She pulled one latex glove further up her arm, feeling it pull the tiny hairs on her skin. She was ready to forget the last few minutes, when someone else accosted her. It was one of the five library regulars: The Crime Thriller guy. He was almost always found in the Crime Thriller section, sitting at the tables overlooking the park. It was sheltered a little from the rest of the library. Tucked away, quiet. Sometimes, when the library closed, Aleisha liked to sit there herself, looking out. Just for a minute or two. Just for a tiny bit of a break before she went home. A moment to brace herself.
‘What?’ she snapped. She knew she was being rude but didn’t have the energy to care.
‘Hey, sorry,’ he said, mumbling. His hair was long – too long for an adult man, in her opinion – and it covered a lot of his face. He liked bright T-shirts but almost always wore a thick black hoodie over them. Just looking at him, in this sweaty summer weather, made her wilt. ‘I just wanted to return this book.’ He held up a copy of To Kill a Mockingbird.
She pointed with her latex finger to the returns pile. ‘Just put it there and I’ll get to it,’ she said.
He nodded. ‘Not my usual crime book, of course. But it’s really good. I’ve read it a few times now – I keep coming back to it … It helps me get out of my head – well, all stories do that, you know? This place does that for me.’
She frowned – if dark crime was his escape, what on earth was he escaping from? She nodded in response.
Crime Thriller stumbled on, awkward and shy. ‘This book … you know … I’d recommend it.’ He raised his eyebrows and nodded almost imperceptibly towards the old man, framed by the shelves. Aleisha frowned again, and Crime Thriller waved the book once more in the old man’s direction. ‘It’s a classic … a book everyone should read.’ He laboured each word, before carefully placing the book next to the other returns – like it was some sort of precious gift – and turned away from her slowly.
What was his problem? Was he trying to flirt with her?
When he finally left, Aleisha picked up To Kill a Mockingbird, scanned it on the system to log it back in, and started to shake it in search of any illegal scraps to be binned. When a piece of paper fell out, she half expected it to be his phone number or his Instagram handle or something. But as she unfolded it, she saw it was some kind of shopping list. She sighed, she wanted to call him back, tell him off for adding to her workload. But then Aleisha looked closer – the handwriting was nice, curly in all the right places. It wasn’t how she imagined Crime Thriller to write. She scanned the words again: it was a list of books.
A reading list.
There were eight titles scribbled there. It began with To Kill a Mockingbird, the book she was holding in her latexed hands.
Just in case you need it:
To Kill a Mockingbird
Rebecca
The Kite Runner
Life of Pi
Pride and Prejudice
Little Women
Beloved
A Suitable Boy
At first, she dropped it on the chuck pile. But as she went to dump the whole lot in the bin, something stopped her. She took one of her gloves off and carefully ran her fingers over the delicate words To Kill a Mockingbird, before stuffing the scrap of paper into the back of her phone case, along with the chicken shop stamp card.
She held up the book, taking in the cover and feeling the weight of the pages in her hands.
Then she got up and headed over to the old man, her heart pounding in her chest, ‘a book everyone should read’ ringing in her mind. Here it was, her olive branch.
Chapter 3
MUKESH
MUKESH HAD FELT THE girl’s eyes boring into the back of his head as he stomped towards the shelves. He had no idea where to begin in his ‘search for a novel’ – the colours of the books all blurred into one. He ran his hands over the spines, feeling the different textures – mostly shiny and soft, silky. He thought of Naina’s neat saris piled up at home. The words written down the spines washed over him, ran away from him, laughed at him, as though they knew he didn’t really belong here. Was the girl still watching him? He wandered between shelves, trying to get out of her eyeline.
He heard someone whispering. He didn’t know where the sound was coming from, but it felt as if they were whispering about him. His cheeks grew hot. Desperate to hide himself away, he quickly grabbed a book, any book at all, from the shelf.
The Highway Code and Theory Test for Car Drivers. Well, he certainly hadn’t been looking for that. It wasn’t even a novel, though it might come in handy for his granddaughter Priya’s driving theory test in six years’ time. Reluctant to admit defeat, determined to pretend he didn’t need the librarian’s guidance anyway, he sat down at a table and started to read: ‘Introduction: The Highway Code is essential reading for everyone.’