The Reading List(88)

Leilah watched her, and Aleisha couldn’t know if the words were even making sense. None of this made sense. Aleisha just kept talking, until there was nothing more to say.

For a moment, the world stood completely still, as Atticus-Aleisha disappeared, leaving Aleisha alone in their place. Aleisha, whose heart was numb, who could not believe that anything like this could happen. She pushed herself forward, forcing herself to sit beside her mother. She ignored Leilah’s flinches and held her mother’s hand, as tightly as she could. Leilah’s hand was limp, it had no life. Aidan had no life.

The room moved in slow motion – but the air stood completely still. Breathless. Lifeless. Until Leilah began to scream. Leilah, she had been right, when Aleisha had come home to find her panicking, drowning. Leilah – her instinct. She had known. She had always known.

Leilah began to beat her hands on her thighs, until Aleisha moved them carefully onto the bed beside each leg. The sound of the beating was muffled, but Leilah’s cries made up for their silence. Her voice tore through the house, tore through the rest of the world.

Her son was dead.

Her son was gone for ever.

‘Get out!’ Leilah screamed at Aleisha, her eyes focusing for the first time. ‘Get out! I don’t want to see you! Leave me alone!’





Chapter 32


MUKESH


THE HOUSE CREAKED AROUND him as he sat in his usual spot, lamps lighting up the space. As soon as he’d arrived home, he’d delved into Beloved, wondering if there was any sort of clue as to what Aleisha was going through within its pages. Had she left it as a sign for him? Or was it simply her next recommendation?

He’d been met, immediately, with another strange and eerie house, a house haunted with sadness.

He’d thought of number 79, Aleisha’s house – at the time it had seemed like Manderley, the last ominous house he’d experienced through the pages of Rebecca. But now it was clear that Aleisha’s house, with all its windows closed, its curtains drawn, shrouded in darkness, it was exactly how he pictured the house in Beloved – number 124. He knew it wasn’t plausible, that a house in 1870s Cincinnati would look anything like a terraced house in Wembley built in the 1940s. But when the author described the haunting feel of number 124, he just pictured Aleisha’s house – the windows shut, never to be opened, the silence echoing. But Toni Morrison allowed him to see inside the house in Beloved – he could see what happened there, he didn’t need to let his imagination run wild. Inside 124, he met Sethe, and her last remaining daughter Denver, and immediately his heart hurt for them, living in a home that they felt they couldn’t escape. Sethe’s sons, Howard and Buglar, had fled the haunted house years before; even Baby Suggs, Sethe’s mother-in-law, had been saved from its darkness by the next life, by death. Now it was just Sethe and Denver, alone. It was a house no one visited, a house no one entered. And Denver never went beyond the yard on her own. Her whole world was the house, her mother and the ghost who lived with them. The ghost of her dead sister, Beloved.

Through every page, Mukesh wanted to throw himself into Sethe and Denver’s world, to show them how alive and vibrant they were, how ready for life they could be, if they weren’t being pulled back to trauma constantly by the ghost who could never leave them alone, who could never let them forget their past.

As he continued to read, the phone sat right beside him; he was hoping for a phone call from Aleisha. He just wanted to know she was okay. But with every page he turned, every noise, every car that drove past, Mukesh felt a shiver down his spine. He’d been sitting there for hours, just reading, unable to leave the characters alone, but the air around him was getting colder. Aleisha hadn’t called. His worries weighed more heavily on him by the minute.

If this was a message from Aleisha, his heart ached at the thought of what she was trying to tell him. Was she, like Sethe and Denver, trapped in the house, unable to leave? What was keeping her there? Did she have a ghost of her own?

‘Hello?’ Mukesh picked up the phone, half asleep, groggy. His alarm clock bleated 11:00 a.m. at him – later than he usually got up, but he’d been awake until the early hours, reading, searching for clues.

‘Can you meet me?’ the voice said, down the phone.

‘Sorry, who is this?’

‘It’s Aleisha.’

Mukesh breathed in, he hadn’t recognized her voice, she didn’t sound okay. Number 124 floated to the forefront of his mind again.

‘Aleisha, what can I do?’

‘Can you meet me?’ she repeated.

Mukesh nodded, though Aleisha couldn’t see his assent. ‘I will come. Where?’

‘I’m at the park, the one near the library.’ Her voice was hollow.

Mukesh shuffled to the telephone stand, where Rohini’s Post-it notes sat waiting. ‘Yes, hold on, I am just writing it down.’ He didn’t want to forget. He couldn’t forget. His hand was shaking.

‘Are you okay? Do you want me to call someone?’ Mukesh asked.

‘I have. I’ve called you.’

Mukesh was silent. He hung up the phone and trundled as fast as he could to the bathroom. He got himself ready quicker than he ever had before.

At the park, Aleisha was sitting on a bench, The Time Traveler’s Wife clasped tightly in her hands. Mukesh had taken forty-five minutes to get there, and he blamed the bus – stopping at every stop, letting on too many people so the bodies were squished together. He was ready to give his excuses and his apologies as soon as he saw her, but the look on her face told him she was somewhere else entirely.