He hoped Umang was well – he was a boy with a big heart, a clever mind, wise beyond his years. Mukesh had loved playing with Umang – he was someone Mukesh could always be himself around. ‘Two peas in a pod,’ his mother always said to them in English.
They’d drifted apart in their teenage years – but still saw each other walking the roads, at the beach – but Mukesh hadn’t thought of Umang for years now. Until The Kite Runner.
‘When I was a boy, I had a best friend,’ Mukesh started, not quite knowing how to phrase it without making himself look like a villain. He noticed Mrs Danvers had stopped eating her cream-cheese bagel to watch him. ‘He always wanted to spend time with me. One day, I shut Umang out of my house because I didn’t want to play, I just wanted to be alone. But my friend, well, he was just there for some company, for some peace and quiet, and probably for some of my mummy’s dosa – everyone in our village loved my mum’s dosa.’
‘Is it as good as Ba’s used to be?’
‘You know, my mum actually gave your ba her recipe! I did other things I wasn’t proud of – now I look back and can see how terrible I was as a friend to Umang, playing with him only when I wanted to. When some of the older boys asked me to play, I abandoned Umang, not wanting the boys to know that we were the best of friends, worried about what they might think. We were from quite different families, you see.’ He took a deep breath. How would Atticus find the meaning in this story? ‘It’s good to be kind to people, especially the people you love, because you never know what it’s like to walk in their shoes until one day you do. And by then, it’s often too late to make a real difference. But yes,’ he tapped the book again, ‘maybe save this one until you’re a teeny bit older. Ha?’
‘Okay, Dada, if you say so …’
Suddenly, sitting beside him was Naina. She was back. She had come back to him, for the briefest of moments. Her face was aglow, her smile iridescent. Today was a milestone, and he couldn’t wait to tell Aleisha what a good job he had done.
THE READING LIST
INDIRA
2017
INDIRA STOOD OUTSIDE THE library, peering through the doors, with the list held in her hands. She looked at it, as though it might give her direction. This morning, her next-door neighbour’s daughter had posted a note through the letterbox: Dear Indira, I wanted to let you know that my mother Linda will be moving away from Wembley. She is coming to live with me – we’re all keen to have her closer to us. Her memory is not what it once was and we feel the time has come to have her near. Please do keep in touch. All best, Olivia x
Linda had been Indira’s neighbour for the last twenty years. They weren’t best friends, but they spoke almost every day, at ten o’clock in the morning when they both sat out in the garden for a few minutes before they got on with the rest of their day. They were both lonely; they both filled their days with crosswords, and tea and chai breaks. They both had routines that meant nothing. But today, Indira realized there was a difference. Linda had people there for her, and now she wouldn’t be lonely again. Indira … she had no one. Her daughter Maya was living in Australia – she saw her every few years. Not once had Maya and her husband ever suggested she move there with them. She read Olivia’s note once, twice, three times, folded it up and unfolded it again and again.
Upset, but unable to explain why, she hopped over to her coat on the coat rack and pulled it over her shoulders – she needed to get out even though she had nowhere to go. She pulled her plastic mandir bag out from her pocket, and out came a note. The other note. The one she’d found weeks ago in her shoe rack at the mandir, with the list.
She turned it over. Harrow Road Library.
Right, Indira had thought to herself. That’s where I’m going to go.
Throughout Indira’s life, she’d always looked for signs. While the list of books hadn’t felt like one at first, her mind had kept being drawn back to it, like a siren in the night. And today, it had found her just when she needed a distraction. The library was only a few streets away from her house. She might as well go; she had nothing else to do – she never had anything to do. She hadn’t been to the library since her Maya had been little – and they’d curled up in the children’s corner reading books.
To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee. It would be under L, she kept telling herself over and over again.
After a deep breath, she pushed the doors open. Immediately, she was greeted by an Indian man behind the desk wearing a sweater-cardigan-waistcoat-type thing.
‘Hello, madam!’ he said, smiling broadly. ‘How may I help you?’
His smile was infectious; she couldn’t help but beam back at him.
