of water nearby. ‘I’ve proven how true my love is. Now get over here, Hayati.’
Smiling, she reached her arms behind her and unclipped her bra. It fell to the floor and her breasts tumbled out.
‘Oh, Anna,’ I moaned. ‘Oh, God.’
Keeping her eyes locked on mine, she hooked her thumbs into the sides of her knickers and wriggled out of them. And then she stood there, all of her in front of me, and she was even more beautiful in the flesh than she was in my imaginings.
The sight of her body, toned, tanned, nearly sent me over the edge. ‘I swear I could come just looking at you.’
She stepped out of her shoes. I gently pulled her down onto my bed, climbing on top of her. She smiled but her eyes told a different story.
‘Don’t be scared. I’ll be gentle, promise.’
‘I might not be any good at it.’ She bit her lip.
I brought my lips close to her ear and whispered, ‘You’re already the best I ever had, no contest.’
‘Mmm,’ she moaned while I sucked on her earlobe.
‘Tell me to stop whenever it hurts, even if it only hurts a tiny bit,’ I said in between kisses. ‘We’ll go real slow. You’re the boss, okay?’
I teased her with her my mouth and my fingers until she was begging out loud for it. Then I reached into the drawer next to the bed but she pulled my hand back to her.
‘You’re clean, Nick. You don’t need that. I took care of it.’
Slowly, slowly, I entered her. After a few tense minutes, I was fully inside. I let out a deep moan of pure contentment. ‘That’s it, beautiful, I’m all the way in now. We’re completely connected now you and me.’
She had deep frown lines in her forehead.
I moved as gently as I could inside her. ‘There’s literally nothing separating us now. That’s so special to me, thank you for this.’
She opened her eyes and when they met with mine, she had a look of complete surrender. ‘I am yours now, Nick. I am yours and you are mine.’
I knew in that moment, with absolute certainty, that I would love this woman for the rest of my life.
And since then, despite all the dramas surrounding us, we’ve at least had that. We’ve had the bedroom – the one place where nobody could get to us.
I savoured moments like this one, right now, where it was just me and her, and the rest of the world was safely locked outside the front door. It was a testament to how much she really did love me that she was still here, still with me – the man who’d brought bigotry and ridicule to her world.
The press was obsessed with us, with her. Everywhere she went, she was followed. She’d been offered twenty thousand dollars to speak to 60 Minutes. Fifty thousand to get topless for Maxim. From the first week we were together, the media couldn’t get enough of our story. One of Australia’s highest paid footballers with a notorious reputation, and the innocent young refugee, the daughter of a famous politician with a tragic past linked to terrorism. It was paparazzi gold, the kind of stuff that set social media on fire. I doubted there was anyone between the ages of sixteen and sixty who hadn’t seen or at least heard about the footage of Anna’s family being blown up.
There was an Instagram page called @warningsforanna set up by a girl I was with years ago, where girls uploaded photos and memes of me that didn’t exactly paint me in the best light. And every comment had the same hashtag: #nickisnotagoodboy. That page alone had over thirty thousand followers. Like driving past a car crash, I couldn’t look away and found myself checking it daily. Each day I felt further removed and more disgusted by the person I used to be. I honestly couldn’t remember three-quarters of the shit that was on there.
Anna had seen it, of course. How could she not? It was talked about everywhere. It was just bloody lucky for me that she believed that wasn’t who I was anymore.
Last week, when I drove her back to the restaurant from the pool, I turned on the radio to the sports station I followed.
The DJ was in hysterics. ‘Okay, the next caller is Aiden. What have you got for us, mate?’
I recognised the DJ’s voice, an ex-footballer, James Round, who I never liked because he was dirty on the field.
‘G’day, Roundy,’ the caller’s voice came through. ‘All right, my title would be You had me at Halal.’
Anna and I looked across at each other as more laughter erupted from the car’s speakers.
‘That’s a classic! Love it!’ James sounded like he was crying with laughter. ‘Stay on the line, Aiden. That might just be the winning entry. Okay, folks, after the ad break we’ll be taking the last lot of calls and if you can come up with the best title for a movie about Nick Harding and Anwar – or should I say Anna – Hayati, you could win yourself a Gold Class cinema double pass.’
Anna and I both reached for the off switch at the same time and neither of us said a thing for the rest of the drive. It was getting harder and harder to ignore it all, though. We never went out, we were trapped in my house whenever we wanted to see each other, and even then, they wouldn’t leave us alone.
