‘I’m sorry, Aleisha, it is just their way of paying respect I think.’ Mukesh passed the phone back.
Aleisha began to obsessively scroll. She tapped a few things and started to type. He worried that she might be typing horrible emails to the people; he wondered if they would understand, if they would forgive her.
‘My dad has put a photograph of Aidan as a baby up on his Facebook profile. He hasn’t had any evidence of any of us on his Facebook since he got married again. Does a dead kid earn you respect, or something?’
Mukesh noticed that Aleisha’s natural tone had vanished – she was enunciating in a way she never had before.
‘Aleisha, I think you should go off these internet things. Please. For a little while, not just today.’
Aleisha looked him in the eye for the first time since he’d started talking about The Time Traveler’s Wife. Her face screwed up, she rubbed her eyes and she took three deep breaths.
‘You’re right,’ she said eventually, turning her phone face down on the table.
Mukesh nodded – yes, he was.
They sat alone in silence for a while, tucked away in a corner of the library. Mukesh looked around him – it was quiet now, but he remembered seeing people, people he felt he knew, a little community he felt a part of.
He took himself away to a separate part of the library, wanting to give Aleisha some space, but not wanting to be too far away. He stepped back into Beloved – he’d already finished reading it, but he didn’t want to ask for a new book. He didn’t want to put the pressure on her right now.
He flicked through the pages of Denver’s plan as she looked to escape the boundaries of their house, 124. Denver, who hadn’t left the house in twelve years; Denver, who had a terrible fear of the outside world – she had gone for help. She’d overcome her fears, and thirty women from the community turned up to help Denver in any way they could.
He looked around the library – in a way, those first steps that had brought him here had been a chance for Mukesh to ask for help, a chance for him to reach out to a community. While he had left the house in twelve years, he’d not read a book in many. And he’d never set foot in the library, not until this summer. He thought of the leaflets, the slogan imprinted on his mind: Save Our Libraries. Naina had always been talking about it, saying how devastating it was for a library to vanish. He thought of all those things he’d taken to heart, whether it was wisdom from the characters in the books he was reading, or the familiar faces who smiled as he walked in, or Aleisha advising him, guiding him, or that feeling of being able to talk to Priya, see her grow into a reader … This library had come to mean something to him. It had begun to feel like home. And a place is only what it is because of the people who make it. That’s what Naina always used to say about the mandir. And Aleisha had always said the library had meant something to Aidan too …
An idea hit him, a bolt from the blue, or perhaps from wise old Atticus Finch. He pushed himself up from his chair and stomped over to the front desk. ‘Aleisha?’ he said. His voice was quiet, no more than a whisper. The library was still almost empty, but in his mind it was full of everyone he’d met, fictional and non-fictional, over this one summer.
‘Yes?’ her reply came back sharply, and as soon as she heard it, he could tell she regretted her tone. ‘Yes,’ she said again, softly this time.
‘You know this?’ He held up one of the Save Our Libraries leaflets.
‘Yes?’
‘How are we actually meant to save our libraries, if we don’t ask for help?’
‘Er, Mr P, I think that’s what the leaflets are all about.’
‘Okay, fine, but … you know what I mentioned earlier, about Denver going to ask for help. What if we asked the community for help? Because, this library – it’s been helpful for me. It has made me bolder, it has given me friends. And I am just one person.’
‘I’m sorry, I’m not following,’ Aleisha’s face was expressionless.
‘Sitting here in silence with others can feel much less lonesome than sitting at home surrounded by my family constantly talking over me. It is nice, comforting, to see the same people every week. And it feels like I’ve got so much out of it, because I’ve got people to keep me company. I am just one person, and I have got all of this from stepping out of my house, from leaving my comfort zone, just like what Denver did … and now, here I am, at the library … a place that feels like it helps me. Now, you always mentioned Aidan loved this place too. What did he like about it?’