The Year of the Runaways

1. ARRIVALS

Randeep Sanghera stood in front of the green-and-blue map tacked to the wall. The map had come with the flat, and though it was big and wrinkled, and cigarette butts had once stubbed black islands into the mid Atlantic, he’d kept it, a reminder of the world outside. He was less sure about the flowers, guilty-looking things he’d spent too long choosing at the petrol station. Get rid of them, he decided, but then heard someone was parking up outside and the thought flew out of his head.

He went down the narrow staircase, step by nervous step, straightening his cuffs, swallowing hard. He could see a shape through the mottled glass. When he opened the door Narinder Kaur stood before him, brightly etched against the night, coat unbuttoned despite the cold. So, even in England she wore a kesri. A domed deep-green one that matched her salwaar kameez. A flank of hair had come loose from under it and curled about her ear. He’d forgotten how large, how clever, her eyes were. Behind her, the taxi made a U-turn and retreated down the hill. Narinder brought her hands together underneath her chin — ‘Sat sri akal’ — and Randeep nodded and took her suitcase and asked if she might follow him up the stairs.

He set her luggage in the middle of the room and, straightening right back up, knocked his head against the bald light bulb, the wire flexing like a snake disturbed from its tree. She was standing at the window clutching her handbag with both hands.

‘It’s very quiet,’ Randeep said.

‘It’s very nice. Thank you.’

‘You have been to Sheffield before?’

‘My first time. What’s the area called again?’

‘Brightside,’ he said.

She smiled, a little, and gazed around the room. She gestured towards the cooker.

‘We used to have one like that. Years ago.’

Randeep looked too: a white stand-alone thing with an overhanging grill pan. The stains on the hob hadn’t shifted no matter how hard he’d scrubbed. ‘There is a microwave, too,’ he said, pointing to the microwave. ‘And washing machine. And toaster also, and kettle and sofa-set. . carpet. .’ He trailed off, ridiculous to himself. ‘The heater works fine. It’s included in the rent. I’m sorry there’s no TV.’

‘I’m used to it.’ She looked to the wall. ‘Nice map.’

‘Oh. Thank you. I thought. .’ What did he think? ‘I want to visit every continent of the world.’ She smiled politely, as if he’d said he wanted to visit the moons of Jupiter. ‘It’s one of my dreams.’

There were only two other rooms. The bathroom was tiny, and the pipes buffalo-groaned when he forced the taps. In the centre of the greenish tub the hand-held shower lay in a perfect coil of chrome, like an alien turd.

‘And this is your private room,’ he said, opening the second door.

She didn’t step inside. There wasn’t much to see: a double bed, a rail for her clothes, a few wire coat hangers. Some globs of Blu-Tack on damp, loose wallpaper. There was a long, hinged mirror straight ahead which they found themselves staring into, him standing behind her. She didn’t even reach his shoulders. It was cold and he noticed her nipples showing through her tunic. Frowning, she pulled her coat shut and he averted his eyes.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘It’s too small. And dirty. I’ll look for something else tomorrow.’

‘It’s fine. Honestly. Thank you for finding it for me.’

‘Truly?’ He exhaled relief. ‘There is a bus from the bottom of the hill that can take you into town.’

‘And that hill will keep me in shape.’

‘And this isn’t an area with lots of apneh.’ Her lips parted, but she didn’t speak. ‘Like you asked,’ he reminded her. ‘And the gurdwara’s only a few stops away. In Burngreave. I can show you? If you like?’

‘We’ll see,’ she said. ‘It’s late. Can I call you tomorrow?’

‘Of course. But you should know that the flat downstairs is empty. So no disturbances.’ He smiled, pleased with himself. ‘Yes, this flat was a special find. Especially at this time of year, it is not easy. We were lucky.’ That ‘we’ was problematic and knocked him off balance. ‘But I should go,’ he said hastily. He took up his red tracksuit top and zipped it to his chin, pushing the short sleeves up to his elbows.

She walked him to the stairs, saying, ‘You should probably bring a few of your things and leave them here.’

He nearly blurted out that his suitcase was just outside, in the gennel. ‘I will bring some. But I will telephone you first.’ He wouldn’t be one of those boys who turned up at a girl’s house unannounced and unexpected. Then he remembered about the meter tokens. ‘The light.’ He pointed down the stairs. ‘There is a meter underneath. It takes the pink electric tokens. Not the white ones. The pink ones. There is a shop around the corner. The aunty there sells them.’

She looked confused. ‘Do I have to collect these tokens? Like vouchers?’

‘Collect them from the shop, yes. Only be careful you put the cards in straight. Would you like me to show you? The meter?’

She’d never heard of electricity being pink, or white for that matter, but she was tired from the journey and said she really did just want to sleep. ‘But thanks for everything, Randeep.’

She used his name, without ‘ji’ and to his face, which hurt him a little. But this was England. ‘No problem. And do not worry. You won’t need any for a while yet. I put lots in before you came.’

She thanked him again, then — perhaps out of nerves, needing her fingers occupied — retightened her chunni over her turban and under her chin. It made her eyes look bigger, somehow.

Randeep opened his wallet and held out some notes to her. ‘Next month’s.’ He was looking away. He hated doing it like this. At least when she lived in London it had gone by post. She too seemed embarrassed to take it.

He said goodbye. Halfway down the stairs he stopped, looked round. ‘I hope you don’t mind, but is everything all right? You are not in any trouble?’

‘Oh, I just need to rest. I’ll be fine tomorrow. Can I call you?’

‘Of course you may. Of course.’ He smiled, then went down the remaining steps and opened the door. He nodded a final goodbye. She leaned forward out of the doorway, arms folded. She looked uncertain.

Randeep held his suitcase across his lap on the bus ride home. Of course she wasn’t going to ask him to stay. It was stupid of him to have thought she might. If anything, he wondered now if she’d seemed eager for him to leave her alone. He spat coarsely into his hankie and worked out a bit of dirt on the brown leather of his case, which still gleamed, in spite of the coach to Delhi, the flight to London, and now three months spent wedged on the roof of that disgusting wardrobe.

He got off right outside the house and saw the grey-blue light of the TV flickering behind the closed curtains. He’d hoped they’d be asleep by now. He went the long way round the block, stopping off at the Londis for some of those fizzy cola-bottle sweets.

‘You are leaving?’ the singh asked. The suitcase.

‘I was helping a friend move only.’

The TV was still on when he got back. Randeep turned the key gradually, wincing at the loud final snap of the metal tongue, and went straight up to his room on the second floor. He sat there polishing his workboots with toilet roll and after that he changed the blanket on his mattress, taking care with the corner-folds. Then he lay down, the darkness roomy around him, and with no real enthusiasm reached for the toilet roll once more.

It was near midnight when the clanging of the gate woke him up. He hadn’t meant to fall asleep afterwards and the scrunch of sticky toilet paper was still in his hand.

Downstairs, he went through the beaded curtain and found Avtar gulping straight from the tap. The back of his uniform read Crunchy Fried Chicken. Randeep stood in the doorway, weaving one of the long strings in and out of his fingers. There was a calendar of tropically naked blonde women on the wall by the fridge. Someone would have to get a new one soon.

Avtar turned off the tap, though it continued to drip. ‘Where is everyone?’

‘Asleep.’

‘Did someone do the milk run?’

‘Don’t think so.’

Avtar groaned. ‘I can’t do everything, yaar. Who’s on the roti shift?’

Randeep shrugged. ‘Not me.’

‘I bet it’s that new guy. Watch, they’ll be bhanchod burnt again.’

Randeep nodded, sighed. Outside the window, the moon was full. There were no stars though, just an even pit of black, and if he altered the focus of his eyes, he saw his vague reflection. He wondered what his father would be doing.

‘Do you think Gurpreet’s right? About what he said this morning?’

‘What did he say this morning?’

‘You were there.’

‘I was asleep.’

‘He said it’s not work that makes us leave home and come here. It’s love. Love for our families.’ Randeep turned to Avtar. ‘Do you think that’s true?’

‘I think he’s a sentimental creep. We come here for the same reason our people do anything. Duty. We’re doing our duty. And it’s shit.’

Randeep turned back to the window. ‘Maybe.’

‘And I asked bhaji, by the way, but there’s nothing right now.’

The job, Randeep remembered. He was relieved. He’d only mentioned it during a low moment, needing solidarity. One job was enough. He didn’t know how Avtar managed two.

‘How’d the thing with the girl go?’

‘Nothing special,’ Randeep said.

‘Told you,’ and Avtar picked up his satchel from where it rested against the flour barrel. He took out his manila college folder and wriggled up onto the worktop.

Randeep had learned by now that when Avtar didn’t want to be disturbed he just ignored you until you went away. He let the beads fall through his hands and was turning to go when Avtar asked if it was true that Gurpreet hit him this morning in the bathroom queue.

‘It was nothing,’ Randeep said.

‘He’s just jealous, you know.’

Randeep waited — for sympathy? for support? — but Avtar curled back down to his book, trying out the words under his breath, eyes glinting at the end of each line. Avtar’s posture reminded Randeep of the trips he used to make between college and home, his own textbook open on his lap.

In his room, he changed into his tracksuit bottoms, annoyed he’d forgotten to warm them against the oven, then slid inside the blanket. He knew he should try to sleep. Five hours and he’d have to be up again. But he felt restless, suddenly and inexplicably optimistic for the first time in months. Years? He got up and moved to the window and laid his forehead against the cool pane. She was somewhere on the other side of the city. Somewhere in that dark corner beyond the lights, beyond that pinkish blur he knew to be a nightclub called the Leadmill. He wondered if she’d noticed how he’d spent each evening after work scrubbing the doors and descaling the tiles and washing the carpet. Maybe she was thinking about all he’d done right now as she unpacked her clothes and hung them on the rail. Or maybe she’d decided to have a bath instead and was now watching TV, thick blue towels wrapped around her head and body the way British girls do. His forehead pressed harder against the glass. He was being ridiculous again. There was no TV, for one thing. But he couldn’t lose the sense that this was a turning point in his life, that she’d been delivered to him for a reason. She’d called him in her hour of need, hadn’t she? He wondered whether she’d found his note yet, the rose-scented card leaning inside the cupboard above the sink. He cringed and hoped she hadn’t. At the time, in the petrol station, he’d convinced himself it was the sophisticated thing to do. Now, he exhaled a low groan and closed his eyes and forced himself to remember each carefully written word.

Dear Narinderji, I sincerely hope you are well and are enjoying your new home. A beautiful flat for a beautiful person. And a new start for us both maybe. If I may be of any assistance please do not hesitate to make contact. I am at your service day and night. In the interim, may I be the first to wish you, in your new home, a very Happy New Year (2003).

Respectfully yours, Randeep Sanghera.

It was gone 2 a.m. and Avtar was still sitting up on the counter. He’d long set aside his college notes. His ankles were crossed and the heels of his trainers lightly tapped the cupboards. He could feel his eyes start to close, a shallow dark descending. He jolted himself upright. ‘Come on, come on,’ he said, half to himself, half to Bal, the guy he was waiting for. He checked his phone. He recounted the money. He had enough, had earned enough. Then his phone rang, too loud for that time of night. It was them.

‘So we come to yours?’

‘No, no. Keep to the gardens.’ He didn’t want them knowing where he lived.

He zipped up his jacket and sneaked out of the house and down onto Ecclesall Road, heading away from the city. The shabby restaurants were all closed, the pound shops shuttered. He liked this road in the day, a place of business and exchange, a road that seemed to carry on into the hills. Tonight, though, there was only a scrappy silence, and the city at his back, the countryside glowering ahead. He gripped the top of the zip between his lips, flicking it with the end of his tongue, and breathed out puffs of air that hung briefly in the cold. He turned up towards the Botanical Gardens and saw them sitting in their rich black BMW, faces flooded by the car’s interior light. The engine was still gunning. Bal got out, the eldest of the three brothers, all long leather and shaped facial hair. The gold ring on his right hand was the size and shape of a fifty-pence piece. Avtar nodded, jogged to meet him.

‘Why so late? I have work soon.’

‘True what they say, man. Fuckin’ cold up north.’

‘You were held up?’

‘By another one of you chumps. In Birmingham. He won’t be doing that again.’

Avtar handed the money over. ‘It’s all there. So tell your uncle not to bother my family. Do you understand?’

Bal counted it, note by note. ‘Good. It’s just my share, then.’

‘Arré, go fuck a cow. I can’t pay extra every—’

He slapped Avtar. ‘It’s two o’clock in the bastard morning, I’m in the arse-end of nowhere and you want to argue the fucking toss?’

Hand on his cheek, Avtar looked over to the two in the car, the baseball bat he knew they kept in their boot, then back at Bal’s heavy face. The height, which stretched the fat out of Bal’s body, couldn’t do the same for his slabbed cheeks and jaw. He took three more notes from his pocket and threw them across. ‘If we were in India, bhaji, I swear I’d break all your bhanchod bones.’

Bal feigned confusion. ‘What would I be doing in India?’ Then he laughed and pinched Avtar’s cheek, as if he were a child.

Three hours of sleep later, Avtar forced his stiff second pair of socks up over the first and pulled on his oversized workboots. He stuffed the sides with kitchen towel until they fitted. Then he picked up his rucksack, his hard hat and reflector jacket, and locked the door quickly. He was late.

He and Randeep were the last of the twelve to come down the stairs. They mumbled a quick prayer over the smoking joss stick and rushed out. Avtar didn’t mind: it meant they got the nearest waiting point. The street lamps were still on, spreading their winter yellow. The chill was sharp as needles.

‘So cold, yaar,’ Randeep said, and tucked his gloved hands into his armpits.

They turned onto Snuff Mill Lane and waited beside a twiggy hedge near the Spar. The National Lottery sign reverberated in the wind. Any van pulling up would look like it was only delivering the day’s newspapers.

‘There used to be a flour mill here,’ Randeep said. ‘Hundreds of years ago. I read about it.’

‘Yeah,’ Avtar said, too tired to really talk.

They took out their Tupperware boxes and peeled off the lids. Avtar held up one of his chapattis: a brittle misshapen thing full of burn holes. ‘No joke, I genuinely think my cock could do better.’

Randeep smeared the chilli gobi around his roti, then rolled it all up like a sausage.

The white Transit arrived and they climbed into the back and squeezed onto the wheel arches. The others were already in there, eating, or asleep on the blankets that covered the corrugated floor. Randeep squashed his bag under his knees, behind his legs. Opposite, Gurpreet was drawing on his roll-up and looking right at him.

‘Did you wear that jacket all the way down the street?’ Gurpreet asked, rocking side to side. ‘Do you bhanchod want to get seen?’

‘I was in a hurry.’

‘In a hurry to get us all caught, eh, little prince?’

He’d have to take some of his clothes over to her soon. He concentrated on that.

‘So what was she like, then?’ Gurpreet asked. ‘Our Mrs Randeep Singh?’

Randeep pretended not to hear.

‘Oy! I asked you something.’

‘Nothing. Like any girl.’

‘Oh, come on. Tall, slim, short? What about. .?’ He mimed breasts.

Frowning, Randeep said he didn’t notice, didn’t care to notice.

‘And she didn’t let you stay?’

‘I didn’t want to.’

Gurpreet laughed. ‘Maybe one day you will.’

‘Leave him alone,’ Avtar said, strongly, eyes still closed.

‘Where are we going today?’ Randeep asked quickly.

Vinny — boss, driver — spoke up: ‘A new job, boys. We’re off to Leeds.’

They all groaned, complaining about how late they’d be back.

‘Hey, ease up, yeah? Or maybe I need to get me some freshies who actually want the work?’

Someone in the back closed his fist and made the wanker sign, a new thing that had been going round the house recently.

The proposed hotel site was directly behind the train station. A board so white it sparkled read, Coming soon! The Green: a Luxury Environmentally Friendly Living Space and Hotel in the City of Leeds. But right now it was just a massive crater, topsoil scraped off and piled in a pyramid to one side. At least all the bushes and trees had been cleared.

They assembled in the corner of the station car park, looking down onto the site. Another vanload joined them. Mussulmans, Randeep guessed. Bangladeshis even, by the look of them. A man approached, his hard hat askew on his big pink head. He went straight to Vinny and the two spoke and then shook hands.

‘All right, boys,’ Vinny said. ‘This is John. Your gaffer. Do what he says and you’ll be fine. I’ll pick you up at seven.’

The van reversed and Vinny left. Randeep moved closer to Avtar: if this John was going to pair them off then he wanted to be with him. But John began by handing out large pieces of yellow paper, faintly grid-lined. Avtar took one, studied it. Randeep peered down over his shoulder.

‘These are the project plans,’ John said, walking back and forth. ‘As you can see there’s lots to do, lots to do, so let’s just take it one step at a time, yes? You understand?’

‘We could do this with our eyes closed,’ Avtar muttered. ‘Saala bhanchod.’

‘Oy! No, bhaji!’ John said, bursting into Panjabi, pointing at Avtar with the rolled-up paper. ‘I no longer fuck my sister, acha?’

Avtar stared, open-mouthed, and then everyone was laughing.

They put on their hats, smoothing their hair out of the way, chose tool-belts and made for the footings stacked in neat angles on the wooden pallets. John called them back. He wanted stakes in first.

‘But it will take twice as long,’ Avtar said.

John didn’t care. ‘We’re doing this properly. It’s not one of your shanty towns.’

So Avtar and Randeep piled a wheelbarrow with the stakes and bumped on down to their squared-off section of the site. ‘You put in the stakes and I’ll follow with the footings,’ Avtar said.

Randeep dropped onto one knee and held a stake to the ground. With a second glance towards the plan, he brought down his hammer. ‘Like last time?’ He wasn’t going to fall for that again.

‘It’ll take all week just to do this,’ Avtar said. ‘It’s as big as one of their bhanchod football grounds.’

At lunchtime, they found their backpacks and joined the others sitting astride a large tunnel of aluminium tubing, newly exposed from the dig. Beside them, a tarpaulin acted as a windbreak. They slid off their helmets. Their hair was sopping.

Afterwards one or two pulled on their coats and turned up their collars and sank into a sleep. The rest decided on a cricket match to stay warm. They found a plank of wood for a bat and several had tennis balls handy. They divided into Sikhs and Muslims, three overs each. Gurpreet elected himself captain and won the toss. He put the Muslims in to bat.

‘No slips, but an edge is automatic out,’ he said, topknot swinging as he ran back to bowl.

He was knocked for fourteen off the first over, the last ball screaming for a six. Gurpreet watched it arc above his head and land somewhere in the car park.

‘Arré, yaar, there’s something wrong with that ball.’

‘Right,’ Avtar said. ‘The fact that it is being bowled by you.’

Randeep laughed but when Gurpreet glowered he fell silent.

They needed thirty-one to win and came nowhere near, with Avtar going for glory and getting caught, and puffing Gurpreet easily run out.

‘These Mussulmans,’ he said, throwing aside the bat. ‘Cheating is in their nature.’

John approached and for the first time Randeep noticed his gentle limp.

‘Bohut good work, men, bohut good work. But come on, jaldi jaldi, it looks like you’ll have it all khetum in no time.’

Avtar and Randeep stowed their lunchboxes and trudged down the site. Another six hours to go.

Vinny was late that evening.

‘Some of us have other jobs to get to, yaar,’ Avtar said.

‘Sorry, sorry,’ Vinny said. ‘I had to go to Southall.’ He was forced to turn left. ‘Crazy one-way system in this city.’

‘Is there work in Southall?’ Avtar asked, up and alert.

‘Hm? No, no. The opposite. I’ve found another one of you slackers. You’ll have to make some more room back there.’

No one spoke. It was nothing new. They came and went all the time.

Soon they hit the motorway. Someone asked if Vinny Sahib had heard anything about any raids? Because one of those Mussulmans, you see, he was telling that the raids have started again.

Vinny whistled a single clean note while shaking his head. ‘I’ve not heard a thing. Why would I? Far as I’m concerned you’re all legit, ain’t you? You all showed me your papers. Nowt to do with owt, me.’

The van continued in the slow lane, the tyres rumbling away under Randeep, a vibration that felt vacantly erotic. Then something made him sit up. At first he thought it was rain but it was too slow and gentle to be that. Then he understood, and touched his fingertips to the back window. ‘Mashallah,’ someone said, as Randeep felt them all brimming up behind him, pressing and jostling to stare at the sky, at the globe of tumbling snow around each street light.

At the house, Avtar persuaded Vinny to drop him off at the chip shop, leaving Randeep to eat alone in his room. Soon he was in bed, too exhausted to call Narinderji, too exhausted even to sleep, and he was still awake when he thought he heard a door sliding shut, like a van’s side door, and the downstairs bell being rung. He swiped clear a patch in the window — Vinnyji again? — and went down the first flight of stairs. Gurpreet and the others had edged into the hallway, shushing one another.

‘It’s Vinnyji,’ Randeep called down but no one seemed to hear him.

Gurpreet bent to the letter box, just as Vinny’s voice came through, shouting that he was freezing his fucking kecks off out here. Quickly, the door was opened and he hurried in. He was hunched over, looking shorter than usual, and each needle of his spiked hair was topped with a bobble of snow. Behind him was someone new.

Randeep joined them in the front room, glancing around for Avtar. The others were all there: some perched on the mattress laid over the metal trunk, two squatting on an upturned milk crate, several flopped into the Union Jack deckchairs nicked from a garden a couple of weeks ago. The TV was balanced on a three-legged stool in the middle of the room, playing their favourite desi call-in show.

‘This is Tochi,’ Vinny said, his thumb chucked towards the new guy. ‘Starts tomorrow, acha?’

He was very dark, much darker than Randeep, and shorter, but he looked strong. The tendons in his neck stood out. Twenty-one, twenty-two. One or two years older than him, anyway. So another he’d have to call bhaji.

‘I’ve got a spare mattress in the van. He’ll be staying in yours, OK, Ronny?’

It wasn’t really a question but Randeep said he was absolutely fine with that.

He and Tochi carried the mattress up the two flights and leaned it against the wall. They’d have to take out the wardrobe first.

‘Wait,’ Randeep said and placed his suitcase to one side, out of harm’s way.

‘Cares more about that fucking suitcase. .’ Vinny said.

They bullied the wardrobe out and shoved in the mattress and then Vinny said he had to go.

‘Have a beer,’ Gurpreet said, joining them on the landing.

Vinny said he couldn’t. ‘Was meant to be back an hour ago. She’ll have the face on enough as it is.’ He turned to the new guy and made a star of his hand. ‘Five sharp, you understand? These lot’ll show you the ropes.’

When the three of them were left, Gurpreet folded his arms on the shelf of his gut, slowly. ‘So. Where you from?’

Tochi walked into the room and closed the door. Gurpreet stared after him, then pushed off the banister and huffed downstairs.

Randeep waited. He wanted to make a good first impression. He wanted a friend. He knocked and opened the door, stepping inside. The guy looked to be asleep already, still in his clothes and boots, and knees drawn up and hands pressed between them. He’d moved his mattress as far from Randeep’s as was possible in that small room: under the window, where the chill would be blowing down on him, through the tape.

‘Would you like a blanket? I have one spare,’ Randeep whispered. He asked again and when he again got no reply he tiptoed forward and folded out his best blanket and spread it over his new room-mate. Downstairs, there were still two rotis foil-wrapped in the fridge. He heated them straight on the hob. He liked the froggy way they puffed up. Then he coated them with some mango pickle. He didn’t want to join the others in the front room, where he could hear the TV blaring, but he didn’t want to disturb his new room-mate either. So he stayed there, marooned in the middle of the kitchen because there wasn’t a single clean surface to lean on, tearing shapes out of his roti and feeding himself.

By 3.15 the next morning Randeep was awake and washed and dressed and in the kitchen binning the previous day’s joss stick and lighting a fresh one. He said a quick prayer, warming his hands by the cooker flame, and set about getting what he needed: frying pans, rolling pin, butter and dough from the fridge, a cupful of flour from the blue barrel. He dusted the worktop with the flour and tore a small chunk from the cold brown dough, softening it between his palms. He had just over an hour to get sixty rotis done.

He paced himself and rolled out the dough-balls methodically. Four rolls up, turn it round, four rolls more, a pinch more flour, three more rolls on each side and then into the pan. He found himself whistling even as his upper arms filled with a rich, dull ache. There was movement around the house: radio alarms, the thrust of a tap. He quickened up and once the rotis were done and wrapped he dumped the frying pans in the sink for whoever would be on washing duty that night and replaced them on the hob with four large steel pans of water, full gas. He added tea bags, cloves, fennel and sugar and while all that boiled he gathered up the five flasks and dozen Tupperware boxes stacked on the windowsill. Each box bore a name written in felt-tip Panjabi. He found an extra box for his new room-mate, Tochi, and spooned in some potato sabzi from the fridge. As he carried a six-litre carton of milk to the hob, Gurpreet wandered in, the bib of his dungarees dangling half undone. He was pinning his turban into place.

‘All finished? Thought you might have needed some help again.’

Randeep flushed but concentrated on pouring the milk into the pans.

‘Clean the bucket after you wash, acha?’ Gurpreet went on, moving to the Tupperware boxes. ‘None of your servants here.’

He had cleaned it, he was sure he had, and his family had never had servants. He didn’t say anything. He just watched Gurpreet moving some of the sabzi from the other boxes, including Randeep’s, and adding it to his own. He wondered if he did this with everyone or only when it was Randeep on the roti shift.

‘Where’s your new friend from?’

Randeep said he didn’t know, that he went to sleep straight away.

‘His name?’

‘Tochi.’

‘Surname, fool.’

Randeep thought for a moment, shrugged. ‘Never said.’

‘Hmm. Strange.’

Randeep didn’t say a word, didn’t know what he was driving at, and stood silently waiting for the pans to come to the boil again. He had the twitchy sensation he was being stared at. Sure enough, Gurpreet was still there by the fridge, eyes fixed.

‘Bhaji?’ Randeep asked. Gurpreet grunted, seemed to snap out of it and left, then the hiss of the tea had Randeep leaping to turn off the gas.

Soon the house was a whirl of voices and feet and toilet flushes and calls to get out of bed. They filed down, rucksacks slung over sleepy shoulders, taking their lunchbox from the kitchen counter; next a rushed prayer at the joss stick and out into the cold morning dark in twos and threes, at ten-minute intervals. Randeep looked for Tochi but he must have gone ahead, so he paired up with Avtar as usual. Before he left the house he remembered to take up the pencil strung and taped to the wall and he scored a firm thick tick next to his name on the rota.

Overnight, the ground had toughened, compacted, and at the end of the morning they were still staking it out while Langra John — Limpy John — and three other white men went about in yellow JCBs.

‘Wish I had that job,’ Randeep said, closing his lunchbox. ‘Just driving about all day.’

Avtar clucked his tongue. ‘One day, my friend. Keep working hard and one day we’ll be the bosses.’

Randeep leaned back against the aluminium tunnel. He shut his eyes and must have nodded off for a while because the next thing he heard was the insistent sound of Gurpreet’s voice.

‘But you must have a pind. Was that in Calcutta too?’

Tochi was sitting against a low wall, the soles of his boots pressed together and knees thrown wide open.

‘I’m talking to you,’ Gurpreet said.

‘My pind’s not in Calcutta.’

‘Where, then?’

Tochi swigged from his water bottle and took his time screwing the top back on. He had a quiet voice. ‘Bihar.’

Gurpreet looked round at everyone as if to say, Didn’t I tell you? ‘So what are you?’

Avtar spoke up. ‘Arré, this is England, yaar. Leave him.’

‘Ask him his bhanchod name.’

Shaking his head, Avtar turned to Tochi. ‘What are you? Ramgarhia? Saini? Just shut him up.’

‘Ask him his bhanchod name, I said.’

Tochi made to get up, frost crackling underfoot. ‘Tarlochan Kumar.’

Randeep frowned a little but hoped no one saw it.

‘A bhanchod chamaar,’ Gurpreet said, laughing. ‘Even the bhanchod chamaars are coming to England.’

‘Who cares?’ Avtar said.

‘Only backward people care,’ Randeep said, but Gurpreet was still laughing away to himself and then John limped up and said they better get a move on.

‘Do you think he’s got a visa?’ Randeep asked, when they started up again.

Avtar looked at him. ‘When did you last meet a rich chamaar?’

‘His parents might have helped him.’

‘Janaab, don’t go asking him about his parents. He’s probably an orphan.’

That evening Gurpreet knocked on their bedroom door and said he and a few of the others were going out, so Randeep and Tochi would have to help with the milk run. ‘You’ve got Tesco.’

‘Where are you going?’ Randeep asked and Gurpreet made a fist and pumped it down by his crotch.

‘And stop buying those bhanchod cloves and whatnot. We don’t have money to waste, little prince.’

Randeep waited until he heard him on the stairs, out of earshot. ‘He’s that ugly he has to pay for it.’

Tochi was threading his belt around himself. The swish of it sliced the air. ‘You’ll have to do it yourself.’

‘I can’t carry all that milk. Do you know how far it is? Can’t you help me?’

‘Join one of the others.’

‘But we can’t all go to the same place. The gora gets suspicious.’

Tochi said nothing.

‘I respect you, bhaji,’ Randeep said. ‘Can’t you help me?’

On Ecclesall Road the roadworks still hadn’t finished and the street was all headlights and banked-up snow. Randeep pulled his woolly hat lower over his ears and marched through. Tarlochan only had on his jeans and a shirt which kept belling in the wind. His jeans had no pockets, as if they’d been torn, and his hands looked raw-white with cold, like the claws of some sea creature.

‘Next time I will insist you borrow my gloves,’ Randeep said. ‘You can have them. I have two pairs.’

As they passed the turn-off for the Botanical Gardens, Randeep pointed. ‘That’s where Avtar bhaji’s second job is. Through the gardens and carry on straight.’

‘Whose garden is it?’

‘No one’s. Everyone’s. Maybe the government’s. But they’re pretty. I always think it’s like we have the city, then the gardens, then the countryside.’ He nodded towards the hills, made smoothly charcoal by the night. ‘Shall we go there one day? To the countryside?’

‘How many apneh work with your friend?’

Privately, Randeep felt ‘apneh’ was perhaps a little too far, given their background. ‘A few, but no one else from the house. You looking for a second job too?’

He didn’t say anything. Instead he turned sharp left down a road, his head bent low. Randeep yelled his name, then ran to catch up.

‘Police,’ Tochi said, still walking.

Randeep turned round and saw the blue lights revolving by. ‘No visa, then.’

‘I guess not.’

‘How did you get here? Ship or truck?’

‘On your mother’s cunt.’

Randeep stared glumly into a dark coffee-shop window. It didn’t seem to matter how hard he tried.

‘Sorry,’ Tochi said. He looked annoyed with himself.

‘I’m on a marriage visa.’ Randeep expected a reaction but got none. ‘I got married,’ he went on, aware he was starting to blather. ‘To a girl. She came over to Panjab. From London. But she’s here now. In Sheffield, I mean.’

‘So why not live with her?’

‘She’s Sikhni. But I’m not that bothered, if I’m honest with you, bhaji. I’m going to take some clothes over soon but that’s it. It’s just one year, get my stamp, pay her the money, get the divorce, then bring my parents and sisters over. It’s all agreed with Narinderji.’ And he wished he’d not said her name. He felt like he’d revealed something of himself.

They bought milk, flour, bread, potatoes and toilet roll and went back to the house. Others were returning with their milk and shopping too, and it all got piled into the fridge, done for another week.

*

Randeep took a step back from the door and looked up to the window. The light was on. He rang the doorbell again and this time heard feet on the stairs and Narinderji appeared on the other side of the thick glass — ‘I’m coming, I’m coming’ — and let him in.

‘Sorry I was in the middle of my paat.’

‘I didn’t realize,’ Randeep said, following her up to the flat.

With each step his suitcase hit the side of his leg, and, as he entered, the gurbani was still playing. She hadn’t changed anything much. It was all very plain. The single plain brown leather settee. A plain tablecloth. The bulb was still without its shade. Only the blackout curtains looked new. A pressure cooker was whistling on the stove, and the whole worktop was a rich green pasture of herbs. In the corner, between the window and her bedroom door, she’d created a shrine: some kind of wooden plinth swathed in a gold-tasselled ramallah, and on top of this both a brass kandha and a picture each of Guru Nanak and Guru Gobind. In front of the plinth, on a cushion, her gutka lay open, bound in orange cloth, and beside that a stereo player. The gurbani began to fade out and the CD clicked mournfully off. Randeep set his case by the settee.

‘How have you been?’

‘I’m getting used to it.’ Her hands were clasped loosely over her long black cardigan.

‘You are getting to know your way around?’

‘Yes. Thank you.’

‘At least the weather is getting a smidgen better now. I thought the snow would never stop.’

She gave a tiny smile but said nothing. Randeep wondered if she just wanted him to hurry up and leave again. He knelt before his case and thumbed the silver dials until the thing snapped open.

‘Well, as I said on the phone, I’ve brought some clothes and things for you to keep here.’

He draped a pair of matching shirts across the creased rump of the settee, along with some black trousers and starched blue jeans, all still on their bent wire hangers. He took a white carrier bag tied in a knot at the top and left this on the table. ‘Shaving cream, aftershave, that kind of thing. And also some underwear,’ he added in the casual manner he’d practised on the way down. Then he reached back into his suitcase and handed her a slim red felt album. ‘And these are the photographs I think we — you — should hang up.’

He watched her palming through the pages. The first few were taken on their wedding day, in a gurdwara outside his city of Chandigarh. The later ones showed them enjoying themselves, laughing in a Florentine garden, choosing gifts at a market. ‘They look believable to me,’ she said.

‘Vakeelji sorted it all out. He said sometimes they ask to see where we went on holiday.’ He sidestepped saying ‘honeymoon’. ‘There are dates on the back.’

‘Are there stamps on our passports?’

‘It’s all taken care of.’

Suddenly, her nose wrinkled and she held the album face-out towards him: the two of them posing in a busy restaurant, his arm around her waist.

‘Vakeelji said there have to be signs of — intimacy.’ He’d looked past her as he’d uttered the word.

‘I don’t care what Vakeelji said.’ She shut the album and dropped it onto the settee. ‘This isn’t what I agreed to.’

He felt himself getting riled, as if discarding the photos in some way reflected her feelings towards him. ‘Look, can’t we just do what Vakeelji said? I’m the one with everything to lose here.’

‘I’ve put a lot at stake too.’

‘Yes. I’m certain you have. And I’m very thankful for all you’re doing. I’m sorry if that isn’t clear. We won’t use the photos.’

The silence seemed calculated, forcing her to relent.

‘Most are fine to use,’ she said, and he nodded and retrieved the album.

‘I only hope we’ve got enough. I’m hearing rumours of raids.’

There was a sort of frozen alarm in her face which thawed to incomprehension. ‘You think this place will be raided? By who?’

‘It’s just people at work talking. And there are always rumours. But it’s better to be prepared. Maybe I should come and live here?’ he said, testing the water a little.

The shock of the suggestion seemed to force her mouth to open.

‘I was not being serious.’

‘It’s too small. And the weather,’ she said, randomly.

‘I understand completely,’ he said, layering smiles over his disappointment. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been so warm in a house, with food smelling as good as that on the cooker.

She made to walk him to the door.

‘Shall I help you with this first? It’s not fair to leave you to pack it all away.’ Delay tactics. She said she’d do it later. That it wasn’t a problem. Reluctantly, Randeep followed her down the stairs. As she opened the door he took the notes out of his pocket and handed them to her.

‘Another month,’ she said. ‘The year will be over before we know it.’

‘Yes!’ he replied, shaking his head, as if amazed how quickly the time was passing, when really it seemed to him that each new week took on the span of an entire age.

After he’d gone, she collapsed onto the armrest of the settee, face hidden. This was too hard. This was too much to give. What had she got herself into? She lifted her head out of her arm and was met with the images of her gurus. They spoke to her, reminding her that she always knew it was going to be hard, that doing the right thing is never the easy choice, but to remember that Waheguru is her ship and He would bear her safely across. She felt Him beside her, and felt her resolve return, as if the blood was pumping more thickly through her body.

She fetched from the drawer the map she’d picked up from the station and zoned in on her street. The surrounding areas didn’t sound like places she wanted to visit: Rawmarsh, Pitsmoor, Crosspool. Burngreave. Killamarsh. They sounded so angry, these northern places, like they wanted to do you harm.

Across the city, Randeep lay on his mattress. Everyone had eaten early and gone to sleep, tired out from a whole muddy week of shovelling up and levelling out cement. No one had even mentioned his second visit to the wife. He replayed their conversation and was more or less pleased with how it had gone. They seemed to understand each other and if the year carried on like that everything would be fine. He was hopeful of that. He heard the downstairs door go and the kitchen beads jangling. Probably Avtar would stay in the kitchen for an hour, eating, studying, counting how much money he had, or didn’t have. Randeep wouldn’t join him. The last few times he had gone downstairs he’d got the impression he was only getting in the way.

Rain pattered against the glass. He turned his head towards Tochi. Yesterday, Tochi had moved his mattress out from under the window and turned it at a right angle, so he and Randeep now lay parallel to each other, the door at their feet. Randeep guessed it was so he could sleep facing the wall. His boots were crossed at the ankles and were the only part of him that poked out from under the blanket. Randeep’s blanket. Which he’d not even been thanked for.

‘Bhaji, are you awake?’

Nothing.

‘Bhaji?’

‘What?’

Randeep didn’t know what. He hadn’t had a conversation planned. ‘I can’t sleep.’ Then, a minute or so later, ‘This is strange, isn’t it?’

‘Go to sleep.’

‘I mean, when you were a kid, did you ever think you’d be working in Sheffield, in England, and living in a house like this? I’d never even heard of Sheffield.’ There was silence and Randeep asked, ‘Do you still have people back home?’

Tochi didn’t reply. The rain seemed to be plashing harder and Randeep drew his blanket up around his neck.

‘Bhaji?’

‘What?’

‘I like hearing the rain outside.’

A pause, and then Tochi: ‘Me too.’

