The Reading List

by Sara Nisha Adams

  ‘Hey, Mia! How are you? Yeah, what you doing here?’

  ‘Just studying for my last exam next week. I know you told us girls you were working here since your exams ended, but I didn’t actually believe it.’ Mia smirked, like Aleisha’s job was the funniest joke in the world. In that moment, Aleisha hated her.

  But she giggled awkwardly, acting as though she was in on the same joke, laughing at her own expense. She hadn’t seen Mia since her own last exam in the middle of May, over a month ago – they’d not exchanged a word after. She certainly didn’t think of herself as one of ‘us girls’ any more. The WhatsApp group was now the only sign that they’d ever been connected to one another. She wondered what it would be like in September, thrown back at school. Would they be the ‘best of friends’ again? Would they never speak again?

  Mia’s textbooks were scattered all over the desk.

  ‘That looks like more than one exam’s worth of stuff.’ Aleisha nodded her head towards the table: a distraction technique.

  ‘I want a head start too. Not long before uni applications, I don’t want to be playing catch-up.’

  ‘Yeah I get you.’ Aleisha nodded, her eyes darting around the library, looking for an excuse to leave. ‘I’d better go. It looks like someone needs me.’ She bobbed her head in the direction of the front desk where a kid of about ten was preparing to ring the bell. Kyle was making his way over too – Aleisha caught his eye and shooed him back.

  ‘Hey,’ Aleisha waved her arms at the kid. ‘I’m here.’ She marched to the desk, settled herself into her chair and put her game face on. ‘How can I help?’

  ‘I want to take a book out.’

  ‘Any one in particular?’

  ‘I don’t know. Can you recommend me one?’

  Aleisha rolled her eyes. Here we go again. But she could feel Mia watching her, and she kept a wide smile: Good Librarian Mode in full force.

  Mia didn’t leave quickly. She stayed for hours. Long enough to see Aidan walk in with a Tesco carrier bag of lunch for Aleisha. She spotted her friend’s ears prick up at her brother’s voice. Mia had always had a crush on Aidan; all Aleisha’s friends did.

  ‘Hey, Leish,’ Aidan said, wandering up to her. ‘What you doing?’ He pointed his carrier bag at her as she leant back in her seat reading Rebecca. Seeing as Mr Patel had read To Kill a Mockingbird in two days flat, she’d had to recommend him Rebecca before she’d even finished it herself. In a panic, not wanting to be caught out again, she’d called up during Lucy’s shift later the next day to reserve The Kite Runner, Life of Pi, Pride and Prejudice, Little Women, Beloved and A Suitable Boy. The whole list. The books were piled up on her desk, ready to be taken home.

  Lucy had squealed down the phone. ‘Aleisha! You’re reading a big old load of books, are you?!’ And right on cue, the library assistant embarked on her favourite story about her kids becoming readers. ‘Honestly, trust me, even if you think storybooks can do nothing for you, it just really opens up your world a little bit, my dear. Look at my Hannah, she’s a big business lady now and she always says she got her focus from this place. Those textbooks you read for school and stuff can teach you a fair amount, but novels teach you so much more! My little ones became readers here, babe,’ she said for the trillionth time. ‘So happy you’re doing it too! Especially after all your whingeing.’

  She was pleased for the protection the book gave her today, something to hide behind. But she still felt stupid, with Mia there glancing round every so often, despite the fact reading felt a smidge more natural to her now. She’d been drawn in at first by Mr de Winter, charming, attractive, as well as his new wife, nervous, so obviously in love. And Aleisha couldn’t shake that ominous feeling of the past coming back to haunt them, captured by the description of that grand, overgrown, overbearing and creepy house, Manderley, a secret festering between the newlyweds.

  Aleisha had jumped out of her skin earlier. A line in the story mentioned a pile of books from the library. It had haunted her; it felt as though the author had suddenly turned her gaze outward, on Aleisha.

  She didn’t yet know where this story might go, but she wanted to find out.

  ‘I’m just reading,’ she replied to Aidan.

  ‘I can see that, I’m just … pleased you’re so keen. Remember when Nan got you that Lemony Snicket book and you ended up using it as a stage for your Kinder egg toys?’

