The Reading List

Aleisha continued, picking up with Pi leaning over the boat trying to catch some food, in a desperate attempt to feed Richard and keep himself alive. Pi was almost entirely alone in the middle of the ocean, with nothing but animals, a volatile tiger, for company. Aleisha tried to squash down the rise of a familiar feeling – the survival mode that kicked in every time she heard Leilah shout out at night. It was with a stab of guilt that she realized, yes, she knew a thing or two about volatility. Like Pi, Aleisha was constantly watching for a shift, a change, that could come at any moment. But on the other hand, the tiger, despite everything, was the one thing saving Pi from his own loneliness. When she looked up from the page, she saw that Leilah was in Pi’s world too, her eyes were focused on the ceiling, painting the images before her eyes. Aleisha wondered how Leilah’s artistic eye was visualizing this story. She pictured some of Leilah’s recent designs, the ones she did for herself, rather than for ad agencies, printed as postcards and stuck to the wall in her bedroom. Were the colours vibrant? The sea, a deep blue, the orange of the tiger bold, burning. And, Aleisha allowed herself to wonder, to Leilah, was she Pi, or the Tiger? Or no one at all?

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.

‘I’ve heard of that book, Dada, it’s a film and everything,’ Priya jumped in.
‘Ha, beta? What is it about?’
Priya shrugged, a frown clouding her face. ‘I don’t know, I don’t know everything.’
Mukesh chuckled. The girl behind the desk breathed in, as though she was about to embark on a long speech, but all she said was, ‘It’s a good introductory novel, you know? A classic.’
‘Do you think I’ll like it, this book?’ Mukesh didn’t know who to look at – the girl, or Priya. He had liked The Time Traveler’s Wife but mainly because it had fallen into his lap at the right time and brought him closer to Naina.
The girl nodded.
Mukesh looked at the book cover. The title was scrawled like handwriting; he had to squint to make out the words. To. Kill. A. Mockingbird. ‘Why does it have that title?’ he asked.

Harrow Road Library was an old building, completely different from the modern Civic Centre; it looked as if it had been someone’s house once, with big white walls and timber framing, black and bold. Behind it was the park, so it was quiet and peaceful despite being on the main road. There were lots of windows, some were definitely new and modern, along with those terrifying ‘automatic-open’ glass doors. He spotted a sign on the door that he hadn’t noticed before: Save Our Libraries it said. Spread the word.

Leilah suddenly shouted from upstairs, ‘Shut up! Aleisha, shut up!’ Aleisha and Aidan looked at each other, their faces blank, their smiles gone. She wasn’t surprised. Last night, the giggling, the yoga … but nothing had changed. Nothing would ever change. That thick black curtain would always be there, shrouding the whole house, holding Aidan down with it this time. After a moment of silence, the two of them barely drawing a breath, Aidan finally shook his head to say, ‘She doesn’t mean it.’ He didn’t say it out loud because he couldn’t know it was true.

She hurriedly looked down at her phone again, nervous – unsure what to do. She opened up Tinder. She’d never used Tinder properly. Unlike all her friends, who seemed to be on Tinder all the time, with dates every other night of the week, she didn’t have the time to be meeting guys, for dates or hook-ups. But sometimes, when she wanted to pretend that her life was something else, that she had some kind of freedom, she just swiped for the sake of swiping.
Was this guy on Tinder too? What if she’d just mindlessly swiped left to him? Worse … what if she’d swiped right?

Mukesh shuffled into bed that evening, in the bedroom he had once shared with Naina, mattress and bones creaking. He whispered, ‘Jai Swaminarayan’ and rested his head in the very centre of his pillow, looking up at the ceiling, the dying sunlight creeping in through the cracks in the curtains, casting an orange glow on the paintwork. He closed his eyes for the night, praying and hoping he would wake up with Naina next to him. He knew, if he was going to finally get to know his granddaughter, to earn her trust and her respect, he might have to start making some changes. The library was the key, he just knew it … but the sponsored walk, it couldn’t hurt to have a go, could it?

‘Rohini,’ Mukesh said, ‘is Priya always this quiet? Her head always in books?’
‘She just likes to read, Papa, it’s fine. Mummy did that all the time, and she definitely wasn’t quiet.’
‘But I never hear her talk about her friends, things she likes to do other than reading. Your mummy liked books, but she always had friends over too.’
‘Yes, Papa, Priya does other things. Have you ever asked her?’ Rohini wasn’t looking at him when she said this, but he felt the sting as though her eyes were boring right through him.
‘Well, no, but …’ Mukesh stammered.
‘She has two best friends, Papa, Christie and James,’ Rohini continued. ‘They’re very nice, and quiet like her.’
‘She has those two friends to visit?’
‘Papa, kids don’t do that these days. They play together at school. In the break times.’

He was dealing with another irrational, irrelevant and annoying customer who had phoned in – but at least that was better than dealing with the irrational, irrelevant, annoying customers in real life. What had Aidan loved about this job so much?
‘No, sir. I think I will have to charge you for the book, if you removed it from the premises without checking it out.’
Kyle’s brows knotted into a frown.
‘Sorry, sir, could you repeat that just a little more slowly for me please?’ And after a beat, ‘Do you have a library card?’
Aleisha couldn’t tune out of the conversation, Kyle was so sodding loud.
‘I’m so sorry, sir, I didn’t realize. When was this? Yesterday? Hmm, yes, thank you, sir. Thank you for letting me know. I’ll investigate and see what I can do … Yes, well, if you don’t have a library card, how about I set one up for you today and take the book out for you, and you can return it when you can. That way I’ll make sure my colleagues can’t charge you when it is returned.’