Aleisha tried to pull Mia to her feet, but she was determined to lie back down on the floor, looking up at the sky, singing into the breeze.
Suddenly, Rahul was by Aleisha’s side.
‘Let me help you,’ he said.
‘No, I’m fine,’ Mia spoke for Aleisha, from the ground.
‘Okay,’ Aleisha nodded to him. She couldn’t do it alone.
Rahul didn’t say any more. He bent down to Mia, sitting on his heels. ‘Mee,’ he said, softly, ‘I think we should go now. It’s late, everyone’s going home.’
Mia shook her head dramatically. ‘No one’s going home,’ she said, her words suddenly crisp and clear. ‘Aleisha’s here, we have to make the most of it. We might never see her again.’
Between the two of them, they had enough strength and determination to lift Mia off the ground, carrying her with an arm on each of their shoulders. Even when Mia picked her feet up, floating between her two friends, they carried on. Mia said her goodbyes, complaining about her shepherd and chaperone, and wandered out of the park.
Aleisha was pissed off, but tried hard to conceal it. Aidan always said he could read her like a book – she hoped no one else could. She didn’t want the night to end this way. She wished her friend wasn’t so pissed. She wished Rahul wasn’t there.
Mia still lived in the house she’d grown up in, on the other side of Wembley to Aleisha. She hoped she’d be able to get a bus back. It was still early, so she knew Aidan would be up. He’d probably be watching something on YouTube, which was how she usually found him at this time in the evening, in the dark living room, the computer screen illuminating his face, giving him a deathly green glow. She should text him. But she knew it would be like admitting defeat – that she couldn’t have fun, no matter how much she forced it. It would prove to him that she wasn’t as good as her big brother. She kept her phone firmly in her pocket.
On Mia’s road, Aleisha recognized the houses and muscle memory took her the rest of the way.
When they got to the door, all the curtains were closed, the windows black. It was midnight, the street was quiet, Aleisha didn’t dare ring the doorbell. Rahul shrugged. Mia wasn’t sober enough to find her keys in her bag, so Aleisha went to help, following the sound of the jangling. Finally, she opened the door for her friend, who waltzed over the step, and shut the door on Aleisha and Rahul without a word. They heard a few more clatters, crashes and bangs. They shouldn’t have worried about waking up the house – Mia was doing the job anyway.
‘So,’ Rahul whispered. ‘I’ll walk you to yours, yeah?’
Aleisha shook her head. ‘No, it’s fine.’
Rahul insisted, but Aleisha got her phone out. It was time to put up that white flag. She called Aidan.
They waited outside Mia’s house, Aleisha was freezing cold, suddenly aware she was wearing shorts and a stupid strappy top. She hugged herself, avoiding Rahul’s eye in case he offered her something to keep her warm. The wait felt like for ever. She wanted to talk to Rahul, tell him what had been going on at home, about the old man she’d made friends with at the library. Would he laugh, or think it was stupid, or maybe tell her it was a nice thing to do, to keep a lonely old man company? She wanted someone to talk to, someone who wasn’t Aidan, who didn’t know what it was like to look after your mum when she couldn’t look after herself, but who might try to understand.
At one point, she opened her mouth to start talking. But she stopped herself. There was no point. It was probably the little bit she told Rahul about her mum that ended up scaring him away in the first place. It wasn’t something teenagers were used to talking about. She’d told Mr P some stuff, that was enough. She had Aidan, they were in this together.
Then, through the silence, Aidan’s car pulled up, music playing more softly than usual through his stereo, and he called out through the window: ‘Get in, you two.’
No matter how much she’d been dreading this evening, her heart was a hollow pit. She’d wanted to be the carefree teenager who was a binge-drinking liability for once. Instead, she’d been the sensible one, doing the right thing, looking after others. Nothing had changed.
Chapter 20
MUKESH
BEEP. ‘HI PAPA, IT’S Rohini, thank you so much for looking after Priya.’ ‘Yes, thank you, Dada!’ ‘She said she had a really great time in London with you. I hope you were careful. For your sake, more than anything.’
