The Reading List(87)

Mukesh held onto it tight, tucking the piece of paper with Aleisha’s address into the front cover, and wandered out into the hustle and bustle of Wembley.

Aleisha’s road was new to Mukesh – he’d never even noticed it before, though it was just off the main high street. Though it was a terrace, it looked very different to his road, in a completely different style. It could be a world away.

He looked at Kyle’s handwriting. It was hard to read, but he managed to make out the number. He kept walking. The house would be on his left. The sun was bright again, high in the sky, having broken through some thick black clouds earlier that morning.

He counted each and every house.

He could hear music blaring out of some of the windows, bass shaking the frames, and the panes as well.

He could see children playing in the street, kicking a football from one side of the road to the other. Mukesh felt his heart beat faster again, worried that the ball might come too close to him and he would either be hit or be expected to kick the ball back. Then, when he eventually passed the danger zone, he found he was standing outside the right house: number 79.

He was sure they would be home – Aleisha had said it herself: if she wasn’t at the library, she was at home. But while the windows in the rest of the street’s houses were wide open, these windows were closed. The front garden had nothing in it but bins and some weeds. Everything about the house was dull and grey, except for a flash of colour in the window: the glittering reflection of a police car parked on the other side of the road.

The walkway up to the front door was lined with geometric tiles that Mukesh rather liked, but it was all rather unkempt. He could tell that this had been a loved space once upon a time, carefully created and looked after. He thought of his own garden, Battenburg paving slabs for ease, now sun-bleached and broken.

He went to knock on the door, but he was half terrified of leaving a mark on this house. He waited, stepping a little way back from the door so he could look up at the upstairs windows, listening for any noises, checking for any movements. All closed. Curtains drawn. A silence that was heavy, pervasive.

Mukesh shivered despite the heat.

Perhaps nobody was in after all. He looked at the note again, wondering if he had got the right house. There was no mistaking the 7, and it was hard to misread a 9. This was 79.

His finger hovered above the doorbell, but for whatever reason, he couldn’t bring himself to press it. No one was in.

Instead, Mukesh posted the The Time Traveler’s Wife through the letterbox – he would blame it all on Kyle if it was the wrong address – and walked to the high road to catch the bus.

As he walked away from the house, he felt lighter with every step, glad to be leaving those shut windows, the sense of something ominous breathing inside the house, worried for whatever lay within. An image of Manderley flashed in his mind from Rebecca; walking away from Aleisha’s house felt like breaking free of that old place and the ghosts of the past it held, the secrets and fears. He shook his head, trying to banish the book’s hauntings. Aleisha was fine, of course she was fine. Wasn’t she?





Chapter 31


ALEISHA


THE HOUSE WAS DARK. The policewoman and her constable had taken every bit of light with them when they left. They’d had to step over a book face down on the doormat to get out: The Time Traveler’s Wife. They had all heard the thud as it was dropped through, and then they’d both taken a moment to stare at it, apathetic to its arrival.

Aleisha felt the silence of the house cascade around her. She took each step one by one, terrified to think about the next. When she reached the top of the stairs, her heart was beating out of her chest. As she placed her hand on the handle to Leilah’s door, she felt its cold like a fire on her skin – for a moment, she was frozen to the spot. Aleisha couldn’t hear anything coming from Leilah’s room, but when she stepped in she saw Leilah was standing upright, as if expecting her. Aleisha shut the door behind her. It was better to keep the whole world out for this one moment.

‘Mum, sit down.’ Aleisha rested a hand on her mother’s shoulder. She could feel herself trying on someone else’s skin. Atticus – wise, imposing. Nothing would faze him. Jo March, the moment she learns Beth is gone – broken, angry. Pi, realizing he’d lost his whole family and had nothing but a tiger, which could turn at any moment, for company – all adrift. Nothing was quite right.

As she looked into Leilah’s eyes, she saw her mum was searching for the answer already. Analysing her face, Aleisha could see the policewoman sitting in front of her – she’d been calm. How had she been so calm? She had just broken someone’s world.

Sharp pinpricks ran through her body, as though she was being lifted out of it. How she wished she could rewind time, rip out the last few pages of this story and rewrite them.

Aidan would walk through the door, trip over the book, tell her off for leaving things lying around. He’d head to the kitchen, take off the Post-it notes that weren’t relevant any more and start digging around for some food. Everything would be fine, everything would be normal.

Nothing would be normal again.

Leilah’s eyes stayed fixed on her daughter, boring into her.

Aleisha took a breath. For now, she could be Atticus. Relaying the facts. Stating the truth. Aidan had jumped in front of a train that morning. Suicide. But Aleisha was sure that couldn’t be true. She knew that feeling, standing on the platform, watching the train rush towards you. And that immediate, irrational impulse to propel yourself forward – wanting to know for a moment what it would feel like. To be hit by a train. But that was just a fiction, it wasn’t real life.