The Reading List(30)

She looked down the list, taking in one title at a time. She had read some of these already, including To Kill a Mockingbird, when she was a teenager. She didn’t remember the story, she was terrible with detail, but she remembered the way it made her feel. It had this kind of warm, magical quality about it. The title brought memories of eating breakfast outside on a wooden bench – and it was so long ago she couldn’t recall whether the memory was her own or a scene from the book itself.

When she reached the seventh title on the list, she pulled out the book from her yoga bag, a copy of Beloved. She held it up. Well, it looked as if she already had a head start.

She turned the book over in her hands. She’d only just started reading it, after years and years of her friends recommending it. In the afternoons, when Helena took her long nap, Leonora had started to read, sitting just beside her sister, listening to her breathing, and allowing her mind to escape elsewhere. Her heart was in it already.

She wondered when the Beloved date for the book club might be. There was no more information on the notice board. Would she be ready to discuss it in time? The book was about a mother, Sethe, and her daughter Denver, left alone in a house haunted by the ghost of Sethe’s first daughter, Beloved, who had brought heartache to the family for years. It reminded her of Helena’s house. That too was filled with a ghost; a ghost of Helena’s past, of Helena’s happiness, of the future Helena might not get to see.

Leonora took a deep breath, wiping away a mist of tears on her cheeks. She tucked the book back into her bag. A book club. It might be a good idea. A chance for her to talk, to make friends. She took a picture of the reading list and the sign about the book club too; she’d have a look for it, tomorrow, when Helena took her nap. She’d go tomorrow.





Chapter 10


MUKESH


BEEP. ‘DADA? IT’S ME!’ Priya’s voice was gleeful. ‘I’m really enjoying the The Wizard of Earthsea, but I have been reading quite a few books at once so I won’t be able to return it to the library with you. Mummy said you were going back today already so I wanted to call to say I’m very sorry if it will be late, and I can’t come over today because Mum got me some extra maths work to do for the holidays and I have to do that.’

She said all the words in quite a hurry, so Mukesh had to rewind and replay slowly to check he’d caught every detail, his pad of Post-it notes at the ready.

He’d been looking forward to seeing Priya; he’d got himself up and dressed earlier than usual because he was eager to talk to her about their books. He had even noted down a few key phrases. He wanted to ‘impart’ some wisdom from Hummingbird, just like Atticus, even if the wisdom wasn’t really his to impart.

Don’t take it personally, he heard Naina say, her voice jumping out from the pages. She’s young, she doesn’t want to hurt you.

He knew Naina was probably right. But going to the library with Priya had been easier. And it had felt as though he’d finally made a breakthrough with his granddaughter.

Mukesh sighed. He knew he had to go back to the library. He wanted to return the book and get another. But deep down, he wasn’t totally sure if he could manage it all on his own. He flicked through the book one more time, searching for a piece of Atticus’s wisdom to help him through this little moment.

As he approached the library an hour or so later, the book in his hands, Scout was running ahead of him dressed as a ham, taking Priya’s place, cheering him on, and wise old Atticus was striding beside him. As Mukesh walked through the glass doors, emboldened by his fictional companions, the first person he saw was the girl, Aleisha. She was hard at work, with headphones stuck in her ears again. He wandered up to her desk, Scout and Atticus now gone. A cough caught her attention, and he placed his book in front of his face, proudly peeping over her desk.

‘Hello? Mr Patel? You finished already?’

Once he had got into it, and got over himself, more importantly, it had taken him only two days to finish it. He was very proud of his achievement: he’d only watched one episode of Blue Planet in that time.

When he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow. He’d started slowly, wincing as he’d read that first line of To Kill a Mockingbird, for he’d felt Naina watching his every move.

It’s a good one Mukesh, it won’t take you long. Her voice rang loud and clear in his ear. He’d looked around, expecting her to be there. After trying to get comfortable in the living room, and then the kitchen, and then the garden, he had finally settled on Naina’s spot in their bed – it was perfect. There he could feel, just for a moment, what it was like to be her, tucked up with a book. But that niggling thought at the back of his mind had squeaked, ‘Fraud, fraud, fraud.’

He’d tried to adjust his focus to the feel of the pages.

The softness.

The ‘whoosh’ as they glided across each other.

The gentle snap of the gluey spine from time to time.

Trying to get back to the book, and away from his nagging imposter syndrome, Mukesh pictured tall, broad, authoritarian Atticus in his small bedroom on his IKEA rug (selected by Vritti). Within a few pages, Mukesh learned that Scout and Jem’s ‘courteously detached’ father was a widower, and he had raised his children alone, with the help of Calpurnia their cook. As his eyes ran over the words, he could feel a lump begin to rise in his throat. Mukesh wasn’t a lawyer, wasn’t a pillar of the community, didn’t bless his children with his wisdom. He wasn’t tall, broad and authoritative like Atticus. But Mukesh knew what losing your wife felt like too. Mukesh sat up straight, his attention now firmly focused on this man, this powerful, kind and fair man. As the story went on, Mukesh wondered how Atticus could continue with his life so boldly. Was any part of him stuck in the past, hiding from his wife’s death? He could feel his self-consciousness lift, and he continued, intent on discovering Atticus’s secret to success. How had Atticus moved on with his life seemingly unscathed?