BEEP. ‘Hi Dad, it’s Vritti. Sorry for ringing earlier than usual – I’ve just got off the phone to Rohini. Would you like to come round next week for lunch or something? I can pick you up so you don’t need to get the train. Would really love to see you!’
BEEP. ‘Hi Mr P, it’s Aleisha. Sorry for calling, it’s so quiet at the library here today, so I thought I’d check in on how you were getting on with Life of Pi. I’ve got another book for you when you’re ready. Anyway, I’ll maybe call again later.’
Call again later? Mukesh felt an unexpected panic rise to his throat. He hadn’t spoken to Aleisha on the phone before. What would they talk about? He hadn’t checked his messages this morning because Nilakshi had popped round early to spend the day with him, so Aleisha was bound to call any moment now and he’d barely prepared!
‘Who was that on the answer machine?’ Nilakshi asked from the living room, sitting in her usual spot. (Yes, she had a usual spot now …) Her eyes were trained on a Hindi soap opera on Zee TV.
‘Oh,’ Mukesh said. ‘Just – erm – my librarian.’ He wondered if that was the right way to describe her.
‘Ah! That nice girl,’ she said, not taking her eyes off the television for a minute. ‘You’ve told me so much about her – she sounds like she’s read a ton of books. Naina would have loved that job, wouldn’t she?’
‘She would,’ Mukesh said, his legs shaking a little as he settled himself back down in his chair. He just had a few pages left of Life of Pi so he put on his noise-cancelling headphones (Nilakshi had brought them for him; they were her husband’s) to block out the deafeningly loud music and chatter from the Zee TV programme, and dived straight back in. Zee TV was now the most-watched TV channel in his house – he was strangely pleased about it. It had replaced Netflix and the refrain of David Attenborough on the National Geographic channel.
As he turned the final page of the book, leaving Pi and his unbelievable story behind, he kept his headphones on, hoping for a lasting moment of silence so he could gather his thoughts, not wanting the book to end but needing to know what Pi’s journey meant – was it real, was it imagined? This story had clutched him in the heart and mind – it had been a long, arduous journey for Pi, but an awe-inspiring, revelatory one for Mukesh.
Then, he spotted Nilakshi out of the corner of his eye, breaking his pondering. She was shuffling off the sofa and heading into the hallway.
A moment later, she was back, mouthing something at him, but he couldn’t hear a word she was saying. She was waving the phone in front of his face.
‘What is it?’ Mukesh said, pulling the headphones to rest around his neck.
‘For you! The librarian!’
‘Ah,’ Mukesh said, his heart rate picking up once more. Nilakshi had answered his phone, but what if it had been one of his daughters? He grabbed the receiver, held his hand over the mouthpiece, and moved quickly out of the room and into his bedroom next door.
‘Hello?’ he said.
‘Mr Patel! Mr P! Sorry, I hope I’m not disturbing you at home. It’s as rammed as Manderley here today. I like the silence but time’s dragging a bit. Who was that anyway?’
‘Who was who?’
‘The woman who answered the phone.’
Mukesh took a deep breath for a moment. ‘My … erm … I have a … it was my daughter, she sometimes answers the phone for me. I was reading, you see.’
‘Life of Pi? Have you finished yet?’
‘Just now!’ Mukesh said, pleased she didn’t pry further. He could feel the guilt creeping over him. Guilt about the lie; gu
ilt about why he was lying too.
He imagined Aleisha sitting at her desk, watching over the library. He wondered who was there today. Was the other elderly gentleman there, the one who liked to help himself to a cup of machine-made coffee and sit by the window, with a newspaper on his lap? Or maybe Chris, delving into another crime thriller? Or perhaps it was the book club – he’d never actually seen the book-clubbers, so far, but he imagined what they might be like – big glasses, huge carrier bags full of books, neat clothes.
‘So what did you think?’
‘Hmm?’ Mukesh said, his mind still on the library.
‘Of the book!’
‘Oh, yes, silly me! It’s wonderful,’ Mukesh said. ‘It’s unbelieveable – I can’t imagine it could ever really happen. How Pi lost everything on a sunken ship yet survived on a lifeboat with tigers and monkeys and hyenas for two hundred days!’
‘Well, it is only a book,’ Aleisha said. ‘But, I mean, the way the story is written – it’s, everything that happens is mad.’
