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When Aleisha woke up the next morning, the book was cradled in her hands, its soft, plastic jacket sticking to her slightly clammy skin. She looked around the room, and for a second, she thought she saw a small child sitting in the chair opposite her: scabby knees, shorts, legs a bit dirty from the Alabama dust – Scout. For that first waking moment, she wasn’t in Wembley any longer, she was in Maycomb. She looked to the other end of the sofa, expecting to see Leilah, wondering if Leilah was sharing this moment too. Leilah wasn’t there, and Aleisha was all alone. But, for the first time in a while, the silence in the house wasn’t so cloying; she could breathe.

He slumped himself in front of the television, turning on Blue Planet. Usually David Attenborough’s voice, the deep blues of the sea, the funny noises from the creatures, helped him to focus and to relax. But today, he couldn’t concentrate on David Attenborough, and wandered back over to his canvas bag, pulled The Time Traveler’s Wife out and clutched it to his chest. He shuffled to his bedroom and flumped onto the bed. He let the novel fall open in his hands and allowed himself to be transported back to the world of Clare and Henry; they had been warned in advance – a blessing and a curse – about Henry’s death. That was the starkest warning anyone could be given. They knew their days together were limited – they were waiting for the end to come.

He thought about waiting, of saving this book for a rainy day … but today was the day he had vowed to distract himself.
To Kill a Mockingbird was burning in his hand: read me, read me, read me. There was no other explanation for it – this book, it was a sign. He turned to the first page, forgetting the gentle hum of the library around him, and was amazed how the words didn’t jump around and run away from him. They stayed firmly in place, and soon became nothing but images. As the narrator, ‘Scout’ Finch, introduced Chris to her childhood home, to the town of Maycomb, Alabama, he felt a laugh bubble up in his throat – the quaint quirks of the townspeople, the childlike resilience of Scout’s brother Jem, and their friend Dill … it was another world, and he was so glad of it. When he reached page twenty-seven, which arrived sooner than he could have imagined, he found another note settled there. A whole reading list, of which To Kill a Mockingbird was the very first. This book had kept Melanie from his mind – kept her in that little box, with a tiny wooden lid – so he didn’t have to feel his pain and doubt fizzing through his veins every minute. Those first twenty-seven pages had given him something he hadn’t felt since the break-up: hope.
The list was for him – he knew it.

‘Do people even still use libraries?’ her schoolfriends had asked her when she got the job. So quiet. Dying. Boring as hell. She’d tried for a job in Topshop in Oxford Street – for the discounts and for a chance to get out of Wembley for a bit. But this is where she’d ended up. ‘It’s a place of peace,’ Thermos Flask had said to her after her interview. ‘We pride ourselves on that. Lots of libraries have been closed down recently, I’m sure you’ve heard all about it, and we’re doing everything we can to highlight to the powers-that-be how vital this space is for our community.’

That night, with the room devoid of Naina’s mess, Mukesh cracked the spine, feeling like an intruder. This wasn’t his book, it was never chosen for him, and perhaps Naina would never have wanted him to read it either. He forced himself to read one page, but had to stop. The words weren’t making sense. He was trying to turn the black letters and yellowed pages into a letter from Naina to him. But no such message existed.
The next night, he tried again. He put Naina’s reading lamp on and turned to page one once more. He flicked through the successive pages, trying to be gentle, trying so hard not to leave his own mark on this book in any tangible way. He wanted this book to be Naina, and only Naina. He searched, forensically, for a clue – a mark on the page, a drop of chai, a tear, an eyelash, anything at all. He told himself that one day he would have to return it to the library – it’s what Naina would have wanted. But he couldn’t let it go. Not yet. It was his last chance to bring Naina back.