2. TOCHI: AUTORIDER

Tarlochan Kumar was bent double under the last huge sack of fodder. He shook it into the buffalo trough and moved away as the animals nosed hungrily forward. He was seventeen; it was his fourth year in Panjab, his third with this family. He’d miss the place.

He crouched by the pump at the side of his hut and washed his arms, soaping off the grass and sweat. Then he changed into a clean white kurta pyjama he’d that morning left to dry on a branch. As he made his way to the big house, the sunset streaked the horizon.

The solid iron double gate was closed and its blue rivets still hot to touch. Inside, in the courtyard, his sahib sat cross-legged on his menjha, speaking to a local usurer. The sahib’s wife was napping beside him, her head flopped back over the love seat, and on the floor their daughter crushed herbs in a small ceramic mortar. Once the usurer was dismissed, Tochi knocked on the metal gate and was invited in.

‘How many times?’ the sahib said. ‘Treat this place like your home.’ He was in a good mood, which was something.

‘Sorry, sahib,’ Tochi said.

He noticed the wife half open her eyes and tap her foot twice against her daughter’s back. The girl lifted her chunni up over her head, screening her face from Tochi.

‘I have to go home, sahib. My papa is not well. I got a call yesterday.’

His sahib uncrossed his legs so just his toes touched the floor. The taut hairy ropes of the menjha had striped deep red marks over his feet. He watched them fade. ‘It’s the height of the season. You could not have picked a worse time.’

‘I know.’

‘Why are you chamaars so unreliable?’

Tochi said nothing.

‘How ill is he? Will he not get better?’

‘Both his arms are gone.’

The wife clucked her tongue in sympathy and muttered a waheguru.

‘What colours God shows us,’ his sahib said. ‘You understand I’ll have to get someone else. I can’t keep your job for you.’

‘I know.’

Tochi nodded, turned to leave.

‘Don’t forget your food,’ the memsahib said.

He thanked her and picked up the thali of leftovers on his way out.

The next day, his sahib was waiting outside the big gate, wages in hand. Tochi accepted the wad and bent to touch the man’s feet.

He walked the two hours to Jalandhar, his belongings in a brown rice-sack slung across his shoulder. At the depot the buses were parked up in their rows, the iron grilles blurring into each other in the mellowing dark. He found his bus, but the conductor sitting on the roof ground out his beedi and said they wouldn’t be leaving until it was full, nine o’clock, at least, so he should pass his luggage up to guarantee his place. Tochi kept his bag with him and went and sat in the station’s chai-samosa dhaba. He ordered some tea and made a cradle of his arms on the table, nestling his head down and closing his eyes.

It was past noon before the conductor blew his whistle. As they laboured out of the compound, the passengers were rocked from side to side and the man sitting next to Tochi clanged the tiny cymbals tied to his wrists and whispered a prayer under his breath. He was a young man, in a cheap white cotton shirt and faded black trousers. A burgundy folder lay across his lap. He was going for an interview, he said. To be a ground clerk. Tochi nodded as if he knew what that was and told the man he was going home because his father had lost both his arms. Grimacing, the man clanged his cymbals and didn’t speak again, as though he didn’t want Tochi’s bad luck to rub off on him.

The conductor steadied himself against the pole while he punched Tochi’s fare into his machine, tearing him off a stub from the tape-roll of pink chits. Then, rice-sack clasped against his stomach, Tochi allowed himself to swing in and out of sleep until it was gone midnight and they were pulling into Meerut station and the young man next to him was saying he wanted to get past.

Outside the depot, tall double-headed lampposts ran up the spine of the road, and traffic swarmed, though no one seemed to be getting anywhere fast. The connecting bus wasn’t leaving until the morning, so Tochi dodged across the road and carried on down the street, hoping to find a hostel amongst the cement stores and Airtel operators. In a two-storey shack with red and green fairy lights all over: ‘AARTI HOTEL’, he paid the boy watching a Bollywood film at the counter. Then he went up to a thin metal bed and fell asleep to the snicker of cockroaches.

He couldn’t get on the coach direct to Patna — other passengers priced him off — so he waited the morning out under a narrow tree, making a cola and two rotis last until he climbed onto the afternoon bus to Shahjahanpur. He played cards with a young boy sporting a sandalwood mark on his forehead. The boy was sitting across the aisle from Tochi and they used their knees for a table, but when the boy asked Tochi his name — ‘No, your full name’ — and Tochi told him, the boy’s mother made some excuse and switched places with her son.

He spent three nights in Shahjahanpur, sleeping on the ground behind a mandir, head on his sack of clothes. On the fourth morning he asked the pandit for a bucket of water. He washed himself, then dipped his clothes into the bucket, wrung out the water and put them straight back on. He could almost feel them crisp and shrink against his skin. He went again to the station, and this time the conductor said there were enough passengers for the journey, but only as far as Allahabad. The bus was full of Sikh women, pilgrims with round turbans and small knives. No one said a thing the entire journey, and Tochi sat at the back, staring out at the young green corn. He wondered how they’d coped in the year since his father’s accident. All his brother had said was that money was running out, work drying up. To come home, please.

Dawn arrived grainy in Allahabad and Tochi joined the long queue for the Patna bus, his fourth. He’d got to perhaps six or seven from the front when the conductor announced they were full and everyone would have to wait for the evening ride. Tochi went down the windows each side saying that his father had lost both his arms and would someone please exchange tickets with him. Most passengers turned their heads, but a young man with a professorial look jumped off and cheerfully told Tochi to take his place. He even offered to pay for his ticket but this Tochi politely declined.

Slowly the heat dwindled. When the bus crawled into Patna, finally there were landmarks Tochi recognized: Vaishali Talkies, Bhavya Emporium, Market Chowk. He stepped off and bent to touch his hand to the soil and then to his forehead. For the final hour-long journey he flagged a packed bumblebee-painted auto-rickshaw and hung onto the side of it, feeling his body curve as the thing juddered out of the city. Tochi jumped off at his village gate, opposite Bicky’s Friendship Store, and as he passed under the arch he again bent to bless himself with dirt from the ground.

He walked the long white strip of road, past some kids playing with a stick who stopped to watch him. The vast field of wheat either side was still in the hot air. Butterflies flew reed to reed, wide-winged, cabbage-green and peacock-spotted. He turned off into an alley where the sewage moved in sluggish plates in front of the wooden doorways. It was darker here. He came to a red panel, the paint flaking to reveal the green underneath, and he lifted it aside and ducked and turned sideways to squeeze himself through the thin gap and into the room. The sun streamed through holes bored into the back wall and fell like scattered treasure across one half of the stone floor. On the other side, in thick shade, he could see his father asleep on a mattress woven from coconut leaves. His head was turned to the wall and the sleeve of his grey tunic lay empty at his side. The pink shelf his sister had put up was still there but the things on it were new to him: a gold pen, a ration card, an address book still in its plastic wrapping, a picture of a white girl with straw-coloured hair hugging a dog in front of a thatched cottage. There was an English inscription on the picture of which he only knew the word ‘home’. He dumped his clothes in the corner and went back outside. Further up, the lane forked and at the junction was a large broken fountain now filled with sand. Beyond it were a few shops made from sleeves of tin that seemed to be held together by nothing more than God’s benevolence. The tailor — Kishen — was still there, cross-legged at the sewing machine, under a ceiling fan which made the sheets of fabric displayed behind him ripple. They’d gone to school together, briefly, back when the state had attempted a literacy drive. They shook hands.

‘Your brother said you were coming back.’

‘How’s business?’

‘Running. Papa died last year.’

Tochi swatted a fly hovering by his ear. ‘Is there work?’

Kishen said there was nothing. ‘Even Chetan and his sons went to Danapur. They heard there was land there.’ He measured out some tiger-print cloth, looped it back and sliced it in two with scissors tucked beneath his thigh. ‘They came back. Nothing.’

Tochi looked at the pyramids of hot yellow bricks, at the two rat-thin dogs weaving primly between the wheels of an oxen cart. Some bare-chested kids played cricket in the arid field, and beyond them was a mountain of sewage, looming like a black cliff face. Nothing seemed to have changed.

He shook hands with the people he passed, confirming that he was back and that he had found work in Panjab. And, yes, hadn’t he grown? He walked slowly, wanting them all to get a good look at him, to understand that there was once again a man in the house, that it wasn’t just the cripple. The villagers understood this. They would have done the same.

When he had completed his circuit and arrived back at the sand-filled fountain he saw his brother coming down the road. Dalbir. His brown shorts were tattered and his white school shirt not much better. He carried a sack of grain about twice his size. So they had taken him out of school. Tochi approached but Dalbir shrugged him off: ‘I can carry it.’

‘Never said you couldn’t.’

Dalbir was looking to the ground. His eyes were wet.

‘I didn’t bring you anything back. I’m sorry. I said I would, but I didn’t.’

‘That was four years ago,’ Dalbir said. ‘I’m fourteen now.’

Tochi stepped aside and watched his brother turn into the field, where brown buffalo were feeding. In the house, his mother was unpacking his clothes, shaking them out and hanging them on a thin wire she’d tied across the back wall.

‘Geckos will climb in if you leave them on the floor like that.’ The gold wedding hoop in her nose glinted in the daydark.

Tochi crouched beside the door. He took off his boots and placed them against the wall. He heard his father shuffling and turned to see him wriggle upright, using his shoulder-stumps as a kind of motor. There was a glass of whisky on an upturned bucket level with his face and he laboured to catch the straw in his mouth. When he finished he breathed out gratefully. ‘Why’d you tell him? What good is he here?’

‘Was he drunk when it happened?’ Tochi asked.

His mother moved to the mud oven, squatting. ‘He thought he’d switched the machine off.’

‘When can you go back?’ his father said, slurred. ‘You need to go back and work.’

‘We need a man in the house,’ his mother answered. ‘I can’t even get a proper rate for the milk any more.’

Dalbir stepped under the doorway — he still didn’t need to duck — and slid down the wall opposite his brother, copying his pose: crouched on his backside, knees pitched up and arms draped loosely over the top. Palms cupped. And then Palvinder, their sister, arrived, her salwaar covered in cuttings from the crops she was helping pull up. She touched Tochi’s forearm as she passed and joined her mother in the corner of the room, and both women started blowing into the cave of the mud oven in an effort to get the cooking-fire going.

The dhal was thin and barely covered the shallow plate, the potatoes few. Tochi tore his second roti in two and threw half across to his brother. His sister passed round glasses of hot tea, the side of each glass stamped with a cartoon mouse. Tochi blew across the rim of his glass, while his mother and sister used the ends of their chunnis as gloves. Afterwards they rolled out the wicker mats and Dalbir went and lay beside his father. Palvinder shook her mat out by the back wall, furthest from the door, and Tochi was to sleep across the entranceway, in case of intruders. His mother pulled her chunni over her head, hiding her face, and said she was going to check on Devi Bai down the lane, because her son was off looking for work and the daughter-in-law wasn’t behaving as a daughter-in-law should. Tochi listened to the starry rustle of her clothes as she stepped away.

‘What d’you have?’ his father asked. His eyes seemed redder through the dark.

‘Is there none left?’

‘Did you not save any?’

‘I sent it all to you.’

His father sighed and turned his face to the wall. Tochi stood and went outside, jumping the fat river of sewage that ran in front of their home. The night sky shone so bright it made silver splashes in the drains. He could hear drills somewhere. He heard his mother returning, too, coming through the night like a nearhand ghost. She stopped beside him. She looked older than he remembered. The hair thinner. Still that overbite which had passed on to her daughter but not her sons.

‘I’ll look for work tomorrow.’

‘We need you in the field. We’re running out of time.’

Tochi kicked his heel into the muddy lane, making a divot. ‘I’ll still look.’

‘They’ve refused Palvinder’s hand,’ his mother said.

He nodded and, arm outstretched, reached for his mother, and she held his hand and rested her small head lightly inside it.

He’d slept with his head on his wrist, and now his wrist ached, but he didn’t move. He just lay there with eyes open. He could see his father naked to the waist and Palvinder squatting beside him, washing him with the tin bucket and strawberry soap. He was all torso, the stumps of his arms skinned over. Skinned over and shrunk and wrinkled like meat. Tochi closed his eyes, then opened them again. His mother held out a glass of tea and a salted paratha. He sat up and ate.

‘Where’s chotu?’

‘Working,’ his mother said.

‘He’s early.’

‘It’s because you’re here,’ Palvinder said, looking at him over her shoulder, still soaping their father. ‘I usually have to drag him up by his ankles.’

It was just past seven and children were heading off to the village school, hands looped around the straps of their dusty backpacks. Tochi made for Babuji’s house. No doubt the old man was aware of his return — someone would have informed him soon enough — but Tochi wanted to pay his respects in person. To thank him for organizing his father’s treatment and to assure him that this quarter’s rent would be on time. But Babuji had gone to Calcutta on some business for one, maybe two months, and Tochi was told by the servant to return then.

He walked to the field, bending to enter the concrete hut. His scythe was still hanging from the rusty hook by the motor switch, as if it had not moved in the last four years. He took it up, along with three rough brown sacks, and stepped back out into the green-and-blue morning. Dalbir was many yards down a row of cut wheat, the crops lined neatly behind him. He’d already done two rows, nearly three. He’d set off too fast. He’d learn. Tochi reached up for a tree branch and brought his scythe down upon it. The branch fell cleanly across his feet. He tied his white dhoti up between his thighs and headed off, away from his brother.

He went at his own pace, a regular hacking once on each side of the root before twisting the whole thing out with a sharp turn of his wrist. It was only around mid morning, when he squatted to start on his eighth row, that his thighs began with that familiar ache. His brother was slowing. Each time Tochi looked back from under his armpit, Dalbir seemed to be moving with heavier feet, flicking the sweat from his brow, breathing harder. By noon Tochi had finished his half, and even filled the brown sacks and carried them to the hut. Dalbir still had at least one-quarter of his to go. Tochi took up his scythe and started at the other end, and a little over an hour later they finished together.

‘I could’ve done it on my own,’ Dalbir said.

‘Never said you couldn’t,’ Tochi said, and he picked up three steel buckets, two in one hand and one in the other, and made for the path, to where the buffalo were tied to their trees.

‘Already?’ Dalbir called after him, panting.

‘Already.’

They measured the milk into metal canisters and carried them home for their mother and sister to sell around the village. Done for the day, Tochi found a clean white shirt and brown trousers and went down to the village pump to fill a bucket with water. He bathed in front of the entrance to their shack, using his old dhoti first as a screen and then a towel. He used the same water to wash the mud from his sandals.

The next village, Jannat, was about two miles away and he was there under the half hour. A hunched old woman with a blue hydrangea in her hair squatted beside the entrance arch, a wicker basket of almonds and cherries displayed before her. It was a village even tinier than his own, boasting just one road and ten, maybe twelve, huts. But the fields looked rich, Tochi thought; they still needed tilling. He passed under the arch and carried on towards the house with the big red metal gates, knocking once. A male servant materialized on the balcony. He asked Tochi his name, then told him to wait a few steps from the gate. Madam didn’t like them getting too close to the house.

Nearly an hour later, the gate yawned open and the landowner stepped nervously outside. Tochi got up from where he’d been crouched in the roadside shade and waited for the man to beckon him forward. He was tall, elderly, his olive-green robes rippling over a full round belly. He asked Tochi what his business was. Was he causing trouble with someone from this village?

‘No, sahib.’

‘Because I hear there is a lot of trouble about.’

‘My family live in peace, sahib.’

‘I won’t stand for any trouble, you understand? Keep your goonda-giri away from my village.’

‘Yes, sahib.’

The man slapped at the back of his neck. A midge, maybe. ‘It is the elections. Every time. They send people mad.’

Tochi said nothing. He wasn’t expected to have a view on such things. A donkey came clip-clopping up the road behind him. The landowner walked down the slight incline to his gate and raised his hand to stop the tangawallah. He spoke to the man on the cart — something about a land dispute between two local brothers — and then climbed aboard. He told Tochi he’d be back in a little while. Tochi nodded and went back to wait in the shade of the roadside tree.

Another hour later, three young men took shape on the road, beedis glowing palely in the heat and dhotis tucked up around their groins. As they neared they kissed the air, prompting Tochi out of the shade and into the white sun. The men took his place, chatted a while, crushed their beedis under their feet and went on their way again.

It was nightfall by the time the landowner returned, whistling to himself. He seemed a little drunk. Tochi stood and moved into the moonlight. The old man looked surprised, frightened even, and his hand went round to his back.

‘I have a gun,’ he said.

‘I’m from Manighat, sahib.’

‘Are you here to cause trouble? I have a gun.’

‘I’m looking for work, sahib.’

‘You can’t buy my vote. You Sena logh think you can buy anything. I have a gun.’

‘I will work very hard, sahib. I have a brother also who can work if you need him.’

There was the squeak-squeak of a metal bolt being simultaneously twisted and yanked, and then the gates opened. It was the servant. ‘Shall I put your food on the table, sahib?’

‘Has everyone else eaten?’

‘They are waiting for you.’

The landowner started up the incline to his gate.

‘Sahib, about any work. .?’ Tochi said.

The landowner stopped, turned round. ‘There’s not even enough for the men from this village. Maybe try further on.’

The old man made to leave again, but Tochi dared another question. ‘Could I trouble your kindness for a suggestion, sahib?’

‘Villages nearer the city, maybe. Most of their sons have gone to work in the town.’

The servant closed the gate behind his master, and Tochi heard the bolt being forced back across.

The next day he put on the same clothes and headed out again, past Jannat and on to the next village, another dirt-driven plot of huts and flat fields of wheat and corn. He could see fields of high cotton, too, bending demurely in the sunlight. The landowner was in his house, completing his ablutions. Tochi was asked to wait in the courtyard. He stood beside a large tulsi plant and reached over to stroke its velvety leaves. It felt nice. When he heard a door open, he returned his hands behind his back.

The landowner sat on his charpoy in just a white vest and lunghi while one of his granddaughters knelt behind massaging mustard oil into his hair. He listened to Tochi, then said he was sorry, but there would be uproar if he gave work to someone from outside the village, especially in these times.

‘I have quick hands, sahib,’ Tochi said. ‘I’ll get all the cotton before it dries.’

‘Sorry, kaka,’ the man said, and slid his eyeballs up, his brow constricting in the effort to meet his granddaughter’s looming face. ‘Tell your dadi to give this young man five rupees. He’s come so far to hear bad news.’

Tochi said there was no need, and, if sahib would give him the gift of his permission, he would prefer to get on his way.

The next village was six miles further on and it was past noon when he arrived at the gate. But the landowner had gone on a month-long pilgrimage, and his sons were spending the day in the city.

He carried on, walking the sandy edge of the asphalt to avoid the thickening traffic. The roadside shacks turned from mud to tin, and he passed a petrol garage where two attendants in grubby IOCL overalls lazed against a pump. He was on the fringes of the city. He entered Randoga, the biggest village in the district, with a skyline of wooden balconies and red Airtel satellite dishes.

A wide dirt track separated the fields and their farmhouses from the mazy central bazaar. He passed a man leading a herd of wet black cows and asked him who were the main landowners around here. The man pointed to a few farmsteads, but said he doubted they’d be in at this hour. Tochi made for one of the houses anyway, cutting a diagonal through a field of wheat. He stopped at the open gate. A woman, bent at the waist, was cleaning the courtyard with a charoo. She was too glitteringly dressed to be the lagi. Tochi tidied his shirt into his trousers and wiped the sweat from his face with the inside of his collar. He tapped his knuckle twice against the metal gate, then took a step back and put his hands out of sight. She twisted round, still bent over, and asked him what he wanted.

‘Please forgive me, memsahib. I wondered if sahib had a minute, please?’

‘What do you want that only takes a minute?’

So he wasn’t in, or at least not within earshot, and she sounded like trouble. ‘I’ll be on my way, memsahib.’

‘I said what do you want?’ She stood, queenly, and dropped the charoo to one side. She looked young. There were red ribbons strewn through her hair-bun.

‘I’m looking for work, memsahib.’

‘Oh, well, that’s what you all say, but when you get it. . Look! We have to clear up after your mess.’

‘I’ll leave you in peace, memsahib.’

‘Come here.’

‘I need to find work.’

‘Here,’ she said again.

He started towards her, her face ageing with every stride: the lines showing through her powder, the smear of henna beneath her hairline, the thick bristle around pencilled eyebrows.

‘What kind of work?’

‘Farm work, memsahib.’

‘Where are you from?’

‘From the city,’ he lied. He didn’t want any trouble following him home.

She stared for a while. Then: ‘We do have work. Lots of it. But sahib has gone to the bazaar.’

‘Acha, memsahib.’ He turned to go.

‘You can wait inside.’

He didn’t say anything.

‘Did you not hear?’

‘Memsahib, I need to find work.’

‘I told you there is work. Just wait inside.’

He didn’t move.

Her hard face hardened further. A shadow over a stone. ‘Things easily go missing from these houses. It’s an open entrance, isn’t it? I wouldn’t want anyone in this village to think you weren’t trustworthy.’

Tochi went through a large green door inlaid with gauze against the mosquitoes. He waited beside the charpoy, covered in its white sheet. He heard a door swinging open, clattering shut, and a tap running. A minute or so later she entered, her make-up now all gone. ‘That sheet stains so easily,’ she said, and started unbothering herself from her sari.

Afterwards, he walked back round the dirt track and on to the pale stone lanes of the bazaar. A parade was on: Sita in her Rajasthani red, dupatta pulled forward like a deep hood and led by a single boy in white turban and tunic, miserably banging his drum. Tochi picked his way through the singing crowd, slipping into the spaces vacated by others, always moving ahead. No one seemed to notice him. He emerged into a side alley crammed with wedding-card manufacturers and moved away as some girls rode past, quacking their scooter horns. The alley spread into a paved square where four young men were playing cards on an unstitched brown sack, the kind used to transport crops. Their lunghis were rolled up around their knees and their calves covered in mud and field cuttings. Tochi crouched beside them and at the end of the hand asked if there was work around here. They said there was lots of work, but also lots of people looking for it.

‘What should I do?’

‘Go and register at the dhak-khana,’ one of them said. He seemed the youngest of them, with a fluffy moustache above thin lips. ‘They’ll add you to the list.’

‘It’ll be a long list.’

He made a so-so motion with his head. ‘A year. Maybe six months if you give him enough. And have a phone for your home.’ By which he meant steal a phone for your home.

Tochi nodded. So they could call him if a job came up. ‘Do you know anything? Any work going?’

‘Yaar, if I did do you think my brother would be sitting at home counting his fingers?’ They laughed and dealt the next hand.

‘Thank you,’ Tochi said, standing.

‘It’s these elections,’ the young man said. ‘People are scared to hire us. The Sena logh have scared them.’

In the western corner of the bazaar, he found the post office, between a liquor store and an open-air stall selling electric fans. There was no door, only a rusting metal shutter rolled up and held in place with a wooden pole wedged at each end. Inside, he couldn’t see anything of the walls: they were hidden behind the immense rows of shelving that gave slightly under the weight of all those paper files. The postmaster sat at his table, writing into a blue ledger. With one hand he held his hair off his face. His cuffs were checked neatly back, revealing a silver bracelet on one wrist and a gold wedding thread around the other. Tochi waited to be noticed. The postmaster looked up, raised his eyebrows and kept them there.

‘I’m here to register, sahib. For work.’

‘Six months,’ the postmaster said and bent back down to his book.

‘I don’t mind what the work is, sahib. Farm work would be best, but I don’t mind as long as it’s work.’

‘Six months.’ He didn’t even look up.

Tochi took out from his back pocket a twenty-rupee note. ‘It’s all I have, sahib.’

When the man didn’t reply, Tochi returned the note to his pocket and made to go.

‘You don’t have a family?’ said the man.

‘I have a father, a mother, a sister and a brother.’

‘Your father doesn’t work?’

‘He has no arms.’

The man clucked his tongue. ‘There’s not much work for you people in this district. The elections, you know.’

‘Thank you for your time.’

He closed his ledger with a dusty thud and reopened it at the first page. ‘Three months. There’s work — farm work — in Danapur in three months. Shall I put your name down?’

‘Do you think they might give me an advance on my wages, sahib?’

‘Definitely not.’

‘Then you should not put my name down. I need money now.’

‘Get an auto. Lots of business. Especially with the rains coming.’

‘I can’t afford one.’

‘Since when has that stopped anyone?’ And with that he stretched behind for a file, then sat up straight again, the front chair legs banging the stone floor. Clearly, Tochi was to leave now: he’d taken up enough of his time. He wound back through the bazaar and to the main road. Soon he could see buses up ahead, their fuzzy red lights pitching through the slow dark. He walked three or four miles, maybe, past a newly built hotel and several others not yet finished. Then he was weaving through the city herds of cars and lorries, crossing the chowk to get to the mandi. He stopped outside the market. All the shutters were pulled greyly down: he’d find no auto drivers here. He made for Patna Junction, hands pushed deep inside his pockets and arms rod-straight, shoulders hitched up to his neck. There were no lights here, just the muted silver of the moon trailing the alleys.

He kept his head low, not looking at the men stalking the night for drink and women. Rounding a corner too quickly, he felt his stomach dip and his left side sink warmly down. A drain. He could feel his sandal dredging off. He fetched his toes together and yanked his leg out of the sewage. It emerged in foul sludge and without its sandal. He rolled his sleeves to his shoulders and moved onto his knees, feeling his hand carve its way through the black waste. He closed his eyes and constricted his nostrils, lowering his shoulder to deepen his reach. He couldn’t find it. His arm was dripping great cones of black filth like some diseased and shedding creature. He wiped off as much of it as he could and carried on up the lane, limping with his heavy leg and one sandal. He knew he stank — even the women on the balconies made chi-chi noises.

In time he took off his other sandal and left it at the side of the road. The ground was warm underfoot. Not far from the train station he stopped outside a theka, a liquor store. The owner had a yellow towel slung around his neck, each end held in his fist as if he was a boxer’s mate. He stood there staring out at the night and at Tochi as if all his life he’d been waiting for Tochi to pass. Tochi asked if he might clean himself up. He was searching for a job, he said, and didn’t think he stood much chance looking like this. The man jerked his head to the side and said there was a tap round the back. Soap too.

‘Thank you,’ and Tochi followed the wall down, twisting side on to slip between two giant pipes that climbed into the darkness. He had to grope to find the tap and after maybe a minute or two water started coughing out. He washed his arm as best he could and removed his trousers and scrubbed them roughly. When he put them back on, the stiff blackness remained, and his arm still gave off a thin smell of rotting sewage. He closed the tap and went round to thank the owner.

‘Where are you going?’ the man asked.

‘I’m looking for work.’

‘What kind of work?’

‘Rickshaw work.’

The man looked doubtful. ‘You can afford one?’

Tochi thanked him again and turned to go.

‘If you want to make money quick, lots of boys are taking an operation. We could do a deal.’

The man seemed to smile with only one half of his face, which frightened Tochi a little, and he apologized and said he really had to go.

He heard a coal train shrieking to its stop on the other side of a building up ahead. He rounded the building — a cinema — then crossed the rail lines and climbed. The auto drivers were all outside the station, most of them asleep in their taxis while they waited on the morning crowd. One driver stood with his back to Tochi, singing.

‘Bhaiya, can I ask for your help?’

The man turned round, in no hurry. He was shorter than Tochi, and his small moon of a face and thin legs seemed a wrong fit for the rest of his body, as if all the fat in him had deposited itself in a wide belt around his waist. His hair was slicked back. ‘Kya?’

‘I’d like to speak to someone who will sell me an auto.’

The man looked Tochi up and down, at his ruined clothes. ‘Autos don’t come cheap. Who did you rob?’

‘Who do I speak to?’

The man made a dismissive gesture with his hand. ‘No more licences in the city. Find some other work.’

‘Just tell me who I need to speak to.’

‘You need to speak to me, and I’ve told you already.’

Tochi remained where he was, looking at the man. ‘Maybe I should ask someone else.’

The man chuckled and turned his head to the side. ‘All this government support must be going to their heads. Now they want to work with us, too.’

From the autos came a couple of sleepy, smoky laughs.

He spat at the ground, right between Tochi’s feet, and stood there smirking, arms crossed over his chest as if waiting for Tochi’s next move. Relenting, Tochi returned to the station platform and was about to cross the tracks when a voice called him back. A body pieced itself together through the dark, chest uncovered, an orange lunghi twisted expertly around waist and thighs. The man asked if Tochi was the one looking for an auto, because he had one for sale, or at least his brother did.

‘Where is it?’ Tochi asked.

‘You know the clock tower? By the maidaan? Meet me there in the morning,’ and before Tochi could ask anything else the man turned and hastened up the platform.

Away from the station, he breathed in a clear, great draught of air, looked up and asked God to please let this chance be real.

He checked under each stairwell he passed for a place to lie down, but they were all full, and soon he realized he was near the river. He crossed the flyover, spookily quiet at this hour, and scrambled on down. The water looked seductive, its dips aglow with moonlight. Off to his left was the simple outline of the long red bridge. At the river’s edge, he took off his trousers and shirt and washed them in the water, then returned to the wall in his wet clothes. There were already people bedded down for the night, bodies lying low against the bricks, sheltered from the wind above. He found a space further along and lay on his side, facing the river. It didn’t take long for his eyes to feel heavy, and the last thing he registered was the fat honk of a tugboat gliding darkly by.

He was at the maidaan not long after sunrise and already the place was filling: shoeshine boys setting up for the day, office men strolling to work, nuns on their morning constitutional. He couldn’t see the man anywhere. His eyes moved to a tidy saffron crowd gathered in the shade of an apple tree. They were sitting around a man who kept pointing to a piece of paper in his hand. Some sort of protest, maybe. Tochi looked up at the clock tower. He wished they’d agreed on a specific time.

He was woken by someone shaking his shoulder, and rushed to his feet.

‘Where’s the auto?’

‘Come with me.’

As they walked, they could hear the man under the tree: ‘We need a strategy to install Hindutva! They can’t keep holding us down!’ A bright white banner twisted itself across the brambles: Bharat is for the pure of blood and blood we will shed to keep it pure.

The auto man fluttered his hand by his side, indicating that Tochi keep his distance from the crowd. ‘These Maheshwar Sena people,’ he said.

Tochi waited, hoping for something further, but the man left it at that and they carried on over the maidaan and through the iron gates.

The auto was a broken, paint-peeled thing, the yellow roof bevelled with dents. Tochi pointed to the ruptured front tyre. ‘Is there a spare?’

‘Under the seat.’

Walking round the vehicle, he noticed Om stickers plastered to the rear grille-window and pictures of Sai Baba. ‘How much?’

The man turned his head, calling, ‘Bhaiya?’

Tochi hadn’t spotted the man sitting inside the auto, hidden by the deep grime of the window. His brother, Tochi remembered, as the man shuffled to the side and with some effort levered himself out. For balance, he kept one hand on the doorframe. He looked ill, and his voice, when it came, was the voice of a man decades older.

‘Whatever you can afford, bhaiya.’

‘I can’t afford anything. I’ll pay you from what I earn each day.’

The first man shook his head. ‘Do you think we’re stupid?’

‘Now, now, nikku,’ the brother said.

‘You’ll never see him again, I promise you that.’

The ill man looked at Tochi. Tochi said nothing. He just stood there in his stiff river-washed trousers and mouldy white shirt.

‘We’ll see,’ the man said.

‘You’re crazy!’

The ill man smiled. ‘Please excuse my brother-in-law. But the auto’s yours if you would like it.’

They agreed on the time and place Tochi would come each evening to make good on his payment, and then the man held out the keys and licence, and a list of regular pick-ups.

‘I hope it brings you better luck than it did me,’ he said.

Tochi lay in the auto, at the end of the slim gully that led to his house. He kept the keys in his fist and his fist hidden inside his armpit. He’d felt almost criminal driving home, as if he’d expected someone to halt him and point out how ridiculous it was for his family to own such a thing. Children throwing marbles into the fountain had stopped and stared. Even Kishen had looked up from his tailoring, tape measure clamped between his teeth, and asked if Tochi had taken to robbing banks.

Lovingly, Tochi ran his hand over the handlebars, the leather old and bristly against his palm. He heard something, and saw that it was Dalbir stepping out of the dark lane. He was carrying a steel bowl with a spoonful of dhal, and a single roti. He handed this to Tochi.

‘I’ll bring your tea later,’ Dalbir said, climbing in beside him. His wide eyes made a slow tour of the vehicle, neck arching as though he was inside some huge temple.

‘I can’t remember the last time Ma was so happy.’

‘Who’s asking you to?’

‘I’m asking myself.’

‘Don’t.’ Tochi passed him half of his roti.

‘I’ve eaten.’

‘Eat some more.’

At dawn, he filled a bucket with water from the pump and bought on credit a bar of crumbling strawberry soap from Bicky’s Friendship Store. He started at the back, scrubbing off the stickers, slowly working his way round. At some point, Dalbir came and asked for the spare rag.

It was far into the morning when the last of the polish had been applied. Tochi went back to the house and wrapped a shawl around his father’s torso. Then he helped him outside and sat him on a chair in front of the auto. Tochi’s mother and sister followed, heads covered and holding a bowl of yoghurt and a saucer of holy water Palvinder had fetched that morning from the gurdwara. She dipped her fingertips in the water and went round the auto splashing drops. Then his mother fed Tochi a spoonful of the buttery yoghurt. Tochi touched her feet and she asked God to bless her son with success.

He drove into Pankaj Flats Colony, joining the squiggle of autos already parked by the gated compound, and climbed out into the hot afternoon. He’d never been to this quiet corner of the city before. A chowkidar sat dozing in his chair, thumbs hooked into his belt-loops, and on the other side of the gate, where the sun burst across the apartment blocks, Tochi could hear children playing. The other drivers were hunkered down in the shade of the wall, reading a paper or listening to the cricket. Tochi crouched down too, on the flats of his feet, rounding his back closely over his knees and threading fingers together tight across his shins, curling himself up into as small a target as possible for the sun. He wasn’t sure when the woman was going to come out. Any time between two and three, the list had said. Someone offered him a beedi, which he declined.

‘So you’ve taken Ashok Bhai’s auto?’

‘Bought.’

The man smiled. ‘That’s what I meant.’

His name was Susheel, he said. From Jannat. That was his auto over there, the one with the lucky red ribbons tied to the grille. He seemed younger than Tochi — the softness of his beard, a certain confidence.

‘If you need anything, just ask for me. Everyone knows who I am.’

Tochi nodded, thanked him, but perhaps he hadn’t seemed sufficiently impressed.

‘Ask anyone. Susheel. That’s me.’

There was a loud banging on the metal gate and a call for it to be opened. The chowkidar rolled up onto his feet, leisurely, stretching. He said he was coming, madam, coming. The drivers all stood up too, but when the gate flushed open to reveal the woman, most of them sat back down. She stepped forward, her hand a shield against the sun. Tochi didn’t know if this was her, and he didn’t want to approach and ask — it might look like he was in the business of stealing someone else’s pick-up. But then Susheel confirmed that this was his ride, or one of Ashok Bhai’s old ones, at least. Tochi walked to the woman, salaamed, and explained that he’d bought Ashok Bhai’s auto and if she would permit him to lead her to his vehicle he’d take her wherever she needed to go. There was a sudden silence, and Tochi could feel the drivers staring at him. The woman nodded and said, ‘Of course. Please, after you.’

He waited for her to be seated before rousing the engine and reversing out of the compound. ‘You should have brought the auto to me,’ the woman said.

Tochi nodded. He’d worked out as much already. ‘Sorry, madam.’

She laughed. ‘No matter.’

Twenty minutes later he parked outside a modern-looking building with ‘Sheetal’s’ embossed across the window in a spiky green diagonal.

‘Wow, that was fast,’ the woman said, throwing aside her magazine.

She gathered up the pleats of her crimson sari and stepped gracefully onto the lumpy tarmac. A sliver of her nut-brown midriff was briefly exposed.

‘Two hours, acha?’

Tochi nodded, and watched as the peon beamed and opened the door, and she swished up the marble steps and hurried inside, away from the heat.

Tochi drove to Kumhrar Road, where he caught a couple of fares: two white-saried widows carrying trays of unlit dia lamps to the Radha Krishna Mandir, and then a father and son who wanted to fly their kites on the ghats. When he got back to Sheetal’s, he still had to wait a full fat hour before the peon opened the door and the woman came down the steps, talking over her shoulder to a friend who followed. They stopped beside the auto, still talking. Something about someone’s kitty party. Tochi couldn’t be sure: their tongue was half English. He wanted to try for a few more fares before the evening grew too thick and he had to go home. He looked at the glassy timer in the centre of his handlebars, and maybe the woman’s friend saw him looking and made some sort of gesture with her eyes, for he heard Madam say, ‘Oh, he’s just a scheduled.’

There was an excruciating silence, and the woman’s friend smiled in a squeamish way and said she’d see Radhika next time, later in the week maybe. Madam waved and reluctantly turned round. She was biting the corner of her lip, like a schoolgirl. She got into the back without once looking at Tochi and asked quietly if he wouldn’t mind going next to St Joseph’s Sacred Heart School. They needed to pick up her son.

The next day, Tochi drove right up to the gate where Madam was waiting for him. Her chin was up, eyes peering down her nose, and she climbed into the back of the auto in a single swift movement. Determined not to speak, it seemed, as if to illustrate the proper relationship between driver and Madam. It didn’t last long. Tochi had only turned onto Ganapathy Drive when she flopped forward, elbows on knees.

‘Acha, I’m sorry. But it’s so hard to know what to say these days. I mean, are you even still called chamaars? Legally? Am I allowed to say that?’

‘You can call me what you like. I only want to drive you and get paid for it.’

‘So what should I call you?’

Tochi said nothing.

She fell back, sighing. ‘I’m not a horrible person, you know. I do feel sorry for you people.’

Through the rear-view mirror he could see her looking out the side, agitated, frowning, as if again her words had come out wrong.

