Asif Declan Kalil Murphy has a brooding resentment of his name, and by extension, of his deceased parents, although he resents them for many more things than his name, up to and including their untimely departure from life. The trouble with his name, he thinks, is that it promises so much more – it promises that he will be interesting and exotic and larger than life, Irish charm and whimsy blended with South Asian mysticism and romance. Asif finds it impossible to live up to his shining name, and so shudders moth-like just beneath it; avoiding introductions and hiding behind initials. He finds it much easier to be A Murphy, a Murphy like any other, just one of the crowd of immigrants of Irish descent littering north London. Or better still, simply AM; I am what I am, thinks Asif, as his tube rumbles into the disappointing depths of Finchley Central, where the rain has made the edges of the platforms slippery, and there is a strong smell of ammonia from an unidentified source. I am what I am, he muses, not special or flawed or creative, just unimpressive, dull as dishwater, little old neutral old nothing old me; at a certain point, he thinks, he really needs to stop blaming his parents. But not just yet. He’s still young, he’s just twenty-three years old, and he suspects that he has years of grievance left in him. He’s an accountant like his British Asian mother before him; he lacks her strong will, but he has inherited her fickle constitution; his father was a hero who died on a peace-keeping mission several years before his wife’s congested heart was to claim her; Asif knows that he has nothing approaching his father’s courage, but he shares his sense of duty, and propensity to follow orders. It seems a bad joke that the very things that got Asif’s father killed are the things that deny Asif his own life; Asif is not the sort to swear, but he admits to having experienced a secret, soaring thrill the first day he heard the Larkin quote, from Lila, of course: ‘They fuck you up, your mum and dad. They may not mean to, but they do.’ It was so brilliantly and starkly true. Like a song he’d been humming his whole life had finally been put to words.

He walks up the steps at Finchley Central, and away from the gritty high street down the narrow, tree-lined roads towards the family home that he has inherited from his begrudged parents and that he shares with his youngest sister, Yasmin. The higgledy-piggledy streets are untidy and the knobbly, sore-looking trees are not slightly picturesque, but despite this, the walk to and from the tube is his favourite time of day. It’s when he doesn’t have to be at work worrying about his performance and whether he’ll Consistently Meet Expectations or Consistently Fail to Meet Expectations at his next appraisal, and when he doesn’t have to be at home worrying about pretty much the same thing, waiting to be appraised wordlessly by Yasmin’s NHS-assigned specialists instead. During the walk he is in between things, and no worse than anyone else; certainly not any different. During the walk he imagines that he has secret superpowers, as he is invisible, in his smart suit and precisely ironed shirt, and good shoes and tattered briefcase, which he inexplicably carries like a prize, as one might a broken nose, as though it has a scent of history about it; he is the sort of pleasant-faced young man that no one would notice.

His mobile phone rings as he turns into his street, and he stands at the corner shop in full view of his house, watching the curtain in the upstairs window twitch. Yasmin is looking out for him, as she always does between 6 p.m. and 6.30 p.m. He knows from past experience that if she doesn’t see him there, she panics, and so he never digresses from his usual path without warning. He has got so used to seeing the curtain twitch in the upstairs window each and every evening that he wonders whether he’d panic himself if he didn’t see it, as though Yasmin’s symptoms might be contagious; after all these years of accommodating her infuriating demands for consistency and routine, her habits and neuroses, it would hardly be surprising if he unwittingly adopted some himself. He searches for his phone in every pocket, with mounting panic, until he finally locates it; he is relieved to see that it is just his other sister calling, and answers hurriedly, aware that Yasmin is waiting and watching. ‘Hi Lila, what is it?’

‘I’m fine, thank you for not bloody asking. You’re losing your manners spending all your days locked up with Yasmin, I’ve always said it would happen.’

‘I don’t spend my days locked up with Yasmin, just the evenings. I spend my days locked up at work,’ retorts Asif, feeling guilty that Lila has managed to sum up so swiftly and with so little premeditation what he has been wondering himself.

‘At Accountants’ Anonymous?’ sniggers Lila, pleased with her joke. ‘Same difference. I’m returning your call from yesterday afternoon.’

‘Oh good, you got the message. That bloke who took the call seemed really out of it.’

‘Mikey? He owns the record shop. He is always out of it; I think he did too much dope as an adolescent or something. Still does. Has a fantastic arse though, I’m considering sleeping with him when I’m single again.’

Asif, becoming rapidly appalled at how quickly he can lose any sense of conversational control with Lila, ignores the merits of this unknown Mikey’s arse and asks, ‘So you’re coming round tonight, at eight-ish? I’m getting a curry in for us.’

‘What? As if, Asif! Spend a Friday night in with you and sodding Miss Spock. Not bloody likely.’ Lila begins to laugh, and then, realizing that her cackle sounds self-consciously cruel, like a cartoon villainess, stops abruptly. ‘I’m seeing Wesley tonight, anyway.’

‘That’s nice. Where are you meeting up?’ asks Asif with pointed civility, watching the curtain twitch a little bit more.

‘The Central,’ admits Lila grudgingly. The Central Bar is only ten minutes’ walk away from the house, a fact that hangs unspoken in the air between them.

‘Then come around at eight anyway,’ asks Asif at last, trying to sound business-like rather than pleading; he often gets lost between these two tones when making perfectly reasonable requests at work of the office support staff. ‘You can bring Wes if you want. Or leave him there for half an hour if we embarrass you. Yasmin has something important she wants to discuss with us; she wouldn’t tell me what. Something to do with school, I suppose.’

‘Why is it always about Yasmin?’ mutters Lila. Asif doesn’t answer, as, of course, she knows why already. ‘OK, I’ll pop around, but just for half an hour. And get me a veggie samosa please.’ Asif smiles; both he and Lila know that she doesn’t really want a samosa; asking him for one is her way of saying that she’ll be there, it’s her promise, wrapped up in pastry and stuffed with steaming and aromatic vegetables. His smile fades a little when he sees the curtain at the window has stopped twitching; he hopes that Yasmin...