The Reading List(9)
‘Sir?’ she repeated. ‘Is that what you were looking for?’ She pointed down at The Highway Code. ‘I could have found that for you if you had told me.’
‘Don’t call me “Sir”, I am not your “Sir”!’ Mukesh stood up, bristling with anger and embarrassment.
With that, he picked up The Highway Code and marched towards the door as quickly as he could manage, pressing the automatic open button (hardly automatic open!) to let himself out. His head held high, he ignored the beeps from the detectors, forgetting the stolen book in his hands.
Arriving home, Mukesh opened the door to emptiness; he was calmer now but his eyes were prickling with tears, his ears burning with shame. Slipping off his shoes at the door, he threw his canvas bag down onto his chair in the living room with unexpected force before checking his landline for messages. There was another from Rohini, ending with ‘Papa, call me when you get this. We need to know what to cook when we visit on Friday, I’ll need to do the shopping tomorrow. I hope you’ve been eating properly.’
He slumped down onto his sofa. Rohini’s message only served to increase the pounding of his heart. Last week Priya had begged him for something to read. She’d left her own book at home and had nothing to pass the time. He’d suggested watching Blue Planet. She’d groaned at him.
‘I wish Ba was here! She had so many books.’
Priya and Naina had been forever wrapped up in books. Naina would hole up with Priya in their downstairs bedroom – they’d make a fort out of sheets and cushions and sit together and read. He would hear them talking about characters as though they were real-life people. He thought it fanciful, but completely lovely. He watched his documentaries with the same passion instead. Just as educational, but easier on the eyes. He really wanted Priya to love David Attenborough as much as he did.
‘I have a book,’ Mukesh had said to his granddaughter, as he hurried upstairs to his box room. The bookshelf now showcased only the dusty plastic-jacketed copy of The Time Traveler’s Wife.
When he brought it down to her, held out in his hands, Priya’s face showed nothing but outrage. ‘Here, Priya. Even I have read this one, it is the most beautiful story.’
‘Dada, this is too grown-up for me!’ Mukesh could see her cheeks start to glow red with frustration. ‘I wish Ba was here. She would know. You don’t get books, Dada,’ her bottom lip began to quiver, and then, eventually, she sniffed: ‘You just don’t care!’ Priya slapped the book out of his hands and commenced an uncharacteristic temper tantrum.
His heart crashed, a punch to the chest. He let his eyes glaze over, wishing to be spirited away, desperate to hear Naina’s voice once more, to feel her sitting beside him.
No. He couldn’t bear a repeat of that. He’d felt so ashamed, so useless … Naina would be so disappointed in him. ‘What can I do?’ he called out to the silent house.
Now is not the time to give up, Mukesh.
Mukesh stopped in his tracks, knowing his mind, his disappointment, was playing tricks on him, but it felt like Naina had said that to him.
Everyone needs to ask for help sometimes, Mukesh, her voice came to him once more, and he felt the hairs stand up on the back of his neck. She was right, she was always right.
His heart sank at the thought of Priya sitting in an armchair, or tucked up on Ba’s side of the bed, with a book – miles and miles, and worlds and worlds away from him.
‘Does she enjoy coming to visit me?’ Mukesh asked out loud.
He waited, hoping for Naina to come back to him, to tell him it was all going to be okay – but there was only silence.
He slumped himself in front of the television, turning on Blue Planet. Usually David Attenborough’s voice, the deep blues of the sea, the funny noises from the creatures, helped him to focus and to relax. But today, he couldn’t concentrate on David Attenborough, and wandered back over to his canvas bag, pulled The Time Traveler’s Wife out and clutched it to his chest. He shuffled to his bedroom and flumped onto the bed. He let the novel fall open in his hands and allowed himself to be transported back to the world of Clare and Henry; they had been warned in advance – a blessing and a curse – about Henry’s death. That was the starkest warning anyone could be given. They knew their days together were limited – they were waiting for the end to come.
But from Mukesh’s own experience, he knew that a warning, no matter how stark, was never a comfort; it was only the slow drip of fear through all the good and all the bad times. A ticking time bomb. He remembered when the doctor had sat him and Naina down after her last scan.
‘I’m sorry, Mrs Patel,’ the doctor had said, his voice solid; yet under the surface Mukesh heard a quiver. He wore glasses, which sat neatly on the bridge of his nose. He looked how Mukesh imagined his own son might have, had they had one. That familiarity, it made it worse somehow. They’d always wanted a doctor in the family, for moments like this, for an expert to say to them, ‘Don’t worry, Papa, often doctors get these things wrong.’
Naina and Mukesh had both known this doctor was not wrong.
Rohini came to collect them both from the hospital; she’d bombarded them with interesting facts from the news, trying to deflate the sadness in the car, while Mukesh and Naina sat in silence. This was their moment – the moment equivalent to when Henry travelled into the future and watched himself die – wondering how long they had until that day finally arrived.