The Reading List(68)

Vritti was standing at the door ready to greet him as he came out of the lift. Her arms were open wide, as they always were whenever she was greeting family, friends. Ever since she was a little girl, she’d loved to play the host.

‘Dada!’ Jaya and Jayesh, Deepali’s twins, chimed in unison from behind the door. Mukesh clamped his hands over his ears, hoping he wouldn’t end the day with earache as the two little ones hugged his legs.

Deepali stepped towards him as he headed for the kitchen. ‘Hi, Dad. Ooh nice T-shirt. But aren’t the sleeves a little short for you at your age?’

Mukesh only saw Lydia Bennet, in her fancy frock, staring out at him from Deepali’s eyes.

‘Hello, Deepali. No, I had a fashion adviser pick it out and this is exactly the right length.’

Aleisha had helped him to pick out some new T-shirts and ordered them on the library computers. She had told him which arm length would suit him best. She chose the colours for him too. She selected one in an olive green that he wasn’t sure would suit him; she said it was a ‘wicked’ colour at the moment. ‘Wicked’ wasn’t necessarily something he’d consider for himself, but he went with it. She was young, she’d nearly got a job in Topshop, so she definitely knew what she was talking about. She picked a navy blue one too – ‘because you can never have too much navy blue’, she’d said – and a white one as well. She called it the ‘summer staple’.

Dressed like this, like a trendy person, he felt as though he fitted in. In this sporty top, he was suddenly ageless, invincible. He thought of Nilakshi as she waited in the living room while he tried his new purchases on in his bedroom, walking out to show her – he called it ‘fashion show’ because Naina used to. ‘Ooh,’ Nilakshi had said, right on cue. ‘Very snazzy.’

‘Looks great, Papa!’ Vritti said. ‘Come sit down!’

The table was set already. It was clear and white with a lovely bouquet of flowers set in the middle – Mukesh just knew Vritti had nipped out and picked them up that morning. They were fresh and colourful. It was a habit she’d picked up from Naina, and their first neighbour in London, who had turned up on their first day in their new home with a bunch of big daisies, greeting them with, ‘Flowers for you! Lovely fresh blooms make a home.’ Vritti would beg and beg Naina to go and fetch some new flowers whenever the old ones were on their last legs.

Deepali sat down immediately, sighing, exhausted after constantly running around after her twins – he felt a quick pang of guilt for his Lydia Bennet comparison. His daughters weren’t little horrors as children, were they? He always remembered that time so fondly – they were angels, that’s what Naina said, always helping around the house, and they would sit nicely when they were meant to and eat whatever they were given.

The twins Jaya and Jayesh, on the other hand, looked like angels, but instead liked to spend their time running up and down the house, crawling up and down the walls, and on rainy days they would get their felt-tip pens and draw on any surface they could find. Deepali’s once perfectly decorated house had suffered because of it. She always said as long as they were happy that’s all that really mattered.

As soon as the kids got their plates, they inhaled their chips and chicken nuggets. Pranav, Deepali’s husband, was not a vegetarian and therefore the kids weren’t either. Naina had been upset that Deepali hadn’t convinced her entire nuclear family to follow their vegetarian Swaminarayan beliefs, but Mukesh didn’t mind so much. Chicken nuggets would be much easier to make than mung beans, he thought, though he had just discovered halloumi fries, which were pretty easy too.

‘How have you been, Papa?’ Vritti asked, fetching some cutlery.

‘Fine, yes, same same as always,’ he said. ‘What about you both?’

‘Ah, Dad,’ Deepali said. ‘Rohini said you’ve been going to the library?’

‘Yes! I have read so many books.’ He whipped out Pride and Prejudice from his jacket pocket – he hadn’t read it on the Tube, but he liked carrying it with him, just as Naina always used to. ‘It’s very good.’

‘Pride and Prejudice?’ Deepali giggled. ‘I can’t imagine you like it!’

‘It isn’t maybe my cup of cha, but the cover is nice.’ He held it up. ‘Your mummy always liked paintings like this – it feels very proper, like a good old book.’

‘Isn’t it basically nineteenth-century smut?’ Vritti laughed, sitting down at the table.

Mukesh’s face blanched. ‘Smut? Really? I am only a quarter of the way through. I haven’t seen smut yet.’

‘Just you wait,’ Vritti winked.

‘How is Nilakshimasi?’ Deepali asked, passing Vritti’s colourful salad around. The question smashed into the table like a grenade. Vritti fell silent. Mukesh didn’t move an inch. Even the twins seemed to freeze, their chicken nuggets mid-air.

The reason he was really here, of course. Mukesh looked around the room, hoping that some invisible person might be able to answer for him. Vritti’s eyes were fixed firmly on her plate.

‘She is good, yes,’ he murmured.

‘Lovely to see her the other day,’ Deepali said. ‘I didn’t want to ask, but how is she after you know … what happened to her husband and son? So tragic. Mummy would have been devastated if she knew.’