  Aleisha rolled her eyes.

  ‘How’d it go with the old guy in the end? You’re still reading these for him?’

  ‘Not just for him,’ she replied. ‘Helps pass the time too, I guess.’

  He pulled the book out of her hands to scrutinize the cover. ‘Rebecca? Careful you don’t scare the old guy to death with this one. You could get fired for that.’

  ‘Shhh!’ Aleisha hissed, looking over at Mia. ‘Give that back!’ She snatched the book from his hand.

  ‘Sorry, sorry, don’t want to ruin your street cred in front of all your friends,’ he waved his arms around dramatically at the library buzzing with imaginary people. Then Aidan’s eye caught the back of Mia’s head. ‘Mia?’ he mouthed, in an over-the-top, typical Aidan kind of way.

  Aleisha nodded and pulled a face that only Aidan would understand to mean, ‘Yep. Fuck my actual life.’

  ‘Want me to hang out here to, you know, protect you? Why aren’t you mates any more, anyway?’

  ‘Shush! We’re all right. Plus you only want to stay ’cause you know she fancies you.’

  ‘Well, who can blame her?’ Aidan winked, and Aleisha got up from her chair to punch her brother on his shoulder. ‘Hey! That’s not how you treat everyone here, is it? No wonder you’re getting a rep as the world’s worst librarian. I’ll go then …’

  ‘Wait! Seeing as you’ve come all the way here …’ she shout-whispered. ‘I feel like this is the first time I’ve seen you in ages, we’ve been ships in the night. What you been up to?’

  They both knew that managing Leilah’s spiral was taking over everything else at the moment; their mother’s need hanging unspoken between them.

  ‘Yeah, it’s okay, they’re thinking of promoting me to manager at the warehouse which would be good … finally.’

  Aidan worked at a biscuit warehouse, which wasn’t quite the job of his dreams. He’d taken on the evening shift in his summer just after sixth form, intending to find something else, but after seven years he was still there. Aleisha knew he liked the stability, the familiarity … and probably the biscuits too.

  ‘That’s so great!’

  ‘But it would mean spending more time there and potentially giving up the job at Elliot’s.’ Elliot’s was the car mechanic’s Aidan had been working at for the past few months, covering the odd shift here and there. Aleisha saw it as another avoidance technique of his – trying to be practical, putting his own ambitions of setting up his own shop on hold. He’d spoken about doing an Open University business course before, but every time Leilah was unwell, he acted as though he’d never suggested anything of the sort, and threw himself into something else.

  ‘Would that be the end of the world?’

  ‘Leish, you know I like mechanics, like I think it could be a good career for me in the short term. Might give me some hands-on insight into running a business too. Elliot’s really nice, he said he’d let me help out on that side of things if I wanted.’

  ‘Right, but other than that, are you actually interested in it?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ He suddenly looked a little stony-faced.

  ‘What’s the money for a manager position at the warehouse?’

  ‘It’s more than I expected. It’s not loads. Not as much as you’re gonna get as a lawyer.’

  Aleisha laughed, but it was tinged with sadness. Aleisha had always been allowed to dream, had always been pushed to do more. Aidan had never had that same opportunity. She’d decided on becoming a lawyer when she was thirteen, mainly because she loved to argue, and from that moment Aidan had never let her drop it
, planning his own life to support hers.

  She wished she could say to Aidan that he could be anything he wanted too, he could follow whatever dream he had, but he’d never take advice from his younger sister. Aidan didn’t take advice from anyone.

  ‘What’s your dream?’ she asked, unable to stop herself.

  Aidan just let out a low, guttural laugh. ‘What are you, my career adviser?’

  ‘I’m your sister, and I don’t think I know what it is.’

  ‘That’s because I’m not like you, Leish. Some people don’t have dreams.’

  ‘Everyone has something.’

  ‘In that case, if you really want an answer, I have you guys. You and Mum. You’re it.’

  Something caught in Aleisha’s throat and she couldn’t reply. The silence of the library echoed around them. What had they done to this young man? What had they done to his dreams?