‘Oh, hello! I am looking for some books.’ She passed him the list. ‘Any one of these would be good, but is there one you’d recommend reading first? Perhaps I should just start with the first one?’ She couldn’t stop herself from talking. The man didn’t respond for a while, as his eyes scrolled down the piece of paper, then up again.
‘You could start anywhere, of course. But The Kite Runner, eh?’ he said. ‘You know, our volunteer-run book group is actually reading that one together. There’s one of them over there.’ He pointed to a white woman, about twenty years younger than Indira, with her white hair pulled back into a bun, half her face hidden behind the book.
‘Lucy,’ he called over, and the woman looked up. She smiled big too. Everyone here was a smiler. ‘I’ve got a lady looking for The Kite Runner!’
The woman hurried over, holding her own copy – ‘Oh my, yes, you’re in for a treat! We’ve got a couple of copies on the shelf. If you are interested, you could come along to our book group.’
‘What day is it?’ Indira asked, cautiously, not quite sure what she was signing up for. She only came here for a few books.
‘We meet every second Thursday of the month.’
Indira knew she was free then – Indira was always free.
‘Yes, okay – I will … I will read the book, and then, if I like it, I can come?’
‘Of course,’ the woman, Lucy, said. ‘But if you don’t like it, that’s fine too! We love a good discussion, we do! We have a young woman called Leonora who joined the library specially because of the book club. And we have a girl called Izzy; she’s such a voracious reader, always in here with a long list of books, a bit like yours actually, but she’s already read The Kite Runner – she’s got so many little sticky notes on it – the rest of us aren’t like that! She’s like a detective or something … anyway, she’s already told us she isn’t a fan. So, whether you like the book or not, you’ll always have someone on your wavelength. It’s a good way of connecting with people.’
The librarian lady smiled warmly, but she lingered on that last sentence, staring straight into Indira’s eyes. Or was it just Indira’s imagination?
‘Lucy is one of our volunteers so she knows this place like the back of her hand. Would you like me to grab the rest of these books for you?’ The Indian librarian was looking Indira up and down, her Zimmer frame his obvious concern.
‘Erm, no, actually – maybe I will take this one, first of all. See how I get on.’ She looked at the book in the woman’s hand and wondered whether she would be able to manage concentrating on a whole book. It had been a long time since she had read that much in English. ‘Do you have this one in Gujarati?’ she asked the Indian man, hoping he might understand.
‘Not this one, but we do have quite a few books in Gujarati,’ he said, and he led her towards the shelf. There were about fifty books there. Enough to keep her going for a good long time. ‘Wow,’ she exclaimed. ‘Well, I will start with The Kite Runner, but then, I think I will need to come back for this.’
‘And the other books on your list?’
She looked down. ‘Oh, yes, of course. I will come back.’
‘It’s been really nice to meet you … sorry, what’s your name?’ the white woman said to her.
‘Indira,’ Indira replied. ‘Nice to meet you also, Lucy. I am
looking forward to the book group.’
‘Oh, we’re a lovely bunch of people, if I do say so myself! You’ll love it. We bring cakes and snacks too, so if you ever fancy sharing anything, you would of course be more than welcome to.’
‘Thank you!’
‘We’re a little community, we are,’ Lucy said, beaming still. Indira wondered whether her cheeks were hurting from all her happiness.
As Indira left the library that day, she knew she’d be back – that shelf of books was so exciting to see. She liked reading English, and she could read it well, but she missed reading Gujarati novels.
The list was still held in her hands, tucked into The Kite Runner. ‘Thank you,’ she muttered to it. ‘Thank you for bringing me here.’