‘At the end, it says a little thing that made me wonder if it was all Pi’s imagination. Is it true?’
‘I don’t know what the author wanted us to think, but … I believe Pi. Don’t you?’
‘Yes, but it’s so sad. How does he do it? He is so alone and lonely and yet … he is so brave!’
‘I reckon it all means something else – you know, like those biblical stories, which all have different meanings. My teachers were always talking about the Bible when we were kids – I never understood it. I had to ask my dad what they all meant. He didn’t have a clue either.’
She was talking about her father again. Was it just his imagination or did Aleisha seem slightly less guarded these days?
‘But I don’t know,’ Aleisha continued. ‘I wondered if the tiger meant something; like resilience or whatever.’
‘Maybe, I didn’t think that deeply about it. I’m not as clever as you. Or my wife, Naina,’ he said, the reprimanding image of Mrs Danvers popping into his head again. ‘Have I told you how Naina’s the reason I came to your library in the first place? And the books, the books you’ve been giving me, have helped me feel like I might be making her proud. Naina and my little granddaughter, Priya; they always had such a lovely connection with each other because of books. But still, I’m not as clever as you with all the deep meanings.’
Aleisha laughed, softly. ‘I’m not sure that’s true. That’s really lovely, though, Mr P. Your wife would be really proud of you. Especially if you really had just read one book before all of this. I don’t believe you, though – you’re getting through the books like a machine.’
Mukesh let that thought rest with him, pride inflating his chest, his head, just as Mrs Danvers fled the scene. Then the ‘ding-dong ding-dong’ of the doorbell rang.
‘Oh, no!’ Mukesh said. Who could it be?
‘Wait! How was your day with Priya?’ And suddenly Mukesh forgot about the doorbell, about Nilakshi and her Zee TV dramas.
‘Aleisha, it was magical!’ he exclaimed. He heard Aleisha giggle in the distance. ‘I took her to a bookshop – in central London. I took your advice. There were so many people there, all browsing, or drinking in the café … it was so full! I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be rude to the library, but, you know … it was busier than the library. I wish people loved the library as much as we do, Miss Aleisha.’
Ding-dong ding-dong.
‘Mukeshbhai! I’ll get it!’
‘No!’ Mukesh shouted, as Aleisha started to say, ‘That’s so brilliant, Mr P.’ He dropped the phone on his bed, forgotten, and trotted as fast as his slippers allowed to the front door. But, as he entered the small hallway, he already saw Deepali standing on the Welcome mat, Nilakshi with a smile plastered on her face, beckoning her in.
‘Hi Dad,’ Deepali said. ‘I … I was just popping in to say hi. But … I should have called, I, er, didn’t realize you’d have company. I’d better go.’
‘Goodbye, Nilakshimasi. Nice to see you,’ she said, turning to Nilakshi once more.
Before Mukesh could get to the doorstep, Deepali was already in her car, the engine started, ready to go.
The excitement from his conversation with Aleisha had vanished completely. He watched his daughter drive away as Nilakshi clamped a hand on his shoulder. ‘Mukesh, we are just friends. We both know this, your daughters – of course they’ll understand.’
But Mukesh knew they wouldn’t. He had disappointed them – he had seen Deepali’s face drop. Speaking to Aleisha might have made Mrs Danvers disappear, but Deepali had brought her flying back again and Naina was nowhere to be seen, felt or heard.
THE READING LIST
IZZY
2019
‘HELLO?’ IZZY SAID, PEERING over the library’s front desk. ‘You all right there?’
The man behind the desk was covered in dust, with piles of boxes all around him. ‘Yeah,’ he puffed. ‘I’m all right, I’m just clearing some stuff out. My boss says we need to make this place spotless in case they try to shut us down. I don’t actually know who this mysterious “they” is, but there you go …’
Izzy stared at him, remembering the Save Our Libraries sign that had been stuck to the door for the two years she’d been coming here, ever since she’d found the reading list. Every time the words became illegible, bleached by the sun, someone – the save-our-libraries elf – replaced it with a new A4 sheet. The library, to her and Sage’s relief, was still going – though perhaps not going strong. Now that she’d found it, she couldn’t really imagine it not being here.