  He launched the meal-deal bag at her, which broke the tension with a clatter, the juice and sandwich rolling out onto the floor.

  ‘Shit!’ Aidan shouted, and all four people in the library, including Mia, turned around to frown. When Mia spotted that Aidan was the source of the disruption, her face changed, and she beamed at him, doing one of those cutesy little waves. Aidan raised his eyebrows, waving back, picking up the sandwich and juice with his other hand and placing it carefully on Aleisha’s desk.

  Mia started to approach, and Aidan smirked at his sister, mouthed, ‘I’m sorry’, and rushed out at breakneck speed. On cue, Mia slowed down, diverting her path ever so slightly away from Aidan’s ghost and towards Aleisha.

  ‘Oh, you dropped this,’ Mia said, bending down to pick something up from the floor. A little orange Post-it note. She presented it as though it was some kind of precious gift.

  Enjoy your lunch. Pick up some stuff for dinner tonight – I’ll cook. Ax

  Classic Aidan.

  ‘From your brother? Awwww, super cute,’ Mia said, reading it for herself.

  Aleisha snatched it back. ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Erm, I was just coming over to say I’m going to head out now, but see you soon. Enjoy your book. And your meal deal. Good to see you, yeah?’

  At seven o’clock, closing time was fast approaching. Aleisha was the only person left in the whole library. This was just the kind of peace she wanted. The perfect environment to spend some quality time with Rebecca. When she’d first flicked through the pages a few days ago, she’d known she’d give the book a decent chance. The first sign was My Cousin Rachel on the list of other books written by Daphne du Maurier. Aleisha missed her own cousin Rachel. They used to be inseparable, but Rachel now lived over a hundred miles away …

  The beautiful, isolated mansion – Manderley – pulled her right into the book, taking her somewhere else altogether. She was slowly learning about Rebecca herself … she was actually Mr de Winter’s ex-wife, yet her presence was so overbearing in the house, so all-consuming in the new Mrs de Winter’s life, she deserved to be the title character. Manderley’s location was never mentioned precisely, but all the description reminded her of Cornwall … well, it reminded her of the photographs she’d seen of the beautiful Cornish coastline plastered all over her Year 9 Classroom wall after all her friends had gone on a school trip to Bude. Aleisha hadn’t been able to go. Aidan, who had been just 21 at the time, had rearranged his work shifts to try to make it work, but ultimately she had to stay back because Leilah wasn’t well. She’d hated seeing those beautiful pictures at school, hearing the stories from her friends, learning about everything she’d missed.

  Aleisha had always wanted to see Cornwall in real life, but she had still never had the chance. She loved the look of its rugged cliffs, dramatic crashing waves – so different from the wide sands and pine trees of North Norfolk, the only seaside Dean and Leilah had ever taken them to as kids.

  But now, through Rebecca and Mrs De Winter, Aleisha was experiencing Cornwall from a totally different perspective. And she could go as far away from Wembley, from Mia, from Leilah, as possible, one page at a time.

  Rebecca skulked about Manderley like a ghost and, a chill running down her spine, Aleisha dropped the book down onto her desk suddenly. Bloody creepy. After a breath, to calm herself, she tucked the novel under her arm and grabbed her bag, overloaded with books. When she stood up, a big, dark shadow was looming over her, slicing through the waning light of the summer evening.

  ‘Shit!’ Aleisha yelped, clutching the book to her chest for protection. As her eyes readjusted, she realized it was just the vacuum cleaner, left out by Kyle as a reminder to ‘keep this place looking sharp’. This bloody book – it was still basically daylight and it was already scaring her half to death.

  As she locked the library up for the night, kicking a grand total of zero readers out into the summer evening air, she tucked the reading list into Rebecca to mark her spot.

  Once again, she found her mind lingering on the curator of the list. She pictured someone fairly young, younger than her mum probably but older than her, judging from the super neat and kind of fancy handwriting, not like Aleisha’s bubble handwriting. They could be a student, but she doubted it. All school reading lists were typed out and just handed out to people. This was one the person had put together themselves, or copied out of a newspaper or off the internet or something. Like off the lists that say ‘20 books to read before you die’. In the case of Rebecca, she wondered if it was ‘the one book to read before you get married in case you discover his ex-wife is going to haunt you and the housekeeper is going to be a right bitch through your whole marriage and maybe you can’t trust your new hubby either’.

