By the time Aleisha had read another chapter – Pi had just ‘marked’ his territory in the lifeboat after five days at sea – Leilah and Aleisha were both laughing. When she finally started to read again, through cry-laughing eyes, her mother pulled her hand out from under her legs and placed it gently on Aleisha’s knee. Aleisha froze. Her every nerve stilled, a shot of ice piercing straight through her skin, her bone, and into the sofa. Aleisha placed her own hand gently on Leilah’s, and turned the page with the other.
She kept reading, she heard the words of the story, but she didn’t take them in. The voice no longer felt like her own; she was alone, trapped inside her own body with no control. The only part of her body she belonged to was her hand, the hand connected to Leilah’s hand, connected to Aleisha’s knee, which didn’t feel like Aleisha’s knee at all.
Leilah’s voice then. ‘The characters feel so alive. The animal, that tiger, it feels so … human.’
‘They do, don’t they?’
‘Who gave you this book?’ Leilah asked, stroking the cover.
‘The library.’
‘Who recommended it? I’ve never heard of it before.’
‘I found it on this,’ she pulled out the list from her phone, unfolded it, passed it to Leilah. Suddenly, to Leilah, it was the most precious thing in the world.
‘Oh, Aleisha! I remember Rebecca. I loved that book.’ Leilah ran her fingers over the words, lingering for a moment in the folds. ‘I read it in one day, when I was pregnant with you, actually. I couldn’t sleep. You never let me sleep. So I read this – it was perfect. Wow,’ was all she said for a moment. ‘Someone curated this list. It’s lovely. So simple. Who wrote it?’
Aleisha shook her head. ‘It was just left in one of the books. I also found this – not in the same book though.’ She held up the chicken shop stamp card, her first thoughts on To Kill a Mockingbird scrawled in tiny handwriting on the back after Kyle had told her to ‘say something interesting’ to Mr P.
‘You’re going to keep reading them? The books?’
Was she going to carry on? She’d felt so unsure at first – it had just been a tick-box exercise, so she’d have enough to say to pretend to Mr P that she knew all about books, that she was a good librarian. But Rebecca … it had scared her half to death. She could picture Manderley so clearly in her mind; the house itself, Rebecca’s room, left almost untouched. And then The Kite Runner. She’d never forget that book. And she thought of Atticus, his kick-ass lawyer skills, how much she admired him, even though he was literally made up. And, right now, she felt Leilah’s hand still resting on her knee as Pi and Richard Parker drifted across the ocean.
‘Yes,’ Aleisha said with conviction. ‘All of them. This is the fourth.’
‘Were the others good?’
‘Yeah.’ She wanted to say more, but she stopped herself. She thought of The Kite Runner – it was so sad, there was so much grief there, she was scared of how that might make Leilah feel.
Leilah brought the piece of paper close to her face, squinting. ‘Could be a student, like a uni reading list or something?’
‘Maybe.’
‘A Suitable Boy. Dean read that when we were on holiday once. He ended up using it as a doorstop. It’s fat. I don’t think he got very far.’
She hadn’t heard her mother mention Dean in months; she hadn’t used his name in years. Usually it was ‘your dad’ or sometimes just ‘him’。 But she laughed anyway. Of course, her dad would use a fat book as a doorstop.
‘When was that?’
‘You must have been just five or six, we left you with his parents. We went on a cycling holiday. The first holiday, just us, in ages. It was nice, not having to look after you guys,’ Leilah paused. Aleisha frowned at her. ‘As much as we loved you, we could just be us for a little while again. He kept forgetting things in his saddle bags when we were at the villa, and every time he went to get one thing, he’d lock himself out. Finally, he caught on,’ Leilah smiled, ‘and stuck that bloody book there to keep the door open. But he’d only ever remember to bring one thing in at a time, so the door was almost permanently wedged open. He’s so forgetful.’
After a moment, Leilah said, ‘Keep reading?’
Aleisha continued, until the sunlight vanished from the room, and Leilah mentioned dinner, vaguely, noncommittally, before deciding instead that it was too late, it was time to go to bed. Aleisha should have fed Leilah. Aidan would be upset that she hadn’t. But for the first time since Leilah’s dark days, weeks and months had begun, she had let her daughter in, even if just for a moment. All thanks to a boy, a tiger, an orang-utan, a zebra and a hyena stuck on a boat.