We were on the front cover of a trashy magazine after they got photos of us deep in conversation and unsmiling standing by my car in my driveway. The headline screamed, ‘Refugee Anna gives Nick Harding ultimatum “Convert to Islam or it’s over.”’ There was another magazine cover of Anna leaving hospital with Ricky after a routine check-up accompanied by the headline: ‘Nick Harding’s teen girlfriend has pregnancy confirmed, shaming her devout Muslim family.’ Leaving a specialist cancer hospital!
‘It’s so convenient for them to forget my mother is Christian,’ she despaired. ‘It doesn’t suit their agenda.’
We turned on the TV one night to see a raging debate about Australia’s asylum seeker regulations. The talk show flashed Anna’s face up on screen with the banner: ‘Special favours for politician’s daughter – how Nick Harding’s girlfriend jumped the queue.’
The media, the internet trolls, and the public – they’d had three months to get used to the idea that Anna and I were together. But they just couldn’t seem to wrap their heads around it.
At my initial meeting with Craig and the Rangers’ CEO, Max Dawson, when Anna and I first got together, I convinced them that all that had happened was that my new girlfriend was a refugee. The club then made a statement condemning the inaccurate, racist headlines and the intrusion into our privacy. But now even they were sick of me and this situation that seemed like it would never go away. The players and managers had lost their sense of humour weeks ago with the media that hounded them daily for information about us.
And as I felt my teammates and coaches become resentful, I distanced myself from them further. I felt like more of an outsider now than I did when I wasn’t training. And it was bad enough then.
In the eleven weeks I was doing rehab, I wasn’t just separated from the team at training but I didn’t fly interstate with them every second week either. Players were together from the minute they arrived at the club to catch the bus to the airport, to when they got off the bus back in Perth. They ate all their meals together and did every activity in each other’s company – without families, girlfriends, or any other distractions. I missed out on all of that.
Maybe the lines were blurred about how much of my isolation was brought on by the injury and missing stuff like the interstate trips and how much of it by my relationship with Anna. What I did know was that I was an outsider these days in the team I used to consider my family, and it was only getting worse.
Since I was cleared to weight-bear, I hadn’t trained anywhere near as hard as I should have to get back into top shape. I wasn’t even close to match-ready, even though there was a countdown on for my return to the midfield next weekend playing in the reserves.
Craig called a meeting with me on Monday. He waved me to sit down when I walked into his office, without looking up from his paperwork. He finally made eye contact after I’d been sitting in silence. I rolled up my sleeves and tugged at the collar of my shirt.
‘Do you mind turning down the heater, please, mate?’ I asked.
‘It’s not on,’ he snapped. ‘Nick, I’m going to get straight to the point. I’ve given you twelve weeks’ leeway. For twelve long miserable weeks, I’ve put up with you going through the motions; let it go because I thought to myself, he’s frustrated that the fractures came back, he’s fed up, we screwed him over by saying he didn’t need surgery when he did.’ He paused. ‘I thought that the second those crutches came off you’d get stuck right into training to make up for lost time, the way you did last time. But you’ve hardly worked up a sweat. You look bored out there, mate, and I’m seriously doubting your commitment to the club. I think all this fuss in the media with that young lady is messing with your head. We need you to have a clear head, Nick. You can’t afford this distraction. The club can’t afford this distraction. Am I being clear enough?’
‘Yeah, mate, crystal clear. You’re right, I know,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry. I’ll fix it. I promise.’
And I wanted to fix it. I did. The very last thing I wanted was to let Craig or the team down. But the fire in my belly was gone. It was just gone, and I couldn’t seem to get it back. I used to be the first one at training and the last to leave. Not anymore.
Even Bruce and Joel had turned cold on me and they had been the last two to stick by me. I’d still met them for a coffee or lunch regularly, we’d hung out for a bit after the match on game days. Plus, once they got to know her, they both liked Anna. Almost every time they saw her, they thanked her for being the one to finally keep me off the grog and out of trouble.
But as of this week, Bruce and Joel weren’t returning my texts and they ignored me at training. And I knew why.
It was because of the march that was taking place in the city tomorrow that Anna helped organise with Asylum Assist. I was going to march with them. Because after hearing what it was like for the kids on Bluff Island, well, those kids might as well have been in prison. When I imagined that Ricky could have still been stuck there if not for his cancer, it made me sick.
The thing was, the company that provided security services to Bluff Island, SafeXone Security, was also the number one sponsor of the Rangers Football Club. And Bluff Island was one of its biggest contracts, bringing in almost two million dollars a year. The purpose of the Asylum Assist march was to demand the closure of the detention centre altogether.