  Aleisha had no idea what it was like to be haunted by a dead woman or to live in a mansion, but the way Manderley was described, the atmosphere, sharp, heavy and suffocating … she got that. She knew exactly what that felt like. She wished she’d never made the comparison. Maybe it wasn’t the best book choice for her after all. But it was already too late.

  She let herself out of the library, locking the doors behind her. She looked back through the windows. It had been confronting seeing Mia here today – an intruder in the space that was starting to feel different to her. More like a refuge than a prison sentence. More like somewhere she could, one day, actually belong. She watched as the last beam of evening sun shone on her desk, her spot. Even if she’d never admit it to Mia, maybe she was starting to like working here.

  It was the little things.

  THE READING LIST

  IZZY

  2017

  IZZY SAW IT THERE, lying on the pavement in front of her. She had a look around, wondering if someone had dropped it, where it had come from. It had a piece of sticky tape at the top, now lacking any adhesive. It was just dry and dirty from the London smog.

  She hadn’t found a list in a long time. It was a bit of a weird habit of hers, collecting lists. She’d started when she first moved to London, when she’d found one abandoned in a trolley in Sainsbury’s. The city had been so large, so vast and lonely sometimes, finding lists was like finding tiny moments of human connection, where she could prove that the silent strangers who walked past her, avoiding eye contact, were people too. They wrote shopping lists, they planned their dinners, they added some treats in every so often – the lists grounded her.

  Every list she’d ever found was now stuffed into a little box in her hallway dresser drawer. She knew that one day she’d upgrade them, put them in a folder or a photo album or something, but for now, that’s where they lived. Most of the lists were from supermarkets, found in baskets, on the floor, by the cash register, left at the self-service checkout. Sometimes she discovered them floating down the street outside a shop. Almost all the lists were shopping lists, once useful then suddenly discarded. Apart from one, which was an invite list – a small dinner party, maybe. There were names scribbled out – and some responses too: ‘doesn’t eat eggs’ or ‘allergic to chicken but fine with other birds’. For days she’d wondered how the dinner
party had turned out – whether the people who were crossed off had RSVP’d ‘no’, or were dumped by the host.

  Every list gave her some kind of insight into the person – she loved trying to work out what meal someone might be cooking, whether they were meal planning for the whole week or just for one special dinner, maybe a date, a meet-the-parents lunch, or just a cosy night in.

  Sometimes she wished she was all right at art, because the images of these people were so vivid in her mind, she wanted to draw them, immortalize them in some way. She could work out if someone had kids, was vegetarian, was cooking for one or two, even what their skincare regime was or how smelly they were (deciphered by their choice of deodorant).

  But this list, floating down Wembley High Road, was a bit different.

  Just in case you need it:

  To Kill a Mockingbird

  Rebecca

  The Kite Runner

  Life of Pi

  Pride and Prejudice

  Little Women

  Beloved

  A Suitable Boy

  She knew what it was. She’d written loads herself when she was at uni and had to get a pile of books out of the library. It was a reading list. It might even have been someone’s university reading list, if it weren’t for the line at the top: Just in case you need it.

  She recognized some of the books, had read them years ago, but, as she stood in the middle of the busy pavement, scrutinizing the handwriting, she struggled to find the connections between each title. What, and importantly, who had brought all these books together?

  Looking down at this smudgy list, her fingers brushed over the words. Silently, it began to rain. She didn’t notice until the drops fell on the words, and the ink, once dry, was suddenly fresh and running into a puddle. She tucked it up her sleeve in a hurry and sprinted to the nearest bus stop. Here she stood looking down at the words, the handwriting, the gentle curl of the ‘J’, the ‘d’. The titles were written less floridly, as though whoever wrote the list wanted the books themselves to be as legible as possible. Yet they couldn’t resist adding a flourish to the ‘g’ and the ‘R’, and eliding the ‘B’ and ‘e’ of Beloved.