The Reading List(50)

‘Yeah, we don’t really talk anyway. You know that day when she saw me in the library? Must’ve reminded her I exist.’

‘You used to be tight though. It’s sad.’

‘Do you like her or something?’ Aleisha let her gaze linger on Aidan, who didn’t return it.

Aidan laughed, his voice heavier than usual. ‘Look, I don’t have time for this. I’ve got to be at work. Go be with Mum.’ He turned away from her, put his key in the ignition, and sped off without a second look.

The house was quiet; Aleisha wanted to call out to her mum, find out where she was, but she didn’t dare make any loud sounds. She peered round the doorway into the living room. There she was, her legs crossed, on the sofa. Aleisha tiptoed in, moving slowly. She sat down on the opposite side of the room, and pulled her next book, Life of Pi, from her bag.

‘Mum?’ Aleisha whispered. ‘Want to hear a story?’

Leilah didn’t look up.

Right now, all Aleisha wanted was to replicate that day she’d read To Kill a Mockingbird out loud to Leilah. Her mother had been fast asleep, but still, that was the most peaceful the house had been in weeks. One wrong move might ruin it all, but she was desperate to avoid an evening of stony silence.

Eventually Leilah nodded; Aleisha allowed herself a deep exhale. Feeling thoroughly exposed, she cleared her throat and began. Leilah didn’t take her eyes off her daughter.

‘Wait,’ Leilah said, after Aleisha had been reading for ten minutes. ‘I’ve missed something. What’s this about?’

Aleisha stopped. She hadn’t expected her mum to follow the story. She’d just been expecting her to listen, letting the words wash over her. ‘Erm … well it’s about this boy, Pi Patel …’ Whenever Aleisha thought of Pi, she imagined a young Mr P, with a thicker head of hair, but the same beaming, smiling face. ‘He’s just escaped a shipwreck that was transporting his whole family and their zoo animals to Canada. Now he’s stuck on a boat with a tiger and some other animals … in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.’

‘What the … that’s not likely, is it?’

‘Er, probably not. But I think that’s kind of the whole point of the book – like truth, and what’s true and what’s imagined.’

‘Ah, that’s clever,’ Leilah said. Aleisha smiled, suddenly shy, a tiny bit of pride creeping through her veins. ‘Okay. Who’s the Richard Parker he keeps going on about?’

‘Mum, that’s the tiger.’

‘Called Richard Parker?’ Leilah’s eyes were wide, disbelieving.

‘Yeah! A clerical error that stuck – it was actually the name of the person who captured the tiger, but the paperwork swapped their names round.’

‘Okay, I’m caught up – go on.’

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?

She put the book down for a moment, ‘Do you want a drink?’

Leilah nodded. ‘Water, please. Cold as you can.’

The water from the tap streamed into the glass; Aleisha stared straight ahead. She could see an outline of herself reflected in the tiles: her hair, pulled back into a bun on the top of her head. She looked like her mother, in the pictures from back when Leilah had still been married to Dean. Her smile then was ever-present, it seemed. But people always smiled for photos. From those pictures, she couldn’t ever really tell what was going on in her mum’s mind. She wondered if Dean ever knew either.

She smacked some ice cubes out of the tray onto the countertop, before plonking, plinking them into each glass. ‘So loud, Aleisha!’ Leilah called from the other room.

‘Sorry, Mum,’ Aleisha called back, wincing. The spell cast from the book was starting to wear away.

Condensation was already forming on the outside of the glasses when she handed one to her mum. ‘Okay, Mum,’ Aleisha said softly, ‘I’m going to finish reading in my room. Will you be okay?’

‘No,’ Leilah said. ‘Sit next to me and read again.’ Her voice was hopeful, like a plea.

‘Okay,’ Aleisha collected her book, trying to keep the surprise from her face.

They sat close to one another, but not too close. Her fingers trembled almost imperceptibly as she started to turn the pages once more.