The Reading List(11)

But, as he picked the book up, he saw a Post-it note stuck to the table in its place. He peeled it off, carefully, and brought it close to his face. His eyesight wasn’t as it had once been, before the hours and hours of reading in his dimly lit flat. The Post-it note was covered in handwriting, an elaborate scrawl of letters.

I know this isn’t your usual thing, but I read To Kill a Mockingbird when I was 21 and going through a hard time – it taught me a lot back then, and I got to see the world through the eyes of a child once more, the good and the bad. It was an escape for me, I threw myself into the world, into the injustices, into the characters, and it was the respite I needed from my own life – for it helped me care deeply about someone else’s. I hope it can be an escape, a bit of respite, for you too. Sometimes, books just take us away for a little while, and return us to our place with a new perspective.

He brushed the hair out of his eyes. There was no name on the note, no ‘to’ and no ‘from’ – it could be for anyone. But then how could he explain that sudden feeling of being seen? As though someone had read his mind? He looked at the book afresh, his eyes taking in the title: To Kill a Mockingbird. Whoever had written this little Post-it note – had they known he sat here, day after day, wasting his hours wallowing?

He held the book tightly in his hands, as though imagining it might spring to life and explain it all to him. Nothing happened. No one jumped out from behind the shelves revealing that he was on some comedy show, a ‘Chris, this is your shitty life’ episode. But someone, somewhere, was telling him they’d understood what he was going through.

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.

He thought of that scripted message at the top: Just in case you need it. He felt like he’d never needed anything more.





PART II


TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD


by Harper Lee





Chapter 4


ALEISHA


ALEISHA’S WALK HOME FROM the library was accompanied by the sounds of the park – kids playing and crowds of people her age laughing, smoking. She wondered if it was anyone she knew. She wanted desperately to go to the park, have a cigarette, but she’d agreed to be home for Mum, to cook the dinner tonight. She knew she would want spaghetti hoops on toast – her mum’s favourite. But she’d asked for that every day for two weeks and Aleisha was sick of spaghetti hoops. She wanted lamb stew with dumplings now, her Uncle Jeremy’s speciality, even though it was the middle of summer and blisteringly hot.

She sent a text to Rachel, her cousin, for the recipe (Uncle Jeremy was completely useless with his phone) and got a message back almost immediately – a picture of Uncle Jeremy’s recipe scrawled on the pages of a Delia Smith cookbook. Dad knows better than Delia, for sure, said Rachel. Aleisha’s mum loved her brother Jeremy, and she loved his cooking, so Aleisha hoped and prayed this recipe might be the spaghetti-hoop breakthrough they needed this week. Nerves bubbled in her chest as thoughts flashed through her mind of the best-and worst-case scenarios. Burning the stew – setting off the fire alarm – triggering Leilah’s anger, her upset, her anxiety. Cooking the stew to Uncle Jeremy perfection too had its drawbacks. What if Leilah couldn’t stand anyone else cooking her brother’s stew? What if she shut herself off for even longer? Aleisha drew a deep breath, feeling the hot summer air fill her lungs, and focused on the recipe instead – one step at a time.

Aleisha zoomed in on Uncle Jeremy’s messy handwriting, and found the list of ingredients, before popping into Variety Foods. She wandered around, picking up the veg she needed, checking, double-checking then triple-checking them against the list, trying to decipher Uncle Jeremy’s handwriting.

She handed over the money to the guy behind the till and walked out, tapping out a message to Rachel: Thanks so much, Mum’s gonna love this, I’m sure – better than spaghetti hoops.

Rachel started typing back, then stopped, then started again, but no new message appeared on Aleisha’s screen. Aleisha kept staring, waiting. She began typing a message back – How are you? – and let the words linger before hitting delete, delete, delete. Her cousin was probably busy. She didn’t have time for casual chitchat. She shoved the phone back in her pocket.