When he returned to pick her up, she appeared at the window, waving far too excitedly, and suddenly the door was thrown open and she was coming down the steps, sari hitched up and six, seven, eight women pushing up behind. They arranged themselves around the auto, beaming at Tochi. Collectively, they gave off a pinkish, fruity scent.

Madam spoke calmly, though there was something strained about her face, as if she were trying to check her delight: ‘Can you fit us all in?’

Tochi asked where they were going.

‘Bakerganj,’ said one.

‘The maidaan,’ said another.

An obese and middle-aged third shunted her friends aside. ‘The Women’s Shelter. I’m patron of their birth-control programme. Actually, I should tell you that we have a real problem with birth control in your caste group. Are you married?’

Tochi twisted the key and the engine puttered up. ‘I’m only allowed to take four.’

All nine forced themselves into the auto, sitting on each other’s laps, standing, singing, as if this was a great adventure.

He skirted potholes and speed humps, avoiding police checkpoints, and as each passenger alighted they gave their address and a time to collect them the following day.

‘Most of us have sold our private cars,’ Madam said. ‘We want to help the poor in society instead.’

It was just her and her son left. The boy bounced about in his white shirt and fire-engine-red tie. Twice his mother pressed upon him his sunglasses, and twice he threw them off. At the compound gate, he jumped out and ran towards a waiting kulfi cart. His mother gathered his satchel into her lap.

‘Same time tomorrow? Or are you too busy now?’

She was smiling, pleased with herself. Tochi just said he’d come tomorrow as normal.

*

He got to know the city well. All the branching bazaar alleys that hid the frilly-roofed salons and Danish-style tea rooms. After dropping Sarasvati Madam off at Charlie’s Chai Corner, he’d take the newly built flyover and collect Bimlaji from Nalanda University and go from there to Sheetal’s, via Radhika Madam’s compound. That used to make him late delivering Jagir Bibi to the gurdwara, but once Susheel shared with him the tanners’ lane shortcut Tochi could avoid the bulk of the afternoon mandir rush and the old lady would be at the gurdwara well before the ardaas. The late afternoons were busier still, full of school pick-ups and last-minute runs to the market. Over time, passengers began to recommend him to others: an opportunistic friend and his daily visits to a dying ‘oil-in-law’, a father whose driver had taken to drink. It felt as if no sooner had he washed the auto and set off from his village, than the next time he paused and looked up from the road the sun was sinking away, and he’d again forgotten to eat the rotis his sister had packed, and the night was starting its smoky occupation of the sky.

‘I hear you’re doing well,’ Susheel said.

They were at the Drivers’ Dhaba, sipping sweet tea.

‘Maybe you’ll earn as much as me one day.’

Tochi nodded. ‘How old are you?’

Susheel’s face turned serious. He understood. ‘Seventeen, bhaji.’

‘Family?’

‘Just my ma and papa. My ma’s ill.’

Tochi nodded.

His last stop in the city before heading home was always to pay the brothers their share of the day’s takings. They lived in a one-roomed shack under a stairwell, behind a new hotel, with both their families. At least eleven different faces he’d counted over the weeks. He’d duck to enter and the children would huddle off into a corner to give this uncle room to sit. A sister handed him tea and as he drank the brothers liked to hear of his day. Where he’d been, who he’d taken. Afterwards, they’d say that the auto truly was proving much luckier for him.

*

He slept in the back of the auto, as a precaution. One night, Dalbir lay collapsed over the handlebars. He’d been working in the field and, Tochi noticed, had forgotten to wash the mud from behind his ears.

‘We should buy another auto so I can be a driver too,’ Dalbir said.

‘Who’ll work the land?’

Dalbir thought on this. ‘I’ll hire a manager.’

He heard a woman rustling down their lane. It was Palvinder. She brought Tochi a glass of milk — they could afford to drink it themselves now — and collected his dirty bowl and plate.

‘Ma is asking for you,’ she said to Dalbir.

‘Why?’

‘Since when did you start asking “why”?’

‘I have my rights.’

‘Go,’ Tochi said, and, grumbling, Dalbir rose and went slouching up the lane. Tochi gulped at his milk, handed back the glass. ‘Did Ma tell you?’

Palvinder nodded.

‘And you’re happy with the match?’

‘Would it make any difference if I wasn’t?’

Tochi nodded. ‘I’ll see what they say tomorrow.’

She stood the emptied glass upside down in the bowl and followed her younger brother.

The servant showed Tochi through to the breakfast room, where Babuji was sitting at the scoop of a long kidney-shaped table, spooning sugar into his tea. When he glanced up, sunshine seemed to fill his face and he reached for his walking stick.

‘Don’t get up,’ Tochi said, touching the old man’s feet.

Babuji tapped his stick against the nearest chair and Tochi sat down, balancing on the lip of the seat. ‘I came as soon as I returned. But you were away.’

‘Calcutta business,’ the old man said dismissively, because what he really wanted to hear was what Tochi had been up to. Where he’d been and what he’d done and how long he’d been back. Was it true he’d bought an auto? Tochi said it was.

‘Wonderful! Well done! You’re moving in the right direction.’

He’d aged in a grand way. His hair had turned as white as milk and the skin was terrifically lined, making a noble feature of the large loose face that many still said reflected too soft a character. His hands clasped the ivory handle of his stick and the hem of his silver kurta made a valley in his lap. He’d known Tochi’s grandfather. They’d been great friends, Tochi’s mother had said. Babuji had even attended Papaji’s funeral pyre, and as far as anyone in the village could remember that was the first time a landowner had attended the rites of a chamaar. But that was all back when they’d worked for the family, in the years before Tochi’s father had asked Babuji if they might quit their servant jobs and instead rent some land.

‘I wanted to let you know we’ve found a good match for Palvinder.’

Babuji nodded. ‘So I hear.’

‘I’m sorry I didn’t come and ask for your permission first.’

‘Oh, those days are gone, Tarlochan. Is the girl happy with the match?’

‘If the match has your blessing, then the rest of us don’t need to question it. They’re from Jannat.’

‘On the Margiri side? I know the seth who owns the land. They’re a good family.’

‘I’ve no doubt. But he’s the only son and if we can’t pay the full dowry they say they’ll refuse. And she’s already been refused once. She won’t get another chance.’

Babuji sighed. ‘It’s a monstrous business. “I want five motorbikes and ten cows before your daughter can marry my son.” But it’s the way these things work.’

‘I just wanted to check that you think their demands are reasonable.’ He paused, then decided to add, ‘If they insist I’ll of course pay.’

‘I think it’s monstrous, like I said, and I hope one day it changes and we all start practising the religions we preach. Until then. .’ He opened his hand in a gesture of resignation. ‘If you find you can’t pay, we’ll give them my Contessa. It still drives like a dream.’

‘I didn’t come here to ask—’

‘I know you didn’t.’

Tochi nodded. Somewhere in the house a clock chimed out the hour. He’d be late for his first job. He put on the table the following quarter’s rent. ‘It’s the same as before I left. Aren’t you ever going to increase it?’

‘Can you afford it if I do?’

‘I’ll just have to give them one less motorbike.’

Babuji feigned horror. ‘Not the motorbike. People will think we’re animals if we only give four.’

That afternoon, Radhika Madam asked why he wasn’t going the usual way, via the maidaan, and Tochi explained it was because of the election. There were rallies. This way would be quicker.

‘I’ll be glad when election season is over,’ Madam said, fanning herself with the end of her pallu. ‘And the rains are taking so long, na?’

He took the hairpin turn onto Lohanipur Road and sped towards the bazaar. But it looked like here, too, there was a rally, and he gently braked into the crowd. He tried intimidating his way through, delivering long bursts on the horn.

‘Might be quicker to walk, Madam.’

‘In this heat? And give his mother more reason to complain I’m not fair enough? I’ll wait, thank you very much.’

So he forced his way to the side, parking beside a few other drivers, and switched the engine off.

It was the Maheshwar Sena. And the same white banner Tochi had seen at the maidaan all those weeks ago now hung in a taut smile across the entrance to the bazaar: Bharat is for the pure of blood and blood we will shed to keep it pure. Three, four, five people were on the stage, dressed in saffron and passing between them a microphone boxed in an orange collar. Their words boomed — loud and fuzzed with static — through speakers tied to tree trunks all around. They spoke of the need to regain control. That their religion was becoming polluted, the gods were being angered. The land was increasingly infested by achhuts, churehs, chamaars, dalits, adivasis, backwards, scheduleds — whatever new name they decided to try and hide behind. They needed to be put back in their place. Not given land and handouts and government positions.

‘Maybe I will walk and you can go,’ Madam said.

‘If you want.’

Clearly she didn’t, and stayed put. ‘Such backward logh. And how useless is our government that they can’t do anything? Do you know, our maid, Paro, told me that one of these goondeh made her husband get off the bus and walk home?’

Tochi said nothing.

‘They’ve no shame.’

‘Who?’

‘Don’t be clever.’

Though there were shouts of support and one or two tatty saffron flags above the roving mass of heads, mostly the crowd was impatient and kept calling for the swamijis to move their holy backsides out of the way. ‘I’ve got work, bhanchod!’

‘Let there be no doubt,’ the speaker went on, as if someone had turned up the volume. ‘We will fight to keep our country pure. We will shed blood. We will not back down. Let’s put it even more plainly: we will kill.’ The crowd quietened a little. The speaker seemed pleased by this. ‘There will be revenge for the murder of our brothers by the Maoists. There will be a purge. No one can stop it. And it will start at the beginning of Navratri. In respect for our murdered brothers and sisters, on the first day of Navratri we will allow none of the impure to work in the city or be seen about the city. It will be a day for the pure only. So the pure can enjoy the parks and the streets as Ishvar intended. Anyone going against us will be exterminated.’

Anger flamed inside Tochi, and Radhika Madam was tapping his shoulder, urgently. ‘Please, let’s go. This is too awful.’

On his way home he stopped at the village of Jannat. He knew it was one of the houses behind the Hanuman mandir, but it took a schoolboy scoffing toffees on the temple steps to point it out. Tochi knocked and a voice — an old man’s voice — asked who he was. Inside, he took a seat on the low stringy charpoy, pulled down from where it stood against the wall. The house was dark save for the candles and their intimate light. There were just the two rooms, with an empty doorway between them. Tochi could see the mirror in the second room and reflected in the mirror was a woman lying under a blanket. At her side was Susheel, hands on his knees. The old man was busy apologizing for asking Tochi who he was, but there was so much trouble about these days, what with these Sena logh. Only two days ago he’d heard they’d killed a man because he’d refused to take part in their protection racket.

‘It’ll pass,’ Tochi said.

‘This is your first time to Jannat?’

‘I came three months ago. Looking for work.’

‘Did you speak to the thakur?’

Tochi said he did.

‘He’s getting old. Forgetful. But a good master. He gives us no difficulty.’

‘The land is good here. Rich.’

‘We work hard on it. Though not hard enough, it seems. I like your auto.’ His lips thinned into a sly smile, his pinched little face made even more so by the ratty white turban.

Susheel came forward to shake Tochi’s hand and pass him a cup of tea. His hair was parted to the side, the usual quiff flattened down. Despite the cockiness at work, he seemed like a caring boy. A good match.

‘You know my son,’ the old man said.

Tochi nodded. ‘Did you have a date in mind, uncleji?’

‘When would suit you?’

Tochi understood the inference. When would he be in a position to fulfill the dowry? ‘I’ll speak to my parents. I just wanted to ask if you had a date in mind. Or if you had any other demands.’

The father shook his head. ‘I’m sorry if we’re asking for a lot. We’re not greedy people. But he’s my only son. You understand?’

Tochi said he did.

‘And his mother is not well. But I promise you that, if you perform your duty, we will perform ours and your sister will be treated well here. You’ll have nothing to worry about.’

Tochi shook hands with them both and folded back out of the doorway. He was about to drive off when Susheel appeared at his side.

‘Bhaji, I wanted to say I’m sorry if my father offended you. He doesn’t mean to, I promise.’

Tochi nodded.

‘And would you please. .?’ Tentatively, smiling embarrassedly, Susheel held up an envelope.

He’d only been home a few minutes when his sister arrived with his food.

‘Quick today,’ he said. He made a plinth of his knees and began mixing the white butter into his sabzi. Palvinder stood there holding his glass of water.

‘You can put it down.’

She did. Still she stood there.

‘You going to stay there all night?’

‘Uff, just give it to me.’

He gave her the letter, asking how they managed to contact each other, but she was skipping up the lane and out of his sight.

*

The Maheshwar Sena were more and more on the city streets. It seemed as if around every corner there was a jeep loaded with men in saffron bandanas. They spoke through megaphones, reminding people of the upcoming day of the pure. Any low castes, or anyone protecting a low caste, would be committing a crime against Hindutva, would be spitting on the burning bodies of their murdered brothers and sisters, would be dealt with. Some shops had already been targeted. A jeweller’s was destroyed, the glass bangles smashed on the road, the cash register launched through the window. And one day Tochi saw a suit-boot man with a briefcase stopped and badgered for his ID. He tried to look imperious as he handed it over, only to receive a wide stinging slap and an instruction to make sure he didn’t leave his house on Navratri.

Radhika Madam asked if he shouldn’t just stay at home until all this madness passed over. He said he couldn’t afford to do that.

‘Well, at least you won’t be working on Navratri.’

Tochi remained silent.

‘Tell me you’re not?’

They’d arrived at Sheetal’s. Madam stepped out, hitching up her sari with one hand.

‘You know, money won’t buy back the dea—’ She caught herself, perhaps thinking how easy it was for her to say that.

For days they all urged him to not work on Navratri. Bimlaji, Jagir Bibi, Saraswati Madam. None of them would be leaving the house — no one would — so what was the point in coming into the city? Didn’t he understand that? Especially now things were getting worse. Rumour was that a poor young man had his hand chopped off for hitting one of these crazy orange-brained dacoits. And now it seemed the Maoists were getting involved.

‘As if one set of murderers wasn’t enough,’ Radhika Madam said.

His mother, too, begged him not to go into the city now. ‘Wait a while, na? Work in the field for a few days. With us. You can make up the money afterwards. I’ll help you.’

But Tochi said it wasn’t the money.

‘What use your pride when we find you dead in the street?’

But it wasn’t pride, either. Or not just pride. It was a desire to be allowed a say in his life. He wondered if this was selfish; whether, in fact, they were right and he should simply recognize his place in this world.

The night before Navratri, on his way home, he stopped outside Kishen’s. His friend was pulling the shutter down.

‘You going into the city tomorrow?’ Kishen asked.

‘Do you think I should?’

‘I think you should at least leave your licence at home. And anything else with your name on it.’

‘Mera naam he tho hai.’

‘Vho he tho hai mera naam,’ Kishen finished. A schoolyard phrase, about their names being all they owned. The tailor took up his folded newspaper and flicked it twice with the back of his hand. ‘Our brothers-in-arms. The Maoists. They say they’ll fight fire with fire.’

Tochi shoved into gear, driving off. ‘The pyres! The pyres!’

He didn’t go. He stayed at home and went into the field with his brother. They worked all day, hacking, twining, carrying. Every hour he stood and slicked away the sweat from his forehead with the hem of his dhoti. Over the city, the sky was clear. He could see no column of smoke and he could hear no cries. All was silent save for his brother’s scythe a few rows back.

His mother beheaded and cooked a whole chicken for the evening meal and afterwards Tochi returned to the auto, lying on top of the yellow roof with his hands behind his head. The sky was delirious with stars. The air was damp. The rains couldn’t be long. He heard his mother coming down the lane and turned to look. She was holding something; a box, which she placed on the rear wheel arch. She unfurled a long iron key from the end of her chunni and rattled the tin open, lifting it up to Tochi because she didn’t know how to count. He sat up on the roof, legs out in a wide V, and made equal piles of the notes.

‘Two more months,’ he said. ‘Maybe three.’

‘Shall we set a date, then?’

He nodded. ‘I’ll speak to them.’

Three days after Navratri, the rains came, blasting the red earth. Scooters began to lilt in the softened ground and dogs yelped under jeeps. Tochi rushed back from tying down the auto’s rain-covers and stood shivering wet in the doorway, watching the manic fall of water and the sewage running fast beneath his feet. He said tomorrow he was going to the city. He couldn’t wait.

‘So soon?’ his mother asked.

‘This is when we earn.’

He was right. The first day back and he couldn’t go ten metres without some man waving his briefcase at him, a woman calling for him to please stop before her umbrella collapsed on her. People fought over him, proffering double, triple the fare. It was the same the next day, and the one after that, and he motored through the splashy streets while the single black wiper did its squeaky work. Each day he kept a lookout for the Maheshwar Sena, but all he’d seen were two men in orange standing under the dripping awning of a tractor repair shop, waiting for the rain to lessen. Radhika Madam said the weather had forced them off the streets, and, anyway, they’d not achieved anything with their so-called day of the pure. Thank God.

‘I could see them from our window. The whole time they spent getting drunk in their jeeps. Some revolution!’

Tochi knew otherwise. He’d driven through the alleys leading off Gandhi Chowk and seen the burnt-out tanning yard. And he’d heard his passengers talking: it seemed that at least three men had been killed, and maybe even a child.

Palvinder and Susheel were wedded that winter in an open-air ceremony and travelled to Shimla for their honeymoon. Then, not a year married, Susheel called to say he was bringing Palvinder back for the birth of their first child. Tochi’s mother ordered that a new charpoy be bought — one in the double-weaved style — and placed this in the room they’d added to the rear of the house last summer.

‘Tochi must be doing well,’ Palvinder said when she arrived, testing out the bed. ‘And what’s this about using hair gel? You becoming a goondah now?’

‘Doesn’t she look different!’ Dalbir said.

His mother said that of course she looked different. She was carrying a child inside her.

Tochi thought Dalbir meant something else, though, something to do with not looking like a girl any more. Perhaps that was why for the first time ever he’d heard her using his name, to his face.

Outside, a couple of kids were arguing with a passing dhol-player, pestering him for a go on his drum, and somewhere a man was selling hot peanuts and chai.

‘It’s nice to be home,’ Palvinder said, a hand on her belly. She gestured for Dalbir to come sit beside her, saying how tall he’d grown and that she’d heard he was back at school now. No time even to call his old sister?

‘I’m a busy man,’ he said.

She laughed and held his face. ‘Have you started shaving?’

Their mother came back and shooed the boys out. She wanted to speak to her daughter in private.

All month Tochi stopped off by the buffalo on his way home because his mother insisted Palvinder have fresh milk every night. She refused to reheat what was left from the dawnlight milking Dalbir completed before school. One evening, during Navratri, as Tochi drove back with the milk, his mother met him halfway. The baby was coming, she said calmly, so he needed to go find Prakash Kaur from the next village and bring her here. Tochi passed her the bucket of milk and turned his auto around.

At the gate to the neighbouring village, two women stood chatting, baskets of winter spinach on their heads. Tochi asked if Prakash Bibi was at home. They said she wasn’t, that she’d been doing seva at the city gurdwara all week. Tochi frowned. He’d been careful all day, after the havoc of last year, and didn’t want to return to the city now, with the night looming.

‘Is there any other midwife?’

They looked at each other and shook their heads.

As he raced off he heard them shouting their blessings for the newborn, perhaps mistaking him for the father.

The city roads were still quiet, too quiet for Navratri. Thankfully, Tochi found Prakash Bibi in the gurdwara canteen, scraping huge steel vats with wire wool. The sleeves of her widow-white kameez were rolled back into the fat of her elbows. When she saw Tochi she seemed to understand immediately and from a knot in the end of her chunni handed him a list of items to fetch from the Vishwanath Medicine Store.

‘It’s near the bus station. Come back here with it all and we’ll bless it before we go.’ She asked him if he needed money. He’d already turned for the door.

He followed the river, past the ghats, where vendors were clearing away their unsold shoes and handbags. Two beggar kids came dancing through the night, excitedly shouting, ‘Khoon kharaba! Khoon kharaba!’ Tochi turned up Tanners’ Alley, engulfed in its sudden dark. The ground was uneven, forcing him to slow-swerve around the dust heaps. A couple of men were slumped against the exit. He thought they were drunks, then noticed one of them clutching his head, blood running down his wrists. There were voices, too, chanting, coming from the centre of the city, near the maidaan. He’d thought this might happen and reversed and went the long way round to the medicine store. But its shutters were down and it didn’t matter how hard Tochi banged, no one opened up. Suddenly, four, six, eight motorbikes roared past, two men on each bike, a third standing at the back. They were whooping, holding aloft makeshift orange flags that cracked in the air. Across the city, fingers of smoke began to rise and spread. He knew of one other large medicine store, near Gandhi Chowk, but when he got to that roundabout some twenty or thirty motorbikes were circling it, revving their engines and pulling wheelies. A crowd watched on. He got nowhere trying to barge through a side gully — it was too narrow, too packed with exhilarated children and anxious adults. He headed back to the chowk, looking for another exit. Then a man ducked into his auto and asked to be taken to the train station.

‘Unless they’ve been scared off by these hooligans, too. They make things so difficult, yaar.’

Tochi asked what had happened and he said it was the damn Maoists. They’d dumped a truckload of Brahmin bodies in the maidaan a few hours ago, all wrapped in an orange sheet painted Happy Day of the Pure Anniversary. But this was only what he’d heard. None of it might be true. The cheers and calls for revenge amplified, and more rioters appeared from the direction of the maidaan, displaying what looked like green petrol canisters.

‘The poor chamaars are going to get it tonight,’ the man said, tutting, and then perhaps he noticed Tochi’s name on the licence card because he held Tochi’s shoulder and told him to go home and look after his family. ‘I’ll walk. You go. Go now and I pray may God be with you.’

Villages burned as he sped out along the city road. Orange flames were thrown up everywhere and great flakes of ash drifted against the windscreen. Parents were dragging their children into the fields. He braked at an abandoned PCO and called Babuji, who said the world was going crazy and that he was on his way in the Contessa. If Tochi got there before him then he was to get his family and come to the big house at once. He’d left the rear gate open for them. Tochi hurried back into the auto and soon saw that his own village was on fire. He drove harder — ‘No, no,’ he kept muttering — and forced his way through the rush at the gate. He found Dalbir shaking at the end of the lane, beside their father in his wheelchair. Tochi told them to get in, then ran up and ducked inside the house. His mother was in the new room padding a wet poultice against Palvinder’s brow.

‘What’s happening? What’s this shor-tamasha?’ his mother asked.

He said they had to go. They rolled Palvinder onto her side and put their shoulders beneath each armpit and hefted her up. They walked like that up the lane, Palvinder counting her breaths and both arms circled low around her huge belly. She sat in the back with her parents while Dalbir jumped in the front, their father’s wheelchair folded on his lap.

Tochi kept the headlights off. All around him huts were ablaze, and from within the burning shacks came screams. He stopped at the fountain, inside which a woman lay dead — she must have tried to douse the flames by rolling in the sand. Beyond her more orange-clad rioters were charging through the arch, banging their canisters together. And amongst it all was Babuji’s silver Contessa, honking, stuck in the crush. Tochi turned round and drove past Kishen’s and past their lane and made for the fields, urging the auto up onto the long dirt road. The track was full of half-submerged rocks and each sharp bump had Palvinder calling out for her mother.

‘Where are you going?’ Tochi’s father asked.

He didn’t reply. He knew the track would eventually lead them to the river but from there he didn’t know what they would do or where they would go. Branches whipped across the roof. He heard his sister say she was scared and his mother said not to be, that it was all going to be fine. He ripped his licence card from the dashboard and threw it outside. Then he looked at his brother: Dalbir was staring straight ahead, his hands gripping the wheelchair.

‘Bhaji?’ Dalbir pointed. There were buffalo, tethered to the trees. And people standing around. Motorbikes, too, and a jeep. Tochi slowed right down. If he turned round he wouldn’t be able to outrace them.

‘Just say God’s name and all will be well,’ Tochi’s mother said.

The men were calling to him, brazen and gesturing with their bottles. He shunted the auto on until they were ten or so metres away. ‘Kapoor,’ he whispered, and left the engine wheezing as he stepped outside. They were six or seven in number, smoking and drinking. Orange sashes were belted through their jeans and they’d dressed the buffalo in big floppy orange bow ties which gave the whole scene a grotesquely comic edge. One of them slid down the bonnet of his jeep and walked with expansive steps out from under the trees. Looped around his wrist, a small stereo crackled jazzily. A Bollywood song: tu cbeez badi bai mast mast. . He asked Tochi where he thought he was going.

‘Doing my job. Getting our people away from the dirt.’

The man — the leader — nodded and said that was good, very good. Then he jutted his chin at one of his men who now walked past Tochi and towards the auto.

‘What’s your name?’

‘Tarlochan.’

The leader waited.

‘Kapoor.’

The man at the auto called out, ‘Arré, she’s having a baby.’

‘What’s his licence card say?’ the leader said, still looking only at Tochi.

But he said he couldn’t find it. ‘It’s not here.’

‘Stay here,’ he said to Tochi and went to the auto. Tochi followed behind anyway.

The leader peered in, his forearms on the roof, the stereo dangling its song. Yeb pyar bada bai sakbt sakbt. . ‘Is this your husband, sister?’

Palvinder was crying into her mother’s neck.

‘Are you going to the hospital?’

She nodded.

‘Let us go,’ Tochi’s father said.

The leader walked round to Dalbir. ‘What’s your name, chotu?’

‘Dalbir Kapoor,’ he said, no hesitation.

The leader sighed. ‘I better let you go, then.’ He gave Dalbir the stereo, a gift for being brave, then with that long careful walk of his rejoined the others.

Tochi waited, then edged back into the auto. He spoke quietly, clearly. ‘When we get around that bend, I want you all to get out and run into the trees.’ Dalbir nodded. In the mirror he could see his sister and mother, foreheads pressed together, praying.

‘Arré, aaja,’ the leader called. ‘She’s having a baby!’ Someone laughed from further back in the trees. Someone else looked down and nodded.

Tochi clicked the auto into gear and inched forward. As they passed the motorbikes and orange-bow-tied buffalo, the leader salaamed and wished them well. Tochi tracked them in the mirror, shrinking, until he rounded the wooded curve and they slid out of view. He slowed, but didn’t stop. ‘Go.’

Dalbir vaulted out, then ran round and prised his sister away from their mother. He tried to pull his mother out too, but she said she couldn’t leave their father behind.

Tochi looked left, at his brother tunnelling into the night, leading his sister by the hand. He applied his foot to the pedal and pressed, and the harder he pressed the more the auto juddered over the rocks. Already he could see their headlights in his mirror. Star-shaped bulbs easily closing in. He thought it was the jeep, but then the headlights split off into motorbikes and came up on either side of him. They were dousing the auto, inside and out. His mother screamed and shouted for them to in God’s name show some mercy. Tochi swerved towards one of the bikes, but the rider laughed and dodged out of the way. A rag was lit and thrown and there was a sudden whooshing upthrust of flame and noise. Tochi stopped and as he tried to pull his parents out, arms snaked around his waist, his neck and legs, and hauled him back. The smell of the fumes stunned him. They held him down, his cheek pressed hard into the road. He felt their knees all over him and could hear something being unscrewed and then the thick glug and plash of petrol pouring onto his back. He fought to breathe, arching his neck as if sucking up the pale moonlight. In front of him the crops flickered in fiery shadows and all around he could hear the blister and the pop and two voices becoming one, and a third, perhaps his own, joining them.

To lift the basket of bricks onto his head he had to squat so deeply that his knees flared out and his arse touched the ground. He tottered the length of the factory and stacked the bricks in the vault of the lorry in piles two bricks wide, alternating longways and crossways. On his first day he’d been told that would stop them toppling over. His first day — when the scars had still stung. He returned indoors, the shallow basket lolling by his side, and rejoined the queue at the brick mound.

At midnight the green bulb flashed and the conveyor belt groaned to a stop. The production team began to take off their gloves and dust masks, heading home. He figured there were still a good forty baskets left: he’d become expert at judging how many trips to the lorry remained after the belt had closed. He organized the bricks into his basket and raised it towards his head. But his arms were trembling and then his right hand collapsed and it took two men to rush up and steady the thing.

‘Arré, go home, yaar,’ one of them said. ‘Don’t kill yourself in your last week.’

He walked out, the brick dust ticklish in his hair, all over his face and clothes. He used to wonder what he might look like, a grey ghost stepping through the night. He passed the marble palace, built for some dead English queen, and stopped outside a hole in the wall for his one-rupee cup of mishty doi. It had been a fellow worker’s tip: a cup of this sweet yoghurt after work and he wouldn’t be coughing up dust through the night. He handed the empty clay cup back to the kid-vendor and crossed the tramlines and into the alley. He stuck to the middle of the dark lane, between cheap guest houses on one side and sleeping rickshaw drivers on the other. Past the Nepalese cafe was a large door of solid metal, a square hatch cut into it. He slid aside the bolt and bent through the hatch, entering a small, weedy courtyard. In one corner was a black arrangement of rubber tyres. He hooked one of these over his shoulder and made his way up the open stairwell at the rear of the yard. He could hear people talking behind the doors. Children, grandparents. A television. On the roof everyone was asleep already. The fire was out. He took the knife from his back pocket and drove it into the tyre, tearing along the central seam, wheeling the tyre round with his free hand. He cut the rubber into strips and made a pyramid of them to his left, and then he found some matches in the pocket of one of the men asleep, and on his third attempt the rubber caught and he got a little corner fire going. His stomach was contracting emptily, but he was tired enough that it didn’t matter.

He waited on the factory floor outside the shift manager’s office. The spinners were on full tilt that evening, filling the air with their grinding. The door opened and Mr Rao came out and said he was sorry to have kept Tochi waiting but Chief Manager Sahib had rung out of the blue, desperate to get his opinion on a most delicate work matter. ‘Great changes afoot. But I have probably said too much already!’ Tochi handed in his folded-up overall, and Mr Rao gave Tochi his weekly wad of notes, saying he couldn’t believe the time had flown by so quickly. Was he going back to his village? In Orissa, was it?

‘Bihar, sahib.’

‘Exactly.’ The phone rang inside. ‘Excuse me. That’s probably him again.’

Tochi picked up his sack of clothes, said a few goodbyes, and walked out. The gurdwara was only a short distance through the city gardens and there he bathed and ate. Then he waited outside the prayer hall. Inside, a turbaned old man was sitting behind the palki, reading from the book. He ended the verse with a long waheguru and gestured for Tochi to follow him through a side room and to a tall cupboard with a Chinese dragon print on its black lacquer. The old granthi turned the key and reached for Tochi’s leather satchel. It contained everything he’d earned.

‘Count it,’ the granthi said.

‘Thank you, Baba.’

‘Is your bus tomorrow?’

‘Tonight.’

The old man nodded. ‘I’ve never seen you once pray. Not once have you entered the darbar sahib.’

Tochi touched the man’s feet and begged his leave.

‘I don’t know what you’ve suffered, but you mustn’t blame Him. It’s too easy.’

Tochi looked to his left, to the rectangle of light in the doorway. He thanked the old man again and walked straight towards it. It had been two years. He was going home.

The local bus routes must have changed in his time away because he had to get off at the neighbouring village and walk the last two miles home. It was dawn, though stars still showed low in the sky. A white government van, a green cross on its side, stood under his village gate. He remembered it from the days after the massacre, just as he remembered the four bespectacled men and women who, two years on, were still sitting around with their clipboards and pencils. The woman smiled and made an approach, but he walked straight past, down to where Kishen’s store used to be and over the sand-filled fountain. Some kids were playing cricket in his lane and he gave one ten rupees and told him to go ask Babuji if Tochi might come and see him any night this week.

Inside the house, there was nothing left save for his sister’s red-and-gold chunni, coiled up in a corner. She’d left it behind in the rush to get out and he’d not felt able to touch it. Everything else he’d burned. He put down his sack of clothes and his satchel of money and went to the water pump behind the house. He worked the lever with one hand and splashed his face with the other. Then he heard a bolt slide open and a neighbour from the lane opposite brought him an iron bucket and a bar of streaky green soap. The man’s wife stared from her doorway, curious. He filled the bucket, watching the soap sink cloudily to the bottom, then carried it inside. He undressed and squatted and used his cupped hands to pour the water down his back. These days he washed his back again and again — the absence of feeling meant he could never be sure how thorough he’d been.

He was asleep when the door opened and sunlight invaded. Blinking, he sat up and saw Babuji, walking stick in hand. Tochi said he’d have come to see him, that Babuji needn’t have made the trip.

The old man gave a little dismissive shake of his stick. ‘How was Calcutta? Everything OK in the factory? They treated you well?’

Tochi said they had.

‘And the hotel was happy to have you? No trouble?’

‘None,’ Tochi lied.

‘Excellent. So now you’ve got that out of your system, there’s plenty of work here to do. When can you start?’

Tochi said nothing.

‘Because I’ve been thinking and it’d be good to try and get three lots out this year.’

‘Babuji, about what we talked about before I left?’

The old man grimaced, revealing perfect dentures. ‘I was hoping you would have changed your mind.’

‘Did you find out?’

‘I found out that it’s very expensive.’

‘I think I’ve earned enough.’

‘So what? Do you plan to live over there in hiding forever?’

‘I will come back. I’ll come back a rich man who can choose his own life.’

Babuji told him that, yes, he had found a man in Patna who did this kind of thing regularly. His fee was heavy — too heavy, as far as Babuji was concerned — but he said he could get you anywhere. Europe, England, Canada, America. Guaranteed.

‘But you have no idea how hard it will be. Here you have a job, food, somewhere to sleep. You’ll be sleeping on the streets over there. It won’t be all playing cricket in their parks.’

‘Where can I find this man?’

Babuji banged his stick. ‘You are not thinking properly!’

Tochi stayed silent for a while, then repeated his question.

Shivroop Skytravel: a small glass-fronted building with a life-size cut-out of an air stewardess in the doorway. Tochi pushed inside, into the freeze of the air conditioning. A dark woman, a perfect strip of vermilion in her parting, looked up from behind her desk. She asked if she could help. She didn’t smile.

‘I’m here to see Mr Thipureddy.’

‘What is it in connection with?’

‘I’m here to see him about flights abroad.’

She sighed, seeming to understand, and leaned heavily to one side, perhaps pressing a button. Several minutes passed before a man stepped through the curtain at the back of the office. He was short, even darker than the woman and with a jumped-up little moustache whose tips pointed to God. The woman said something in Tamil and then the man clicked his fingers and told Tochi to come upstairs.

An hour later and Tochi was back on the street, his money-satchel lighter. Two weeks, the man had said. He’d called someone in Delhi and said that Tochi could be on a flight to Turkey in exactly two weeks. After that he’d be trucked as far as Paris, which was in France, and from there Tochi would be on his own. Did he understand?

‘Yes,’ Tochi said.

‘Of course, I’ll come with you as far as Delhi. Part of the service.’ And then Mr Thipureddy took out some forms from his little Tamil drawer and snatched up the pen leaking in his shirt pocket. There was a map on the wall behind him.

‘Where is France on there?’ Tochi asked.

‘Hm?’ Mr Thipureddy twisted round. ‘Oh, no. France is in Europe. That is South India. I am from — ’ he reached back and jabbed his pen into the map — ‘there. Kanyakumari. The southernmost tip of India. The end of the country.’

Tochi nodded.

‘It is the only point in the world where three oceans meet. So you see it was in my blood to help people straddle the seas.’ He gave a little laugh. It sounded like something he said often. ‘Anyway. I expect you will be wanting to make payment.’

Mr Thipureddy met him twice more in the next ten days to go over what he called Tochi’s itinerary, and the night before departure he confirmed by phone what time they were to meet at Patna Junction. Tochi switched off his mobile — Babuji’s leaving gift — and sat on the plastic suitcase he’d bought that afternoon. There was nothing to do now but wait. He took out a tennis ball and bounced it against the ground and wall opposite, watching its yellow sheen glimmer and die as it ricocheted through the dark. He thought again of that place called Kanyakumari. The place of ends and oceans. It seemed amazing to him that there could be an end to India, one you could point to and identify and work towards. That things needn’t go on as they are forever.

Later that night, Susheel came to say goodbye. He gripped the keys to his motorbike in his fist and said he’d heard bhaji was back. That he was leaving again, this too he’d heard. Tochi told him it was true.

‘When do you go?’

‘Tomorrow.’

Susheel nodded, looked down, looked up. He gave a nervous smile. ‘Papa has arranged for my wedding next month. I thought you should know.’

‘I’d heard,’ Tochi said.

‘Oh.’

The breeze picked up, disturbing the silence.

‘I have to wake up early tomo—’ Tochi began.

‘Why did they find her in the trees?’

He moved a hand down his face. ‘Because I told them to run away. Both of them.’

‘All three of them,’ Susheel corrected.

‘All three of them,’ Tochi repeated, barely moving his lips.

‘Where are you going?’

‘I don’t know. Europe.’

Susheel looked to the lane beyond the open doorway. ‘Away from here. Good.’

Tochi didn’t know what that ‘good’ really meant.

‘How did you earn enough?’

‘I worked.’ He didn’t mention the money Babuji had given on his parents’ death — a pseudo life-insurance payout — or what he’d made from selling the rental contract on the land. Even with all that, he’d only just enough to cover all of Mr Thipureddy’s costs.

‘My papa’s been trying for fifteen years and still can’t afford to go.’

‘I guess I was born lucky,’ Tochi said.

Susheel smiled, wry, and extended his hand. ‘Papa asked me to invite you to our house. But it seems we were too late.’

Tochi shook his hand. ‘Good luck.’

‘Good luck.’

Tochi heard the motorbike being kick-started at the end of the lane, and then the sound of the engine withdrawing. He’d been dispatched to ask if he could join Tochi, or if Tochi would send for him, or make some provision for him once he was safely fixed up abroad. Susheel would’ve known that Tochi understood this. But the boy hadn’t asked, for whatever reason. And no doubt he’d go back home and tell his father that Palvinder’s brother hadn’t been in and the door had been locked and that he’d waited as long as he could. And the father would sit there swirling the dirty ice cubes in his whisky, wondering how much to believe his son.

