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.
For weeks after, in the pitch black of the night as Naina lay asleep beside him, Mukesh’s mind replayed those words: ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Patel.’
‘Naina,’ he’d whisper to her, ‘how can I swap places with you? How can I tell God to take me instead?’ Mukesh knew what was coming, just like Henry, just like Clare. But he refused to admit it to himself.
‘Mukesh,’ Naina said to him one morning. ‘We should talk about arrangements, for after …’ She’d said it softly yet so matter-of-factly. She was hurting him. Henry never let Clare dwell on that moment, on his death, did he? Mukesh wasn’t sure any more; his memory of the story had merged with his own life. Henry was Naina, and Mukesh was Clare. The one left behind.
‘Naina,’ he would say, smiling. ‘Don’t you worry about any of that, let’s just enjoy this beautiful day.’ He said the same thing, whether it was stormy outside, or brilliant sunshine.
‘We should talk about the girls, what they will need. Priya, and Jaya and Jayesh too. I have things I want to give to them, for when they are older. I should show you.’
Mukesh just shook his head, sipped his tea. ‘Naina, it is okay. You need to rest, we can do all that another day. Let’s watch something, one of those films, a nice one.’ The words tumbled from his mouth like a waterfall, trying to wash away Naina’s practicality.
‘Mukesh,’ Naina’s voice had been stern. Every few days she tried to speak to him, and every few days he dismissed her. ‘We’ve been given time, we should use it.’
Despite it all, she had never once tried to talk to him about how he should feel when she was gone, what he should do for himself, to bring her back. That was all he had ever wanted to know.
Now here he was alone, still without any clue as to what he should do now she was gone, left in a lifeless, soulless, bookless house that had once been their home. Naina had given her personality to this house, her heart hung up among her saris, her possessions decorating every surface – fabric and cardigans draped over every chair, books stacked in every corner and jewellery trailed from the bedposts.