Breach by Olumide Popoola Page A

for the small crowd that clapped her over there, she’d give up right now. Really, she ought to be helping Marjorie, her tiny timid aunt, sorting donations in the warehouse with other volunteers. Really, inner Dad interrupts, she ought to be at home preparing her first university essays, instead of traipsing along with bloody Marjorie to Calais. But she’s in neither of these places, doing neither of these dutiful things. Instead, she’s leaning back against the wooden side of someone’s shelter, stretching her legs out, tipping up the toes of her hiking boots to stretch her calves. Probably, she should be at yoga camp in Wales with her mother, but no, she’s watching a man walk by in thin blue cotton shalwar kameez with a khaki anorak over the top, talking with his friend. She’s watching his feet go by in worn leather sandals, like an extra from a desert film who’s wandered on to the wrong set. She’s wondering how he will manage in the cold that already bites from the shadows. She’s addressing her father, proposing thathe rethink his whole position on refugees and (please, Dad!) welcome the desert man as soon as possible to a council house of his own. With heating.
     
    Outside the school, Muhib is practising, knee to knee with his flute teacher, a German woman with pink-dyed dreads, an orange dress and a nose ring, both of them peering down at the chords written in a book by their feet. Muhib is wearing clothes that his volunteer friends brought especially for him, stylish clothes: black stretch pants, a black and gold T-shirt and a black hoodie with sleek fat-toothed zips over the pocket. People say that Muhib is so friendly, so generous, so enthusiastic, so open. They don’t say, because it’s awkward, that he’s handsome. And ‘Muhib’ is not, of course, his real name. Muhib means ‘loving friend’, though, so it’s a good name for him.
    ‘Tonight, you play with us?’ the flute teacher asks him. ‘In the Dome?’
    ‘You think I can do that?’
    ‘For sure, Muhib. Come on, man – one song?’
    ‘That will be very amazing,’ he tells his teacher, and she grins.
    He picks up her phone and frames a photograph of her with the merry ‘School’ sign painted on the wall behind her head. A notice on the door requests that people not photograph the school, but that’s to protect the refugees from thoughtless snappers; it’s not meantfor the regulars like the flute teacher who’ve put in the time, who’ve chosen the Jungle, the real troopers.
     
    It’s not a wonderful smell. But not offensive, really. Like a full laundry basket perhaps. Stale, with notes of cold wet concrete, Marjorie thinks. At her trestle table, they’re sorting the shoe donations by size. Maybe that’s why she’s noticing the smell today, come to think of it. To one side, they pile Impossibles: broken or inappropriate shoes, including a pair of red stilettos. This morning, someone found a wedding dress packed in a trunk with other donated garments. Is that an insult? Marjorie wonders. Offloading your unwanted tat? Or might it be a romantic notion? You never know – someone might want to marry in a refugee camp, might not want to wear a bulky parka and donated trainers to their wedding, might want a white gown and even some red stilettos. In what she refers to as her middle years, Marjorie takes a more elastic line on weddings and marriage than she used to. Much to abhor, of course, in the gender inequalities of the institution, but the younger generation seem to like a wedding, even the lefties. Not to mention mad heels. Let it go.
    Another thing to let go of, if she can: some guilt or doubt nipping at her gut, just under her ribs, concerning her niece. Is her brother correct? Has she brought Julie along because Julie wanted to come, being eighteen now and allowed to make her own decisions? Or is Juliehere as another salvo in Marjorie’s long-running war with her right-wing brother? Marjorie doesn’t doubt her own true