The coach station at Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International Airport was so blazingly floodlit that Mr Thipureddy changed his mind and told the tuk-tukwallah to drop them off in the cargo park instead. That had been over an hour ago.

‘She’s always late,’ he said and flipped open his phone.

‘No need to call, uncle. I’m here.’

She approached through the smoky lilac air, the skirt of her sari held away from the dirt.

‘Madhu,’ Mr Thipureddy said.

Her shiny plastic waistcoat looked crimped in the moonlight and from the lanyard around her neck hung a whistle and perhaps a security pass. The niece, Tochi thought. She asked how her aunty was, if Aanjay’s marks had recovered sufficiently to get into college this year. Only then did she say hello to Tochi. ‘You’ve heard of Russia? Because we’re going to have to go via Ashgabat, which is pretty much the same thing.’

Mr Thipureddy kissed the air. Tochi wondered if he’d have to hand over more money.

‘No choice,’ she said. ‘They moved Annie. Too much flip-flopping in Customs these days.’

She showed her uncle the new tickets and asked if he’d got all the papers officialized. He gave them over.

‘Which route?’ Mr Thipureddy asked.

‘B. Ashgabat to Turkey. Then Europe.’

‘You don’t get seasick, do you?’ Mr Thipureddy said to Tochi. ‘But Arhan will look after you.’

The niece looked up from palming through Tochi’s documents. ‘It’s Deniz now. How long since your last carry-over?’

‘Not since that business with the food on the plane.’

She said to Tochi, ‘The food on the plane is free. Do you understand? Don’t try to pay for it. Don’t cause a scene — just eat it.’

Tochi thanked Mr Thipureddy, who wished him the best of luck, and followed the niece into the airport. She talked him through what to expect, what he’d have to do. It sounded like a routine she was ploughing through, even where she said she was going to repeat the key points because she could tell he was nervous. She gave him a small red rucksack to hold over his shoulder — ‘A book, toothbrush, socks. Motor magazines. I don’t know why you boys never bring hand luggage. It looks so suspicious’ — and a bright green-and-gold ribbon to tie onto the bag before he got to Turkey. It was how the driver would recognize him.

‘Won’t that look suspicious?’ he asked.

‘On a plane with Indians? It’ll look restrained.’

She asked if her uncle had shown him how to use an escalator — moving stairs. He said he hadn’t and she made a frustrated noise. She looked at the watchface on the underside of her slender wrist. ‘We don’t have time now. You’ll have to just work it out.’

They checked in his suitcase, where a woman name-badged Annie stamped his ticket and fake passport and wished him a safe flight. He put the red rucksack through security and rejoined the niece on the other side of the beeping electronic arch. She checked the boarding time and pointed out the gate. Then she extended her hand and wished him very good luck.

‘If anyone stops you or asks you anything, just remember what I told you. But Annie will be on the flight.’

‘Thank you,’ Tochi said.

She seemed about to go, half turning. ‘I was sorry to hear about your family.’

Tochi said nothing.

She sighed. ‘Well, let us know how you get on.’ And she walked back, ignoring the security guard who laughed and asked her how much she’d pocketed this time.

The boarding call was announced and her instructions started to churn in his mind. He looked to the floor, fighting his nerves, then got on the plane and found his window seat and belted himself in. Somehow — the graceful stewardesses, the exasperated passengers, the hard, straight seats — it all looked as he’d expected it to. An elderly Sikh man in a three-piece suit sat next to him.

The plane began to move. He looked out of the window at the dirty white span of wing veering away and beyond that to the floodlit luggage men playing cards on the bottom step of a mobile staircase. Then the plane started to speed up and there was a savage oncoming roar as Tochi felt himself forced back into his seat. He could see the luggage men clasping their cards to their chest and their trousers yapping wildly about their ankles and then the ground tilted away and the dark sky opened, beckoned, and a sense of being freed, of freedom, poured beautifully through him.

He didn’t see Annie again until they arrived in Ashgabat, when he took up his rucksack and followed everyone out of the plane and into the airport. She was sitting behind a glass counter, as though she’d always been there. People were reaching for their documents and joining one of two queues. He waited in Annie’s line. She had a serious face, which complemented the way she stamped tickets and dispatched passengers on their way. When he gave over his documents, she glanced up briefly, then applied the circular green stamp and moved on to the next.

He filed into the waiting room: a small, sorry place with rows of rudimentary grey seats and an old-style black-and-white ticker board that looked broken. There was a bar at the back playing American-sounding music, and a barman who was punching open boxes of snacks and stacking them high. There was no one at the bar, though. Everyone was sitting on the seats and quietly waiting. He’d seen lights and cars on the descent, but now it felt as if they were all stranded here in this Russian desert. He rested his head on the rucksack.

It was still dark outside when people started to queue at the airport’s only boarding gate. He half rose out of his seat, then saw Annie at the bar, tidying her skirt over her knee as she talked to another girl. She’ll let you know when it’s time, Mr Thipureddy’s niece — Manju? Mandip? — had said. So he sat back down.

Two hours passed and more flights had departed before Annie came down in her high heels and announced that the flight to Gaziantep was now boarding. She spoke first in English and then, with almost smiling slowness, in Hindi.

He stayed awake all through the flight. The flickering map on the beige-boxed screen at the front of the plane made little sense to him and he spent most of the time watching the slow dissolving of the night, the way the heavy black-blues hung on and hung on until finally relenting to the turning world and the first faint pinks of daybreak.

Though the landing wasn’t as smooth as last time, and passengers gasped and lurched, the pilot’s voice came over and he said something which made everyone laugh. Out of the plane, he noticed Annie up ahead, in front of all the other stewardesses. He kept his head low, trying to keep up. Suddenly, the moving stairs appeared in front of him, like a cliff drop. He didn’t have time to wonder how the thing worked — he could feel people at his back — and put one foot onto the grille and gripped the rail, his left leg somehow following. He felt a little dizzy, as if he wasn’t sure if the stairs were carrying him down or if the ground was floating up. He focused on the man in front and tried to copy him off the thing.

The hall was large and carpeted red and his fellow travellers were taking out their passports. Once more, Tochi joined Annie’s line. She didn’t look at him as he passed and when he turned round, she’d gone. A gum-chewing man with a glistening bald head called him forward. Tochi handed over his passport, and as the man flicked through, a tricky smile came to his lips.

‘So you’re paying my rent this month, ha?’ he asked in bad Hindi.

Tochi said nothing.

‘Which of Annie’s are you? Germany? UK?’

‘France,’ Tochi said.

The man nodded, tapping in some numbers. ‘Good. I hate the French.’

He collected his luggage, dragging it off the belt, and headed straight out of the automatic glass doors and into the new world.

The niece had been right: his ribbon was one of the least colourful, and it took some time before a short, heavyset man with surprisingly quick strides approached. His yellow shirtsleeves were squared around his elbows, sunglasses on his head.

‘Tar-lo-chan, Indien?’

He followed the man outside. A dry, sandy heat filled the day and two great whorls of sweat swelled out from the man’s armpits, almost meeting in the centre of his back. As if reading Tochi’s mind, the man twisted round and said, ‘No air con outside.’ He spoke reasonable Hindi and said his name was Deniz and welcome to Antep.

They sat in silence on the dinky airport bus that dropped them in the middle of an industrial estate. They walked along the perimeter fence, beyond which women in headscarves and red-stained overalls were eating pastries in the shade. Deniz shouted something across to them and some of them laughed and raised their hands. They seemed to be wishing Tochi good luck. Rounding the corner, some sort of depot came into sudden view, pallets strewn, and Deniz pointed out his truck — the only truck there — a reassuringly huge twelve-wheeled monster. Its black tarpaulin bore a giant image of wet tomatoes on a vine. Deniz gestured for Tochi to wait while he went inside. He returned ten, fifteen minutes later, stapled papers in his hand and a yellowing pillow squashed under his arm. He said it was time to go. Tochi moved to the rear of the truck, but Deniz threw him the pillow and told him to climb in the front.

A beeping sounded as they reversed, then Deniz changed gears and took the road out of the estate. Tochi stared. He’d never felt so high up in a vehicle before. He could see all the way back to the airport, where a plane was taking off, climbing its ramp of air.

He waited outside the cemetery gates, ready to leave, his two months in Paris just as Deniz had predicted. They’d been on the deck of the ferry to Brindisi when the Turk warned that France was the wrong choice for him. London would be much better.

‘London? You understand me?’

The waters looked free and magical, the sun breathily warm on Tochi’s face. He wondered if this was what it would feel like to stand on that southernmost tip of India. The calling sea beyond.

‘Very racist, the French are. Horrible people. The English are much nicer. You should have paid a little more and gone to England.’

‘As long as there’s work.’

‘Not much work in Paris for you men these days.’

Later, as they’d crossed into Austria, or maybe France, Tochi asked him if he meant what he said, about there being no work in France?

‘Did I say that?’ He shrugged. ‘It’s true, anyway. You’ll find out soon.’

‘How much for you to take me to England?’

They agreed on a price and a date. And when Deniz dropped him off at Bobigny gurdwara — ‘All the Indians spend their first night here’ — he reminded Tochi to be waiting outside the cemetery gates and to not tell anyone. He didn’t want half of Bangladesh climbing into his truck and ruining his tomatoes.

He completed a second circuit of the cemetery in case Deniz had meant some other gate, but there was only the one. He sat on his suitcase, rucksack between his legs, and ran a thumbnail in the leather creases of his boots, where foot met shin. Sleeping in the park. Less than one week of work. He was glad to be going. The traffic was sparse, the road lonely. There were apartments for sale in the window of the shop opposite, and there, in its dull reflection, he saw Deniz coming up behind him. His sunglasses shone and on the chest pocket of his red T-shirt a black horse pranced.

‘So! Ready to leave, my friend?’

For the ferry to England, he hid in the back of the lorry. Europe was no problem, Deniz had said, but these English types could be very difficult. Tochi hunkered down, knees tight to his chest and head tucked in. It was as dark as a well. Metal barrels surrounded him — right above his head, too — their clinking the only sound. He fell asleep. At some point he lifted his head off his knees and felt a deep stillness inside him. The barrels weren’t wobbling. The engine wasn’t running. All was peace and darkness. He closed his eyes, though the insides of his lids were painted with images of dying and the dead. He was woken by the rear shutter rattling up. He held his breath, didn’t move. Daylight made a faint blond entrance. There were voices, Deniz’s among them, and knuckles being rapped on the containers. More voices, white-sounding, until the shutter clattered back down. A little later the engine roused and he felt the truck’s clunking descent.

‘This is England,’ Deniz said, when at last Tochi was able to wriggle out. They were in some sort of car park. Shops, white people. Nearby, the grey noise of fast traffic. The sky looked the same as in Paris. Deniz fetched them a plain baguette each and they got back in the front and rejoined the motorway.

‘I thought you said it would only take an hour?’ Tochi said.

‘From Calais. They do less checking in Dieppe. Why, was it uncomfortable?’

‘It was fine.’

Deniz said he’d drop Tochi off in Southall, in London, unless he had anywhere else in mind. ‘My wife’s brother is always saying how he needs waiters. He has a restaurant.’

Tochi stared out of the window. The roads seemed impossibly straight and flat, the fields perfectly hedged in.

‘What do they grow here?’

Deniz said he didn’t know.

‘It looks like spinach.’

‘Perhaps.’

He looked closer. ‘It is spinach.’

‘Why, does it remind you of home?’

‘It reminds me of spinach.’

Two hours later they arrived, parking the lorry half on the pavement. A car beeped, swerved past.

‘There’s your temple,’ Deniz said. He nodded towards a gold dome, princely and Indian against the coming dark. ‘And this is the main road.’

The bus stops — Tochi guessed they were bus stops — showed filmi posters, while passing women retightened cardigans over their kameez, salwaar-bottoms puffed out in the wind like legs of mutton.

‘Are they all illegal here?’

‘No, just Indian.’

He followed Deniz out of the driver’s side, past a travel agent’s called IndiGo and a shop display of sari-draped dummies. Deniz halted outside a fast-food place, cartoon chickens on the window, and told Tochi to wait there a minute. He watched Deniz enter and shake hands with a fat man who kept wiping his nose on his apron. They spoke a while and the fat man lifted his shoulders heavily and gestured around him, in a move that suggested either there was more than enough work, or not enough as it was. As Deniz came back through the door, Tochi stepped away.

‘I’ve got to go but wait inside and Marat will take care of you.’

‘Is there work?’

‘Maybe. He’s not sure. Just wait.’

They returned to the truck so Tochi could collect his bag, his suitcase, and pay Deniz the balance.

‘I hope you make your millions,’ Deniz said, restarting the engine, saying good luck, goodbye.

Inside the restaurant, the fat man — Marat — brought Tochi a can of cola and showed him to a table. He moved his hands so that Tochi understood he should wait there while Marat used the telephone. Tochi nodded, said thank you in English.

It was a busy night. White people, Indian, black, everyone seemed to eat food from here. Even Indian girls came blustering in, in tight tops and skirts. Tochi stared. Another fat man worked with Marat at the counter, while further back two younger men in sleeveless T-shirts operated the fryers. He could easily learn that, Tochi thought.

The chicken clock on the door said ten past eleven and Marat untied the apron from behind his back and lifted it over his head. He said something to the others and indicated that Tochi come with him, flicking the lights off on his way out. They turned down a side street where Marat pointed to a long window bordered with red conch shapes. The glass in the front door had the same pattern.

‘Bangladeshi,’ Marat said.

Tochi followed him round to a small yard where a shallow sports car was parked. A tall man with a shaved head and a gold bracelet leaned on the bonnet, chatting into his mobile. He saw them waiting, yet made no move to end his call. Eventually, he and Marat exchanged some words and the tall man looked over.

‘Where you from?’

‘Bihar.’

‘How’d you get here?’

‘Truck.’

‘Can you wash dishes?’

‘If there’s water I can.’

The tall man nodded at Marat, who looked relieved as he left.

‘How old are you?’ the man asked.

‘Twenty-six.’

‘Course you are.’

He said his name was Sukhjit and he took Tochi back through the restaurant and to the kitchen at the rear. The floor was tacky against his feet.

‘Start with the dishes and work your way round.’

‘Where do I sleep?’

‘On the floor. Tomorrow, I’ll bring a mattress. And then you better move in with Sheera.’

He put down his bags and got to it. Work on day one. This was good. Maybe it was true what they said about England. That this was where you could make something. He was on to his third stack of dirty plates when he sensed someone watching him. He looked over his shoulder. It was a waiter, his head curled around the doorframe as if sneaking a look.

‘I’m Munna. What’s your name?’

‘Tarlochan.’

‘Tarlochan Singh Sandhu?’

‘No.’

‘I’m Munna Singh Sandhu. But Munna’s not my real name. It’s my baby name. Are you a friend of Sheera Uncle?’

Tochi said nothing.

‘He’s not very nice.’

Slow, backward, he looked about seventeen. A two-note car horn sounded, the second note more belligerent than the first, and then the boy disappeared and Tochi heard the front door opening, closing, locking.

When he woke he had to peel his cheek off the damp steel flank of the cooking range. It was still dark — there were no windows in the kitchen — and he didn’t know what the time was. If he listened, he could hear the noise of passing traffic. He couldn’t hear any movement from the restaurant, though. Perhaps they were asleep, the other workers. Gently, he opened the kitchen door and blinked in the sudden bright. A giant wing of pale, wintry sun rested across the room, over the dark wood tables and the chairs turned upside-down on them. There was a counter to Tochi’s right, with a cash register at the far end, and behind the counter were glasses and bottles and fridges. Through the window, he tried to work out the shops on the other side of the road. Fruit, one of them. Mobile phones another. Then the sari place. And next to that a shop where men stared up at a TV screen, watching horses race. He heard a noise, a wailing like the ambulances in Patna. Cars slowed and set themselves aside as two police vans came flying down. Tochi flattened himself against the wall until the wailing retreated, then returned quickly to the kitchen and closed the door behind him.

Hours later, he heard the restaurant door unlocking and the muffled creak of feet on carpet. He stood up and waited to be discovered. It took a few minutes — there was first the clinking of glasses, then the complicated beeps of the cash register. When the man came through the kitchen door he paused mid-sip and stared at Tochi over the rim of his glass. His eyes were red and small. He finished necking the drink — whisky — and went round the kitchen switching things on: the tandoor, the oven, something under the sink that made nasty crunching sounds. The crown of his head was so bald it shone, but the hair around the sides was long and landed in greasy curls about his collar. He went back out into the restaurant and next Tochi heard a sustained hungry growl. He opened the door and saw the whisky man pushing around the room some sort of cleaning machine.

The backward boy — Munna — arrived at the exact moment the oven timer rang out four o’clock. ‘I’m on time again, Sherry,’ he said. ‘That’s three times this week.’

Behind the bar, the whisky man was pouring himself another peg. He’d changed into his chef’s whites. ‘Call me that again and I’ll rip your tongue out.’

Tochi went out into the yard. It was already dark. He rested against the wall and slid down to a crouch, T-shirt riding up to his shoulder blades. He put his head in his hands and it took a few moments to recall the name of this place he was now in. He just had to work, he told himself. Keep working, keep earning, and he’d get there, wherever there was. When he came back through to the kitchen, onions were being violently chopped, mustard seeds popping. In the restaurant, tables were dressed in burgundy polyester, a steel boat of ketchup marooned in the centre. Munna waited by the door ready to greet the guests. Sukhjit was here too, and with him a kid whose narrow sideburns, amazingly, met in the cleft of his chin. Like Munna, he was buttoned up in white satin shirt and black trousers.

‘This is him,’ the boss said.

The kid approached, all swagger, holding out his fist. Tochi did nothing and the kid grinned and reached for Tochi’s hand and closed it into a fist and touched his own with it. ‘Like that, see?’

‘My nephew: Chikna,’ Sukhjit explained.

‘Chico,’ the boy said. ‘It’s Chico.’

‘Actually, it’s Charandeep Singh.’

The boy frowned. ‘Thanks, chacha.’ Then, to Tochi: ‘So you a fauji or a scooter?’

The door opened and a couple in matching leopard scarves blew in. Munna beamed and took their coats and said that, yes, winter was definitely on the way, and Tochi went back into the kitchen, where several steel vats were already humped into the sink.

He got into routine. First he scraped off the leftover chicken or curry or mint sauce or rice into the bin he’d wheeled in from the yard. Then he rinsed the dishes in a tub placed to the left of the sink, before plunging them into the sudsy water and scouring until he heard squeaks. Lastly, he passed them through a second tub on his right, in water made faintly green by a thimbleful of disinfectant Munna had shown him how to use. His fingers shrivelled and the plate of skin between his shoulder blades ached. It was two o’clock when he heard the last of the diners waved off, and the waiters took a bowl of chicken curry from the chef and started back for the restaurant, calling for Tochi to come and join them.

They ate with their fingers, moulding the rice and chicken into little balls. The chef came through with his own thali and sat alone by the long window.

Charandeep spoke. ‘Chacha says you’re from Bihar, yeah? Blitzed it over truck-style?’ He had to repeat himself, in Panjabi.

Tochi nodded, not looking up from his bowl.

‘Proper outlaw,’ Charandeep said, approvingly.

‘Are you here for a holiday?’ Munna asked.

Charandeep smiled. ‘Kids, eh?’ He went on: ‘Same as Chef. Trucked it over time ago. Sixties, maybe.’ He leaned in. ‘Sent him a bit doolally, though. What’s your tonic, alcoholic? Know what I mean?’

A car with a fierce exhaust parked up. ‘Uncle’s back,’ Munna said.

Sukhjit swung through from the kitchen, rubbing his hands warm. ‘Too cold for love out there. How’s things? Sherry?’

‘I have to call him Ardashir or he’ll rip my tongue out,’ Munna said.

‘As long as it’s out of hours,’ Sukhjit said, singing open the cash register.

One by one they dumped their bowls in the sink. A car horned and Munna left; then Ardashir pulled on his long black coat, and Sukhjit and Charandeep said they were going too and turned off the lights and locked the door. Tochi returned to the kitchen. He changed the water in the sink and started again. It was nearly four when he wheeled the bin out and spread his blanket beside the still-warm range. Sukhjit must have forgotten about his mattress.

*

Most days he stayed in the restaurant, going no further than the window, though once a week he’d proceed onto the road, with its big red buses and busy faces. He’d journey to the end of the street and around the corner, from where he could see the green tops of the old gasworks. He always paused outside a shop that sold homes, calculating how long it might be before he could afford one.

He was paid on Sunday nights. He’d be called into the yard, where Sukhjit held out his notes through the window of his red Alfa, the engine thrumming. It was about a tenth of what he’d expected, yet he said nothing. He used his first wage to buy some proper soap. The rest he folded into his rucksack, which along with his suitcase he stowed in the gap between the fridge and the wall.

On his third payday his suitcase was stolen. He’d been taking down the chairs in the restaurant when Munna rushed in from the kitchen shouting about some goreh robbers. Tochi sprinted into the yard so fast a doornail ripped off his jeans pocket, but there was only the rear end of a white hatchback skidding round the corner. The microwave lay cracked on the kitchen floor, dropped in the getaway, and the drawers were all tipped open, Tochi’s suitcase missing.

He picked up his rucksack and checked his money was still there. He had one other shirt and pair of trousers but the rest of his clothes had been in the suitcase, along with his blanket and towel. He got his fist around his remaining jeans pocket and ripped that off too.

‘Fuckin’ chiefs,’ Sukhjit said, that evening. He passed Tochi his notes. ‘These things happen, eh?’

Tochi said nothing.

‘Why aren’t you living with Sheera? It’s raid season, man — Sherry, staying with you from now on, yeah?’

Ardashir was putting on his coat. ‘Never stopped him.’

It was a few minutes’ walk, a run-down part of the neighbourhood Tochi had never been to. Most of the windows were grilled over and behind one of the grilles twinkled a dwarfish tree. Ardashir went down a flight of thin stone steps, Tochi following, and once through the front door he tugged on some string dangling from the ceiling, which brought on the light. Sink, cooker, fridge, boiler. Three chairs — one straight, two orange plastic — stood against the wall with several empty bottles of whisky huddled around their legs. Beneath the long net of the window was a single bed on tiny gold wheels. Tochi dropped his bag to the floor and took a piss in the bathroom, on the other side of the kitchen. When he came back Ardashir was pulling sofa cushions from under the bed and arranging them in the middle of the room.

In the morning, lying awake on the sofa cushions, he watched Ardashir at the sink, pouring whiskies and chucking them back one after the other, growling as each peg hit the spot. He was in trousers only and the heavy slack of his stomach pressed against the worktop.

‘If you get caught, you don’t live here.’

Tochi nodded.

‘You don’t know me, you understand?’

‘It’s your house.’

Ardashir gave a little snort. ‘Yeah.’

They didn’t bother one another. Soon as Tochi woke he washed and left to look for a second, daytime job. Sometimes he asked the Turk, Marat, and often he trudged to the gurdwara in case fruit-picking had started up. He was back at the restaurant for midday, time enough to vacuum and dress the tables. Ardashir would arrive an hour later and change into his whites, and they’d work together in the kitchen, quietly, peaceably, making the midnight walk back to the basement flat in silence, and in this way the seasons shifted and the months passed.

The restaurant closed on Christmas Day — the one day in the year when it did — and Tochi spent the morning lying on the floor, on the blue sofa cushions, gazing up at the damp ceiling. There was no point in looking for any work today — he’d learned that much from last year. Ardashir sat on his straight chair at the window. After a silence of almost two weeks, the older man spoke.

‘How long are you staying here?’

‘I can leave now.’

‘In England, I said.’

‘Until I’ve earned enough.’

‘Then you’re a fool.’

The afternoon was quieter still and as they sat down with the lamb curry brought back from the restaurant the previous night, all that could be heard was the dull scrape of metal on foil and the slurp and slop of eating. Sometimes a car went by.

‘You’re a bigger fool than me. I didn’t have anyone to tell me different.’

Tochi said nothing.

‘Take my advice and go back now. Before there’s nothing to go back for and you’re stuck here.’ It was the most he’d ever said to Tochi. Perhaps it was this Christmas spirit everyone went on about. ‘Thirty-three years. Didn’t do my papa’s rites, my biji’s. Wife and children started new lives. For what? So I can sit here in this hell. No future but death. Just a body needing to be clothed and fed. Go back, you understand?’

‘I’ve done my papa’s rites. And my biji’s. And my brother’s and my sister’s.’

Tochi’s wrist began to tremble and he lowered the spoon and stared at the ground between his knees. He heard Ardashir stride past and pour the rest of his food into a black bin liner hanging off the side of the sink.

The restaurant reopened fully on New Year’s Eve. Tochi worked fast, determinedly, but by the time the countdown and midnight cheer came and went he still had hours ahead of him. Sukhjit stumbled in. He was laughing and had his arm collapsed across another man’s shoulder.

‘Arré, Sheera, give my cousin one of your lassis, man. We’re gunna be Panjabis tonight!’

‘Does that mean we get to beat our wives?’ the other man said.

Sukhjit put a finger to his own lips. ‘They’ll hear you. Ears like an elephant.’

Soon, Sukhjit rounded everyone out the door, saying it was over to his place for whisky and poker, and in less than a minute all the noise of the night evaporated and the restaurant door locked shut. Ardashir joined Tochi at the sink, grabbing a wire-wool scourer of his own.

It was past five when they made it to the flat.

‘Thank you,’ Tochi said.

‘You won’t get anywhere working like a dog for him. Earning shit money.’

He arranged the blue sofa cushions in the middle of the room.

‘Take the bed,’ Ardashir said.

‘I’m good here.’

‘I said take the fucking bed.’

The next day, Tochi was pulling down the chairs from their tables when Ardashir answered the restaurant door. It was the same man who’d come into the kitchen with Sukhjit. He stood there shaking the cold off his small shoulders, flicking out his feet. He seemed to hate standing still. He even spoke fast.

‘What you doing, man? It’s New Year’s fucking Day.’

‘Do you want a drink?’ Ardashir said.

‘Not all alkies, dude. So where is he? This him?’ he asked, looking at Tochi. ‘You got your NI card?’

Tochi looked to Ardashir who said he’d get one in the week. ‘As long as you get his CSA card.’

The man shrugged. ‘Coming out his pay, in any case.’

‘How much?’ Ardashir asked.

‘That’s between me and Freshy Jo here.’

‘How much?’ he asked again.

‘You his fucking pimp?’

They agreed on a figure, which was about four times his current wage. They shook hands.

‘I’m Virender. Vinny. And you’re lucky, you know that? I’ve just got a new contract. A top-of-the-motherfucking-range hotel. Should knock the smile off Sukh’s face.’

‘When can he start?’ Ardashir asked.

‘I’ll speak to Sukh. But say I’ll pick him up next Saturday. I’m down south anyway. Have your suitcase ready to go. Acha?’

On his last morning Tochi tidied away the sofa cushions and sat on the straight chair, red rucksack at his feet. Ardashir placed a pair of leather workboots on the floor. They looked old and used but stronger than his own.

‘You’ll need them.’

‘I’ll buy some.’

‘I’d like you to take them, but suit yourself.’

He sat on the bed and swigged from his bottle. They said nothing until a few hours later when a white van parked outside and the horn sounded.

‘I told him not to do that,’ Ardashir said, standing up. Then, to Tochi: ‘You should go.’ With that, he disappeared into the bathroom behind the kitchen, leaving his bottle on the worktop.

Tochi hooked the rucksack over his shoulder and took up the boots and walked out of the room and door and up the stone steps. The day was cold and bright. He opened the van door and nodded at Vinny and climbed in.

3. SETTLING IN

The Sheffield snow had nearly gone. Grass showed darkly through and only a few white sleeves remained on the roofs of the houses opposite. Moving away from the window, Tochi prised off the workboots Ardashir had given him and put on his cheap trainers instead. He took the half-roti he’d saved from his lunch and, on his way downstairs, crushed it all into his mouth. The kid, Randeep, he could hear in the kitchen, complaining to someone about the cement their gaffer had ordered: ‘It’ll take forever if we can’t use the jib. Maybe if—’ Tochi closed the front door and bent his head low against the cold.

He turned left on Ecclesall Road, not right as Randeep had shown him, and strode past all the places he’d already tried twice in the last month. He walked efficiently, never meeting anyone’s eye. Once he was through the city centre, the terrain rose steeply and from the top of the hill he could see the blue dome and sprawl of that shopping centre they all spoke about. He couldn’t remember the name. It didn’t matter. There’d be no work for him in a place like that.

There was a Nooze ’n’ Booze a little further along, windows grilled over, manned by a bearded sardar type. Tarlochan waited for a couple to leave with their bottles of wine. The uncle looked older this close up. In his sixties, at least.

‘Sat sri akal.’

The man smiled. ‘Sat sri akal, puth.’ Son.

Tochi explained that he was new to the area and looking for evening work. He’d be happy stacking shelves or working behind the counter or cleaning. Anything really. Whatever it was, he’d put his heart into it.

‘Fauji, hain?’

Tochi nodded.

‘Pind?’

‘Manighat.’

The man tried to place it.

‘It’s in Bihar.’

A sigh, a nod. ‘Acha. Well, good luck.’ And the man gestured for the turbaned girl behind Tochi to come forward. ‘Third time this evening, beiti. Is it still not working?’

Outside the shop, Tochi made a fist and banged the grille-shutters, shaking everything. The shopkeeper came out. ‘Any trouble and I’ll call the police.’ His voice wobbled. Tochi moved on a few feet, then stopped, his forehead to a lamppost.

‘Are you all right?’

It was the girl. From the shop. In her hand some pink meter tokens. He glanced up to her turban, then spat on the floor.

‘He wasn’t fair to you. He didn’t treat you well. I told him so.’

‘Right.’

‘We’re all equal before God.’

He wished she’d go away.

‘I’m new to the area as well.’

He nodded.

‘It’s not easy. It’s very lonely. I get very lonely. Especially at night.’

She seemed an odd mixture of strength and innocence, with little idea of how she might be misconstrued.

‘Do you know where the gurdwara is? If you’re lonely you can go there. I do. Or if you need food.’

‘What if I need a woman’s bed?’ he found himself saying, needing to hurt her the way he was hurting.

She remained perfectly still, yet he could see her mind turning away from him. ‘God can’t provide everything,’ she said, and wished him well in his search for work.

The kid’s friend, Avtar, was leaving the house as Tochi arrived back. On his way to his evening job, going by the orange uniform. He nodded at Tochi and held the front door open for him, and Tochi nodded back and passed inside. From the dimly lit hall, he could see into the front room where a few of them were watching a Tamil porno, Gurpreet urging the man on. Upstairs, the kid was sitting on his mattress, writing into something. The glow from the streetlights seeped through the curtain edges and made a vase on the wall, above the boy’s head. Tochi lay back on his own mattress, undoing the Velcro straps of his trainers but keeping the shoes on because the floor was so cold. He closed his eyes. A pleasant darkness enshrouded him. All he could hear was the scratch of the boy’s pen.

‘I’m writing a letter home,’ the kid said. ‘Better than phoning.’

Tochi felt he nodded, eyes still closed.

‘I’ve mentioned about my new room-mate.’ A pause. ‘That’s you.’

‘Give my salaams.’

‘And I’m including some photos of me and Avtar bhaji. We took them at a booth in the station last week. You get four in a row. And it’s not too expensive. I can show you if you like.’

Silence.

‘I mean, if you want to send some to your family.’

Tochi laced his hands together behind his head. ‘I’ll think about it.’

*

The foundation concrete had cured and they’d spent the morning making a start on the brick posts. It was donkey work, really. Around them, yellow cranes manoeuvred into place, driven by professional-looking white faces. Tochi secured the final brick into his section and jumped onto the wall, confirming everything was flush and bedded down. From here, he could see across the whole site. There were almost three times as many people now as when he’d first arrived. Project managers, floor planners, site officers, water operatives. A roving swarm of hard yellow hats, fenced in by the short brick posts that at last seemed to be giving the site some sort of shape. He saw the kid’s slim figure far across the way. He had his hands on his knees, peering into a turning barrel of cement as if he’d lost something inside it.

That evening, he changed route, passing the Botanical Gardens and the small moonless wood. There were fewer shops this way — instead, the further he went, the bigger the houses became, the wider the avenues. The air felt greener, as if this was where all that countryside started insinuating itself. The something district, they called it. Even their green spaces sounded urban. He walked for perhaps an hour and found himself in a village, in front of a little, pretty convenience store. Inside, a brown kid in several layers and a baseball cap idled at the counter. Tochi made his usual pitch.

‘You want a job?’ the kid surmised. His Panjabi was poor, Hindi-inflected — ‘Aap job chaiyeh?’ — and he’d probably understood little of what else Tochi had said.

He slid open a wooden panel behind him and called up the stairs for his mother. Tochi heard her coming down, mumbling that everything was price-marked, Manvir, why don’t you look before interrupting her all the time? A small woman, who might have been handsome if it wasn’t for her long jaw, she stopped as soon as she saw Tochi. ‘Oh, sorry.’

The boy said something and then the woman sent her son upstairs and turned to Tochi. ‘You’re looking for work?’

Born back home, clearly. Probably came over to be married. ‘Ji. In the evenings. Cleaning, shelf-stacking, I can do anything.’

She thought a moment. ‘I’m guessing you’re illegal.’

Tochi nodded.

‘Pind kerah?’

‘Mojoram.’ It was the name of the Panjabi village he’d worked in. She asked him his name and again without hesitating he said, lied: ‘Tarlochan Sandhu.’

‘Jat, then?’

This time he paused. ‘Ji.’

She said her husband was in India for a few weeks but they had been looking for someone. Especially now they were both getting on a bit. It was just so hard to find someone honest, you know? You couldn’t trust a gori and her sons weren’t interested. Tell them to stand in the shop for even an hour and you’d think they’d been asked to reverse the cosmos.

Tarlochan asked if that meant he had a job.

The landlord knocked on the first working day of every month. A compact forty-something, he had neat, short popcorn-coloured hair and his long nose made his eyes seem deeper-set than they probably were. He was called Mr Greatrix and he always wore the same tie.

Narinder handed him the rent, which he took with a resigned sigh and counted out very slowly.

‘This is all very cumbersome,’ he said.

‘I’m sorry?’

‘I have to come here to collect it and then I have to go to the bank. It’s all very. . cumbersome.’

Narinder didn’t know what to say. She wished he’d turn round and go down the stairs and leave.

‘Do you not have a bank account?’

‘Sorry.’

‘What about your husband?’

‘I’ll ask him.’

‘Don’t you know?’

She said nothing.

‘I’m going to have to up your rent.’

‘Pardon?’

‘For the costs I incur in coming here.’

Narinder looked to the wall over the man’s shoulder, at the cracks in the plaster, like branches. ‘No. I’m sorry.’

‘You what?’

‘I don’t think you’re doing the right thing.’

He nearly laughed. ‘I rather think that’s for me to decide.’

‘Imagine it’s not me standing here. Imagine it’s your sister or your mother. Would you want them to be treated like this?’

‘But you’re not, are you? Either my sister or my mother.’ Adding, muttering, ‘Thank the good Lord.’

‘But if I was. How would you feel if someone was trying to use them in this way?’

He pressed the silver top of his pen, so the nib disappeared. ‘I think we’re going off point.’

‘I think you have to be fair, Mr Greatrix. To treat people as kindly as you’d want those closest to you to be treated. I might be your tenant but I’m also your friend and neighbour.’

Someone once said to her that when she spoke she made people feel naked against the world.

‘Maybe we can discuss this another time,’ he said, blushing as he made his exit.

She was woken by a rattling sound, as though someone was trying to trip the lock. Momentarily, she thought Mr Greatrix was back. She sat up. Her heart was thumping. The clock-radio blinked 12:00. The light had cut out, or had been cut out. She told herself not to get like this, not to let fear take her over. She held the kandha at the hollow of her throat and listened for Him, and something like the stroke of a wing disturbed the air beside her face. She moved to the bedroom door — heel to toe, heel to toe — and opened it. She must have forgotten to draw the curtains because the main room was bathed in a geometry of light, shapely blocks of blue that made a cityscape on the floor and walls. There it was again, the rattling. She found the torch-pen she’d bought the previous week and with a rolling pin in her other hand opened the apartment door. In the dark the stairs looked even narrower, longer. It was only the wind in the letter box. Sighing, a little irritated with herself, she took a pink token from the tin under the sink and kept one hand to the wall as she went down to the meter. When she came back, she couldn’t sleep, so drew out from under the mattress her letter, the one she’d a few nights ago started drafting to her father. She wanted to write a letter to her family every month. This was her second. She’d gone back home to Croydon after the visa marriage, not telling anyone. The lawyers had said it was important she had a fixed address, at least until her interview, until the visa was granted. The interview, mercifully, was short. As instructed, she said she’d met Randeep four years ago, on one of her yearly visits to India, and that they’d fallen in love and decided to get married. She had photos and witness testaments to support it. The interviewer — a kind-looking man, close to retirement — smiled and said it all looked in order and that he was happy to support her application. Soon, she received a call from the Indian lawyer confirming that Delhi had granted the visa, and that Randeep and his family were extremely grateful, that they said it was as if she’d been delivered to them from God. Narinder could expect her first payment by the end of the month.

One month after that, mere weeks before her real wedding to a man called Karamjeet, Narinder left home. She wrote the most difficult letter of her life and secured it with a hairclip to the front of her gutka, and placed this on her dressing table. She’d not said anything about Randeep — they’d only notify the police and put an end to it all — she’d only said that she had her reasons for not being able to go through with the wedding right now but that she’d be back in one year and hoped with enough time they’d be able to forgive her. At four in the morning, an hour before her father woke for his morning prayers, Narinder carried her suitcase down the stairs and stepped outside, where a taxi was waiting to take her to the station.

Now, she attached a stamp and sealed up the envelope. Like last month’s letter, this one simply communicated that she was fine, that she’d be back by the end of the year and that they weren’t to worry. She folded out her map across the bed — she’d take a train somewhere tomorrow and post it from there.

