'The English have a saying: you can't step into the same river twice. Do you know it? Do you know what it means?'

She knew.

Another time he called and said, 'I've seen her.'

'Hasina!'

'The family she is with is respectable-type family. But it would be better if she had her own living accommodation.'

'How did she seem?'

'She seemed . . .' Chanu paused. 'Unbroken.'

'What did she say? How did she look?'

'We must send some money. Will you send to her?'

The first wage that Razia paid was not much. All month they ate rice and dal, rice and dal. And at the end of the month there was five pounds left to send to Hasina. Next month there was more.

Nazneen put down her pen. It was not working. She was not ready. She had thought it would be a matter of trying. Now she realized that the work would come later. First she had to imagine.

A new song came on the radio.

Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeelll A woman's voice, half singing, half screeching.

You know you make me wanna shout She went to the radio and turned it up. The singer jumped off her cliff of expectation and cavorted in an ecstatic sea.

Nazneen moved her head to the song. Her hips went side to side. She tapped her right foot, then the other. She raised her arms and moved her chest. The music broke in waves over her entire body.

She waved her arms, threw back her head and danced around the table. Shout! She sang along, filling her lungs from the bottom, letting it all go loose, feeling her hair shake out down her neck and around her shoulders, abandoning her feet to the rhythm, threading her hips through the air. She swooped down and tucked her sari up into the band of her underskirt. Shout!

Nazneen put her hands on her waist and kicked her legs high. She turned and kicked, turned and kicked, jumped and kicked and her foot went over her head.

The phone rang. Nazneen ran to the radio and switched it off.

'Hello.' She was panting.

'What's wrong?' It was Chanu.

'No. Nothing. Just running for the phone.'

'Your sister has vanished.'

Nazneen's chest hurt. She pushed it with her hand. 'Oh, God, what has happened?'

'Her employer came to see me. She has vanished with the cook. They have run away together.'

'Oh,' said Nazneen. 'I thought something terrible . . .'

'Something terrible has happened. The cook is only a young boy. How soon before he gets tired of her? Remember what happened the last time.'

The line was clear but Chanu, out of emotion or force of habit, shouted.

'When did she leave?'

'A week or two ago. I don't know. There was hell to pay with the employer. Good cooks don't grow on trees, as he kept reminding me.'

'Did you see him, the cook? What was he like?'

'Don't expect me to go chasing after her. There's more to this soap business than meets the eye. I can't go running around all over the town on your wild-goose chase.'

Nazneen imagined him nursing his belly.

'I know,' she said.

'Why did she do it? Why does she do these things?'

Nazneen glanced down and was surprised to see her legs. 'Because,' she said, 'she isn't going to give up.'

Chanu was quiet. The line played a static tune.

'I've been thinking,' said Chanu. 'Maybe you could come for a holiday, you and the girls.'

'What about school?'

'Oh,' he said and was very casual about it, 'oh, come whenever it's possible.'

'Yes,' she told him. 'We'd like that.'

The miles did not matter. She saw him beam. His eyes disappeared in crinkles. His cheeks were ready to burst. His voice, when it came, was unsteady. 'I'd like that too. That is the thing I'd like most in the world.'

'Where are we going?' Nazneen asked again. 'Give me a clue.'

They were on the bus, heading towards Liverpool Street. That was all she knew.

'A clue. A clue,' said Razia, with her best sideways look.

'No,' cried Shahana. 'Stop it.'

'It's a surprise,' Bibi explained, with the patience of angels.

'I'll guess, then. We're going to the zoo.'

'No.'

'The cinema.'

'No.'

'The fair. The circus. The end of the earth.'

'No more guessing,' said Shahana. She took a Tupperware box out of her bag and lifted the lid. She had made the sandwiches herself, cream cheese spread with mango pickle. 'There's two each. Who wants one now?'

Shahana and Bibi had half a sandwich each.

The conductor came upstairs and told them theirs was the next stop.

As they got off the bus, the girls took hold of Nazneen's hands. 'Close your eyes,' they told her.

She obeyed.