PART VI
PRIDE AND PREJUDICE
by Jane Austen
Chapter 19
ALEISHA
SHE GLANCED OVER TO her bedside table. Pride and Prejudice was staring back at her. It really wasn’t her kind of thing. She’d picked it up twice now and couldn’t get into the early nineteenth-century world of dances, of balls, of marriage matches, of interfering mothers. But at the pace Mr P was reading, he’d have caught up with her in no time, so she forced her eyes to focus on the words, on the images of the Bennet family house, Mrs Bennet, bossy, overbearing. Elizabeth, pretty uppity herself actually, and Mr Darcy, the love interest, the Colin Firth character in the BBC series … pretty uppity too. She tried not to, but she couldn’t help comparing him with Zac. He’d been popping up in her head ever since she’d started reading this cheese-fest of a book. She couldn’t work out why, but he kept appearing on her mind’s horizon, wearing period costume, his face brooding and moody, just like Mr Darcy. She imagined Leilah in Mrs Bennet’s place … would she approve of him? She caught herself, her imagination already wandering too far. What was she doing, thinking of Zac, and Leilah, in this way?
She heard the upstairs floorboards creak. Aidan’s room was directly above hers, but she was sure he’d be fast asleep by now. He had an early shift tomorrow, according to the Post-it notes stuck on the fridge. It sounded as if he was pacing his room, frantic. She’d lived in the ground-floor bedroom long enough to work out what every creak meant. Usually, it was the ones from Leilah’s room that she was most attuned to. She sneaked out of her bedroom, leaving the book face down on her bed, and wandered upstairs, trying to be as quiet as possible. She didn’t want to be the one to wake Leilah up. She stood outside his bedroom door. She put one hand out, ready to knock, but she could hear the pacing clearly now, as well as a soft, choked sobbing. Her heart crashed to the pit of her stomach. Part of her wanted to rush in, envelop her brother in a hug. But the other part of her, the cowardly part, told her that he’d hate that, that he’d just want to be left alone. She let that second part win, and she tiptoed back down the stairs.
She shut the door to her room. She tried shoving her headphones in, forcing herself to listen to her music, to forget about her brother, but it was futile. Her mind was still on him.
She opened up Pride and Prejudice once more, wishing for some connection to the old school characters, their frills and dresses, even wishing Zac would pop up in his period outfit and whisk her imagination away, but her mind was still with Aidan, in his room. She shut the book with force and dumped it back beside her bed. It didn’t matter what she did, her house had become Manderley again, with ghosts creeping in the corners. She squeezed her eyes shut, the darkness swirling behind her eyes.
‘Hey, Leish.’ Her brother’s head popped round her bedroom door the next morning. The light was shining through the curtains already, but she could tell from the stillness of the house that it was early. She grumbled in response, rubbing her eyes awake.
‘I’ve swapped some shifts around so I’m working today but will be back home tonight,’ he paused. ‘So I’ll be here in time for you to go out. You know – for your barbecue.’ Aleisha desperately searched her brother’s face for stress, tension. But she only saw a brightness; his eyes had a twinkle to them, as if he was plotting something. It was the face he used to make when he was a child, planning to make her a mud pie in the garden for her birthday, or when he’d put clingfilm over the toilet seat … and then planted the clingfilm box in Aleisha’s room for Dean to find. She wondered how last night, whatever had been going on with him, was already forgotten this morning. Had she dreamt it all?
‘Aidan, all okay with you? Do you—’
‘Yeah good!’ he cut in. ‘So that barbecue, the one Mia mentioned. You should go, get out of here and enjoy the last few weeks of summer.’
‘No,’ Aleisha laughed, hollow, ‘I’m not going. I’ll stay here. I mean, you’ve not had a night off in ages.’ Aleisha swung her legs over the bed, sliding her feet into slippers. ‘We could chill.’
‘No, you’re going. I haven’t seen you hanging out with your mates for weeks. Mum and me think it’ll be good for you.’
‘You told Mum?’
‘Yeah.’
There it was again. Aidan and Leilah: the joint parental unit, dictating how Aleisha should live her life. It made her laugh how she was a child when they wanted her to be one, yet when Leilah needed her to be a grown-up, there was no room for Aleisha to even be a teenager.
‘Promise me you’ll think about it?’ Aidan asked, putting his little finger up in the air.
