‘Good,’ she said. ‘It was home.’ As she said this, her heart filled with sorrow. Maya had occupied more space in her trip than she’d hoped. She had visited temples and lit candles for Maya, and for the truth of Maya’s death to emerge. In the middle of a distant relative’s wedding ceremony, she had left, clutching her side so people thought she was ill but it was actually the unbearable pain of watching the bride and groom take their solemn steps around the Holy Book together.
London had not changed. The wind whipped her face, spraying her hair with mist. She pulled her shawl over her head and followed her husband to their car. The city’s flat outskirts greeted Kulwinder with the usual dismal views: walls covered in swirls of graffiti, scaly rooftops and the wide glowing forecourts of petrol stations.
‘Are you hungry?’ Sarab asked as they neared Southall.
‘I had something on the plane.’
‘We can stop for something if you’d like.’
This was his way of saying he had not eaten dinner. Kulwinder calculated the number of meals she had left behind for him. There would have been enough for every night she had been away, including tonight. ‘Maybe McDonald’s,’ he said. Kulwinder said nothing and Sarab pulled in swiftly to the drive-through. She pictured him sitting there every evening, ordering his regular meal – Filet-O-Fish and Chicken McNuggets – and chewing slowly to pass the time. The prepared meals would still be in the freezer when she got home, and she would defrost them for dinner for the next few weeks. This happened every time she went away without him. In a strange way, it was comforting. If Sarab couldn’t eat home-cooked food without her, it meant he had missed her, a sentiment he would never express in words. It also reminded Kulwinder that he would survive without her.
‘Let’s sit inside,’ Kulwinder said. ‘I don’t like to eat while the car is moving.’
He agreed. They parked and entered the restaurant, finding a booth in the corner next to a window. The restaurant was noisy with the sounds of teenagers; it was Friday night. Out of the corner of her eye, Kulwinder noticed a few Punjabi girls but she was too jet-lagged to try to figure out whose daughters they were.
‘Your writing classes have certainly been very popular,’ remarked Sarab. ‘I was at the temple the other day and saw some women heading into the building.’
‘Which women?’ Kulwinder asked. While in India, her problems with Nikki had become as distant as London itself.
‘I don’t know who exactly,’ Sarab said. ‘I did run into Gurtaj Singh at the langar hall the other day. He asked me what was being taught in those classes. I told him Nikki was teaching the women to read and write. He said, “That’s all?”’
‘Was he suspicious?’ Kulwinder asked. She recalled the note Nikki had left on Tarampal’s doorstep. It still didn’t make sense – why had Nikki apologized? But if class sizes were increasing, it meant that Kulwinder’s initiative looked successful to Gurtaj Singh.
‘He seemed impressed,’ Sarab said.
They ate their meals and returned home. The house smelled familiar and foreign at the same time. Kulwinder breathed it in and felt a hard hit in her gut. Our daughter is dead. She turned to Sarab, hoping to make eye contact but his face was clouded over. He brushed past her to the front room and moments later the broadcast of the Punjabi news blared into the living room and drowned the silence.
Kulwinder propped her suitcase against the bottom stair and left it there. Sarab would bring it up for her and then he would go back downstairs to the sitting room and fall asleep in front of the television. She drifted up the stairs to her room and unzipped her kameez. It made her shoulder ache to reach back but she felt skittish asking for Sarab’s help. What if he thought it was an invitation to touch her intimately? Or worse, what if he didn’t? Kulwinder shook away these thoughts. She managed to tug at the zip and drag it down eventually. Making her way to the bathroom, she passed Maya’s room and paused. The door was open. Once a shrine to all things Kulwinder detested about Maya’s Western lifestyle, the room had been hollowed out during the move to her marital home – the piles of magazines thrown into recycling, the door hook which held a dozen handbags tossed into the garbage, the high heels, the lipstick, the ticket stubs from concerts, the novels all chucked into boxes. Kulwinder did not remember opening the door. Sarab must have gone in there in her absence.
Would he ever forgive her? There were times when she wanted to break the silence by shouting: It was my fault, wasn’t it? She had given Maya that impossible choice. She had set up the marriage, considering it such good fortune to find a willing and available groom across the road where she could keep an eye on Maya. ‘Don’t embarrass me again,’ Kulwinder had said when Maya came home and declared her marriage over. In her lowest moments, Kulwinder believed that everyone was right: there was no mystery to Maya’s death. She had ended her life because Kulwinder had sent her back.
Kulwinder took a furtive glance at the window and saw the ghostly outlines of curtains in Tarampal’s living room window. She turned away. Regret struck her one bolt at a time. At the wedding, a clutching worry when Tarampal gave Jaggi a tight embrace that lasted longer than necessary. The flash of fear that crossed Maya’s face. The questioning look Sarab shot Kulwinder. The way Kulwinder, on the drive home, dismissed Sarab’s concerns and said, “She’s married now. She’ll be happy.”
If a man calls, always answer the phone with ‘Oh hey. I was just in the shower.’ It projects an instant image into their minds. This was the only tip Nikki remembered from a dating advice column she’d read in one of Mindi’s women’s magazines. It would finally prove useful; she was in the shower and the phone was trilling outside with the ring tone she had programmed for Jason’s calls. She was annoyed with herself for being excited. She reminded herself to be aloof. Aloof, she thought as she rang him back. Cool. Casual. I wasn’t waiting by the phone.
‘Hi, Nikki,’ Jason said.
‘Oh, hey man, whashappening? I had a shower,’ she blurted.
‘Cool,’ Jason said.
‘I mean, I was in the shower when you called.’
‘Oh. All right. Sorry to interrupt.’
‘No it’s okay. I was pretty much finished – you know what, it’s not important. How are you?’
‘I’m all right. Things have been a little crazy.’
‘Work stuff?’ Nikki offered.
There was a split-second pause. ‘Yeah,’ Jason said. ‘And other stuff. I need to talk to you about something. Could we meet up?’
‘I’ve got a double shift at O’Reilly’s tonight,’ Nikki said.
‘Can I meet you there?’
‘Okay. It gets a bit busy after eight on Wednesdays, so some time before?’
‘All right.’
‘Hey, Jason …’
‘Yeah?’
‘This is weird.’
‘What is?’
‘This – you. You calling me out of the blue like this and then wanting to meet.’
‘Do you not want to meet tonight?’
‘I do. It’s just that – that I haven’t heard from you in a while and all of a sudden you call and you say let’s meet and …’ She was struggling. ‘Do you know what I’m getting at?’ Jason’s silence sparked her anger. ‘Look, I’m a bit tired of feeling like I have to be available whenever you are,’ she said. ‘The way you left my place the other morning was very rude.’