As she opened the car door she suddenly felt exposed. She shuffled into the seat, scared about hitting her head on the roof, or knocking the gear lever or something stupid like that. She felt as though she’d lost control of her limbs.
‘Hi,’ he said, ‘ready? Where we going?’
‘Absolutely, first stop, Hanwell Library. We need to get there a.s.a.p. Someone’s waiting.’ She used her formal business tone, reserved only for grumpy library customers, to mask the anxiety pumping through her chest.
‘Top-secret mission. Love it,’ he joked.
They drove mostly in silence, or more accurately in annoyingly subtle music, for a while. And, eventually, the traffic and the heat got to them. Zac grew steadily more frustrated as the temperature ramped up in the car as the traffic crawled along.
‘This is meant to be a twenty-minute drive, if that, and I feel like we’ve been here for an hour.’
‘It’s been half an hour, and we’re nearly there,’ Aleisha said consolingly. She realized she was using the voice Aidan sometimes adopted with Leilah, and her mind flew to the two of them. What were they doing? Was Aidan sitting with Leilah? Were they watching a film? She felt a pang of guilt that she was here, with someone, and they were both at home. She could have been spending the evening with her brother, for the first time in for ever.
She gulped the regret down, with no time to waste or wallow, and as they pulled up, Aleisha jumped out of the car and knocked on the Hanwell Library door. The librarian was sitting there, typing something into her computer, the angry customer’s books already stacked up next to her, ordered, as suspected, to the wrong library.
After another twenty-six-minute drive, more sassy comments from Zac, through the traffic and damp heat of the North Circular, Aleisha finally dropped the books off with the woman right on her doorstep.
‘Finally,’ the woman said.
‘You’re welcome,’ Aleisha beamed back, hoping the woman could smell the sarcasm.
‘Took you long enough.’ She took the books and shut her door with no whisper of thanks.
Aleisha rolled her eyes – she so wanted to say something back, to shout through the letter box, but she thought of Marmee, the March sisters’ mum, who was all about being polite to anyone and everyone. She was fictional, but she was right. It wasn’t worth it.
Jumping back in the car, she barked directions off her phone, hoping that Zac was okay with doing one last trip before their evening out.
‘Right here – after that sign.’
‘Okay, boss.’
‘End of this road, take a left, following the signs to Wembley High Road.’
‘Got it, boss.’
‘Then it’s the next left, followed by the third right.’
‘Hold on, hold on, you’re going too fast.’ He switched the radio off, wound up the windows and turned the AC on. ‘That’s better, finally space to think.’
Aleisha rolled her eyes. Zac’s gaze was fixed firmly on the road.
‘Left onto here!’ she called. ‘Quick, or you’ll miss it!’
‘What! Where was the advanced warning?’ He checked his mirrors and took a tight left turn.
They pulled up at the house as her phone told her: ‘You have now reached your destination.’ A car was sitting in the drive.
‘Just wait here,’ she told Zac, and grabbed another book from her bag.
Zac kept the car idling. Aleisha felt nervous as she approached the door. She was definitely breaking library rules, using the system to find out his address. She hoped Mr P wouldn’t tell on her.
She rang the doorbell. Aleisha could hear a voice inside, but not Mr P’s. The TV was probably on. One of those Indian channels. A little while later, when Aleisha was about to turn away and give up hope, the door opened to reveal a woman, in her seventies perhaps, wearing a dark blue Punjabi suit with a white contrast scarf around her neck.
‘Hello, how may I help?’ the lady said. Her voice was quite low but held warmth.
‘Hello, I am here to give a book to Mr Patel. He didn’t pick it up from the library today … it was on my way home … thought I’d drop it off.’
‘Mukeshbhai!’ the woman called into the house. Mr P shuffled through a doorway. He was wearing jogging bottoms with a few turmeric-coloured spillages dotted on the lap area and a T-shirt once white, now a dull grey, again with a ketchup stain on the chest. Aleisha had never seen him in anything other than nice trousers, a shirt and his trusty cap.
As soon as he saw her, his face dropped. ‘Miss Aleisha! No, you shouldn’t see me like this.’