‘I promise,’ Aleisha grunted, watching his face for a momentary lapse, for anything. Aidan waggled his little finger so only his face and his hand were visible, the rest of his body was tucked behind the door. ‘Yeah, I promise!’ Aleisha snapped, waggling her little finger back.
‘Great. See you later. I’ve left some reminders on the fridge too.’
She observed Aidan’s every move as he marched off with his usual energy. She shook her mind free of the image, the story, she’d invented last night, the scene she’d pictured through his bedroom door.
If Aidan hadn’t made a special effort and swapped shifts just so she could go out, she would have been typing her excuse on WhatsApp right now. Saying she was sick. Feeling nauseous. Migraine. But his Post-it notes on the fridge saying Go out and Have fun and I’ll be here, so you don’t have to be made her feel guilty. So here she was, putting on shorts and a top she only really wore on nights out. She put her ‘going out’ pack of cigarettes in her back pocket. Her mum and Aidan didn’t know about those.
She called to Aidan from the bottom of the stairs, ‘Aidan, can you let me in when I’m back later? I’ll give you a ring. I haven’t got space for my keys.’ Aidan and Aleisha both knew that the real reason she was leaving her keys behind was her drunken tendency to leave them in random places. Aidan had already had to pay for the locks to be changed twice.
‘Yeah, sure,’ he called back down. ‘Now go have fun!’
The air was cooler this evening, refreshing, and the sky had turned to candyfloss. She picked up a six-pack of beer using the ID she’d doctored with the Tipp-Ex and pen skills that Rahul had taught her. When she reached the park, she heard them before she saw them. She knew it well: an illegal barbecue, laughter fuelled by booze and fags; what friendships are made of. The park was almost deserted, though there were a few dog walkers and a couple of groups of teenagers. (Aleisha’s friends never considered themselves actual teenagers. They looked down on teenagers.)
She heard Rahul laughing, bellowing as though he really wanted to prove how much fun he was having, what a laugh he was. ‘You came!’ Mia jumped up as soon as she saw Aleisha. ‘I didn’t think you’d come. You know, flaky.’ Aleisha laughed uncomfortably, Mia winked back.
‘Kacey and people not here?’
‘Nah, they were going to see some gig or something. Last-minute tickets. Bailed. They’ll be gutted to miss you though – but you know, they didn’t think you’d come.’ That stung, but Aleisha felt the truth in it. ‘Anyway, what have you been up to recently? No one has seen you.’
Aleisha held her breath for a moment. She hadn’t been
up to anything. Her only news was meeting Mr P, reading the books, reading to her mum. It was all rubbish to them. ‘Not much really,’ she said.
‘Guys!’ Mia called out to everyone, ‘Aleisha’s working in the Harrow Road Library!’
Aleisha felt her face blanch. Some people cackled; mostly, no one looked up.
‘I thought they were shutting it down?’ Rahul said, winking at her, trying to draw himself into her conversation.
Aleisha didn’t say anything. She wanted this to end – she had nothing else to say anyway.
She spent the evening trying to act like there wasn’t a massive gulf between her and Mia, friends who were now nothing but strangers who moved in the same circles, lived in the same place, yet knew nothing of the detail of each other’s lives. Rahul kept looking over at her, looking for any opportunity to start chatting, so right now Mia was her only protection. She kept her eyes fixed on Mia as she swigged back the bottle of summer fruit cider, pretending to care about her family summer holiday and the weed she smoked with her dad and brother. Wild.
By 11 p.m., people had already started dropping off. They all wanted to go home early – this was the third night out they’d had this week. It was just a chilled one. Aleisha hadn’t left Mia’s side all night. Out of nowhere, Mia threw her head back and laughed, nearly toppling over and taking Aleisha with her. Aleisha anchored them to the floor. She had clocked some of the guys looking at Mia, watching her get drunker by the second, louder, happier.
‘Mee, shall we go home now?’
Mia shook her head, put her wobbly drunk arm up in the air, singing along to the tinny music playing out of someone’s phone. The barbecue was now forgotten, and the group had marked out their territory with a ring of discarded bottles and tin cans.
The Reading List Page 18