She never attended the gurdwara on Sundays, always fearful of finding herself in the middle of a wedding, face to face with an overpowering aunty who knew her family. But most other evenings she took the bus from the bottom of her hill and would arrive in plenty of time to hear the evening’s rehraas sahib. Unlike the gurdwaras she loved in Croydon and Ilford and Southall, the Sheffield one wasn’t domed and the windows had no balconies cut with gentle fretwork. It was a plain brick building with five uneven stone steps leading to a black door and gold knocker. It could have been someone’s house and, once, probably was. To the left of the door a large blue plaque was inscribed with the kandha and next to that a nishaan sahib waved its little orange flag. After prayers, she’d repair to the canteen kitchen, and more often than not to the giant concrete sinks where she’d spend the rest of the evening hosing down the dirty dishes passed her way.

One evening, she was doing just that when Randeep saw her and halted. Avtar was with him and they’d finished eating and been on their way to hand in their thalis. They didn’t come to the gurdwara often but sometimes, like tonight, because there wasn’t a milk run to do and because Vinny had dropped them off early, they’d put their kurta-tunics on over their jeans and bussed it up.

‘What is it?’ Avtar asked.

‘Nothing. Here. Take mine. I need the toilet.’

‘Take your own.’

‘Please,’ he pleaded. ‘She’ll see me.’

Avtar looked. It was mostly old women. There was only one who was young, scrubbing hard at the insides of some steel glasses. ‘Is that our Narinderji? She does seva here?’

Randeep made a desperate face.

‘Come on. What are you scared of?’

Avtar handed his dishes to one of the old women, forcing Randeep to give his up to Narinder. He held out his thali and she didn’t look up and see him until he said, ‘Sat sri akal.’

‘Sat—’ She stared for a long while, blankly, until at last she seemed to remember that her hands were meant to be doing something and she took his plate from him. ‘Sat sri akal.’

‘We come here sometimes,’ Randeep said.

‘I see.’

‘Are you doing seva?’ At the rim of his vision, he could see Avtar slapping his forehead.

‘I try to help,’ she said, rinsing the plate under the taps.

‘Oh, yes. Me too.’

‘I’ve never seen you here before.’

‘I usually come in the week.’

‘I’m here most days.’

‘Right.’

Frowning, she went back to her cleaning.

‘Well, maybe I should make more of an effort. If you’re here most evenings.’ He smiled.

She seemed perplexed. ‘I don’t see what difference me being here makes.’

‘No, no. I guess I just thought it might be a good idea. If people see us together.’

He rejoined Avtar, who put his arm chummily around Randeep’s shoulder and led him outside. ‘There, there.’

‘If you hadn’t rushed me, I’d have been fine.’

‘Of course. I’m sorry. Next time I won’t.’

‘Next time you won’t be there.’

‘Arré, but she’s such a cutie, yaar.’

They walked a little further on. Randeep was smiling. ‘She is cute, isn’t she? You know, that’s what my sister said, too. Lakhpreet said she’s “cute as a button”. That’s another one of their English phrases. Did you know it already? Cute. As. A. Button.’ But Avtar didn’t say anything, and Randeep, still smiling, didn’t notice.

That night, sitting on his mattress in the room he shared with two others, Avtar studied the four small piles he’d made of his money. The first pile was for the monthly repayment on what he owed Bal. The second for the loan taken out against his father’s shawl shop. The third pile was meant to help his parents with their rent and bills and, lastly, a pile for his own expenses here in England. No savings pile. There’d never been a savings pile. No matter. Once the loans were paid off, then saving could begin. He started counting it all again when from across the room came a loud grunting snore and a turning-over. Instinctively Avtar crushed the notes together and hid them under his arms. He waited until he was sure the other two weren’t faking their sleep and then he separated the money into piles again. It was no good. Bal was coming up in his BMW next week and still there wasn’t enough. He took some notes from his parents’ pile and split it between the first two. Still he was short. He recounted how much he had set aside for himself and took half of this and distributed it evenly among the rest.

The following day, on their way back from Leeds in the van, Gurpreet threw in his weekly contribution and passed the tin to Avtar. Avtar slipped in half of his normal share.

‘What’s this?’ Gurpreet said. ‘You cheating us, chootiya?’

‘I’m not eating for half the week. So I’ll pay half as well.’

Gurpreet tutted in false sympathy. ‘And two jobs he works. Spending it all on whores?’

‘Your mother’s not that expensive,’ Avtar said, sighed. Gurpreet laughed and Avtar passed the tin on.

4. AVTAR AND RANDEEP: TWO BOYS

Avtar Nijjar, former student and now the youngest conductor employed by BUTA Travel, held on to the rubber loop above the door and leaned out of the bus.

‘Sidhu Bangla! Geetpur! Kalawar! Jheela! Choper!’

He moved aside, arse against the windscreen, as elbows and legs clambered in. He kept one hand over his ticket machine and money bag. Thankfully, mercifully, it was the fifth and final round trip of the day. ‘That diversion’s not helping,’ he told Harbhajan. ‘Try Farid Chowk this time.’

Harbhajan sighed and draped himself across the thin hoop of the steering wheel, his new flamingo-pink turban cocked against the windscreen. ‘Yaar, we should go somewhere. Goa, maybe. Imagine it. The beach. Some bhang, some money.’

Passengers were still forcing themselves on board. Avtar started to count over their heads.

‘We’ll take this,’ Harbhajan said, patting the dashboard.

They were full. Avtar slammed the door and some of the people shut out rushed to flag autos; others stood swearing at him through the glass. ‘Your papa let us take this bus? Jha, jha. You must be dreaming.’

And sighing again Harbhajan pressed on the horn for an unnecessarily long beat and urged the bus forward.

It was nearly dark when the last passengers disembarked at Harmandir Sahib and Harbhajan drove on to the shawl shop. Avtar passed him the ticket machine and the day’s takings and jumped down.

‘Just think about it,’ Harbhajan said. ‘Goa! The kudiyaan on the beach in their small-small clothes.’

‘See you later,’ Avtar said and slipped out of his old black shoes and bounded up into the shop. It was a single room lined floor to ceiling with wooden cubbyholes, and each hole held a neat stack of six shawls. At the back of the room his father sat cross-legged on a large fringed cushion. He had a customer with him, several cream and faintly damp-smelling Rajasthani shawls spread before her. Avtar began refolding and repackaging the many shawls that had been viewed and discarded during the day, separating them first by material and then by design and price. He rustled them back into clear plastic covers, stapled the covers secure, and returned the shawls to their cubbyholes. As he finished the customer stood up, puffing out her white-and-pink sari.

‘Madam, I have one more you will definitely like,’ his father called but she was already through the shop and summoning her rickshaw-wallah.

Silently, together, they shook the sequins from the groundsheet and one by one thumbed out the ten joss sticks lit before the images of the ten gurus.

‘I’ll bring the scooter round,’ Avtar said.

‘You go. There’s still work to do.’ It was the eighth time this month he’d insisted on staying behind. Avtar had stopped asking why, but keep counting.

‘I’ll come back in a couple of hours, then.’

‘No, no. I’ll make my own way back.’

‘Papa — it’s too far to walk.’

‘I’ll get Mohan to drop me off. Stop worrying.’

So Avtar took the small royal-blue tin with the day’s meagre earnings and clipped it to his jeans and rode home.

The lift was still broken at Gardenia Villas. He returned outside and checked the four public toilets to the east of the building but none had toilet paper. He’d just have to come back down after dinner with some of his own.

He vaulted up the stairs and made it halfway up the twelfth flight before stopping for breath. It was further than he’d ever got before. He leaned against the warm wall and reread Lakhpreet’s note, pouting, wondering what her ‘news’ would be. He didn’t like surprises.

On the landing, Mr Lal, their neighbour, sat on a fishing chair outside his front door, smoking a pipe. He’d tied a wet American-flag towel around the smoke alarm, Avtar noticed.

‘Young Avtar! Kaise ho?’

‘Good, uncle. Thank you.’

‘Still working the buses, I see.’

Avtar smiled flatly.

‘Well. Good for you.’

He’d got used to the man’s way of boasting, and asked, as he knew he had to, ‘Have you heard from Monty recently?’

‘Yesterday.’ He blew out pipe smoke. ‘Lakhs he is earning. Lakhs. The way he’s going, he’ll have his own business in Toronto soon. And then we’ll join him.’

The jealousy always got Avtar in the gut, though he tried not to let it show. ‘I hope so. God willing.’

‘Nothing to do with God. You just have to go where the money is.’

Avtar’s mother was at the stove, struggling to spark up the hob. Navjoht, his brother, sat on the spongy two-seater, a comic open on his lap.

‘How can we be out of gas so soon?’ his mother said. She tucked the end of her pallu into her waist and blew across the hob, trying the clicker again. It didn’t catch. ‘Beita, can you go buy some before it closes?’

‘I only put some in yesterday,’ Avtar said.

He stepped over the urine bucket with its large plastic lid and twisted the gas pipe further into the stove valve. It slipped loose again so he lifted the stove a metre to the right, closer to the gas cylinder. Then the flame caught.

‘It’s too far from the window,’ his mother said. ‘The room will be full of smoke.’

‘I can move it by the sofa.’

‘I’m busy,’ Navjoht said, pre-emptively.

Their mother said she needed the rice so Navjoht stood, pen clamped in his mouth, and lifted the brown sofa cushion and took up the small sack and passed it across.

Avtar gathered his pillow and rug from on top of the sofa and moved through the shower curtain they used to screen the main room from the balcony. He rolled out the padded rug, arranged the pillow, and lay with both knees pitched up to the sky, for the balcony was too short for him to lie at full stretch. Hands behind his head, he closed his arms around his ears so all he could see was the blue above, all else in the world blocked out. He stared hard at the sky until the familiar alchemy occurred and it felt as if the blue was lifting him away. He smiled and closed his eyes.

When his father arrived, twilight had fallen and the bulb on the wall cast the balcony in bronze. Avtar hadn’t meant to fall asleep and turned on his side, drawing his knees to his chest. The shower curtain was thin enough to see through and Navjoht was clearing away his books so their father could take the sofa. The old man told the boy to carry on working but Navjoht said he’d ‘continue’ in their bedroom. Probably, on hearing their father, Navjoht had switched the comics for his schoolbooks.

‘Another English word?’ their father said, lowering into the cushions. He kept his hands on his knees and rested his back. ‘Smells delicious, Shanti,’ he managed, still breathing hard from the climb up.

He was as white-haired and aged as his wife was youthful. Smells delicious. The flat looks nice. That colour suits you. Sometimes Avtar thought that each compliment contained an implicit apology for the twenty-year difference in their ages.

Later, after the small collapsible table had been folded and stowed under the sofa and the dishes washed, and after Avtar had been downstairs and back to empty the urine bucket and use the toilet proper, his parents retired to their room and Navjoht rolled out his sleeping mat with something of a waiter’s flourish. Avtar returned to his own rug on the balcony. Through the rusting white fretwork he stared out at the spread of the city. Above him, the amrood tree dangled its branch and he propped onto his elbow and broke off the fruit. Bitter. Still maybe a month too early. He threw it over the top and into the dark.

When he thought his brother had fallen far enough asleep, Avtar rose to a crouch, then slowly onto the balls of his feet. He watched him breathing, curled up in a moonbeam, and took one step into the room. When he let go of the curtain behind him, the dark shadow closed across Navjoht like a cupboard shutting. He stepped over him and toed the urine bucket to one side so he could get at the door. Then he retracted the lock with infinitesimal slowness and slid into the mottled light of the corridor and down the thirteen flights of concrete steps and out into the night.

He waited in the dead-end alley beside the bankrupt Bismillah cement factory. Shards of slate littered the ground. He heard voices, low tearful singing, and a band of semi-naked pilgrims filed past with wispy-haired chests, ribcages pressing out. They played their tiny cymbals and chimtas and did not once look towards Avtar in the alley, as if they’d been dismissed from the temple in howling disgrace. Above, smog dimmed the starscape, the pale-grey heights punctured only by the red dot of a plane blinking itself away.

She arrived, nervous and beautiful. Her frock, red-blue with elasticated ribbing beneath her breasts, showed her collarbones, flaring out. Around her throat she’d tied a silk scarf. She wore these kinds of dresses more often these days. He wasn’t sure how he felt about them but he didn’t comment. She hung by his side until he circled an arm around her waist. She stalled and looked over her shoulder and then yielded.

A year ago he could never have thought of himself as the person he was now, someone consumed with this girl and her body. He’d been aware of girls, for sure, but he’d never associated with them. His friend circle both at school and in the one year of college he’d completed had only ever consisted of boys: like-minded, serious boys, into cricket and their studies. Not the type who spoke much about girls, let alone sex; sex, as far as Avtar was concerned, was not something boys from respectable families got themselves involved in. Respectable. That was the word Avtar had used — or its formal urdu variant ‘shareef’ — when she’d stopped him in the college grounds one day.

‘I’ve not seen you in class,’ she’d said, as if they were already good chums.

He’d recognized her. Lakhpreet Sanghera, from his combined studies class, the only class open to everyone. Her family had lived for a short while in the same block of flats as his, but in the larger ground-floor apartments that had their own bathrooms. She was maybe three years younger than him.

‘I’ve left. I came to pick up my leaver’s certificate.’ He indicated the cardboard folder in his hand. ‘You need it to get the coupons.’ He doubted she knew which coupons he meant. She didn’t look like the type of girl whose family needed state help. Wasn’t her father something in government?

‘Oh. That’s a shame. I liked looking at you in class.’

He felt his face stiffen, his embarrassment fuelling a sudden anger towards her. ‘Miss, I’m from a shareef family. Please don’t trouble me again.’

Later that evening, lying on his balcony, he wished he’d not been so rude. He thought of her large black eyes and her glossy lips and cinched turquoise tunic. He thought he’d lost her, but the very next day the PCO man said he had a phone call.

‘I never said you weren’t shareef.’

‘I’m sorry. . Miss,’ he added, regretting it even as the word left his mouth. She laughed.

One month later they had sex in the bell tower of the cement factory. He held her tight against him, rubbing her bottom, her thighs, her long brown back. He loved how hot and flushed her skin felt against his, how perfectly her nipples pressed into his mouth. His own desire surprised him, but her need came as a shock, and when he lay on his back, spent, she moved on top, craving it once more.

That was months ago, and now they jumped the gate round the back of the factory and snuck up the stairs. He cleared some space among the discarded timber and spread his jacket on the ground. Behind them the tower’s big iron bell hung godly and silent. In front, a few miles away, the Golden Temple shone, a tiny intimate lantern. It was a cool September night.

He said nothing when she told him her father had won the promotion and they were leaving next month. She leaned forward and locked arms around her knees, each hand holding the other hand’s wrist. Her hair screened her face from him.

‘Your hair looks different.’

‘I used a hair press.’

He said, ‘Chandigarh’s not far.’

‘Four hours ten minutes by bus.’

He smiled, she did too, and they went inside the tower and started to take off their clothes.

*

The morning after he received his month’s wages, Avtar buttoned up his uniform and left the flat by 6.30 so he’d have time to call at the collector’s house and settle the rent. Then he waited at the bus stand for Harbhajan to come by, sipping the malati water his mother mixed for his winter cough. They completed two circuits before taking lunch at the Roti Dhal Stop, and where previously Avtar had always ordered two keema naans he’d now taken to ordering one, and a plain one at that. It was one of the ways he was saving money in advance for the bus trips to Chandigarh.

‘What’s her name?’ Harbhajan asked. ‘Otherwise why so glum, yaar?’

Avtar gave him a disapproving look and told him to finish up or they’d be late.

‘I always knew you had a secret chokri hidden away.’ A little later Harbhajan said, ‘Let’s do something. Let’s hit the clubs in Delhi.’

‘A few weeks ago you were lost on Goa.’

Harbhajan mopped up the last of the dhal and stuffed it into his mouth. He downed the glass of water in one and sat back and prepared to burp, but when the burp didn’t come he sank a little further in his seat and looked around, disappointed. At the next table a businessman was on his mobile, facing the slightly absurd poster of a gun-slinging pelican. A second phone lingered by his elbow at the edge of the table; Harbhajan palmed it and slipped it into his own shirt pocket. Avtar glared, eyes wide, watching his friend put on his large brown sunglasses and calmly pay the cafe owner on his way out. Avtar waited until they were back on the bus and away before asking what the bhanchod hell did he think he was doing?

‘He already had one, na?’

He plucked the phone from Harbhajan’s pocket. ‘You could buy ten of these if you wanted.’

‘Where’s the fun in that?’

Avtar looked at him. ‘So who did you steal those sunglasses from?’ he asked, and Harbhajan smiled through his thick, neat beard.

At home, his mother was flitting through some sort of pamphlet. Her hair bun hung loose down her nape, the strands around her forehead white with flour. Avtar closed the front door.

‘Prove the cosine rule,’ she said tiredly.

Navjoht fell back against the settee, as if exhausted. He was still in his school uniform. ‘Too easy again. Ask me something hard, na?’

She handed him the booklet, saying she hadn’t realized what the time was. Rising, she lifted the sofa cushion and carried the bag of rice to the stove.

‘Papa?’ she asked.

‘Working late again,’ Avtar said.

‘Will you test me, bhaji? Please?’

‘Later, na.’

Navjoht shut his book and, sulking, went off to his parents’ room.

‘Why are you late? Get the table.’

Avtar dropped to his knees — ‘We have to go all the way to Chogawan now’ — and pulled the table out from under the sofa. ‘That kentiwallah’s gone to Dubai.’

Pointedly, his mother said nothing.

‘Mr Lal says Monty’s earning thousands every month.’

‘Mr Lal has a slick tongue. And why are they still living next door, then? Using a bucket for their soo-soo?’

‘He said there’s money in Toronto.’

‘Avtar, we’ve spoken about this. Roti’s roti no matter where you eat it.’

He moved to the balcony shower curtain, where his shadow loomed gigantically. His mother was still talking.

‘I saw Mrs Sanghera last week and even they are moving. Tomorrow. To Chandigarh.’

It was Avtar’s turn to remain silent. She added jeera to the pan and increased the flame.

‘You remember them? They used to live ten, twelve floors down. They moved to that new compound by Verka last year.’

‘Maybe.’

‘A son and three daughters. The eldest girl is pretty.’ A pause. ‘Lakhpreet. A little immature, maybe, but no matter. Girls grow up after marriage.’

Avtar looked across to his mother, chopping onions. So she knew.

‘I think your papa and I will go to bed early tonight.’

The Ganesh clock balanced between TV and wall said a little after eight when Avtar stole out of the flat and walked the three miles to the temple. She was waiting in the shadow of the main gate. Her salwaar kameez was blue, without embroidery or effect. Her hair she’d tied up and covered simply with a white chunni. For once, she wore neither make-up nor colour.

‘You nervous?’ he asked.

‘I’m impatient. Let’s do it.’

They slipped off their shoes and sandals and stepped through the shallow water trough. Before them, the gold temple sat in its medieval lake, the black liquid surface glimmering with grand reflections distorted by the complications of light on water. The marble was warm under their feet, and damp.

‘We should wash first,’ he said.

‘Fine.’

It was said with an edge of irritation. He knew she was only doing this because it was important to him, because he wanted them to make a promise before God.

‘So melodramatic!’ she’d said. ‘You don’t trust me.’

‘I just know what these Chandigarh goons are like. And I don’t want them anywhere near you.’ He took her in his arms. ‘I really do love you.’

‘And you? While I’m over there will you let anyone else near you?’

‘I’m only human,’ he’d said, and she’d blocked him in the ribs.

He watched her cross towards the female bathing room on the steps of the lake, ducking to enter. He took off his shirt and rolled his trousers above his knees. He went down the steps and into the lake and when he was waist-deep he reached under for the chain and walked further out until the water reached his neck and he could taste the salt on his lips. He held his breath and bent forward until the water covered him completely and then he rose back up and said the first verse of the japji sahib. He went under again, and again, until he had completed all five verses and then he returned, hand over hand on the red chain, shivering as he reached for his shirt. It was late, and the japji was a morning prayer, but what they were doing felt like a new beginning.

She emerged from the bathing room dressed, her face glistening sharp in the moonlight.

‘You ready?’ she called.

A widow in a white kameez handed them a bowl of prasad. The bowl was made of overlapping palm leaves and they held it between them and carried it up the marble pier and to the temple in the centre of the lake. Two men knelt praying on either side of the doorway. Avtar and Lakhpreet bowed their heads and said a small prayer before stepping over the threshold. The Guru Granth Sahib lay open on its bed of gold and glass. Avtar’s trousers still dripped water. He placed the offering at the granth’s feet and they folded onto their knees and touched their foreheads to the ground. Then they went slowly round the chamber and bowed their heads three more times, on each side of the granth. They left by the same door through which they’d entered, walked back down the marble pier, around the lake, and out of the large open gates.

‘Did you make the promise?’ Avtar asked.

‘I said I would and I did.’

‘But you’re sure? I’ll understand if you want to change your mind.’

She looked at him, her smooth forehead suddenly constricting. ‘Will you? Will you really? And what was the point of this if we’re just going to change our minds?’

‘I don’t want to force you.’

‘Uff, janum, you forget I want to marry you. Even with your romantic delusions. I just don’t think we needed to go through all this drama first.’

He nodded and, absurdly, thanked her.

She gave a little laugh. ‘So next year, after I finish my plus two, we’ll come back here and get married?’

‘I don’t think my family could afford it here.’

‘It doesn’t have to be here.’

They walked to Jalianwala Bagh Road and kissed for several minutes behind the gates to the museum, tongues thick, hips fighting. Then Avtar called over an idling auto-rickshaw. ‘PCO me when you arrive, acha?’

‘Try and come every month,’ she said and climbed into the ripped seats of the auto. She was looking away. He put his hand on her cheek and turned her face towards him. Her white chunni had fallen off her head and her eyes were brimming. He went round and gave the driver her address.

*

It was four in the morning and the peppermint-roofed government car was waiting outside. The truck with their furniture had gone on ahead. Randeep tried the bathroom door again.

‘Daddy, are you OK? Please just tell us if you’re all right. We’re getting worried.’

Behind Randeep, his mother said, ‘Remind him of all the people I had to beg for this chance at a new life.’

The handle turned, the door swung in and Randeep’s father stood there looking over their heads, his whole face quivering. He spread one hand along the frame and took a slow step forward. He stopped, looked down.

‘I can’t do this, Paramveer. I’m so sorry, dear.’

Mrs Sanghera unpinned her black shawl and arranged it around her husband’s shoulders. ‘You’re not going to be very warm in just that vest, are you?’

She took his hand in her own, an unfamiliar intimacy that forced Randeep to look away.

‘We’re all here with you. The car’s waiting right outside the compound. Shall we go together? One step at a time?’

He moved into the hall, head fixed straight at his feet.

‘That’s it. And I’m sorry for raising my voice.’

‘I deserve it. What kind of a man am I?’

She looked over her shoulder and told Randeep to make sure the last two Italian suitcases were packed and that his sisters were ready. ‘I’ll lock up.’

Randeep took the lift down, grabbing his college satchel from where it lay propped against the door. The night was clear and the compound gardens chippered with insects. Beyond the gate, the driver rested his hip against the door of the jeep, smoking a beedi. The suitcases were strapped to the roof and folded into the back were the twins, Ekam and Raji. He threw in his satchel and asked where Baby was.

He found her sitting on a child’s swing in a rubber-decked corner of the gardens. He peered over the iron railings and clinked his kara twice against the bars.

‘You ready?’

‘How’s Daddy?’

‘He’s coming. Mamma’s with him.’

She took a deep, galvanizing breath, as if about to meet her maker, and glided through the gardens, the gates and down to the jeep. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen her wear a salwaar kameez. Girls, he thought. Making a drama out of a simple move.

The doors to the apartment block opened and Mrs Sanghera led her husband out, holding both his hands and walking backwards, as if he were blindfolded. At the jeep, Randeep opened the door and could only watch sadly as his father scrambled inside. Mrs Sanghera told Baby to pass her father his beads.

‘Baby?’ And then, louder, ‘Lakhpreet?’

‘Sorry, Mamma?’

‘The beads.’

The driver flicked his beedi high and away, and Randeep watched the wire of orange light trace itself on the air. He got in the front and moved to roll down the window, then stopped, not sure how his father would react. The driver started the engine and asked sahib if they were ready. When his father didn’t reply, Randeep quickly said they were. An owl hooted.

‘Isn’t that meant to be good luck?’ Randeep asked brightly, into a general and moody silence.

Avtar gave up cleaning his bus’s windows — he seemed to be applying more dirt than he was removing — and whistled his way round the cells of parked buses towards the glass office at the back. The light was dingier here, brownish, and though it struggled to penetrate the smeary windows of the office, it did look as if that was Nirmalji sitting at his desk today. Avtar rolled down his sleeves and applied a hand to his chest — yes, his shirt was done up; yes, there was a pen in his pocket. He knocked on the open door.

‘Salaam, sahib.’

Nirmalji’s head rose from his rota book and he didn’t quite smile. In this pose of stillness he looked like his son: bearded, turbaned and small-eyed, full of neck and face, though with more gold rings on his hands than Harbhajan wore. Sreenath, another conductor, had packaged his neat Brahmin body onto the side bench. He was an eighty-plus bald gummy gossip who’d worked here longer than anyone else. A white tikka stippled with grains of rice seemed a more or less permanent feature of his forehead. Nirmalji spoke.

‘Son, I need you to be here next Sunday. The Chabba route.’

‘OK, sahib.’

‘I said that farm boy would not last long,’ Sreenath said. ‘These pindu-logh never do.’

Avtar sat beside Sreenath and while the old man shared his gutter tales — ‘They say he was seen leaving her room. .’ — Avtar mentally cancelled his trip to see Lakhpreet next Sunday. It had been the same last month. He wasn’t sure when they’d ever see each other again.

A roar sounded, startling Avtar onto his feet, and Harbhajan powered towards them on a red-and-chrome motorbike, popping the air with glints of light on metal. He snatched off his sunglasses, beaming as he walked to the office, calling for Avtar to come see, come see. He made it to the door before spying his father.

‘How come you’re here?’ Harbhajan said. There was a note of fear in his voice.

‘You’re late.’

‘I was buying my new bike.’

‘What nonsense is this?’

Harbhajan indicated to Avtar that they should get going.

‘You will take it back,’ Nirmalji said.

‘I’m not taking it back.’

This seemed to be how they always spoke to each other: a stiff, reproachful back-and-forth. Nirmalji walked out.

‘Family members must get paid more than the rest of us,’ Sreenath observed.

‘Oh, fuck off, you old fool,’ Harbhajan flashed and walked off too. Avtar heard the door of their bus being yanked open, then slamming shut.

Sreenath chuckled and started attacking his teeth with a toothpick. ‘Robbing his own father.’ He tutted. ‘I feel very sorry for Nirmalji. Don’t you?’

Avtar told the old man about the diversions he’d seen that morning around Circular Road and to take the Gobindgarh junction instead. If he was still doing that route.

Harbhajan didn’t say much on the road that week. He didn’t acknowledge the other bus drivers as they passed and responded only with a tight nod to the uncles and bibis who asked after his mother and father. During breaks between routes, he bought his meal from the Roti Dhal Stop and took it outside, alone. Avtar ate his food inside the restaurant, under the half-hearted whirr of a wire-mesh fan. He knew his friend’s sunken moods well enough and was waiting for the flare of madness that always followed them, like blood spreading through water.

They were finishing up one evening, Avtar counting and rubber-banding the takings, when Harbhajan held down the horn and an excessively violent sound erupted into the twilight. Avtar jumped, coins fell, and a man cycling home wobbled off his bike. Harbhajan flopped back, laughing. Avtar bent to retrieve the coins from under the seats.

‘Yaar, we’re going to a party next week. Friday night. Be ready.’

‘I’m busy,’ Avtar said.

‘You’re really not,’ and he clicked his fingers for the money. Avtar had no choice other than to hand it over, but as the lumpy mustard-coloured bag passed between them he felt uneasy.

‘Make sure you give it all to your father, acha? It’s my neck on the line if you don’t.’

‘Of course. What else am I going to do with it?’

No more was mentioned about the party, but after work on the appointed day Harbhajan arrived at the flat, bending to touch Avtar’s mother’s feet.

‘Ah, what a good boy. Aaja — come in.’

‘Next time, aunty. We’re late.’ Avtar drew the shower curtain aside and was coming through from the balcony as Harbhajan said, lied, ‘It’s my birthday. We thought we’d go for a burger-cola. Is that OK?’

They drove straight out of the city on Harbhajan’s new motorbike. The engine was fierce and Avtar gripped the metal handle behind him, feeling the warm air sear past, taking determined hold of his hair. For a minute he feared they were heading into Pakistan, but Harbhajan swerved east at the roundabout.

‘Where are we going?’ Avtar called.

‘You’ll see!’

He’d expected him to turn off the GT Road at Kapurthala — Harbhajan had been seeing a girl there — but he carried straight on and some ninety minutes after leaving Avtar’s flat they slowed into the flashy nightlife of Jalandhar. Toes on the ground, Harbhajan nosed the bike through the crowds and parked it among others at a leaning rack. Above them, Rainak Bazaar spun in neon revolutions, the k dimmed out.

Avtar stalled Harbhajan with a hand to the shoulder. ‘What’s the place called?’

‘1771.’

‘Blue?’

Harbhajan grinned and carried on.

The lane seemed to strip on for miles. Then, without warning, Harbhajan stopped and said he thought he’d missed it. He turned on his heel and saw the jeweller’s he’d apparently been looking for.

‘It wasn’t shuttered up last time.’

They snuck along the trickle of an alley down the side of the shop and at the end of this, several wider lanes branched into view. No light seemed to enter them.

‘Do you think it’s this way?’ Harbhajan said.

‘Yaar, I don’t think—’

His friend walked off and, exasperated, Avtar followed.

The window of the bar was black, with 1771 gold-stamped across in a cheap diagonal. The long downstrokes of the 7s morphed into a woman’s fishnetted legs. At the door, a man in a white kurta was talking sweetly into his phone of how glad he was they were getting married soon. Harbhajan clicked his fingers and showed the man some sort of card or ticket which allowed them up the stairs and through double doors with large porthole windows.

At first it seemed that there weren’t many people present — Avtar counted only three women and a man at the bar. The place felt strange and he realized there was no music, only sibilant conversations and smoky laughter, and these he traced to the unlit corners of the room, where women sat with the men who’d picked them up.

The man at the bar slid off his stool and with each step his smile widened and his arms opened out, as if feet and hands and mouth were all connected by some complicated puppetry. His wide-collared orange shirt looked crisp in the dim light, and his eyes were jittery green.

‘Driver sahib! I had a bet you would still come.’ He looked to one of the dark corners of the room, where a pair of slender female calves were closing around a leg wrapped in its tube of denim. ‘Rustom, you owe me. Our turbaned master has, after all, come.’ No response came from that quarter. ‘He’s busy,’ the man laughed.

‘This is my friend Avtar. Avtar, this is Venkatesh.’

Avtar said hi, but Venkatesh just kept smiling at Harbhajan. ‘What would you like to drink, friend? Anything you want. Anything.’

There was a slight rounding out of Harbhajan’s shoulders as he said, ‘You know what I want. Get it me.’

Venkatesh beamed, as if he’d expected to have to work harder than this. ‘As you wish, huzoor. They are all upstairs.’

‘I’ll be ten minutes, yaar,’ Harbhajan said, eyes fixed on a door at the back of the room. ‘Will you wait for me?’

‘What’s upst—?’

Venkatesh said that of course Avtar would wait and, in fact, Sonya would look after him, won’t you, baby? With that, Harbhajan strode for the door, Venkatesh rushing on behind like a little meerkat, and somehow Avtar was left standing in the centre of the floor, alone.

He moved to the end of the bar, away from the girls, and sat with arms folded on the gleaming black of the counter, his legs right-angled around a corner. He looked at his watch and decided to give it twenty minutes. Then he’d go and drag him out. It was drugs, obviously. The stupid idiot had got himself sick on drugs.

Twenty minutes came and went and then a further ten, and now again Avtar checked his watch. Another five, he decided. He sat there tapping his thumbnails together, pinching back the cuticles. One of the girls eased smoothly onto the stool beside him. She placed her glamorous purse carefully on the bar and just as carefully crossed her legs and put both hands on her knees, below where her red skirt stopped. She had big curls and pink lipstick that made her already sullen face look even more so.

‘I’ll have a Mumbai Sling.’

‘I’ve no money.’

‘Why did you come here with no money?’

‘Why did you?’

She unclipped and unzipped her purse and held up a plastic card. ‘What will you have?’

He shook his head.

‘Does my money offend you?’

‘Not your money. How you earn it.’

‘Good. So what will you have? I have orders to look after you.’

He said nothing, then asked, ‘Is Sonya your real name?’

‘Harinderjeet.’

‘A good name. A strong name.’

He could see her face in the bar’s surface, frowning as she returned the card to her purse. ‘Is Sonya not a nice name?’

He felt her leaning in.

‘A sexy name?’

He flinched away. She laughed.

‘Are you a pindu farm boy? Because they’re usually the disgusted ones. Either they rush on their clothes and run out or they stand there telling me how ashamed I make them feel, how if I was their sister they’d definitely beat me. . Strange boys.’

‘If you were my sister I’d feel ashamed, too. But only a coward would hit a woman.’

‘Ah, so you are a pindu.’

‘I’m just an honest and hard-working Indian.’

She sighed, as if bored. ‘You say that as if you’re the only one.’

He looked at his watch, then around the room again. Nothing had changed. ‘Who’s up there?’

She shrugged. ‘Could be anyone. Maybe even your sister.’

He slid off the stool and went round the bar and through the door. A short flight of lavishly carpeted stairs brought him to a second entrance beyond which he could hear the undefined mangle of music and chatter. The guard dozed in his chair so Avtar shouldered through the surprisingly heavy door and into what looked like a slapdash gambling den. There were flimsy card tables covered in threadbare green, and matka stands and shoot-’em-up video games and a tribe of college-looking boys intent on the money machines. He could hear other accents — UK, American — brought here by their desi cousins in a bid to impress. He saw Venkatesh first, slumped against the jukebox, head lolling low. He looked asleep. Avtar shook his shoulder hard, and slowly, as if it were a giant weight, Venkatesh rolled up his head. His eyes had lost their shimmer and as he slewed his head from side to side, gibbering, he looked amused to have found Avtar standing there.

He looked in the toilets, then did another circuit of the room, locating Harbhajan behind one of the leatherette settees, curled up like a baby. He tried waking him, but there was no point, so he hefted him up by the armpits and secured an arm around his waist. The idiot’s topknot swung loosely around his head, coming undone.

‘Where-is-your-pugri?’

Harbhajan closed his eyes, dreamily, and slopped his face onto Avtar’s shoulder. He found the keys to the motorbike in Harbhajan’s pocket and shoved them into his own jeans. Then he carried him out, down the stairs and through the lanes until, two hours later, they arrived at the bike. He arranged Harbhajan on the seat, then niftily, without letting go of his friend, sat down himself.

‘Just keep hold of me acha, yaar? Don’t let go.’

He got the engine going at the third kick and turned a few dials until an amber cone struck up before him. He said a quick prayer and haltingly, wobblingly, moved forward.

The journey back took three times as long as the journey there. Twice Avtar turned off the GT Road and made a detour through the villages because a passing autowallah warned there were police checks up ahead. So it was close to 3 a.m. when he entered Harbhajan’s neighbourhood and braked outside a fish-and-liquor dhaba. He asked the owner to bring out a coffee and forced Harbhajan to drink it. It made no difference. Outside the black gates of Nirmalji’s house, Avtar killed the engine. He wiped both their faces with the hem of his shirt — he hadn’t realized how much he was sweating — and coaxed his friend from the saddle. Avtar had to hold him upright.

‘Arré, giani, come on.’ He slapped him. ‘We’re home. Look.’

Harbhajan opened one yellow eye, shunted Avtar away and veered back down the road, careering across the asphalt. Avtar caught up, his hands on Harbhajan’s shoulders to try and still him. ‘Home.’

His yellow eyes weren’t blinking and with his beard and long girlish ringlets he looked like a madman haranguing the night. ‘I hate it. I hate him. I hate him.’ He sprinted to the gates, crashing into them, then looked up into the sky, his mouth pulled into an ugly stretch, and screamed, ‘I hate you! I hate you!’ He kicked the gates — ‘I hate you! I hate you!’ — and the iron shook and clanged. The more Avtar tried to restrain him, the louder Harbhajan screamed. ‘I hate you! I hate you!’ Lights came on in the neighbouring houses and the large balcony window in Harbhajan’s own house lit up too. Nirmalji appeared, tightening his dressing gown resentfully as he came down the path. Harbhajan’s arm extended through the bars, pointing, identifying. ‘You! I hate you! I hate you!’

‘Where is your turban?’ Nirmalji said.

‘I hate you!’

Nirmalji found his key and forced the lock open. ‘That bhanchod chowkidar,’ he muttered. ‘Avtar, would you take him to his room, please?’

‘Is everything OK, Nirmal Sahib?’ a voice asked from behind. A neighbour. ‘Is that young Hari?’

‘It’s fine, thank you. High spirits only.’

Harbhajan quietened as soon as they were away from his father. Now he complained of feeling sleepy.

Harbhajan’s mother was standing inside the front door. She was a short, dutiful-looking woman, her eyes puffy, as if she’d been crying. Avtar had never met her before. He touched her feet, then with his fist at Harbhajan’s back drove him into the house. ‘Aunty, can you tell me where. .?’

‘It’s the third door on the second floor, beita.’

Avtar steered Harbhajan towards the marble staircase. He kept his eyes down. He felt embarrassed by how much they had. The huge dining table, the leather sitting suites. Two just-glimpsed servants exchanging looks. Harbhajan kept on wanting to turn back, saying he’d left something at the tiger’s house. ‘We’ll pick it up tomorrow,’ Avtar said and that seemed to placate him.