When word got out that Anna was one of the head honchos behind the march and would be a speaker at the event, I found myself on the receiving end of a phone call from Max Dawson for the first time in my life.
He had already shown his distaste for my relationship with Anna months ago when the news broke out. Although the club had issued a statement that they were right behind me, he’d let me know in that private meeting with Craig that if I became an advocate for Islam there would be hell to pay.
On the phone this time he snapped, ‘It’s a conflict of interest for your partner to be involved in this protest. She needs to call the march off, or, at the very least, boycott it herself. The club isn’t at all happy with her involvement.’
I pulled the phone away from my ear and stared at it with an open mouth. Who the fuck did he think he was?
‘Anna’s actually not associated with the club, Max. She’s my girlfriend, that’s it. She has nothing to do with the Rangers. So her involvement with Asylum Assist isn’t a conflict of interest at all.’
‘Nick, you won’t be associated with the club if you’re not careful. There’s no place for politics in football,’ he growled. ‘You need to explain to your little girlfriend that the Rangers’ sponsorship deal with SafeXone is worth millions upon millions of dollars, and that the future of the club, especially your future, is in serious jeopardy without SafeXone’s support. Sponsors like SafeXone don’t grow on trees.’
‘What exactly are you trying to say, Max?’
‘I think I’ve already said it pretty clearly, but I’ll say it again. There’s no Nick Harding if there are no Rangers, and there are no Rangers if there’s no SafeXone. And there’s no SafeXone if there’s no Bluff Island, which is exactly what Asylum Assist are trying to make happen. Explain that to her. And make sure you understand it yourself.’
You’re better than this. Deep breaths. Focus on one of the senses. You’re better than this.
I zoned in on a print that Lily had given me on the opposite wall and made myself count how many waves were in the ocean in it. ‘Max, I’m going to get off the phone now and I’m going to forget this conversation ever happened because I think a club CEO blackmailing a player wouldn’t be looked upon favourably by the AFL. See you later, all right?’ I hung up and realised I’d been clenching my fist so hard that my nails had left deep dents in my palm.
The rumour that I’d had a fight with Max Dawson got back to the team nice and fast. God only knew how, but it did. And the result of that rumour was that, even though nobody had ever actually liked Max, none of the team were now talking to me, including my best friends.
I understood why. I would’ve been the same. There was nothing more important to these guys than the Rangers. They would never do anything to go against the club. That used to be me.
As much as I loved my club, there was no way I was letting Anna do the march without me beside her. When it came down to a choice between standing by her and her fight for what was right or supporting the club, which wanted to ignore the desperate situation on Bluff Island so they could keep making money off it, that choice wasn’t very hard.
I’d finally become the person I thought I would never be – a person with values, a person Dad would have been proud to have for a son. The missing link though was footy. I had to get my passion back somehow, I just had to.
Craig was right – my half-arsed efforts at training were just not good enough considering the amount of money I was on and the expectations that carried with it. Football was my livelihood, my future, and I’d been pissing it up a wall. I made a promise to myself to train harder starting Monday. I’d do everything Craig wanted of me and then some.
If they let me train, that was. What if they weren’t empty threats from Max and I did end up getting sacked because of the march? No, surely it would never come to that.
Bluey barked twice in response to a dog across the road and Anna stirred. She gave a little shiver and pulled the doona up higher over her, sadly covering up her breasts. I grabbed the remote and flicked on the heater so it would be warm when she got out of bed.
It was getting late, and if I didn’t have her home by eleven she’d panic. Every night she had to check in on her mother. It was a rule she’d made for herself that she wouldn’t break no matter how much I begged her to spend an entire night in my bed.
Truth be known, these days Leila had no fucking idea whether it was day or night. So I doubted she would even notice whether Anna checked up on her or not.
Anna described her the other day as being like an autumn leaf. ‘Mama is clinging onto her life the way the leaf clings on to its spindly branch, knowing that at any moment, the wind might pick her up and she’ll be blown away. Or she’ll drop straight down and be crushed. I’m terrified for her, Nick,’ she said with a sigh. ‘My mother is in big trouble, she is lost. She even has to be reminded to brush her teeth. This is no way to live.’
And it was no way for Anna to live, with the constant worry about her mum and the growing responsibility she had for Ricky the worse Leila got. Last night Leila was more with it than she had been for a while, according to Anna, who said she was completely aware of time and place.
‘Maybe there is still hope for my mama, Nick,’ she’d said hopefully.
