Aleisha’s eyes shot towards him. ‘I don’t want to think about books any more.’
‘No, Miss Aleisha, I hadn’t thought of it before, but books can help us too.’
Aleisha sighed heavily. He saw her roll her eyes; she started to tap her nails on the desk impatiently and for a moment he was transported back to his very first day in the library.
‘You see, The Time Traveler’s Wife,’ he said. Aleisha’s eyes were roaming around the library. ‘When my Naina passed away, that book had been a distraction, but it had brought me closer to her as well. But now, I think, more than that, it helped me process some things, you know?’
‘No, Mr P,’ Aleisha said sharply. ‘I don’t know. I’ve spent the whole summer living other people’s lives. I forgot to live mine, to look out for the real people around me.’
‘Beloved,’ Mukesh continued, trying to hide the tremor in his voice. ‘Did you read it? Denver. How does she help her mother?’ Mukesh waited for a reply – but Aleisha was scrolling on her phone. ‘Okay, I’ll tell you what I think. Denver realized that staying in that house, with her mother, with the ghost of Beloved, it wasn’t helping anything. But Denver went out to get help from her community, from other women who wanted to help. She asked for help when her mother couldn’t ask for herself.’
Mukesh let the words hang in the air, and for a moment he felt a comforting hand on his shoulder. Naina’s.
Aleisha kept staring at her desk. She refused to look up at him.
‘Aleisha,’ Mukesh said softly. ‘Please try to remember that books aren’t always an escape; sometimes books teach us things. They show us the world, they don’t hide it.’
That’s a proper Atticus moment, Mukesh, Naina whispered in his ear, louder than ever before. He steadied himself against the desk for a moment.
Mukesh waited for Aleisha. She didn’t respond and continued to scroll. Eventually, she let her phone sit beside her and just watched her screen.
Every so often, it would buzz and flash, sitting on the table in front of them and, while normally she’d turn it over, today she picked it up. Every single time. Her mind was somewhere else. It was understandable.
Mukesh didn’t want to upset her, but he thought it would be better for her not to look at her phone. His daughters were always doing this too. Always looking at their phone in the middle of conversations, like they were never really present.
‘What is it?’ Mukesh asked, trying to keep his voice light.
Aleisha showed him the screen. A photograph of Aidan, a girl and a boy, both squinting in the sunshine. Aidan had sunglasses on.
‘Lovely.’
‘It’s not lovely – look what they’ve written underneath.’
Mukesh could just about make out some typed words, but he couldn’t for the life of him work out what they said. ‘I can’t see,’ he admitted, and Aleisha read it out for him, hashtags and all.
‘Always there for me, always cared. Miss you Aid. Won’t ever forget you. #RIP #GoneButNeverForgotten #RestInParadise #Depression #TimeToTalk.’
‘That’s a nice tribute to him,’ Mukesh said.
‘No, it’s not,’ she sounded furious. ‘It takes five minutes to do an Instagram post, if that. They’re splashing my brother all over the internet, claiming a right to grief. They’ve even put the funeral on their story!’
Mukesh had no idea what that really meant – ‘story’ – but whatever it was had clearly upset Aleisha.
‘Who hashtags depression? They don’t even know it’s depression. And why the fuck would they tag him in it? Because he’ll see it from wherever he is? Paradise?’
‘I don’t know what that means.’
‘Look,’ Aleisha passed the phone to Mukesh. ‘Scroll down.’ Mukesh did as told, his fingers fumbling about until the image started to move.
There were dozens and dozens of photographs of Aidan with various people – there were some photos of the flower arrangement spelling out his name, and he recognized Nilakshi’s dining-room table with the food spread out all over it too. Everything. They had documented it all.
‘For everyone to gawp at. Everyone. Even people who didn’t know him. We wanted a small, intimate ceremony for friends and family, and now everyone has a piece of him.’
One tear, just one, slid down Aleisha’s cheek. She left it there so as not to draw attention to it. But Mukesh saw – he’d had three teenage daughters, all of whom had tried that same trick once in their lives, whether in response to the ending of It’s a Wonderful Life （the saddest film ever）， or because someone had decided to slap them on the way home from school because of the colour of their skin and they needed to pretend that they were okay with it, that there was no one to blame.