The bed was square and plain and stranded in the centre of the room. The left-side wall was taken up with a fish tank, the fish dingily aglow in the low blue murk. Avtar sat Harbhajan on the end of the bed and removed his shoes and socks for him, and then Harbhajan flipped over and scrambled under the covers. Soon he was snoring gently. Avtar stood up, hands on hips, relieved. The window behind the bed had a deep ledge and balanced on it was an unframed black-and-white headshot of a younger, preoccupied-looking Harbhajan, cheek scrunched up against his fist. Next to it, a fizzled-out joss stick, some rupees, dried-up marigolds to one side. Maybe his mother was conducting prayers for him.

Back downstairs Nirmalji and his wife were standing by the dining table, talking quietly. She was shaking her head.

Avtar said that he would bring the motorbike in now, if that was all right.

‘Were you with him all night?’ Nirmalji asked.

‘Yes, sahib.’

‘Did you take drugs also?’

His wife let out an anguished groan. Avtar didn’t know what to say and in the end mumbled, ‘I don’t know.’

‘How much is he stealing from the company?’

‘I don’t know, sahib.’

‘So you do know he is stealing?’

‘I don’t know, sahib.’ His voice getting quieter now.

He could feel the threat, because he knew the rich were the kind of people who find fault with the pet and not the leash.

‘I’ve never cheated you, sahib. I do my job well.’ Maybe Nirmalji was annoyed that the neighbours had all seen. ‘I would have taken him to a hotel but you know how people talk. I thought you would want him home.’

‘You did the right thing. Under the circumstances.’ Then: ‘Go. Leave the bike where it is.’ He turned to his wife. ‘Wake Satram.’

‘I can walk, sahib.’

‘You’ll go in the car. Your parents must be worried. Have you called. .?’ But he stopped, perhaps thinking they were too poor even to own a phone and he’d only be embarrassing the boy. In fact, Avtar had called earlier in the evening and spoken to his mother and said that they’d had a puncture, it was late, and he’d be staying at Harbhajan’s house tonight.

Avtar walked out the front door and into the garden and through the gates. He felt guilty and he wasn’t sure what he’d done to feel guilty about. He kicked a stone hard and it went prancing off down the road. The car pulled up and the window wound down and a man with a droopy moustache and tired eyes told him to get in and shut up. Driving young bhanchod layabouts around in the middle of the night. As if he didn’t have better things to do.

*

At work, he assumed driving duties with old Sreenath as his conductor. The wrinkled Brahmin seemed to know everyone and he’d sit there on his fold-down seat and welcome passengers in, exclaiming how nice it was to see Keshav again, and Rana Bhai, and — be still my heart — Namrata Devi, too? How is the hip these days, sister?

Avtar brought his knees up to the steering wheel, fingering absent-minded circles into the flaky window dirt. He wished he’d gone into Nirmalji’s office when he’d had the chance yesterday and demanded to know if his job was in danger. All this not knowing was making him feel ill. He closed his eyes and heard Lakhpreet’s voice from the night before, saying she was sorry for being mad that he couldn’t come again this month, and that she loved him and would see him soon. Opening his eyes, Avtar felt suddenly certain everything would be all right.

As he was pulling into the depot that evening, he saw Harbhajan’s motorbike, and then Harbhajan himself in the office, feet up and paging through a newspaper in a bored way. Avtar locked the wheels left and parked at the end of the line, making himself invisible. He couldn’t afford to be friends with him any longer.

Sreenath flicked his toothpick to the floor. ‘You are doing right. When father and son are firing bullets at each other, don’t get caught in the crossfire.’

‘I’ve not done anything wrong.’

‘He’s stealing from the workers’ funds. Someone will have to pay.’

Avtar looked helplessly at the old man. ‘But I’ve not done anything wrong.’

‘Some drivers are saying they’ll strike if the duffer doesn’t do something. No one would have dared strike when I was young. Strange how times change.’

‘It’s not fair. He’s just looking for someone else to blame.’

Sreenath twisted his hand, as if to say, Who knew? ‘But it’s your own fault. Plain mouths and rich food. Indigestion is inevitable, no?’

Harbhajan finally caught up with him as Avtar was exiting the rent-collector’s house one morning. ‘O-ho!’ he shouted, pulling Avtar into a half-hug. His eyes looked heavy and he wore a black patka instead of his usual turban. Avtar guessed he’d not slept all night. Perhaps not been home, either.

‘See how good my memory is? See how I remember which day you come here?’

Avtar shrugged him off. ‘I need to get to work.’

‘Tsk! Wait a minute, yaara. Where have you been hiding?’

‘No one’s hiding. You know where I live.’

Harbhajan ignored this. Maybe he felt too ashamed to meet Avtar’s parents. ‘How’s old Sreenath?’ He made his mouth gummy, mimicking: ‘When the rainbow comes, the storm isn’t far behind.’

Avtar frowned. ‘I’ll be late.’

‘I’ll drop you off.’

Avtar carried on walking. Harbhajan blocked him off.

‘I’ll drop you off in my car.’ And he turned Avtar around and pointed to the gleaming red Honda City parked twenty yards up the road. Already, a couple of schoolboys had stopped to admire it. Avtar stormed off. Again, Harbhajan caught up.

‘What’s the matter, yaar? Did you see it? Let’s go.’

He pushed Harbhajan in the chest. ‘You stealing, sister-fucking bastard. I need my job. Do you understand? We can’t live without my job.’

Harbhajan looked hurt. ‘Why the filmi drama, friend? It’s just fun. We’re just having some fun.’

‘Don’t. Not with my life.’

Slowly the silence deflated and Harbhajan said, ‘Let’s go tonight. Wherever you want. Let’s go see your girl. I’ll drive you.’ Before he’d even finished Avtar was walking away, shaking his head.

Four days later he asked Nirmalji when he might be able to take a day off and one week after that he was with Harbhajan on their way to Chandigarh in the red Honda City. He’d not wanted to go like this. When he’d got off the phone to Lakhpreet the previous week he’d looked in his wallet and calculated that after giving his parents enough to cover the rent and monthly gas bill he had just enough for the return bus fare and a day in Chandigarh: he’d have to walk instead of using the scooter for a few days, that was all. But then in the morning his mother said she was going to the temple. She wanted to make a donation in Navjoht’s name and Avtar, as the boy’s elder brother, had to contribute.

‘But the exams are finished. You can’t change the results now.’

‘Don’t make questions, beita. He’s worked so hard.’

He handed over half of what he had and left for work. Twice over the next few days he’d nearly called Lakhpreet and said he couldn’t come. In the end, he dialled Harbhajan. Don’t tell anyone, he’d said on the phone, and this he now repeated as the smug-looking ‘Welcome to Chandigarh’ sign loomed fast towards them.

‘Arré, relax. We’re having a fun day out, that’s all.’

Harbhajan beamed, his smile elastic under the wraparound shades, and they sped into the precisely gardened city, where the cars looked official, government-sanctioned, and the men and women on scooters wore small Sixties helmets.

They parked in the shallow forecourt of Mega Mall and Avtar stepped out into the soft sunshine. It was a white marblesque building with intimidating black doors, a row of potted yellow trees flanking both sides of the entrance.

‘Is she here?’ Harbhajan asked.

‘We’re early.’

‘In that case,’ Harbhajan said, opening the boot. He returned with a palmful of red worm-like things. ‘Take some, na.’

The balloons came up crinkled and heart-shaped. Some had a picture of teddy bears. Avtar looked dubiously at Harbhajan, who passed him some string.

‘To tie them to the car. I’ll have my fun at Geri Route.’

Avtar didn’t ask. It was enough that he wasn’t going to be around when Lakhpreet arrived.

Through the automatic doors, he took the central escalator which fed him into a burger place. She wasn’t there. He ordered a Thums Up and took a seat by the window so she might see him easily. There were only four or five others at this hour: a couple in office clothes holding hands over a briefcase, and a few other men dotted politely about, a bottle and straw at their lips. The ventilation whirred and stopped, whirred and stopped.

He saw her materializing layer by layer up the escalator. Her hair, her eyes, her mouth and neck, chest, hands, her legs. She looked anxious, winding the end of her green chunni in and out of her hands. Then she saw him, and smiled. She stroked his shoulder as she passed and took the seat opposite. He sat down too — when had he stood? — and turned his dark-brown hand palm up on the table. She placed her fairer hand in his.

They spoke of nothing for a while, or at least nothing that Avtar could later remember. He’d felt a little light-headed at seeing her again. They ordered two more drinks and Avtar asked for a burger each as well. She said to forget the burger — it was too expensive here — but that only made him more determined to have one. The food arrived.

‘Where’s your friend?’ she asked.

‘He’s gone to Geri Route. With balloons.’

She gave a gorgeous little laugh. ‘If he’s gone to find girls, it’s too early. The balloons will go to waste.’

‘Oh, he’ll find some way to have fun.’

She swivelled her Thums Up, the glass bottle dancing unpredictably on the table. ‘This is a very boring city, janum. Old people and government types only. There is no fun. I miss doing things. Going to the cinema, boating on the river.’ She smiled at him. ‘And other things with you.’

He asked how her father was. She said nothing. Her mood changed. He wished he’d not mentioned it.

‘He’s given up. I don’t know how long we can keep him.’

He said that God would find a way through and she frowned and said she hoped He’d find it soon.

‘It’s the crying. He cries so much. At night especially. And I know he can’t help it but I just want to scream at him.’

‘Your mamma? How is she?’

She shook her head. ‘And Randeep’s at college so it’s just me and Mummy trying to stop him from doing anything crazy all night.’

As their tray was collected, she asked him when they could get married. Avtar coughed and waited for the waiter to leave. ‘Where would we live? On my mamma-papa’s balcony?’

‘I wouldn’t mind. It’d be fun. It’d be an adventure.’

‘It wouldn’t. And I want to be able to afford a small hut for us both at least.’

‘By the lake, maybe.’

‘With mountains in the background.’

‘Ducks outside?’

‘And a little pink pig.’

‘Oh! To keep as a pet?’

‘To eat.’

‘No!’ And she laughed hard, ponytail swishing side to side. ‘You know, my friends think it’s so romantic what we’re doing. They’re so jealous.’

‘You’ve told your friends we’re getting married?’

‘Shouldn’t I have done?’

He wasn’t sure. ‘I suppose we never agreed not to tell anyone.’

‘Oh, but I want to tell the world!’ She brought her thumbs together and rested her lovely dimpled chin on them. ‘How long, janum?’

‘I don’t know, honestly. It’s so tough right now. Papa’s not doing well.’

She looked alarmed, in a slightly theatrical way. ‘What’s the matter?’

‘I mean, the shop. Business is slow. Has been for a long time. Everywhere is slow right now.’

She sighed, nodded. ‘So many boys are going abroad these days.’

‘You want me to go abroad?’

She made a cute puck of her mouth. ‘I don’t know. How long for?’

‘A year, maybe. I have thought about it. A lot.’

‘And maybe then, if you earned enough, we could have a bigger wedding. With all our family and friends. And a bigger house to live in.’

‘Maybe.’

‘As long as you come back. Some boys never do.’

He said of course he’d come back. He needed to.

‘And me? Don’t I need you?’ She leaned in, head to one side, eyes intent. He could see down her kameez, to her breasts. ‘Don’t you need me?’

They left the mall and Avtar used the last of his money to rent a cheap hotel room. An hour later she freed herself from his limbs and said she had better go. He pulled her back down, needing her mouth again, and it was a full hour more before she could finally reach for her clothes.

Harbhajan wasn’t answering his phone. Forty minutes passed, fifty, one hour and then two. He should have known Harbhajan would do this. The mall chowkidar came by, swinging his lathi. He asked Avtar what he was up to.

‘Waiting for my friend, sahib.’

‘You can wait by the road. Business people come here. Foreign types.’

At the roadside, Avtar snapped off his denim jacket and sat on it with his arms square around his knees. Still no sign. The sun pressed down on his eyelids and soon he fell asleep. When he looked up again, blinking, the red Honda was there. Harbhajan was some feet away taking a piss into one of the potted trees. Avtar stood up.

‘What happened to the balloons?’ he asked, as his friend walked back, zipping up.

Harbhajan stared at his car. ‘Oh yeah.’

There was a sort of empty pressure in his eyes. Avtar said he’d better drive but Harbhajan got in and started the engine, revved it. Avtar hadn’t even closed the door and they were speeding off.

They jumped lights and joined the trunk road.

‘Slow down,’ Avtar said. Harbhajan stared ahead, top teeth biting his lip and arm straight at the wheel, as if in a brace. Cars dodged out of their way. ‘Hari, slow down.’

‘Does your father hate you, Avtar?’

‘Don’t think like that.’

‘That’s not what I asked.’

A green-and-red lorry came honking towards them. Harbhajan veered onto the dirtroad and they felt the car shake as the lorry rumbled past.

‘Does your girl love you?’

‘Hari.’

‘Does life bring you joy?’

Avtar looked out of the window. The fields merged. He turned to the front and saw three cars barrelling down. Harbhajan let out a wild laugh and swerved left where a concrete stump seemed to jump out of the ground. The air filled with crushing metal and the car lurched, then stopped. Harbhajan sat there looking at the steering wheel. Avtar put a hand on his shoulder and a short while later the young man in the turban began to sob.

Night fell. Maybe the electronics weren’t working because the chowkidar had to apply his back to the bars and push the gates open. Avtar drove slowly in. On the porch, under the security light, Nirmalji was waiting in a regal-looking shawl. He had his hands behind his back. Avtar got out of the car and made his sahib-salaams. He was helping Harbhajan to his feet when the driver who’d taken Avtar home that one time shoved him aside and near-carried Harbhajan indoors. Avtar watched his friend dragged into the house, the driver closing the door behind them. It was several seconds until he summoned the courage to turn and look at Nirmalji: only briefly, for Avtar’s gaze dropped reflexively down and rested somewhere around his employer’s knees.

‘You got my message, sahib?’

Nirmalji said he had and that the doctor was inside so not to worry.

‘I think it is a sprained knee only.’

‘Did you know he bought the car with stolen money?’

‘Some ice. My mamma would put some ice on it.’

‘You knew he was stealing from the workers’ funds. Everyone knows that is what he is doing. I have to take action.’

Avtar felt sick. He was determined not to cry. He carried on talking. ‘The radiator, sahib. I had to keep filling it up.’ He showed his blackened hands and wrists as if providing evidence.

‘They’re angry, the workers. And when workers are angry they do silly things like revolt.’ His voice lost its soft edges. ‘They need to know I won’t tolerate that. You cannot be weak in this world. Do you understand?’

‘Please, sahib, forgive my mista—’

‘Chup! Don’t embarrass yourself. Don’t be weak.’

Avtar looked at the hard, thankless ground.

‘I’ll give you a month’s pay. That is the best I will do.’

‘Please, sahib,’ and Avtar started the move onto his knees. Maybe he felt that was what he was expected to do.

‘Get up immediately,’ Nirmalji commanded. ‘Do not ever bow down before a man. Not anyone. Is that understood?’

Avtar nodded, swallowed. He heard the older man sigh, saw his heavy gut rise and fall.

‘I am doing you a favour, son. Go abroad. Follow the others. It’s too hard for boys like you in this benighted country. Abroad you might stand a chance.’

Avtar said nothing. He kept looking down. At least there was no danger of tears.

Nirmalji walked him to the gates and handed him his wages, plus some. Avtar managed a faint thank you and with a subtle declination of the head Nirmalji conveyed that it was time for Avtar to leave.

At the brass tap behind Gardenia Villas, he washed the grime from his hands and wrists as best he could. Then he made the long climb to the flat and waited outside the front door. The moon was high and caged beyond the thickly tubed windows of the stairwell. He could hear the TV in Mr Lal’s next door. He turned the handle and went inside. His mother was at the stove, fiercely stirring. On the sofa, his brother read from a loosely stapled pamphlet of some sort, in English. Their father listened, smiling but clearly not understanding.

‘Tari’s back,’ his father said, sounding relieved. ‘Where have you been? Your brother got his marks.’

‘I’m making prasad,’ his mother said.

‘Top five per cent,’ their father said. ‘Top five!’

‘God listened.’

Navjoht turned back to the front page. ‘Shall I start again, Papa? Now bhaji’s here?’

Their father hesitated. Avtar swept his hand through his brother’s hair and sat gingerly on the precarious armrest of their sofa. He felt something behind his back and pulled round a brown parcel. It had the green stamp of his father’s shop, above that in green ink his mother’s name, and at some point it had also been tied with green string. Now it lay ripped open, and folded inside was a red and very beautiful Jamawar shawl, the kind that he knew took many weeks to make by hand. Months, if you only had an hour or two each night after the shop had closed. He put it aside and decided that, no, he wouldn’t say anything tonight.

‘Beita, can you get some barfi? Is he still open? I want to take it to the gurdwara tomorrow. Ask your papa for some money.’

Avtar stood and said Nadeem would be closed but he’d find some somewhere else. He stepped over the urine bucket.

‘The money,’ his mother said.

‘I’ve enough,’ and he closed the door and started down the stairs.

His father’s postings meant the family moved around a lot. Chandigarh was the latest. It was the ninth city Randeep had lived in and in each city they’d changed residence at least once, so he must have had more than twenty different addresses by now. More than his age — seventeen. His early years were in the south and east of the country — Tiruchirappalli, Bangalore, Nellore, Bhubaneshwar — then, when his naniji was dying, his mother insisted they head closer to home: Delhi, Pathankot, Ludhiana, Amritsar and now Chandigarh. He’d liked Bhubaneshwar the most, and often remembered the six months on the outskirts of the city, in a compound of thatched white cottages, as the best years of his whole life. He’d been about twelve and for the first time made some friends — two boys from the neighbouring village — and they’d given the entire summer to playing cricket in the village grounds. One day, Randeep promised himself, he’d return.

The bell sounded — shrill, constant — and he packed away his unopened books and moved to the windows of the library, looking down. From all sides of the pillared quad students spilled out of the doors, chattering, filling the square until it was all pigtails and schoolish greys and blues. Jaytha was at the centre of her group of girlfriends, head thrown back, neck lushly exposed, laughing. He watched until she vanished out of the quad. Then he returned to his room to pick up his suitcase.

He went home every weekend. It was only an hour on the local Sutlej bus but by the time he alighted and dragged the wheels of his battered suitcase over the rocky ground, darkness had fallen like a shutter. He got into the nearest auto and asked for the government flats in Madhya Marg.

‘DIT side?’ the driver asked, turning the thing around.

‘Sector side, please.’

At Building 3B on Santa Cruz Drive, the resident chowkidar in his old peacock hat saluted and opened the door. Randeep took the lift and outside flat 188 he removed his shoes because the sound of footsteps in the hall had once made his father panic terribly.

That night, as he was watching TV with Lakhpreet, she asked him if he knew any boys who’d gone abroad. How easy was it?

‘How would I know?’ he said.

‘But is it expensive?’

He shrugged. ‘Who wants to go abroad?’

She shook her head. ‘No one. A friend.’

‘Tell her it won’t be all shopping and playing in the park.’

He flicked through to the news and then to a yoga class.

‘Has Daddy done his exercises this week?’

She nodded.

‘How’s he been?’

‘Same same.’

‘I wish I was here more to help,’ he said, but he knew he didn’t mean it, and her silence told him that she knew it too.

On Saturdays, the twins had their classical dance lesson followed by violin practice — or maybe it was piano these days — so when Randeep emerged showered and dressed from the bathroom they were kissing their father goodbye and disappearing out of the door. Then Lakhpreet said she was going — off to meet friends. The door slammed to a close and it was just Randeep and his parents in the light-filled room. The only sound was the hum of the squat grey fridge.

‘A long time you spent in the bathroom,’ his father said, not looking up from the newspaper laid out flat on the coffee table. ‘Avoiding us?’

‘Of course not,’ he said, and as if to prove this came and sat beside his father.

He was a long, thin man, made to appear even taller in his white kurta robes. People spoke of him as being noble, intelligent, with sharp, questioning eyes. Nothing got past Sanghera Sahib. He was starting to grey and, reading his paper with deliberate slowness, looked exactly how people expected a senior government manager to look on a lazy summer morning. He’d shaved, too, Randeep noticed, which was a good sign. Mrs Sanghera darted about the kitchen. Cleaning, wiping, washing the steel and plastic cutlery, wondering out loud why-oh-why they didn’t have a maid. She asked Randeep if he preferred eggs or paratha and he said he’d have some Tiger Flakes later. Then she placed two chalky pink pills and a steel tumbler of water beside her husband’s elbow and left for the bedroom.

‘How’s school?’

‘College. Good. The board exams are soon.’

His father nodded. ‘NIT would be good.’

‘If I get the ranking.’

‘Isn’t that why we pay the fees?’ His father closed the paper, folded it twice, then picked it up and slapped it back down on the table again. ‘These right-wing loons are taking over the country.’

His mother reappeared, dressed hastily in a white-and-yellow salwaar kameez. Her eyes went to the pills, still untouched. Then: ‘Will you come with me? You’re expected.’

‘Next time. Take Randeep.’

‘But I want to stay with you,’ Randeep said.

‘You mean you’re too scared to leave me on my own for a few hours?’ He wiped his hand across the table, palming up the pills, and dropped them into his mouth. He drank the water. ‘There. I feel better already. Don’t I look better?’

Mrs Sanghera said she’d be back by lunchtime — it was an akhand paat — but he had their number and there were two vegetable patties in the fridge if they got hungry. Then she kissed Randeep’s forehead and picked up a gold box of mithai from on top of the fridge.

Later, while his father napped, Randeep took a textbook into the shade of the balcony. He set aside his mother’s plant pots and sat against the whitewashed wall and made a lectern of his lap. With a faint groan, he began to read — absent-mindedly, half-heartedly — and soon the benzene rings on the smudged paper of his chemistry textbook dissolved and reconstituted themselves into images of Jaytha. He wondered what to say to her when they next met — on the way to morning assembly, most likely, as long as this time he remembered that she walked via the mural on Mondays. And he should definitely ask after her bhabhi. As if on the breeze, a feeling of shame came over him. He didn’t know why he was like this. He wished he could be more easy-going about these things. Less calculating. Less like one of those crazed stalkies.

‘Shall we go for a walk?’

Startled, Randeep looked up: his father, in trousers and clean half-sleeved shirt, hair combed. ‘Daddy?’

‘I feel like going for a walk.’

Randeep pocketed the apartment keys as they exited the lift. The old chowkidar saluted — ‘Good morning, Sanghera Sahib’ — and opened the big glass door for them. Beyond the compound gates, they started down the chunky pink pavement of Santa Cruz Drive. The road was measured in trees, one following the other, orange blossoming through the leafgreen.

‘Are you sure you won’t be cold?’

His father didn’t reply, just kept on ahead, chin tilted up to the day.

They passed under the bramble archway of Zakir Garden, which was no more than a flat expanse of shrubs — mostly roses — with a fenced-off pond in the middle. North of the pond, at the sunken bandstand, some sort of trumpet group seemed to be rehearsing. Randeep suggested they go back but his father said not to be silly, that there was a lovely quiet enclosure right by the eastern gate.

Mr Sanghera was right. A short walk up the path, a gap in the hedgerow revealed a secluded little garden: primrose, thistle, yellow jacobinia, more roses, and, in large clay pots guarded by bees, virgin-white rajanigandha twined with ice plants of the most intimate pink. At the centre of it all was a cheap and bow-legged red plastic bench.

‘Let’s sit,’ his father said.

Though the hedges were high, the sun had risen and Randeep removed his sandals and wriggled his toes in the warmth. They used to do this all the time. Spending hours together. They’d talk about music or God or the state of the country. Mostly, his father did the talking. He was a great fan of Urdu poetry and would recite lines from Bahu or Bulleh Shah, testing Randeep to see if he’d understood the meaning. No, the deeper meaning, son. Always search for the deeper meaning. There was one that Randeep had especially liked, about wafa and khata. Loyalty and error and how one followed the other. How did it go? He couldn’t remember. Perhaps now would be a good time to ask.

‘Your mother and I would come here. We’d listen to the Christian Harmony String Quartet playing Schubert at the bandstand and then we’d come here.’

‘Explains our balcony. Mamma must be trying to replicate this garden.’

‘I wonder if they’re still playing.’

‘The band?’

His father nodded. His legs were crossed at the knees, hands clasped loosely in his lap. ‘How is school?’

‘It’s still college and you asked me that already.’

‘I know I did. I’m not going mad. So this time give me a proper answer. Are we meeting anyone?’

‘Daddy!’

‘Uff, Randeep, you’ll be eighteen soon. Be an adult.’

‘But I thought I’d always be your little boy?’

‘That’s just something parents say when it suits us.’

Randeep smiled. ‘There is someone. Jaytha.’

‘Sounds Hindu.’

He said she was. ‘And she’s from the smaller castes.’

‘Your mother would have a problem with that. But problems are a long way off yet. First — is she pretty?’

‘Very much.’

‘And how long?’

‘Not long. A month. Bit less. We’re still getting to know each other.’

He wished he could stop the words, these lies that came too easy. But however much he hated the untruths, he felt better for them, too. They seemed to allow a different version of himself to be presented to the world.

‘Well, I wish you the best of luck.’

It was an oddly formal sentence, said with something like finality Randeep looked down and retracted his feet from the warmth of the sun. Mr Sanghera laughed.

‘Don’t worry. I meant it. I’m not going mad. Many years ahead.’ Then, more seriously, ‘I will beat this. You will get your father back.’

Randeep extended his arm along the bench and cradled his father’s shoulders, which were as narrow as his own.

But the trumpet band seemed to have neared, and Randeep grew alarmed. He ducked through the gap in the hedgerow: the musicians, in red-and-white, were circuiting the park.

‘Shall we go?’ he said, trying not to sound anxious.

‘Slow down,’ said his father. ‘You worry too much. You always did.’

‘It’s only that Mamma will be back. I didn’t even leave a message.’

‘Call her, then.’

A couple dawdled towards them, sharing an ice cream. Randeep was veering left to avoid a collision when the woman called out, ‘Sangheraji? Oh, I thought it was you. How wonderful!’

She unlinked elbows with her partner and came rushing up, waving a little hysterically, a sixty-something with a bob cut and a short summer dress.

‘How are you?’ she asked, with heavy concern. ‘We missed you last week. The office wasn’t the same.’

He saw his father force a smile, and the band rounding the corner.

‘Dolan said you fell?’

‘Nothing serious. A minor act.’

She smiled with excessive slowness, as if she knew he was lying. ‘Is this your son? He’s even taller than you! A chipped block, is he not?’

The band was closing in, the trumpets shrieking on the air. Randeep looked down and saw his father’s hand shaking in his pocket, his face emptying. The woman said something else, then turned to her partner and laughed. Mr Sanghera closed his eyes. He seemed to be struggling to breathe.

Randeep took hold of his father’s elbow. ‘Let’s go, Daddy.’

The woman gave a smile of confusion as he tried to drag his father on, but now the band was marching past, the air full of brass, and Mr Sanghera clasped the side of his head and fell to his knees.

‘Is everything OK?’ the woman asked. ‘Charlie’s a physician.’

Back home, his father cried angry tears and turned chairs over, banging his fists on the walls. ‘What is wrong with everyone?’ he shouted. ‘What is wrong with you all?’

Randeep crashed down blinds, shuttered windows. Mrs Sanghera followed her husband through the darkened flat with a glass of water and two more pills.

‘Get away from me!’ he flashed. ‘You’re trying to kill me. Don’t think I can’t see it. You’re all trying to kill me.’

‘How can you say that? I’m your wife!’

He picked up a fallen chair and launched it against the wall.

‘Stop this! Please! You’re behaving like a child!’

When the doorbell rang the flat was still in darkness. Mr Sanghera sat in his red armchair. Classical music played on the stereo, as advised by the doctors: something he associates with a more peaceful state of mind, they’d said. Snatching up her chunni, Mrs Sanghera answered the door. It was their neighbour. She said she’d heard crying and thought she’d check if everything was all right.

‘Everything’s fine. Thank you.’

In the kite-shaped hallway mirror Randeep saw the woman trying to look in, and his mother blocking her off.

‘I was sure I heard. . Are the children all right?’

‘The children are wonderful. The girls are out for their dance classes.’ He heard his mother sigh, then, with no great zeal, begin the battle. ‘Did I tell you the twins got their kathak level fives? Can’t be long until Lata achieves too, no? Two years she’s been trying?’

‘Three.’

‘Ah, yes. Three. And Randeep’s here this weekend. NIT next year, with God’s will.’

The door closed and his mother returned, looking strangely drained. ‘The things I do to make sure people say nice things about our family.’ It seemed to Randeep that none of the women enjoyed these encounters. It was all part of a bigger wheel that the world wouldn’t allow them to step off.

The girls arrived home together, excitedly, until the atmosphere in the flat chopped short their laughter. The twins made straight for their room, silver ankle-bells tinkling, and Lakhpreet took off her wrap and unbuckled the thin green belt around her dress. She lifted the dough from the fridge and slapped it onto the kitchen counter.

‘I can’t cook in this dark,’ she said, but the only response she got seemed to come from the CD player, where the strings began to subside and with a mighty click the whole thing stopped.

*

Randeep finished unpacking the wretched suitcase and kicked it underneath his college bed. He sat on the tight cotton sheet, elbows on knees and fingertips to fingertips, looking through the circle of his hands at a burn on the carpet. He heard more doors shutting, more loud goodbyes — other students, other arrivals. He reached for his pillow and pushed his face into it.

It had turned cooler by the time Abhijeet arrived, yanking his enormous cricket bag off his shoulder.

Randeep sat up, rubbed his eyes. ‘Hi.’

‘Oh, hi. Thought you were asleep.’ He was groping about on the floor for something. He seemed in a hurry.

‘I’ll switch the light on,’ Randeep offered.

‘Don’t bother. I’m going straight out’ — he found his runners. ‘All the girls are in the lounge.’

‘Oh,’ and then, in a moment of daring: ‘Which girls?’

‘The usual. Shirenjoht, Mausam, Jaytha, Pups.’ He turned round at the door, hesitating. ‘Do you want to come?’

He was asking out of pity, that much was obvious. They’d never become friends, he and Abhijeet.

‘Maybe later,’ Randeep said. ‘I want to finish this chapter.’ He looked to his desk for a textbook with which to supplement the lie. Abhijeet was already on his way, the luminous green of his moon-boots zipping through the darkness.

Randeep made an eye in the window blinds. The day was darkening over, the yellow of the trees retreating. No, he wasn’t going to go down. It was stupid. He felt ashamed, recalling how he’d engineered the meet in the quad the week before. He opened his ring binder and turned to his timetable, determined to prepare for his lectures. Ten minutes later — nothing written, nothing done — he closed the folder and looked round for his wallet.

The corridor was too narrow and carpeted an ugly brown, the dreariness compounded by a large black-and-white close-up of Albert Einstein hanging at one end. He took the stairwell down to the lounge and waited his turn at the vending machine, behind a boy in a white turban. What to choose? What to choose? He tried not to stare at her. She was sitting with friends on three squashy sofas, staring reverentially up at the television. He could see only her profile: the hair all loose and pulled forward over one shoulder, the knifish uptwitch of her thin smile, as if there was a tiny pulse at the very corner of her lips. He imagined lying beside her in a sunny park and every now and then getting up to bring her flowers. Someone called his name. It was Abhijeet, his arm around a girl at the other end of the room.

‘You won’t find no theorems here,’ Abhijeet said.

And then Jaytha turned round. ‘Randeep!’ She beckoned him over. ‘Come sit, come.’

He looked to Abhijeet, who was nodding at him, so Randeep closed his wallet and strode across.

‘Hi, Jaytha. How are you this evening?’ It sounded stupid now, though she didn’t seem to notice.

‘Here, sit with me,’ and she tucked her feet underneath her bottom, making room.

He wavered, then slid in, jamming his hands into the crevice between his thighs. Her elbow jutted out and touched his own and that point seemed to be the epicentre for the wild buzz radiating through his body.

‘How was your weekend with your bhabhiji?’

She smiled. ‘That’s what I love about you. You remember things. You’re so thoughtful.’

Across the room, Abhijeet cheered. ‘Good on you, man! You got through her fortress. And believe me, many have tried; many have failed.’

‘Don’t be so vulgar,’ Jaytha said. ‘Not everyone’s a Neanderthal.’

There was a woollen blanket over her legs which she opened out and spread across both their laps. She nudged closer to him so that elbows, arms and shoulders all touched. It took a while for his heart to calm, and he didn’t dare move. He just sat there with the others, watching some American TV comedy. The only interruption came when two girls entered the lounge and asked if they could change channels. They must have been scheduleds because some of the other girls pinched their nostrils together. He felt Jaytha tense up, her eyes hard on the TV. He sought out her hand under the blanket and squeezed and this she didn’t seem to mind.

*

One morning, a week later, he was shaken awake by Abhi, looming groggily over him, saying something about a call.

Still in his pyjamas, Randeep went down to the stairwell where the receiver was gently bouncing on its blue coil. He put the phone to his ear.

‘Hello.’

It was his mother, which meant it was his father. Yesterday, she said, he’d had a fight with someone at work. He’d broken furniture. She’d had to go in and calm him down. It had taken nearly an hour to get him up off the floor. She paused. ‘They all saw him crying.’

‘I’m coming, Mamma.’

As he arrived home it took a moment to recognize the self-satisfied voice carrying up the hall. Vakeelji, his father’s lawyer. Randeep couldn’t face seeing him right away, so he slipped out of his shoes and curled his head into the twins’ room. They were sitting on the top bunk, in secret conversation.

‘I’m here,’ he said.

They stared at him, waiting. Eight years older, he felt he really didn’t know them at all. Their world was just their bubble of two.

‘How’s things?’

‘OK,’ Ekam said.

‘Yeah, OK,’ Raji agreed.

‘Where’s Daddy?’

‘In his room.’

‘How is he?’

‘It’s a difficult stage,’ Ekam said, and Raji sniggered.

He stepped across the landing and opened the door. His father was sitting on the other side of the bed, facing the window. Randeep shucked off his rucksack and went and sat beside him.

‘Daddy, it’s me. Randeep.’

Mr Sanghera nodded. ‘You didn’t need to come.’

‘Vakeelji’s here.’

‘Come to look at the tamasha, no doubt.’

‘What happened at work?’

‘Please tell them I’m sorry.’

‘Tell who?’

‘And your mother, too.’

In the main room, Vakeelji took up all of the tall red chair, and not for the first time it struck Randeep that the lawyer’s small pink lips surely belonged on the face of a little girl. He was sipping very daintily from the best china teacup. Mrs Sanghera sat on the two-seater and behind her Lakhpreet leaned against the wall. Randeep looked to his sister and saw the flicker, the slight tightening around her mouth that she’d always done to convey to him that she was all right. He touched the lawyer’s feet.

‘Bless you, son, bless you. How is college? NIT next year?’

‘With your blessings.’

‘Always, always.’

His mother explained Vakeelji’s presence. The DTTP had been in touch. They were concerned about his father’s application to his work. His ability to do his job. They were considering not formalizing his contract at the end of the trial period.

‘Can you believe it?’ Mrs Sanghera said. ‘So many years he has given to the government and this two-bit offshoot wants to cut him off like that. Who gave them the right?’

‘The chief minister, bhabhi.’

She was only fleetingly deflated. ‘He could do all their jobs with his eyes closed.’

Vakeelji smiled into his chins and very delicately set his cup down in its saucer, as if to make any noise was to risk some sort of detonation. ‘Bhabhi, we have to face the facts. Bhaji is not well. Inshallah, we all hope he reverts to his normal self soon but until then the department is naturally going to protect itself. In twelve months he will have his full government pension rights secured. Unless they are certain he is a viable long—’

‘Viable!’

‘Long-term associate, they will move to terminate before then.’

‘Then you must stop them, Harchand. We rely on you in these matters.’

The lawyer showed his palms. ‘I will do my best, but I fear. .’

The silence seemed to frighten Mrs Sanghera into temporary submission. She rallied. ‘So what do we do? For the first time in history are the women of this house to go and find work? Shall I start offering my services to clean my neighbours’ latrines?’ She thrust out her arms from under the pallu of her sari. ‘Perhaps you think I should pawn my wedding bangles?’

‘Oh, don’t make so much drama, Mummy,’ Lakhpreet said.

‘I can find work,’ Randeep said.

‘They will still pay his school fees, yes?’

The lawyer shook his wide head. ‘Given the ridiculous bureaucracy around our property laws, they will let you stay in this flat for one year until you move somewhere else. That is all. They will no longer pay for medicines, servants, transport, or, indeed, college fees.’

Mrs Sanghera didn’t know where to look. ‘Why do they make the children suffer?’

‘I’ll find work,’ Randeep said. ‘I can help.’

‘You are staying in college.’

‘I can do both.’ He looked at her. ‘Honestly, I can.’

She turned fiercely to the lawyer. ‘You see how brave my son is? He would never see his mother lower herself.’

The lawyer sighed. ‘Truly you are blessed, bhabhi.’

He found work quickly, doing weekend shifts for a British insurance firm who’d outsourced their call centre to Mirla Business and Technology Park. He enjoyed it. The office was bright, with potted-palm fronds down the aisle, and on the front wall hung a series of professional-looking world clocks: London, New York, Sydney. There was air conditioning, too, and he had his own piece of white desk space around which he’d made a fence of his textbooks.

It was near eleven at night when he’d reach his digs and show his pass to the security guard and enter the lounge. Usually, it would be empty, but occasionally Jaytha would happen to be there and they’d drink hot chocolate from chipped blue mugs and talk about their day. He wasn’t at all certain how to coax their relationship forward, into a corner more intimate.

At midnight he’d move to the stairwell and wait for his mother to ring. He’d asked her if he might buy a mobile with his wages — his wages were wired directly to her account — but she’d thought it unnecessary. Who would pay the bills, for one thing? The phone would ring and he’d lean tiredly against the wall and listen to her battles with the Chandigarh higher-ups. They were trying to cheat his father, she said. They are deliberately giving him impossible tasks to prove their point. I will not allow it. I will not let them make a fool out of him. Sometimes Randeep sensed glee in his mother’s voice, as though she were revelling in it all.