Somehow I doubted it. Leila seemed too far gone to me. I wanted to shield Anna from Leila, from the press, from the trolls, from the Rangers’ committee – from everything and everyone.
The whir as the heater kicked in woke her up.
‘Hey there, dozy,’ I whispered and kissed the tip of her nose.
‘Mmmm, that’s a nice word – dozy. It’s a cross between dreamy and cosy. I like this word, d-oh-zee.’ She rolled over and I was reunited with her breasts again. ‘I might write you a dozy poem one day soon, Nick.’
I forgot about Leila and the stress of the upcoming march and its possible effect on my career and the hundred and one other things that had been worrying me.
‘Yes please, I love your poems.’
I took a hold of her hips and slid inside her, moaning when I felt her wet warmth.
She giggled. ‘Well, that was certainly very quick, Nicholas Harding. How do you even know I want to do this now? It’s polite to ask and say please before just inviting yourself into my body.’
I could tell from her breathlessness that she was already turned on.
I started moving inside her. In my safe haven. ‘Forgive me, I forgot my manners. Anna Hayati, may I please have sex with you?’
‘You may.’ Anna leaned her head closer so our noses were touching. ‘I like dozy sex. It’s nice.’
‘It’s not dozy and it’s not fucking nice either when it’s sex with Nick Harding, sweetheart. It’s a good and proper fuck when it’s with me,’ I whispered.
‘Show me then.’
‘Show you what? Be clear now.’
God, she felt so good.
‘Show me what a good and proper fuck is. So far it’s very dozy.’
‘Is this what you want? You want me to fuck you like I mean it?’
‘Yes,’ she breathed, as I thrust a little harder.
‘Ask me then. It’s polite to ask and say please, remember?’
‘Please fuck me, good and proper,’ said poor little innocent Anna. ‘Please fuck me like you mean it.’
I rolled on top of her and gave her everything I had until she cried out and squeezed hard around me. The sound and feel of her coming made me come every single time.
‘I love you.’ She arched her neck right back and sucked in big gulps of air. ‘I love you so much.’
‘Ana bahebek, ya habibti,’ I said back.
When she sat up, digging around for her clothes, she found The Prisoner of Azkaban on the bedside table. ‘Your reading, Nick, is so slow. It’s making me crazy. In three months, you’ve only read three books.’
‘I lost interest after the first one.’ I yawned. ‘I’ve been reading other stuff. There’s not enough intrigue in Harry Potter.’
‘Blasphemer!’ She flicked her bra at me. ‘May you be forgiven for speaking such untruths.’
‘Hey, speaking of Harry Potter, I have something for you – a good luck charm for tomorrow.’ I pulled open the top chest drawer and handed her a tiny purple gift bag.
‘Another present? You promised no more presents.’
I smiled at the memory of turning up to the restaurant in the bright blue Mini I bought her a month ago. I couldn’t stand the thought of her still catching public transport when she was followed everywhere she went.
‘This one doesn’t count as a gift though. It’s a good luck charm.’
She unwrapped the tissue paper and squealed, ‘Hermione’s time turner necklace! Nick!’
‘Do I get another shag for that?’ I kissed the back of her hand and then dotted kisses up along the length of her forearm.
‘Dream on.’ She laughed and slipped the pendant over her head.
She’d learned many new sayings in the last few months. Even her accent was getting fainter by the day. It made me happy that she was more comfortable with English, but I was also nostalgic for the girl I first met at Black Salt.
‘Are you sure you still want to come tomorrow?’ She pulled on a bright green fleecy jumper that had a freaky owl’s head knitted on it in white yarn. ‘I’m still not convinced it’s the right thing to do. What if you get into trouble with the club?’
I hadn’t told her about the phone call with Max Dawson or any of the tension at the club.
‘For the millionth time, yes, I still want to come.’ I had a big drink of water. ‘You’ve spent hours and hours researching for your speech. I wouldn’t miss it for the world.’
‘But you have heard me give the speech. I’ve practised the whole thing in front of you three times.’
‘Doesn’t count.’
‘Hokay.’ She indulged my love of the word. ‘I hope that the club doesn’t find out you were there though. It probably won’t get covered by the media anyway.’
‘And the forecast is for rain, so if any reporters were planning to come they’ll wuss out now and stay in their warm houses instead. So don’t worry about the club, just focus on being brilliant.’
‘Wuss out.’ Anna laughed. ‘I like this. Wuss out.’
After she left, Bluey jumped onto the couch that he wasn’t allowed on, resting his head on my legs.
‘It’s going to be a big day tomorrow, Blue.’ I sighed, and he sighed back.