They tugged her hands. 'Come on. Walk.'

She opened her eyes.

'Walk with your eyes closed.'

She felt the breeze against her skin, the warmth of the sun against her eyelids, the hair that tickled her cheek. As she walked she was aware of each step, testing out the mechanics of her legs.

'We're here,' said Bibi.

'Hush,' said Shahana. Her hand covered Nazneen's eyes. 'Tie your scarf around, Bibi, or she'll cheat.'

'I hope you don't expect too much of me,' said Razia. 'Remember I'm an old lady. Old and arthritic'

'Hush,' said Shahana. 'You'll give it away.'

The girls guided Nazneen along with one hand on hers and the other in the small of her back. Nazneen heard voices, the ones that passed her and the ones that melted far away. She heard music played on strings and piped from on high. There were thuds too, like boots having the mud knocked off them. And a faint whooshing that came and went like the wind in a tunnel.

'Where are we?'

'You sit here with Razia. We'll organize everything.'

'Shall I peep?' she said to Razia, when she could tell that the girls had gone.

'You could try,' said Razia, 'but then I'll have to poke your bloody eyes out.'

Nazneen rested her arms on the table. She could smell fried food, old leather, the warm, used smell of air that has been in countless nostrils, a hint of talcum powder, furniture polish and the sharp skin of limes. She breathed deeply. It was the furniture polish that smelled of limes.

'We're ready. We're ready,' said Bibi.

They stood her up and turned her round. Shahana untied the knot at the back of her head.

'Go on. Open them.'

She opened her eyes.

In front of her was a huge white circle, bounded by four-foot-high boards. Glinting, dazzling, enchanting ice. She looked at the ice and slowly it revealed itself. The criss-cross patterns of a thousand surface scars, the colours that shifted and changed in the lights, the unchanging nature of what lay beneath. A woman swooped by on one leg. No sequins, no short skirt. She wore jeans. She raced on, on two legs.

'Here are your boots, Amma.'

Nazneen turned round. To get on the ice physically - it hardly seemed to matter. In her mind she was already there.

She said, 'But you can't skate in a sari.'

Razia was already lacing her boots. 'This is England,' she said. 'You can do whatever you like.'

THE END.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS.

I am deeply grateful to Naila Kabeer, from whose study of Bangladeshi women garment workers in London and Dhaka (The Power to Choose) I drew inspiration. Thank you to Naila for her comments on the manuscript, and also for lunch.

I would like to thank everyone at Transworld for their tremendous support, Nicole Aragi for wisdom (provided) and wonders (performed), and Mari Roberts for getting things under way. Colin Robinson and Grant and Wendy Bardsley gave me encouragement at all the necessary moments and valuable observations on the manuscript. I am indebted to my parents and my brother for many discussions over the years, and to my father in particular for handing down stories. Syful, Sofia, Naema, Ali, Shofiur and everyone else who gave up time to talk to me thank you. To Simon I owe special thanks for being my first and most patient reader.

NOT THE END OF THE WORLD.

Kate Atkinson.

'MOVING AND FUNNY, AND CRAMMED WITH INCIDENTAL WISDOM'.

Sunday Times.

What is the real world? Does it exist, or is it merely a means of keeping another reality at bay?

Not the End of the World is Kate Atkinson's first collection of short stories. Playful and profound, they explore the world we think we know whilst offering a vision of another world which lurks just beneath the surface of our consciousness, a world where the myths we have banished from our lives are startlingly present and where imagination has the power to transform reality.

From Charlene and Trudi, obsessively making lists while bombs explode softly in the streets outside, to gormless Eddie, maniacal cataloguer of fish, and Meredith Zane who may just have discovered the secret to eternal life, each of these stories shows that when the worlds of material existence and imagination collide, anything is possible. . .

'I CAN THINK OF FEW WRITERS WHO CAN MAKE THE ORDINARY COLLIDE WITH THE EXTRAORDINARY TO SUCH BEGUILING EFFECT . . . LEFT ME SO FIZZING WITH ADMIRATION'.

Observer