‘Your mamma’s probably glad to have someone to fight,’ Jaytha said one evening. ‘She sounds like a tough woman.’

Randeep said she was, though on reflection he wasn’t sure, and she sounded far from tough the night she rang to tell him that the bastards had won. They’d forced his father out of his job.

‘What will we do?’ she cried.

‘How’s Daddy? What’s he doing?’

‘Nothing. Staring at the wall. He looks broken, beita.’

Randeep put his fist to the wall and pressed his forehead against it. ‘Tell him I love him.’

‘Hain?’

He shook his head. ‘I’ll find some more work. There are more shifts I can do.’

‘We can’t survive.’ She was starting to sound hysterical. Randeep imagined her balanced on the lip of the sofa, hair wild, the twins hiding in their bedroom, Lakhpreet trying to hold it all together. ‘Everyone will find out. We’ll have to move. We have no money. Oh, Rabbah, what will we do? What will we do?’

‘I’ll sort it out, Mamma. I’ll work. Listen to me. I’ll work.’

He joined the processing shift, nine p.m. to five a.m. There were four of them and overnight they had to log the day’s customer claim requests and vet them for ‘completedness’. If information was missing they pulled up one of the three standard templates and printed off a letter. They worked in isolation, one in each corner of the room, the only sounds the snicker of keys, the gurgle of the water cooler, the march of the clock. 2.30. 2.35. 2.37. Sometimes Randeep fell asleep into his elbow, only waking when one of his colleagues flicked a rubber band at him. The night sky had paled by the time his shift ended. He collapsed onto his bed for one, maybe two hours before trudging off to morning labs.

‘This is crazy,’ Jaytha said, one month into his exhausting routine. ‘You’re killing yourself. And you’re failing. When was the last time you failed a test?’

‘It was a stupid test, yaar. It didn’t even count.’

But the next one did, and when he failed that too the deputy principal called him into his office. It wasn’t like him, he said. He was usually one of their finer students.

‘We had you written down as a real contender for NIT this year, Master Sanghera.’

‘Sorry, sir. I’ll do better.’

‘I hear your father has some issues at work?’

Randeep sighed. It was all so predictable, the speed with which gossip spread.

His mother called him daily, on the new mobile she’d finally permitted him to buy. Sometimes she accused him of not wiring all the money through. Mostly she just cried her complaints. That his father did nothing. That he just gazed at the wall listening to his stupid Schubert. They could all starve and he wouldn’t care. What kind of a man was he?

‘We’ve not been to the mall for two weeks. And how long before they ask us to leave this flat? I’m scared to answer the door. Every knock and my stomach falls away.’

‘It’ll get better. Uncle said we could stay in the flat for a year and then I’ll go to NIT and get a good job and everything will be fine afterwards.’

One night, putting the phone down on his mother, he reached sourly into his claims tray. He was angry at her, at himself. She’d said that he wittingly stayed away from home. That they were struggling with his father and he never helped. He’d argued that he was working, working for them. But he knew there was truth in what she’d said, that exhaustion was easier than being at home, and it was this that angered him. He clamped his head in his palms and looked again at the claim. They’d not signed it. Stupid people. How could they expect them to assess their claim if they didn’t even sign it? There was a telephone number scrawled at the bottom, in a shaky blue hand. Randeep punched the digits in so hard his finger blanched. He wanted to tell them how they’d made a mess of everything and that they’d have to fill in another form and send that in and why couldn’t they have just done things properly the first time? As the phone rang and rang, his rage wilted and he looked at the London clock and wondered what the hell he was doing. He had to put the phone down.

‘Hello?’

‘Hello? Oh, sorry, sir, wrong number.’

‘Who is that? John? Is that you again?’

‘Sorry, sir, I didn’t realize it was so late. I’ll say goodbye to you.’

‘Hang on, there.’ There was a dead minute until the man returned, his words now echoing. ‘Better. Who did you say you were again?’

‘Sorry, sir, I didn’t know it was so late. It was simply a courtesy call. I’ll bid you goodnight.’

‘Where you from? You Scottish?’

‘India, sir. I’m Indian.’

‘Oh, Indian. I’ve known a few Indians in my time. We fought together, you see.’

‘OK, sir. Thank you, sir. I’ll let you repair to your slumber now.’

‘In Burma. I was stationed with Balwant Singh, if memory serves. And it really doesn’t, these days.’

He laughed, sadly, Randeep thought.

‘Always took a bucket of water to the shitter with him, that one.’ A chuckle. ‘Must’ve had the cleanest arse in Arakan.’

Randeep switched the receiver to his other ear. He knew the battle. ‘The 1944 campaign, sir? We really out-foxed the Japanese, I think.’

‘Once we got Maungdaw, we knew we were in with a chance. As long as those tunnels stayed true.’

‘The tunnels. Yes, the tunnels. You must admit the engineers were heroes, sir. The Indian Seventh Division put their lives on the line for your country. We studied it at school.’

‘Balwant was one of those engineers. Couldn’t have done it without him. Does he still like his Fairweather’s?’

Randeep paused. ‘I’m not sure, sir.’

‘I was in the second West Yorkshires myself.’

‘Brigadier Evans, sir!’

There was a croaky laugh on the line. ‘I saw him pelting out of the station in just his underpants once, waving a pistol. We were about to come under attack, you see. A great man.’

An hour passed and still they were on the phone and still Randeep had a heap of claims to vet before his shift ended. He said he had to go.

‘Oh, really? I was enjoying myself a fair bit.’ The old man did sound disappointed.

He waited a week before calling the man again. No one answered. He tried again the next night and it seemed to take the old man some time to remember him.

‘And happy birthday, sir. For yesterday. Happy belated birthday.’

Randeep explained that through his father’s former job he’d got access to the Historic War Archival Records Office and in there were details of Private Michael Sedgewick.

‘Like your date of birth, sir.’

‘I had no idea,’ Michael said, apparently awed by the notion that bits of him should exist in stacked-up files in Indian offices.

They spoke about the Burma campaign and then about themselves. The difference between their ages seemed to allow this type of conversation. He said he was a widower. Janice had been dead ten years. Her lungs gave up on her, you see. All those Park Drives. Their children now had their own families and mighty proud of them he was too. Philip was some sort of hospital orderly and Janet senior secretary to a big director type. He had four grandchildren. He was eighty-seven and lived alone. There was a mixture of pride and sadness in Michael’s voice which broke Randeep’s heart a little. He promised to call at least once every week, though no such promise was asked for, and on each call they’d speak for at least forty-five minutes, never more than an hour, because calls over an hour long were checked the next morning by the day supervisor. Michael appreciated this, Randeep could tell. He said how good of him it was to care about an old man on the other side of the world. He said he’d understand if Randeep wanted to stop these conversations and spend time with people his own age. Randeep wouldn’t hear of it.

‘I don’t have any money, you know,’ Michael said.

‘But I don’t want money,’ Randeep said, confused, hurt even. ‘I just want to talk.’

*

Three weeks before his finals Randeep was granted a few days’ leave. His mother and sisters were going to Anandpur Sahib to pray for his father and Randeep had been summoned to look after him until they returned. On the bus home his textbook lay open on his lap, the spine nestled between his thighs. None of it made sense. He’d missed too much, caught up on too little. He shoved the book back into his rucksack and stared out of the dark bus window.

The women left before daybreak. Mrs Sanghera said it was vital they make the morning puja, though Randeep suspected she just didn’t want to be seen standing in line at the bus stop. He closed the door after them and went back to his father, who was sitting in his red chair, barefoot, eyes closed. He had grey stubble. His kurta pyjama was buttoned up to the neck.

‘They’ve gone, Daddy.’

A nod, eyes still closed. Randeep, determined, moved to the cupboards. He found three eggs and some jam.

‘Scrambled?’

Nothing.

‘What about jammy toast?’ He turned the sticky jar around. ‘Gooseberry.’

He looked at his father. His hands were threaded across the small swell of his belly, as if he was only taking a short dreamy nap. And perhaps he was: the gentle rise and fall of his breathing suggested so. He looked peaceful. Randeep decided to cook his father brinjal later, and was thinking about the aubergines he’d seen in the fridge, when his father’s eyes shot open and he bolted out of his seat, screaming, with arms outflung. He had hold of Randeep’s throat and Randeep felt his head banging the cupboard.

‘You’re trying to poison me. You’re like the rest of them.’

But his father was the weaker of the two now and Randeep prised the fingers from his neck. He held his father’s hands down by his side until he stopped fighting, then led him back to his chair and sat him down. He fetched his pills and a glass of water and watched while he took his medication. For lunch Randeep cooked rice and vegetables and when his father refused even to look at the plate Randeep fed him forkfuls, as if his father were the child.

He seemed much improved the next day. When Randeep walked in he was reading at the table, his body washed in sunlight. ‘Morning, son.’

Randeep moved to the sink and pointlessly shifted around a few of the dirty dishes.

‘Looks like Farhan might just break the record after all.’

‘Maybe,’ Randeep said.

He heard his father crisply folding away the paper. ‘Shall we have tea and toast? With some of that gooseberry jam?’

Over breakfast, his father asked him about school — ‘College, Daddy!’ — and his new job and that girl he’d mentioned last time. What was her name again?

‘Jaytha.’

‘Well, let’s not tell your mother just yet, eh? There’s only so much dying with shame a woman can do in one year.’

They played backgammon long into the afternoon, hunched over the thick old board, fists curled to their throats. The sun had moved, now buttering the wall, and a late-afternoon tiredness hung in the air. Randeep started setting up the pieces again.

‘Five-four. I’m catching up.’

Mr Sanghera stretched, glancing at the oven timer. ‘I thought you were making brinjal?’

‘One more game.’

‘Afterwards.’

‘But—’

‘Tsk! Do as you’re told.’

Randeep stood, only pretending annoyance. He was glad to have been mildly rebuked, the way fathers should rebuke their sons. It had been such a good day. The best. He couldn’t wait to tell Lakhpreet how well their father had been. He’d turned a corner, he was sure of it. He took the brinjals from the refrigerator, washed them, and found garlic and cumin and onions and ghee and salt. Soon the aubergines were stewing.

‘Smells delicious,’ Mr Sanghera said.

Randeep lifted the lid, the steam pushing up his nose. He coughed. ‘Another twenty minutes.’

‘And what’s for dessert?’

Randeep paused. He hadn’t thought of that. He looked in the cupboard. There were some damp biscuits. A half-pot of cream. He knew there were apples in the cool box. ‘I’ll mix a fruit salad.’

Mr Sanghera made an incredulous face. ‘That food deserves more than a fruit salad. Let’s have custard. With bananas.’

A childhood favourite. ‘But we don’t have any powder. Or bananas.’

‘Then I’ll go to Stephen’s and fetch some.’ He bent down to look for his flip-flops.

‘No,’ Randeep said.

His father looked up.

‘I mean, it’s too far.’

‘It’s fifteen minutes.’

‘And cold.’

‘Randeep.’

Randeep turned away, still holding the cupboard open. ‘I’ll go. I’ll be quicker.’

He went down Santa Cruz Drive, his walk blooming into a run every few metres. The leaves were shading to pink. He took the flower-planters’ alley — a weedy strip of gravel — and cut across the commerce building gardens to get to the PCO, behind which was Father Stephen’s All Items Store. They didn’t have bananas so he settled on a chocolate roll to accompany the two jars of custard. He remembered they were running out of toothpaste and asked for some Pepsodent too. The thin, unsmiling boy put the items in a green bag, and it seemed to take him forever to tie a knot and push the bag across the counter to Randeep, who snatched it up and hurried out: round the PCO, across the gardens and up the alley. As he reached Santa Cruz Drive he tired, slowed, spun the clammy bag round and strangled the top of it into his fist. He looked up the long road to where their apartment block was. He patted his pocket but knew he’d left his phone behind. He could hear his footsteps beating the ground, the bag banging his thigh. He flung open the main door, not even waiting for the chowkidar, and took the stairs two, three at a time.

‘Daddy!’ He rattled the handle. ‘Daddy! Please open the door!’ He could hear the Schubert playing. ‘Open the door!’

He banged and banged until a hand on his shoulder pushed him aside. It was one of their neighbours, a man whose name Randeep couldn’t remember. He had a crowbar which he wedged into the door beside the lock. There was the sound of wood splintering and then the neighbour came at the door twice with his shoulder until it swung brokenly open. Randeep ran in. He could see his father’s naked dark-brown feet dangling in the main room, a chair in place. His head was tilted to one side, as if in mid apprehension of something. There was a piece of flex around his neck. Randeep wrapped his arms around his father’s feet as if to push him up, and the neighbour stood on the chair and untied the flex. The body slumped to the floor. Its eyes were wide and staring. Its lips opening and parting. It blinked, blinked again. Randeep knelt beside him. More neighbours gathered, puffing out their cheeks, saying how lucky he was. The music was still playing.

‘It would have been better if he had died,’ Mrs Sanghera said.

Four days had passed and she was coming back into the room from seeing off yet another concerned visitor.

‘Mamma!’ Lakhpreet said.

He heard his mother sigh, sit down. ‘Oh, I know. It’s. . I don’t know what to do any more.’

Randeep closed his father’s door and joined him on the bed. Mr Sanghera lay propped against the cushioned headboard, chin on his chest. The plate of jammy toast sat untouched by his side.

‘OK, Daddy, I’m going back to college now. I’ll see you soon, acha?’

Perhaps there was a nod in response. He couldn’t be sure.

The coach broke down and it was past midnight when he jiggled open the lock to his room. He waited a minute for the furniture to outline itself, then saw that Abhijeet wasn’t around anyway, so he clicked the lamp and a triangle of silver light split the room. He was sitting on the floor when his phone vibrated and Jaytha Hall flashed up at him.

She arrived in a thick green duffel coat with fur-trimmed hood, removing it as she sat beside him on the bed. Her arms were brown and thin and beautiful. She smelled of almonds, and a few forgotten breadcrumbs stuck to the corner of her mouth. She must have rushed over here.

‘You didn’t have to come,’ he said.

‘Don’t be silly.’ She linked arms with him. ‘We’re friends. You sound like you’ve been crying.’

He told her about how his father had tried to strangle him and how he’d had to feed him forkfuls of rice like a baby. He told her that he’d been better the next day, they’d even played backgammon, but it must have all been a pretence, and that when he’d seen his feet hanging in the air like that he’d never felt so scared before in his whole life. He wasn’t sure why but he didn’t mention the helpful neighbour. He found himself saying that he’d untied the flex and lifted his father down.

‘I really thought I’d lost him.’ He felt her arms circle his waist. ‘I was so scared.’

‘I’m so sorry.’

She held him tighter and that felt good. To be wanted like that. He wanted her too. He put his arm around her back and kissed the top of her head. She didn’t seem to mind.

‘Thanks for coming.’

She held him tighter still. ‘We’re friends.’

He adjusted a little, kissed her forehead, and made the slow drive towards her lips. She responded, reaching up to meet his mouth. He’d never felt this kind of drowning sensation before. It was his first kiss. His first anything, and suddenly the world seemed like a less difficult place. Maybe things would turn out all right. His father would get better and he’d go to NIT and Jaytha would be welcomed into his family.

‘You’re the only one who understands,’ he said, easing her down, her head on his pillow. A nervous look crossed her face, which she tried to smile away. They resumed kissing. Her hands roved around his back as if not sure what they should be doing. His were on her waist, then her bottom. She pushed against his shoulders, but when he insisted on kissing her neck she seemed willing to let him. He wanted to show her how much he loved her. How much it meant to him that she understood. He pushed up her top and couldn’t believe that under it were her breasts. Just there under this thin top. The pink-brown tips revealed. He heard her say something and try to move away but he knew she liked him and he held her arms and kissed her breasts. She was saying it louder now and the louder she said it the stronger his grip, the more fiercely he applied his mouth to her body. He felt her knees in his stomach, pushing him away. That didn’t make sense. He rubbed his cock against her and she screamed but he was groaning himself and he bit her breasts and dug his fingers into the maddeningly soft flesh of her arms and pushed his weight down, down on her. He was telling her how much he really loved her when he felt a pair of arms around his waist yank him violently away. Randeep gasped, as if only now coming up for air. Abhijeet was telling him to get out. On the bed, Jaytha reached for her torn top, face turned away.

In an alleyway behind the art block, he ground his teeth and smacked his forehead against the wall, again and again, as if trying to knock all feeling out. Her frightened bedsunk face wouldn’t stop floating into his mind.

He walked for hours. The streets were quiet, the only light coming from a top-floor dance studio where a girl was pirouetting, practising for the end-of-year ball. He passed the tennis courts and sports gym and saw another light on in the student study rooms. He thought Jaytha might be there. This close to the exams, maybe she’d forgotten what he’d done and was in there revising. He opened the door. ‘Ja—’ It was some other girl, head bent delicately over her books. She turned round.

‘Sorry,’ Randeep said, and withdrew to the street.

Across the road an auto applied its wheezy brakes and two males got out. They had a crate of alcohol with them, though they already seemed pretty drunk.

‘Randeep,’ one of them said. Harshly?

They were friends of Abhi’s. ‘Oh, hi.’ He waited for them to do something, his stomach cowering. They must not have heard yet.

‘There’s a party. Wanna come?’

‘Not tonight, yaar.’

‘Sure? Plenty of. .’ The boy made a V with his fingers and ran his tongue inside it.

‘Arré, sahib — paise?’ the auto driver said, and the boys paid and told Randeep to come along later if he felt like it.

He stayed out all night, until he was sure Abhijeet would have left for lectures. As he re-entered the dormitory no one turned to stare. The few students were hunkered over desks, preparing for finals. He went up to his room and sat on the bed and scrolled down to Jaytha’s number. No one answered. He untied his shoelaces and fell against the pillow. Her smell lingered. Briefly, he noticed a new cricket poster on the door, and then he closed his eyes and hoped he’d sleep through it all.

The sun forced him up, hitting his face. He reached for his phone but she hadn’t called. Perhaps she’d left a note in his locker box. He used the kitchen stairwell, with its squeaky suggestions of guilt. There was no note from her. Only a card from the Senior Pastoral Care Warden ordering him to her office at four o’clock. Randeep read the card again. His hand started to shake. He thought he was going to cry.

Her office was on the sixth floor of the humanities block. He shared a lift with two teachers discussing their sons’ prospects in Canada, and followed the signs to the warden’s door. A battered plaque read Mrs Bimla Manapadhay, IPS. Randeep, head down, knocked.

Jaytha was already there, in a cushioned armchair at Mrs Manapadhay’s side. Her hair was tied back. She was dressed normally: blue blouse, black skirt and shoes. Randeep smiled with relief. She was all right. She was alive. Mrs Manapadhay asked him to take a seat. She looked too young for a widow-white sari. Her hair, deliberately messy, had two chopsticks criss-crossed into it, and her single gold bangle kept clinking against the glass top of her desk. Randeep sat down. His eyes were fixed on the patch of carpet between his shoes. He felt Mrs Manapadhay leaning across. She had a surprisingly soft voice.

‘Mr Sanghera, a complaint’s been lodged against you.’

He nodded.

‘It’s in relation to your behaviour towards Jaytha. That you tried to force yourself upon her in a sexual way.’

He nodded again. But he felt confused. He’d not thought of it in those stark terms. He’d thought he was only guilty of loving her too much too soon. Stupid boy. He didn’t dare look up.

‘You admit that you did behave inappropriately towards Jaytha and tried to force yourself upon her in a sexual way?’

‘I do,’ he croaked.

She sighed. ‘I should tell you that it was not Jaytha who made the complaint. It’s my unfortunate experience that girls rarely say anything at all.’

He nodded.

‘You’re very lucky that she insists on not involving the police. She doesn’t want to put her family through that.’

Again, he nodded. But he didn’t know what this all meant. He wished his hands would stop their trembling.

‘But we have our own internal procedures which Jaytha cannot influence and which we must adhere to. Even more so when there’s a caste factor involved.’ And she said that she was sorry but they had no choice other than to remove him from college and discredit all his examination results to date. This was with immediate effect. ‘Do you understand, Mr Sanghera?’

He nodded.

‘I’ll complete the paperwork by the end of the day and the SEB will be notified in due course. I suggest you speak to the college careers adviser while you still can about the options now available to you. But as you live only in Chandigarh I’m expecting you to have vacated your lodgings by tomorrow. Let your college warden know if you require assistance arranging your travel.’ She paused. ‘Is that all clear?’ she asked, not unkindly.

He nodded. ‘It’s just, madam, I have a job and have only two more shifts this week. I won’t be paid if I don’t do them. Can I stay until the end of the week, please?’

Mrs Manapadhay counselled against this — ‘Students can be cruel’ — but Randeep said his family relied on him and Mrs Manapadhay said very well. As long as he stayed away from Jaytha, he could remain until the weekend.

It was a horrible week. He spent most of it in the library, avoiding everyone, entering his room only if Abhi was asleep. Word had spread. Students stared, some swore. One shoved him down the stairs.

He arranged his suitcase and bags into a pile by the door, topping it all off with his ceramic goose lamp, and left for work. It was his final shift. Tomorrow, he’d board the first bus home. He wondered how he was going to explain everything to his mother. He wondered whether to try and contact Jaytha. He wondered if he shouldn’t just run away to Africa and start again.

‘What’s in Africa?’ Michael said.

‘Nothing. Exactly.’

‘Better to face things out, young man. At least then you can see who’s hurling the shit at you.’

Randeep smiled for perhaps the first time that week. At the end of his shift, the night manager settled his wages and he walked out of the grey cement block with a small sense of being freed. The streetlights were still on. Maybe he could go to Delhi. Or Bombay. Or back to Bhubaneshwar like he’d always wanted?

He turned into a wide passage that by day acted as a parking station for cyclists. The moon hung at the end of it. He felt edgy and walked quickly, but wasn’t even halfway when three figures slid into the lane, coming towards him. Hands in pockets, faces in shifting moon shadow. Their footsteps made no sound. His heart pumped. They’ll walk past, he told himself. Don’t be scared. But they weren’t talking to one another, and this frightened him. As they crossed, the one in the middle stared sidelong. He had an Om stud in his ear. It looked familiar. Randeep carried on, agitated. Then he knew: it was the boy who’d shoved him down the stairs. He looked over his shoulder. All three had stopped, turned.

‘Kaiso ho?’ the one with the ear stud asked.

Randeep nodded. ‘I’m just going back to my room. I’m leaving in the morning.’

They didn’t reply. He started walking again. He closed his eyes and said please God no, but no sooner had he opened them than he heard steps pounding behind him. He ran, shouting for help. At the end of the lane they tripped him up and covered his mouth with huge clothy hands. An Om-knuckled fist came driving down on his face and he heard himself groan, and then nothing.

He felt thick-headed as he started to stir, as if a deep mist shrouded his brain. Voices, laughter, hands applied to his body. He heard, ‘Let’s see how much the high-caste fucker likes being shat on.’ He tried to speak, but clouded over again and the tiredness was too much.

When he next came round, he was so very thirsty. He swallowed, with difficulty, and realized there was something stringy blocking his mouth. He tried flexing his jaw but it didn’t budge. He wondered what he was doing on his side. He tried to sit but couldn’t. His ankles. Who’d tied them? And his wrists. Crossed and bound behind his back. He was deep in a well. His head throbbed. They’d left him to die. He twisted his neck in wild panic: there was a light, not far. A thin beam of light. A doorway, it looked like. He was naked. No, not quite. They’d let him keep his underwear, but it felt funny, wetly padded. He rolled onto his back and — one, two, three — straightened right up. As he did so his forehead hit his knees and he felt something strange and flaky come off his skin. He bent his head to his shoulder and smelled and retched. The bile came up the walls of his throat and trickled down his chin. He began to cry. Slowly, he moved onto his knees, his bound ankles beneath him, and wriggled to the door. There were voices. His eyes widened in fear. It was them. He listened some more. It was a teacher, teaching. Someone who would help. He wriggled closer, right up to the door. A class. Students. He looked about him, his mouth still gagged. Projectors, folders, boxes of pens. He’d been locked up in the stationery cupboard. He didn’t know what to do. He didn’t have a choice. He banged his forehead to the door. Banging and banging. The teacher’s voice halted. Footsteps got louder. A key turned, the door opened — light! — and with a screeching mewl Randeep collapsed into the lecture hall.

Avtar and Lakhpreet sat side by side in the waiting room. She paged through a dental magazine, of all things. He was set forward, elbows on thighs, one hand closed around the wrist of the other as if choking a small animal. He looked down at the frayed hems of his black trousers. At the candle-wax stain on his blazer that had refused to come out. Again he observed his reflection in the window and again he ran his palm over the slick side parting. The receptionist smiled into her keyboard.

‘Stop that,’ Lakhpreet whispered.

‘It’s not used to being combed like this.’

‘Then you should’ve left it how it was.’

‘Are you even sure he’s coming?’

‘Oh? Do you have somewhere else to be?’

He frowned, stood up.

‘Sit down. Don’t be nervous.’

‘I’m not!’ and he sat back down, nearly missing the chair.

Another hour passed before the door opened and Vakeelji came forward, his big bearish arms outstretched.

‘Baby!’

‘Uncle!’ Lakhpreet said, rising.

They touched the lawyer’s feet, and he showed them into his office, apologizing for the wait. There was a time when he could walk to the club and back and not be stopped by every two-bit Ramu in the book.

‘But those days seem to have passed. Now even the criminals think they have a case!’

He moved around his impressive desk with its clever inlay, and his huge tan chair crackled to accommodate a fat man getting comfortable on hard leather. Avtar and Lakhpreet had to bring in their seats from the waiting room.

‘And how is my friend?’ Vakeelji asked.

‘Same, uncle. He still can’t leave his room.’

‘Well, tell him to hurry up and get better. We need to get our squash games back on. I’m starting to put on weight.’

Lakhpreet gave a sad little smile and Vakeelji patted his desk, as if it were a proxy for her head.

‘Give it time. And I’m here, aren’t I? Jhub hum hain tho kya ghum hai? And a few more months and I’ll have clean-fine licked that brother of yours into shape and onto a plane straight for America.’

Lakhpreet gestured towards Avtar, shifting in his chair, alert. ‘Uncle, you remember I spoke to you about. . If there’s something you can do.’

The lawyer gazed at him and for the first time seemed to acknowledge this other presence in his office.

‘It was at Lohri, uncle,’ Lakhpreet said. ‘You said he’d need to learn English.’

‘And have you?’

‘It’s all he’s done for the last six months.’

‘When I’m not working with my papa,’ Avtar said. He didn’t want the lawyer to expect too much. ‘But my younger brother helps me. He can speak it very well. And I went to an English medium school until plus two so I could speak it a bit already.’

‘I see. And where do you want to go? Where did you have in mind? The south of France? The Gold Coast? Monaco, perhaps?’

‘If that is where I can make the most money.’

Vakeelji seemed to allow himself a tiny smile and reached for a drawer down beside his knees. He presented Avtar with various dog-eared papers and used his gold fountain pen to point out specific clauses, options, fees. It felt as if he was going through the lawyerly motions, for Lakhpreet’s sake; as if he’d taken one look at Avtar and decided this was a waste of his time. There are several visas you can opt for, he said, dully. Ultimately, it came down to the concept of risk and reward.

‘And what I can afford,’ Avtar said.

‘Naturally.’ The marriage route was usually the most expensive, but you could work legally and it more or less guaranteed full rights after one year. It could sometimes take some time to find the right girl. At the opposite end, holiday visas were cheaper, but you can’t work and you have to come back. ‘Many don’t, of course. But then many don’t find work either. So they starve in a shed at the bottom of some chacha’s garden.’ He could always get Avtar there illegally — there was a truck leaving UP only next week. Higher chance of getting caught on the way, but cheaper, and if you made it and found work you’d generally do well. If he were to get caught then the lawyer and agent fees, it went without saying, were non-refundable.

‘He’s not going illegally,’ Lakhpreet said. ‘They die on the way.’

‘There have been many sad incidents, yes.’

‘She mentioned a student visa,’ Avtar said, meaning Lakhpreet.

‘That is another option.’ He turned the piece of paper over and directed Avtar towards the relevant section. ‘Usually for one year but if you’re good the institution will keep you on. I had one boy who went to a college in Wisconsin. Eight years now and he’s a lecturer earning more than me. His whole family has moved there. American citizens all.’

Avtar nodded cautiously, fearful of being drawn into such wishful dreaming.

‘Of course, most of our boys enrol on day one and start work on day two. Usually in one of those takeaway houses. And then they go into hiding. They don’t think about the long view. Only concerned with what they can earn now.’

‘It’s hard not to be, uncle. When you’ve got a hungry family back home.’

At the end of the discussion Vakeelji walked them into the waiting room, where the receptionist quickly minimized her screen. The student visa form was secure in Avtar’s hand, his hand pressed against his thigh. He kept rubbing his thumb along the edge of the folded paper. He thanked the lawyer, who was busy talking to Lakhpreet.

‘Tell bhabhi I’ve not forgotten. I’m hoping for a suitable girl later this month. He’s not getting off that easily, the rogue.’

‘Thank you, uncle,’ Lakhpreet said, and with the most girlish of movements tipped up onto her toes and left an elegant kiss on the lawyer’s cheek.

The money the lawyer was asking: Avtar didn’t know how he’d ever earn that much, even if they did remortgage the shop. And Navjoht’s school fees were coming up. And the rent and bills. He reached a window in the stairwell, traffic glowing below. Nothing in their lives was working and the city lay there roaring its indifference. What a world.

Trudging up the final steps, he had to flatten himself against the wall so two men carrying a large TV could pass by. Avtar’s neighbour, Mr Lal, stood at the top.

‘I’ll call my son. I’m sure there’s been a mistake,’ he said, voice quivering.

The men looked up from their squatting position. It was a big TV. ‘Tell him to cough up or we’ll be back for the rest.’

Avtar ventured up a few steps. ‘Is everything all right, uncle?’

Mr Lal frowned, probably annoyed that Avtar had witnessed this, wondering who else in the building would find out. ‘Fine,’ he said, snapped, and disappeared into his flat.

During the evening, Avtar sat with his family around the small fold-out table, eating the plain rice and wet potatoes his mother had prepared. It was a pitiful meal.

‘The lady with the red bangles came again,’ his father said. ‘I think soon she’ll be placing a sizeable order. Didn’t you think so?’

Afterwards, his father lay on the settee and Navjoht opened the English newspaper they bought at half price from a man who passed by the shop each evening. Avtar stepped through the shower curtain and onto the warm concrete of the balcony. He crossed his arms on the railing, his knee nosing familiarly into the fretwork. It was a greasy airless night. Crickets scratched in the hot spaces and leaves from the amrood tree hung drily by his face. He could hear Mr and Mrs Lal arguing next door. He reached up and closed his hand around a gnarled branch, right where branch met trunk, and ripped at it and ripped at it until all that was left was the white wound.

His mother called him to take the empty gas cylinder to Karthik’s, and to make sure he got a fair price this time.

‘Tell Navjoht.’

‘He’s emptying the bucket.’

Avtar pushed off the balcony, throwing the branch aside, and lifted the gas cylinder to his shoulder. When he got back, his brother still wasn’t there.

‘Downstairs. Teaching. Earning.’

‘I thought I was his only student.’

‘You were his first,’ his mother said.

He told them he’d been to see a lawyer. A good one. An honest one who said he’d help. He explained about the student visa and when his father asked how much Avtar told him a figure that was less than half of what the lawyer had said.

His father looked concerned. ‘We’ll sell the shop.’

Avtar laughed. It was typical, reassuring even, of his father to go straight for the big and obvious answer. ‘We could just take out a loan against it. And I’ll start paying that back as soon as I find work over there.’

‘A loan. Yes. So we can keep the shop?’

‘Yes.’

‘And do you think they will lend us that much?’

‘I think so, Papa. I’ll find out.’

‘Yes. Find out.’

‘Do you have to go? Can you not find work here?’ It was his mother, speaking from the kitchen, her back to them.

‘It’s been over six months, Mamma. And I’ll be back in a year. Maybe two. And then you can get me married and I can try again for work here. But at least we’ll have money.’

‘And Navjoht will be working by then,’ his father said.

‘How will you pay his college fees if you’re paying for this loan-shoan?’

‘I don’t know. I’ll do two jobs. Maybe he’ll have to wait a year. But at least there’s a chance it can work. There’s nothing for me if I stay here.’

‘There’s us,’ his mother said, turning sharply. Her sari had snagged on a nail in the counter and strained almost indecently across her body. ‘There’s your family.’

Avtar was silent. She turned back round and after a while her hand hovered over the two small mangoes ripening on the window-sill, wondering which to choose for a dessert.

He didn’t know how he was going to earn the rest of the money. Each morning for two weeks he dressed in his blazer, shirt and trousers and took the bus round the city. He tried the same places he’d tried several times already this year — the rubber factory, the software firm, the rickshaw hiring company. The manager of Parvati Jewellery Emporium didn’t even wait for Avtar to speak.

‘Same as last time, yaara. Nothing.’

‘But I can speak English now, sir. You said if I could speak English.’

‘Sorry,’ and the man went back to arranging his female busts.

The evenings he devoted to whatever new list of English phrases his brother had drawn up. Where can I locate the train station? The weather today is very fine. Might I interest you in a cup of tea? He’d lie on the balcony, list in hand, the stars encouraging while at his side a white candle burned steadily down to its little hot pocket of wax.

*

He was coming back from the mandi, blazer hooked over his shoulder, when Navjoht ran to meet him.

‘They’re being kicked out!’ he exclaimed. ‘Uncle and Aunty.’

A truck was parked outside Gardenia Villas, piled high with a florid sofa, a French-looking dining table, several cabinets, beds. A whole flatful of stuff. There were police, too, to oversee the exchange. Beyond the truck, the neighbours had gathered, Avtar’s parents among them.

‘What will they do?’ Navjoht asked.

Mrs Lal was weeping onto the shoulder of her husband, who was, in turn, stroking her head.

‘Their son. He wasn’t earning much, after all.’

A man got out of the truck — the same man Avtar had seen removing the television — and clicked his fingers. Mr Lal handed over the keys. Then he took up the suitcase by his feet and led his wife away from the building. No one knew where they were going, though six months later the gaswallah would say he’d seen poor Mr and Mrs Lal rattling a can outside Harminder Sahib. For now, the old couple passed by Avtar and he reached out and touched Mr Lal’s shoulder, but it was a faint touch, not enough to detain anyone.

*

He had to press the buzzer twice before the chowkidar appeared, yawning. He flicked his eyebrows at Avtar: what did he want?

‘I’m here to see Harbhajan Sahib. I’m his friend.’

‘What friend? Harbhajan Sahib has many, many friends. Friends who use his car. Friends who take his money. Which one are you?’

‘Is Nirmalji here?’

The man spat at the ground. So, no one was in. He wouldn’t have dared spit like that otherwise. Avtar asked when they’d be home but the chowkidar laughed and told him to go and piss on someone else’s doorstep. He headed back down the avenue. Perhaps if he went straight to the bus depot Nirmalji would be there. A woman called to him. She held a watering can and wore a tatty brown sari. A maid. She stood on the other side of her gate and asked what Avtar knew of Nirmalji’s situation. More specifically, his son’s. Probably her madam had tasked her with finding out details, and probably each detail earned her a few extra rupees.

‘About what?’ Avtar asked.

‘The shor-tamasha all night.’ It seemed an ambulance had been called at about four in the morning and the son carried out on a stretcher. ‘You should have seen the poor mother. I hear they’ve gone to that private one. Do you know?’

He whistled for a rickshaw, bribed the deskman with twenty rupees and followed his directions past the children’s ward and up the thin stairwell. At the top, through a square window in the door, he saw Harbhajan. He looked asleep. A red drip sprouted from his hand and connected to the stand by his bed. The stand had four wheels, Avtar noticed. Beside Harbhajan was Nirmalji, wearing a face that expressed nothing more than stately forbearance.

It must have been five months since he’d last met his friend. That time, after another week of empty searching, he’d asked Harbhajan to speak to Nirmalji about giving him his old job back. Harbhajan had blankly refused, saying he wasn’t going to do anything that involved asking a favour from his father. Angry, Avtar ignored all of Harbhajan’s calls in the weeks that followed, and then the calls dwindled to the occasional message, and, later, Harbhajan stopped contacting him altogether.

Avtar applied the flat of his hand to the door and pushed it open. He said sat sri akal and waited about a metre from the bed, feet together and hands closed over his stomach, the heels of his palms touching as if he was standing in the gurdwara. Nirmalji sat motionless and Harbhajan lay between them, under a pale-green blanket. There were terrible marks down both his forearms. Avtar wondered what to say. He asked after Aunty.

‘She’s at the temple,’ Nirmalji said.

‘I’ll ask Mamma to pray too.’

‘Is the God that will help him different from the one who put him here?’

Avtar said nothing. Then: ‘Shall I fetch you something to eat, uncle?’

‘Someone’s bringing something.’

‘Some water?’

Nirmalji closed his eyes and for several minutes Avtar stood there wondering if he could go.

Back in the reception lobby, he waited until the deskman had dealt with the fidgety queue trying to force an appointment for that same day. When he did approach, the man looked up from his calculator, then back down. He had an ugly moustache, the bristles hanging unevenly over his top lip.

‘Yes?’ And the looking down, the practised indifference with which he said this single word, made clear that the earlier bribe was now meaningless, forgotten. Any future favours would cost Avtar again.

‘I’m looking for work.’

‘No openings,’ he said, almost singsong.

‘Any job will do. Cleaning. Carrying. Portering.’

The man shook out a form from a sheaf trapped under a Buddha-bust of a bookend. ‘Fill this in and bring it back.’

‘Nirmalji sent me,’ he lied.

Now the man stopped his calculations and raised his head. ‘How long for?’

‘Kya?’

‘Are you looking for a permanent position?’

Avtar hesitated, then said that yes he was. It was too late. The man smiled. He had horrid teeth.