‘Sorry,’ the man brushed dust off his corduroy trousers, and his T-shirt. ‘Sorry. Hello, I’m Kyle. How can I help you?’
She’d seen Kyle several times before over the years, and he always had this distinct air of being completely frazzled yet absolutely serene at the same time. Izzy paused for a moment. Was this the right thing to do? She held the list in her hands – she’d kept it pristine, tucked away in her box of lists for ages, for safekeeping. She’d spent the last two years hiding away from the world in the library, joining the library book club every so often, chatting to anyone she could find, just in case they were the curator of the list. But she’d had no luck yet. She’d read each book again and again, writing notes on them, sticking little sticky tabs on crucial scenes, momentous lines, in case the books themselves, and their messages, were a kind of jigsaw. But she’d tried everything and still, after two years, she couldn’t shake her fascination.
‘You need to get over this, you’ll drive yourself mad,’ Sage had said to her one night, when Izzy was flicking through Little Women for the umpteenth time. It was the third library copy she’d taken out; she wondered if something, a clue, a message, had been marked in certain copies of each of the books on the list – so she was trying every single one. But, again, this copy of Little Women told her nothing new.
‘I’ve already driven myself mad,’ Izzy had said back. ‘I just need to know now.’
So, here she was, exposing her peculiarities to Kyle. A last resort.
‘Erm, so, this sounds a bit strange – but I have this reading list,’ Izzy started. The boy’s eyes were wide, a smile stuck on his face, eager to please. ‘I don’t know who wrote it, but I’m … I just need to know.’
‘All riiight,’ Kyle said, a little unsure.
‘Well, I know that whoever used the list came to this library. I sort of wondered if you’d be able to tell me who took these books out. I guess, either over several years, or all in one go.’
Kyle stood up straight – his smile vanished. ‘No, no, sorry. That’s against privacy, I can’t give you that information, even if I could find it.’
For a minute, there was silence between them.
‘Can I have a look?’ Kyle asked, holding his hand out. She popped the list gently in his palm. He held it like an historic artefact.
‘You see I collect lists,’ she said tentatively. ‘I know it’s a bit of an odd habit, but
I just love it. My dad used to call me his little magpie.’
‘That’s cool,’ he said, but she knew he wasn’t sure if it was. ‘I mean, we see lists like that all the time, obviously. So it feels a bit less special to us.’
‘Yeah, I guess that makes sense. I just think a list gives you a little look into someone’s soul – like books, like art … It’s silly I know.’
‘No,’ he said, ‘I think it’s nice.’
He muttered each of the titles under his breath. Izzy looked around the room, hoping for another clue. She saw Indira; she’d met her at the book club a few times. She really liked Indira, but she loved to chat, so whenever she was around, Izzy had to make sure only to approach if she was in a really chatty mood too. The rest of the library was almost empty.
‘That’s strange, I’m sure it’s completely random, but I’ve got a friend who’s reading these books in almost the same order.’
‘Right now?’ Izzy’s eyes shot open.
‘Yeah, I think so.’
‘You reckon they wrote this list?’
‘Noooooo, she hates books,’ he said, matter-of-factly. ‘But … I’m wondering if she’s seen your list. Have you left it hanging around here at all?’
‘Never.’ Izzy shook her head.
‘Well, I’m really sorry, but I don’t know how I can help. But my friend, she’s a librarian too. She works here. Maybe come see her? She’s often in on Wednesdays.’ The man smiled, but Izzy could sense he was a little weirded out by her. She could get obsessive, she had to admit.
‘I’m sorry, is there anything else I can help you with today?’
Izzy shrugged, smiling. ‘Just this please.’ She dumped A Suitable Boy on his table with her library card balanced precariously on top.
‘And how many times have you read this?’
‘I’ve never read this copy, if that helps.’ Izzy laughed. ‘It’s a huge book – I’ve got to make sure I don’t miss anything.’
‘This list,’ Kyle said. ‘It makes sense now, why you always take out the same books again and again. We just thought you were too nervous to ask for recommendations.’ Kyle passed the book over to her, and she hugged it, comforted by its heft.
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