Ghost Virus

Tooting is a district of south-west London.

It has been settled since the 6th century.

Today its population includes

5 per cent Pakistani and 3 per cent Polish.

Its name is derived from the old verb ‘to tout’

which means to ‘watch out’ or ‘beware’

Samira had been staring into her dressing-table mirror all morning before she summoned up the courage to burn off her face.

You are not me, she whispered to herself. Whoever you are, you are not me.

She heard the clock in the living-room downstairs chime twelve, and that was when she stood up and walked over to the door. She turned the key and jiggled the handle to make sure that it was securely locked. Then she returned to her dressing-table and picked up the clear glass bottle of concentrated sulphuric acid that was standing next to her Rasasi Blue Lady perfume and Masarrat Misbah foundation and all her lipsticks and blushers and eye-liners.

Behind the cosmetics stood an oval framed photograph of Samira with her husband-to-be Faraz. They were standing outside the Mahabat Khan Mosque in Peshawar, in Pakistan, both smiling, Samira with her hand held up to shield her eyes from the sun. That photograph had been taken only three hours after she had first met Faraz, but she had been happy that they were going to be married. Although he had a large mole on his upper lip he was reasonably good-looking and soft-spoken and only four years older than she was.

When her father and mother had driven her to his family’s house in Hayalabad, she had thought for one terrible heart-sinking moment that she was going to be given to Wasim, his fat sweaty forty-four-year-old cousin. Wasim had been sitting in the corner smoking and cramming saffron burfi into his mouth in between puffs.

But however suitable Faraz was, there would be no wedding now. Her parents could keep their dowry. They would have only her brother Jamal to worry about, as if Jamal wasn’t enough trouble on his own.

She didn’t look at herself in the mirror again. Instead she took the bottle of sulphuric acid in her hand and went to the window to stare down at their back yard. It was only about four metres wide, with a narrow flower-bed and a concrete path which led up to her father’s toolshed. It was here, though, she had spent most of her childhood, ever since her family had arrived in England.

It was here that she had played with her dolls and dressed herself up in fancy costumes and pretended to serve tea in plastic teacups to her friends from Iqra Primary School.

She raised her eyes. It was a clear November day, with a washed-out blue sky and sunshine. An airliner sparked like a silver needle as it flew high across south London towards Heathrow Airport. Samira had wanted so much to go back to Peshawar and see more of the country where she was born. That would be impossible now. They wouldn’t know who she was.

She sat down on the maroon satin bedspread that covered her single bed. The grubby stuffed lamb that she had been sent from Pakistan on her fourth birthday was lying on the pillow, with its pink ribbon and its Ziqi label, so she had always thought that its name was Ziqi. She reached out to pick it up but then she changed her mind. Even Ziqi wouldn’t recognise her.

She lay back on the bed. In anticipation of her wedding next month she was wearing an orange shalwar kameez with an embroidered collar, with a long orange dupatta scarf hung over her shoulders. It was warm in her bedroom, almost stiflingly warm, but she was also wearing a thick grey peacoat, with wide triangular lapels.

It was already past time for the dhuhr, the midday prayer, but she knew that what she was about to do was in direct contravention of Allah’s will. Whoever she was, she knew that Allah would forgive her, but she simply didn’t have the courage or the strength to face herself any longer. All the same, she whispered ‘Subhana rabbiyal adheem’ three times as she lay there. Then, ‘Please Lord… please… don’t let me suffer too much and too long.’

She held up the bottle and unscrewed its yellow metal cap. She felt quite calm now, and her hand was steady. The acid had no smell, although she could remember being warned when she was at school not to sniff it, because its vapours could burn her nasal cavities.

She bunched up her dupatta and gripped it between her teeth, in case she screamed. Then, keeping her eyes wide open, she poured the acid slowly over her forehead. Instantly, she saw scarlet, and then jagged flashes of lightning, like demons dancing, and then total blackness. The burning sensation was so excruciating that she dropped the bottle and splashed even more acid down the side of her neck.

Her skin crackled and bubbled and melted, dripping down her cheekbones and onto her pillow. Although she was biting deep into her dupatta, she let out a hideous half-choked screech, arching her back and bouncing up and down on the bed in agony.

The pain grew even more intolerable, and she clawed at her face with both hands in a futile attempt to try to relieve it, but she succeeded only in pulling slithery lumps of flesh from her chin, and ripping off her lips like two fat glutinous slugs. She could feel her teeth being bared, and then the acid eating hungrily into her gums.

She shrieked, and dragged at her long black hair, wrenching it out in clumps.

All the same, her prayer was answered. The acid ate so rapidly through the nerve-endings under her skin that her face and her neck soon began to feel numb, and then her heart stopped. The half-empty acid bottle rolled off the edge of the bed onto the floor and Samira shuddered as if she were cold and then she lay still. Her flesh continued to crackle softly and dissolve, exposing her windpipe and her larynx, all the way down to the vertebrae in her neck, but Samira was in the hereafter, and felt nothing.

Nearly three hours went by. The pale daylight outside her bedroom window was beginning to fade before the front door downstairs was noisily opened, and her mother called out, ‘Samira! We’re home! Samira! Where are you, Samira?’