*

Randeep reached out of the window and stroked the basket of English Lady apples being offered up to him. In the end, he disappointed the kid and opted for the cheaper Green Bharat ones, with their Shivji logo. He’d get the others on payday. He dropped the lumpen bag of fruit in his lap and loosened his tie and waited for the bus to move.

It had been half a year since the teacher unbound his arms and legs and he’d scrambled out of the lecture hall, humiliated, grunting, the students all standing to look. He’d written to Jaytha once since that day, a long letter in which he’d underlined his mobile number three times. He said he felt sick thinking of how he’d held her down. Those were the words he’d used. He couldn’t quite say it any more strongly, even to himself. It was too adult a crime. Of course, he’d told his family nothing. He’d simply said college wasn’t for him any more. That he missed his family. Wanted to be with Daddy.

Outside the flat he paused, cocked his ear. His mother was speaking in her special chiming voice. He wondered which guests they might have. She hadn’t complained in advance about anyone coming over. He turned the key lightly and stepped inside. He recognized Vakeelji’s red Panjabi brogues, but not the slim, sensible black shoes placed tidily next to them. Women’s shoes. He closed his eyes. Will they never give up?

‘Randeep? Is that you, my dear? Do come. Vakeel Uncle is here.’

His mother, addressing him in English? Whoever the girl was, she must have impressed. Randeep kicked off his shoes, a little petulantly, and padded down the hall, suddenly aware of the sweat patches flowering in the armpits of his white shirt. His mother sat on the edge of the settee, ankles crossed and feet aside; she’d set her hair differently, so the streak of white made a significant sweep up past her ear. Vakeelji more or less filled the space beside her. His pencil tie with its baby knot and psychedelic pattern made him look even broader, and a little silly. Later, Randeep would wonder if the tie had been an attempt to lend a more relaxed atmosphere to the meeting, given how terrifically badly the first few had gone. At the window, on the red armchair — on his father’s red armchair — was a woman. The first thing he noticed was her small turban, the kind he sometimes saw women wear at the gurdwara. It was black and started halfway up her brow and smoothly covered her hair and head. Her chunni was a simple green unembroidered rectangle, overlaying her turban and pinned in the traditional manner, so it stayed in place down her shoulders and across her chest, the way few girls seemed to bother doing these days. A delicate steel band circled her wrist. No rings, no jewellery. Her small hands seemed calm in her lap and her eyes were bright and clever. She looked elegant, plain, kind. He pinned his arms to his sides — the sweat patches — and realized he was staring. He looked back to his mother. She indicated the bag.

‘Apples. For Daddy.’ He put them on the table. ‘Sat sri akal, uncle.’ He turned to her. ‘Sat sri akal.’

‘Sat sri akal.’ She was the only one who’d said that. She’d even pronounced the t, which no one ever did. The others had all said Hello, or Hi. Maybe she wasn’t from abroad. Maybe this wasn’t at all what he thought it was.

‘Well, sit down,’ Mrs Sanghera said, and he balanced on the armrest beside her. ‘This is my son. Randeep.’

The woman nodded.

‘He’s a well-educated, well-mannered young man. Respectful of elders and loving of those younger than him. He’s handsome and enjoys to exercise.’

‘Mamma!’

‘What? Will you stop a mother from praising her son, her piece-of-the-moon?’

Vakeelji put his giant hands on his knees and pushed up onto his feet. ‘Bhabhi, show me to bhai sahib. I miss our chats.’

Mrs Sanghera sighed grandly, for she wanted to make clear that she understood the subtext, and led the lawyer out, taking the apples with her. Randeep heard them enter his father’s room, and the lawyer expressing exaggerated joy at seeing his old friend again. Then the door closed and Vakeelji’s voice cut out and it was just Randeep in the room with this strange, quiet woman.

He rose a little off the armrest and slid down onto the settee proper. She was some feet away, and she was staring at him. Randeep had the uncomfortable feeling of being appraised, or even judged.

‘Where are you from?’ he asked.

‘England.’

He nodded. ‘I have a friend there. Michael. He’s from Doncaster. Do you know it?’

‘Sorry I’m from London,’ she said, as if that explained everything.

He nodded again. He noticed she didn’t have a drink, but she said no, she was fine, that his mother had given her some Limca earlier. He nodded. The silence swelled. He noticed a hole in his sock, exposing his big square nail, and he rubbed his toes together until the hole dropped out of view and then he looked up and grinned, just in case. A job? He could ask about her job.

‘Are you employed?’

‘I teach a little at the gurdwara. That’s all.’

‘For the gurdwara?’

‘For everyone.’

‘My father works for the government.’ He paused. ‘Worked for the government. He’s not very well these days. He doesn’t leave his bedroom much. We don’t really know what to do.’ But probably Vakeelji had explained everything already, so he stopped there.

‘God will guide us,’ she said, firmly, and though he wasn’t sure whether she meant He’d guide the world at large or just the two of them, sitting in this room about to weave their lives together, Randeep nodded and said that perhaps she was right, and then they remained sitting there and let the silence grow into something that didn’t feel uncomfortable at all.

He thought about her that night. He flipped onto his stomach and sighed hotly into his thin pillow and wondered what it would be like to be married to her. He’d liked her laugh, the honest, open-faced shine of it. What had he said? Something about how the best Indian families were the ones big enough to get lost in. He should remember that line. Through the wall he could hear his mother’s voice, muffled. Talking to his father. About the meeting, no doubt. He hadn’t committed himself to anything. In fact, the woman had stepped into her sensible black shoes and left alongside Vakeelji without any talk of weddings or visas or money. It seemed like a magnificent thing to try and get away with. Enough had, if Vakeelji was to be believed. Which he should be, of course. And he needed to get away from all this. From his fear of being sent back to college. From the shame that made him want to smash every mirror. This girl seemed to offer a new start, another chance. He flipped onto his back again and held his fist to his forehead. He tried to remember what colour her eyes were.

Vakeelji came round again the next evening. It seemed to be a pre-planned visit, for Mrs Sanghera had the teapot ready on the table. Lakhpreet brought in a plate of apples, sliced and fried in cinnamon. Randeep was called in from his room and the lawyer got down to business.

‘If you want to go ahead with it, bhabhi, we’ll have to be quick. She’s leaving in four days.’

‘Four. .? How in God’s name can we be ready in four days?’

The lawyer raised his hand, as if swearing an oath. ‘All will be done. You just need to say yes to me now.’

Randeep sank into his seat, sinking further when his mother turned to face him.

‘Well?’ she said.

‘I don’t know.’

‘It’s simple. You either go back to college and complete or you do this.’

He felt the heat come into his face.

‘Don’t pull that face with me, Randeep. If you care about the long-term survival of this family, then you need to start making something of yourself. You’re nineteen now. You’re not a child.’

‘But I am making something of myself.’

‘In that electrical store?’ She looked to Vakeelji. ‘What dreams I had, Harchand. A husband high up in government. A son at NIT.’

‘We can all work,’ Lakhpreet said, resting a hand on Randeep’s shoulder. ‘You’re not being fair to him.’

‘And we will work. When we are all in England. With well-paid jobs worthy of a family like ours. What hope for that in this snake basket of a land?’

Vakeelji said, ‘She’s not asking for much money at all. And she’s a good, God-fearing girl. Some of them have all sorts of tricks, demanding more at the last minute and whatnot. But I think you can trust her.’

‘A very quiet, simple girl,’ Mrs Sanghera said, approvingly. ‘Jat Sikh, too. What more could we want? She’s landed in our lap from above.’

‘And you’d be her first transfer. When it gets to the second or third they start asking questions, but this should be straightforward.’

‘You see how much effort Vakeelji has gone to for you?’ his mother said.

Randeep nodded.

‘Is that a yes?’

‘What’s her name?’

‘Narinder. Narinder Kaur,’ the lawyer said.

‘A nice name,’ Randeep said absently, and his mother hid her smile in a sip of her tea.

Vakeelji was right. It was all done in four days. They drove the next morning to a small, isolated gurdwara about thirty miles outside the city and were married in a short ceremony witnessed only by Randeep’s family, the lawyer, his assistant, the priest, and a few locals who happened to have wandered in. Vakeelji’s assistant brought along a sherwani for Randeep to wear, a long gold-and-maroon kaftan, a little scuffed-looking. Randeep guessed it had been the assistant’s own wedding outfit and that this wasn’t the first time it had been reused. The red turban Randeep wore had been his own grandfather’s. When Narinder arrived, the lawyer took a wedding dupatta from the boot of his Ambassador. She accepted it with both hands, like a gift, and touched it to her eyes and forehead. Then she repaired to the outside toilets, emerging a few minutes later with the dupatta arranged and pinned over her head and chest and shoulders. She smiled at Randeep, who smiled back, and Mrs Sanghera led everyone into the temple, where the priest seemed to have a slight cold as he read from the book. Afterwards, the locals surrounded Mrs Sanghera, nagging her for their wedding gifts. She recoiled — the proximity of these chi-chi village folk was clearly too much. But it seemed Vakeelji had thought of this as well and his assistant proceeded to hand out boxes of sweetmeats. Randeep and Narinder stood apart from all this, looking on.

‘Are you OK?’ he asked.

‘It was so easy,’ she said. She sounded almost annoyed. ‘I don’t know why I didn’t do it before.’

He didn’t know what to say to this. ‘Thank you.’

Vakeelji was calling them. It was time to be going. Narinder ducked into the car and the rest of them watched as the assistant double-clanged the boot shut and drove her off. It was a strange sight: a red bride sitting alone in the back of a black Ambassador.

‘A good girl,’ Mrs Sanghera said.

‘Will we see her tomorrow?’ Randeep asked.

‘No need,’ the lawyer said. ‘We got all the photographs and computers will do the rest. I doubt you will ever have to see her again.’

The wedding cards arrived from the printer the following afternoon and in the evening the lawyer turned up with a photo album and video of the wedding, along with some ‘love letters’ dating back several months. He’d had copies made for the girl which he’d take over in the morning, but first he wanted to sit Randeep and his mother down and explain what would happen next. So. The girl will go back to England in two days and file for a marriage visa for you. She’ll need to provide savings slips and evidence that the marriage is real. Hence the wedding, the photographs, the letters. Once she has done that we’ll apply for the marriage visa from here. Delhi will call you for an interview and, if successful, the visa will be granted and you will leave for England. Then after one year you will apply for your stamp, your indefinite right to remain. When you get that, you apply for divorce. A year after that you can get full citizenship status and call bhabhi and your sisters over.

‘Years,’ Mrs Sanghera said, falling back against the settee.

‘Not really, bhabhi. He’ll be in England by September.’

‘Only three months?’ Randeep said.

‘You’re paying all this money. It should be quick.’

‘About that, uncle. What about paying Narinderji?’

‘Ji?’ Lakhpreet exclaimed, from the red armchair. ‘Careful, brother.’

Vakeelji said it was all no problem. ‘We’ve given her partial payment now, as I agreed with your mother, so she has savings to show them. The rest she won’t get until it all goes through. So once you are over there I will give you her address and each month you send her what we’ve agreed. But only if you can afford it. She was quite adamant about that.’

Randeep nodded. ‘She’s very kind.’

‘Hmm,’ the lawyer said. ‘The money doesn’t seem that important to her.’

He felt his mother’s hand stroking his hair. ‘Three months and you’ll be leaving me. All alone in another country.’ He wasn’t sure if she meant his loneliness or her own.

The lawyer took one of the apples before him, speaking and eating at the same time. ‘Actually, bhabhi, I have another visa case running at the moment. Nijjar Sahib. The Ambarsar shawl-wallah? He lived in the same block as you.’

‘Shanti’s husband? He is looking for work abroad? At his age?’

‘His son. I forget his name.’ He looked sidelong at Lakhpreet.

‘She has two.’

‘The oldest.’

Mrs Sanghera turned her face to the ceiling, willing the name into being, but then shrugged and gestured vaguely towards her head. ‘The memory, it is going, Harchand.’

‘I thought the two boys could go together. Four eyes are more likely to find work than two. Do you agree?’

She said she supposed she did. ‘And it means Randeep will have someone with him.’

‘Good. That’s settled, then. I’ll arrange things so.’

Lakhpreet stood and excused herself from the room.

*

It was a small, miserable place: steaming dirty towels stacked on the tottery coffee table, a torn blue sheet coming detached from its rail, a lamp in the form of a goldfish and beside that, strangely, disturbingly, the top half of a grandfather clock. The wooden bed was high and his bare feet dangled several inches above the grime of the chequered floor. He could hear the old woman singing to herself, and the clink and splash of metal objects being run under a tap.

‘Won’t be long, child!’ she called.

Avtar tried to smile, failed. He mouthed a silent ‘Waheguru.’

The woman pottered in, humming, carrying a gold-bottomed tray with large French handles. Various sharp-looking things were arranged on it. Very carefully, she placed it on the coffee table, beside the steaming towels.

‘There. All cleany-cleany nicey-nicey.’ She smiled a wide, loose smile, shoulders bunching up, as if he was a little boy and they were about to embark on a nice little adventure. A picnic, perhaps. The smile made her tiny black eyes disappear but brought the rest of her face out in a sudden storm of wrinkles. Her over-washed flower-print dress was cut roughly at the knee and shoulders and her hair was skinned back into a braided rat’s tail. Her name was Nurse Gomes.

She explained that she was going to give him an injection now which would make him all sleepy because once he was asleep she could make a really long cut at the bottom of his ribs. She’d then tie up a few pernickety little tubes before removing the little moon-sock. And then she’d stitch it all back up, do a final clean, and that would be that. Not even one hour it would take. Easy, na? Not one jot thing to worry about.

‘You get the best care with Nurse Gomes!’

At some point during the procedure his eyelids fluttered, making a veil of his lashes. There was pain. A long razoring pain which he couldn’t locate. It seemed to be coming up from his legs. He could hear the old woman. Singing. The snickering of scissors. He tried to lift his head. Too heavy. He moved his lips but no sound came out. Then his eyes closed and he felt himself being taken under again.

When he did wake, blinking in the steady sunlight, the pain was very definitely coming from his stomach. His throat caught. He reeled up and moved his hand to where it hurt. The area was crisscrossed with furry white bandages. He looked around but the place was empty.

‘Madam!’

She came hurrying in, bunny slippers shuffling on the floor. ‘Lie back! Lie back!’ She applied her hands to his shoulders and pushed him down. ‘You must let it mourn. Your body is calling for its missing part. You must let it mourn.’

So he lay there, one hand tamping down the bandages. He lay there all afternoon staring at the damp ceiling. Breathing hard. Gulping down the pain and starting to sweat. The tears slid from the corners of his eyes and pooled into his ears.

In the evening Nurse Gomes placed her shrivelled little hand on his brow and asked if the dear wanted to stay another night.

‘What cost?’ he managed with enormous difficulty.

‘Normal, dear. Always normal.’

‘Thank you, madam, but I’ll be asking your leave if you don’t mind.’

He hauled himself up, head hanging low. Sickness threatened. Sweat dripped from his nose and soaked into the wood. She went away, still singing, and came back with a fussy yellow envelope. He thanked her and secured the envelope into his shirt pocket. She explained that she’d deducted Mr Bhatia’s cut. The hospital desk-man. Avtar thanked her again, pushed off the bed, and, holding his numb left leg, hobbled out.

At the gurdwara, the beds were all gone. He’d have to find a hotel, the granthi said, but first he rested a while, marshalling his strength. When he tried to move on, he couldn’t get up. The priest returned with two younger men who helped Avtar to his feet and pointed out a nearby guest house where he could try and rent a bed. But only mattresses were available there, no beds, so he chose the cheapest one — sheetless, springless, and yellow-stained. He spent two days and nights on the foul, damp thing until the pain began to dissolve. Till his body stopped mourning. Then he washed his face in the sarovar at the gurdwara, tidied his shirt into his trousers and did some calculations. The loan against the shop, plus what savings they had, combined with the operation money, and still he was short. He added it all up again, and then a third time. He looked over to the temple. Why was He making it so hard for them? He walked out of the gurdwara’s gates and took the route across the flyover. Pocket Bhai had been right.

It was the hospital deskman with the bad teeth who’d first told him about Pocket Bhai. He’d said if Avtar needed serious money and quickly, he really only had two choices. Either give up some part of himself — a kidney, say — or go to Pocket Bhai. In some ways it didn’t matter, the deskman went on, chuckling, because if things went wrong with Pocket Bhai both options resulted in the loss of an organ. Avtar ignored the man and had gone to the bank instead, to ask if they’d increase the loan against the business, and then, when they’d refused, he’d gone back the next day, to see if they’d change their mind. There was another week of unsuccessful job searching before he caved in.

Some said Pocket Bhai acquired the name in England during the Seventies — apparently, in that country, if you’d made lots of money you were said to have deep pockets. Others said it was because he always kept one hand stuffed inside the pocket of his kurta, even when eating. And fucking, some joked. He had the sinewy, tough body of a strict self-disciplinarian, and his face was as neat as a ball, with its nothing chin and absent earlobes, its extreme baldness. A small pot of raw orange lentils lay on the table before him. It wasn’t clear what the shop sold. There were a few bits of furniture here and there. Avtar supposed it was all a front for the moneylending. He had already explained his situation on the phone to one of Pocket Bhai’s people — about the student visa, about working in England — but had to go over it all again. He’d pay the money back as soon as possible.

‘Name?’

Avtar told him.

‘Address?’

He thought about lying, but had a feeling he’d only be found out.

‘Come back tomorrow.’

He did, and the orange lentils were still there. Pocket Bhai threw down a stapled wad of notes next to them and Avtar felt himself take a pace backwards. It was bewildering to see that much money made available to him. Beside it Pocket Bhai placed a lemon-pale piece of paper detailing the repayment schedule.

‘My nephews live in the UK. They’ll collect the money every month in person. These are their numbers. As soon as you land you tell them where you’re living. You understand? We give one month to find work and the next month you start paying. You understand?’

He was looking at the amounts he was expected to pay back. It would end up costing more than five times what he’d borrowed. ‘Uncle, I can’t afford that. Maybe lower the rate a bit?’

‘And yet you can afford your brother’s school fees?’

The man had done his checks. He wondered what else he’d learned. Avtar couldn’t do it. It’d be impossible to repay that much on top of the loan against the shop, and who knew what these people would do to his family if he defaulted on his payments. He apologized and said he’d manage without. Pocket Bhai laughed. ‘You’ll come back. They always do.’

And now, not even a month since that visit, Avtar was indeed back, salaaming Pocket Bhai and taking a seat on the bench against the wall. He sat with his weight across his right hip, which dulled the pain slightly.

‘Kidney?’

Avtar nodded. Pocket Bhai sighed.

‘You silly boys. You silly desperate boys.’

When he walked through the door his mother and father were standing at the photo of Guru Nanak hanging on the wall. They’d been worried, they said. He’d been away so long. But was there work, like Nirmalji had promised him?

He nodded. ‘Lots of work. That’s why I stayed longer.’ He took out the yellow envelope and the money from Pocket Bhai and handed it all to his father. ‘I earned enough.’ He sat on the settee. His parents looked at him. He looked at the floor. ‘I’ll see the lawyer about buying me that visa.’

The summer months passed, hot and fume-filled, the air ferrying around spicy waves of shit and diesel. Even the monsoon, when it finally came, gave little respite, and by September Randeep was still wearing his thinnest cotton shirts. He turned up the wall fan and went back to the clothes he’d laid out on his bed. There was a knock on the door behind him.

‘We bought you something,’ his mother said, moving to reveal it. A suitcase: brown, shiny, expensive-looking leather. A red bow around its middle. She put a hand to his damp back. The fan made her chunni all fluttery over her head. ‘So tall you’ve got these days,’ and then: ‘Let’s pack together.’

The next morning at Delhi International Airport Avtar spotted Lakhpreet in the departures terminal, standing around with her family. Though they spoke every Sunday, and had been on the phone last night for a full two hours, this was the first time he’d seen her since she took him to the lawyer. She seemed anxious, her gaze darting, trying not to look as if she were searching him out. They’d agreed not to meet each other’s eyes today, and definitely not to talk: it was too risky, she’d said.

‘But I talk to unmarried girls all the time,’ he’d replied, joked, though neither of them felt like laughing.

Her brother, Randeep, was dressed much more smartly than him. Shirt, tie, trousers. Even the kid’s suitcase had a fucking bow tie. Avtar adjusted his pen to conceal the fact that his shirt pocket was missing its button, then pointed out to his mother that Aunty was over there.

The two families met, the mothers embracing, commiserating, reassuring one another — and, therefore, themselves — that God willing all would work out well for the two boys. Again — because she had already made several phone calls over the summer — Avtar’s mother pressed her thanks on Mrs Sanghera. It was so very, very kind of them to let Avtar stay with Randeep and his massiji in London.

‘Please, pehnji, you are embarrassing me. And my sister’s London house is very big. It is zero trouble for them.’

Avoiding Lakhpreet, Avtar moved to Randeep and extended his hand. ‘I used to see you sometimes. In the block. Just hanging around looking lost,’ Avtar added, laughing in what he hoped was a friendly way.

Randeep smiled miserably. Everything about his long, skinny frame — shoulders sloping in, feet crossed shyly — suggested an innocent view of the world.

‘Have you been on a plane before?’ Avtar asked.

Mrs Sanghera interjected. ‘We used to fly all the time. With Randeep’s father’s postings. We even went to Colombo once. But Randeep was very small then. You probably don’t remember, do you, beita?’

‘It’s my first time,’ Avtar said. ‘So you can help me, na?’

At this the boy smiled more openly, showing his large, straight teeth.

They checked in their luggage, anxiously showing their visas and passports to the sour-faced man behind the counter. At the security gates the guard advised that it was strictly passengers only beyond this point.

‘Tell Papa not to worry,’ Avtar said, embracing his tearful mother. ‘It’s all going to be fine. I promise.’

He looked across and saw Randeep stroking his sister’s hair. She was crying against his shoulder. ‘I love you, too,’ he said, but still she wasn’t letting go.

‘Don’t be silly, Baby,’ Mrs Sanghera said, pulling her daughter away. ‘This isn’t like you.’

On the plane, whenever he closed his eyes, Avtar kept seeing Lakhpreet’s face, tears rolling down. How helpless he’d felt standing there. He sighed. It was for the best, he reminded himself. Just think how much he’d make. Save. He’d save so much in a year. In fact, he’d have a savings pile, he decided, and add to it every month. Before he knew it, their lives would have turned round. He allowed himself a smile at the thought of Mrs Sanghera’s face as he married her daughter. And Randeep’s. Though Avtar doubted Lakhpreet’s brother would be that bothered. He seemed pretty reserved, not at all like his sister, and it was hard to believe he was the elder, even if only by a year.

‘So. You’re a married man?’ Avtar said.

There was a ripple of confusion down the boy’s face, tiny movements that finished in a slight parting of his mouth. ‘Yeah. I suppose so.’

‘You don’t sound so sure?’ Avtar smiled.

‘No, no. I am. A married man,’ he repeated, almost to himself. Randeep felt a strange dissonance, how the bald fact of it made him instantly adult, and yet their handling of it all, of his life, was like a regression to childhood. He couldn’t work it out. He felt too young to be married, though. He felt too young to be anything. ‘She’s a kind person.’

‘Yeah. A real gutkawalli,’ Avtar said, repeating Lakhpreet’s description.

‘Hmm? How do you know?’

‘Your mother said. To mine,’ and Avtar turned to the window, telling himself to be more careful next time.

At Heathrow, a short woman with a frazzled look approached them. Her salwaar kameez was a plain cranberry, and her widow-white chunni covered her full grey head.

Randeep took the lady in his arms. ‘Massiji. Sat sri akal.’

‘Welcome, beita.’ She had a soft voice. She held his face and pulled it down to kiss his forehead. ‘You had no trouble?’

‘None. This is Avtar bhaji. My friend.’

Avtar touched her feet, but she seemed unused to this and mixed up her blessings.

‘Where’s Jimmy bhaji?’ Randeep asked, looking around. ‘I thought he was coming.’

‘Oh, something came up. But he’ll be at home. They’re both looking forward to seeing their cousin.’

She lived in Ilford, in a small semi on the straight edge of a keyhole-shaped cul-de-sac. There was a mean black hatchback with a phat exhaust on the drive and behind this she parked her grey, spluttering metal bucket of a motor. Home, she said, as if amazed to have made it back in one piece. She held the front door open while they wheeled their cases over the step and found themselves immediately in the living room. Two lime leather sofas and a massive TV dwarfed the space. There were video consoles, too, and boxes of computer games, a clutch of keypads tangling about the carpet. An archway led to the kitchen and at the table sat a young man hunched over his bowl of cereal. Long shorts, gym vest. A buzz cut and a goatee. Glassy studs in both lobes.

‘Jimmy bhaji! How are you?’ Randeep paused at the table, waiting for Jimmy bhaji to jump to his feet at seeing his cousin after so many years. Jimmy remained sitting. He looked up and with his spoon still in his hand nodded at Randeep.

‘Hey, man. Welcome to England. I forgot Mum said someone was visiting for a bit.’

Randeep smiled, a little chastened.

‘This your first time? To England?’

‘Ji.’

‘Well, wrap up warm. You know what they say about England.’

A door closed somewhere above and from a staircase partially obscured by the archway a girl — a woman — entered the room. She wore denim shorts over thick black leggings, and an old grey T-shirt. Her vast frizz of crunchy-looking curls was mushroomed high up on her head, fountain-like, and earplugs emerged from her neckline to noodle about her chest.

She looked at Massiji and Avtar, and then at Randeep. ‘Oh, hi.’

‘Pehnji? I didn’t recognize you.’

‘It’s Aki,’ she said, with emphasis.

‘Sorry.’ He tried again: ‘I can’t believe it’s been, how long, more than ten years since we were all together? Do you remember when we milked those cows and how it went all over us? We talk about that all the time.’

She gazed at him, then glanced at Jimmy and the two of them exchanged smiles. Abruptly, she turned to Massiji. ‘I’m going for a jog and then to Lauren’s. I probably won’t be back tonight.’

‘Akaljot, we agreed. I told you.’

‘Sorry, Mummy dearest. It’s her birthday.’ Then to Randeep: ‘Enjoy your stay.’

She left via the back door, fixing her earplugs in as she went. Then Jimmy pushed his chair back, screeching it along the linoleum, and dumped his dishes into the sink. He patted the pockets of his shorts, checking for keys, said laters to Randeep and whoever the other freshie was and followed his sister out. The glass panel in the door rattled as it closed. Randeep turned to his massi and smiled in an effort to convey that he wasn’t offended. But Massiji was looking out of the window, altogether embarrassed.

She tried to give them her room — the children have college, you see, they need their sleep, otherwise absolutely they would have given up their rooms for you — but the boys insisted they’d be fine on the settees in the front room. ‘Please, Massiji, it’s much more comfortable than we are used to.’

The next morning, rooting in his suitcase, Avtar found the manila folder of student stuff Vakeelji had given him. He recited a short prayer in front of the Guru Nanak calendar hanging in the kitchen and set off to enrol. In his hand he had an old Tube map Massiji had found and over which she’d penned in careful blue Panjabi a list of directions Avtar was to make sure he followed. She didn’t want him getting lost in that big city.

Even so, it was long past two o’clock when he passed under the grey concrete frame of Edgware Station and looked around for some helpful street sign. He was exhausted, and late: the ticket-wallah on the Underground had sent him off towards Edgware Road, not Edgware, and hours seemed to pass before he found a Panjabi-looking man willing to explain that Avtar would have to buy another ticket because he needed to be in another part of London altogether. Thankfully, the friendly man demonstrated how to use the ticket machines, which saved Avtar having to queue at the counter again.

He walked straight on, towards what looked like a major road, and kept to the right-hand side of the pavement. He reminded himself to ask Massiji about changing up some money and to then give her some for letting him call home. They were fine, his parents had said. Pleased he’d arrived safely, his father added, a little formally. They weren’t used to speaking to their son in this way — generally, without a real reason for the call — so it was a short conversation, the main thrust being that Avtar wasn’t to worry about them. He was to concentrate on making something of himself in England now God had blessed him with this opportunity. To that end, Avtar allowed himself a little optimism. The trains had come when the electronic signs had said they would. The guard hadn’t expected money to point him in the right direction. Cars were only driven on roads and only in nice long columns. Even the air was a clear and uniform blue. All the signs of a well-run country. A fair country. A country that helps its people. A country that might even help him.

A brown signboard read ‘Coll. of NW London’ and indicated the first left at the big grassy roundabout up ahead. He wondered how to cross the road. Grey railings lined the kerbside, and it was surely against the law to jump them. He tailed a woman with wheatish hair, hoping she’d show the way, but at the roundabout she followed the road as it curved off and Avtar was left behind. Cars flowed round as if in a deliberate rush to fill in any gaps. He returned to the railings. Perhaps they were low precisely so that people who needed to cross the road could do so. Maybe it wasn’t illegal at all. He secured the folder into the back of his black trousers and, with one foot lifted to the top of the railing, jumped over. The cars were so close. Drivers glanced confusedly over and one or two pointed at the ground, mouthing words. He hoped that now he’d made clear his intention the traffic might stop, but there seemed to be no sign of that. He ventured a foot forward, then took it back as a white van came roaring down. He was breathing hard. He looked about again: nothing. No traffic lights. He had no chance. He waited. When the moment came he felt the cold of the railings leave his body and he was running as hard as he could. The road felt coarse under his thin soles. He could feel his folder coming loose from his trousers and as he reached behind to hold it in place a long brassy horn sounded. Avtar looked over his shoulder. The cars were coming. He wouldn’t make it, and as he launched towards the central mound of the roundabout his foot gave and he felt one of his shoes slip off. All he could do was squeeze between the black-and-white arrow signs and clamber onto the grassy circle. Safe at last, he covered his ears. He felt stupid and angry and through the legs of the arrow signs saw his poor shoe being flipped about like a fish.

About an hour later, a beautiful yellow-haired girl smiled at Avtar as if she’d been waiting the whole day just for him to walk into the college registration office. She looked like one of those white girls that used to come on the television, selling Sunsilk or Amla Shampoo. He managed a weak smile and tentatively presented his folder. He hoped he’d removed all the grass stains.

‘Welcome to North-West,’ she said, unclipping the folder, going through his papers. ‘Computing with Security Systems. I hear that’s a good course.’

‘Thank you,’ Avtar said, just about understanding.

She asked him where he was from and he said India, and then she said they had him down as making his own accommodation arrangements, and he said that, yes, that was true.

‘Not a long way, I hope?’

‘Ilford?’ He showed her the address Massiji had written down for him.

‘Lots of early starts if you want to make your nine o’clocks, then!’ She laughed, which permitted Avtar to laugh too.

She photostatted his visa and passport and Avtar watched her filing the copies into a metal cabinet. She handed him various things: maps, a student union application form, an events listing, his timetable, a pass with his name and picture on it — to give him access to the Mathematical Sciences building, she explained. All this he gathered into his folder, thanking her, keen to leave before they reneged and shipped him back home.

‘There is a strong college Indian Students’ Society, which does a lot of good work helping students adjust to — ’ she struggled for the word. She seemed to want to avoid saying England — ‘a new approach. They’re still open. It’s just down the corridor if you’re interested.’

He thanked her again, inadvertently bowing his head a little, and turned to leave. He couldn’t believe it had been so easy. No interview, no questioning, no police. At the exit, he thanked her once more, only to catch her staring at the cracked heels of his naked feet. He felt suddenly embarrassed and, clearly, so did she.

‘It’s just down the corridor,’ she said again, pointing.

The corridor — an open-air walkway, really — was a low corrugated roof protecting a slabbed concrete floor. To his left were doors and classrooms, while the right opened onto a half-empty car park. There were several squat buildings: Materials and Metallurgy, Blocks 3F to 4B, the Tony Baker Building. So this was a real college. He imagined impossibly clever people in spectacles behind each of those doors, being groomed for a rich and employed future. And here he was, amongst them. If his parents could see him now. Behind him, a voice called out, ‘Hello?’ An apna, Avtar knew, before he’d even turned around. A plumpish middle-aged Indian, in fact, in woolly, dark-coloured clothes. His round glasses balanced on top of his shaved bald-grey head.

‘Ji?’ Avtar said.

‘Foreign students should come see us.’

Avtar tracked back and followed the man into a classroom plastered floor to ceiling with detailed maps of India and huge images of students on elephants. Across the wall ran a banner: NWL IndiSoc Back to Roots Annual. The desks were arranged into a horseshoe, as if for a meeting. The man sat down and started pulling out great sheaves of paper from a nearby cabinet.

‘First day?. . Please sit.’

Avtar didn’t.

‘I’m Dr Amarjit Singh Cheema. General Secretary of the International Society here at NWL. Of which IndiSoc is one part. We offer foreign students support and guidance. Language courses. Visa advice. Accommodation tips. Pastoral care. Et cetera et cetera.’

Finally, the doctor seemed to find his papers and slapped them on the desk and looked up at Avtar.

‘We have an excellent mentoring programme.’

Avtar nodded, smiled. He wanted to get out of here. This man was an Indian and a doctor to boot. He’d work out everything. ‘I’ll come tomorrow, thank you.’

There was a pause, and something like a question mark appeared in the man’s face. Avtar could feel himself being studied, filleted.

‘The annual fee is very reasonable,’ the doctor said, but the tone of his voice seemed to convey something altogether different. ‘Where are you from?’ he asked, switching to Panjabi.

‘Amritsar.’

‘Your elders?’

‘Nijjar.’

The man’s face softened pleasantly. ‘My mother’s people are from there. So you’re Doabi?’

Avtar nodded, said ji, Chachaji, and the doctor laughed.

‘Nice, very nice.’

He put the lid on his pen and closed the door and told Avtar to sit, and this time he did.

‘How much did it cost you?’

Avtar looked down to his knuckles.

‘Listen, I’m Indian. I might have been born here but I’m Indian and I want the people of my country to prosper.’

So Avtar told him and the doctor nodded and asked Avtar what course he was doing and whether he intended on actually doing any of it or if he was just going to disappear like most of them did.

‘I’m here to work.’

‘But there is no work. It’s drying up. Pfft!’

‘I’ll find something.’

‘You kids. .’ He sighed, and, removing his glasses, rested his chin on interlocked hands. ‘Work, by all means. But you’ll be in a much stronger position if you also pass your first year. Then the college will protect you. But if you fail. . Well, the college will kick you out and you’ll have no choice but to disappear. And for how long can you really hide?’ He advised Avtar to keep up with the course. He might not be able to make the lectures — he understood that — but he should definitely improve his English and get the textbooks from the library: ‘They’re free. Think of the long term, Nijjara. If you leave here with a diploma, just think what you could do back home. If you’re lucky, you could even stay and bring your family over. You shouldn’t waste this chance.’

They had a cup of tea — with cloves and fennel and elaichi — and the doctor listened as Avtar told him the story of how his grandparents had moved from tiny Nijjar to Amritsar city. Until recently, his papa used to take the family back there every summer. Avtar had always liked the bull races best.

‘Do they still happen?’ the doctor exclaimed. ‘Ha! My mother still talks about them. You should come to our house. Mataji will light up when she knows someone from her village is here.’

‘How often do you go back, sir?’ Avtar asked.

‘Me? Oh no, no, no. I’ve never been. I’ve always wanted to, but with one thing and another. . And the kids weren’t ever interested.’

‘Life is busy here,’ Avtar offered.

The doctor made an agreeable sound and his gaze shifted away from Avtar. For a long while he stared at the large bookcases beside the whiteboard, at the ordered ranks of books upon books upon books. A lifetime of them. He looked back at Avtar and smiled sadly.

Avtar received by post three waxy-paged and thickly dog-eared computing texts. Dr Cheema had also included books on learning English, with accompanying CDs. Attached to the package was a note saying that Avtar was to remember their chat and be sure to visit him and his family at their home once he was settled in. Avtar folded the note and slipped it into an elasticated pouch on the inside of his suitcase. He couldn’t imagine someone being as helpful to a newcomer in his own country. He ran his hand over one of the textbooks, over the laminated image of lightning bolts forking wildly out from a computer screen. He was sitting at the kitchen table in Massiji’s house. Randeep was sleeping a few feet away on the sofa. He opened to the first page and began to read.

He studied for two hours every morning, rarely getting further than a few paragraphs. By seven, Massiji would be downstairs preparing for her shift at the 24-hour supermarket. She’d make them a breakfast of paratha with achaar, and foil-wrap some more to keep them going for the day. Not long after, they tidied away their blankets and left the house too, before Jimmy bhaji and Aki pehnji woke up.

Doctor Cheema had been right: work really was drying up. In two weeks the closest they’d come to finding anything was a half-hearted promise from a Muslim cash-and-carry owner who said he’d keep them in mind for the Christmas rush. They’d already exhausted the streets of Ilford, Barnet and Poplar in their search, and following a tip from an aunty-type shopkeeper they’d even spent two days traipsing around Southall and Ealing, and then Hounslow, looking for some phantom gurdwara she said was being built.

‘She must’ve misunderstood,’ Avtar said, as they got off the bus at Ilford.

They waited on the concourse, on a bench, until they were certain Massiji would be home. Randeep seemed withdrawn. Avtar wondered if it was his cousins, and how they were always avoiding him. Or maybe it was his father. Last night, on the cheap mobile phone Massiji had bought them, Lakhpreet said that he’d had ‘an episode’. Should he ask Randeep about it? It might help. In the event, Randeep got there first.

‘Your father’s quite old, isn’t he? I remember him now. Total white hair. Very slow on the stairs.’

‘That’s him,’ Avtar said, a little irked at the description.

‘A nice man. He made the bus driver wait for me once because my suitcase was heavy.’

Avtar smiled into his jacket, imagining the scene. ‘Yeah. He’d do that.’

Randeep turned, stared. ‘You miss him,’ he diagnosed.

‘Oh, I miss everything. Why?’ he went on, passing it over, ‘Do you miss your father?’

Randeep looked away, blinking, and Avtar regretted the question.

The sun had almost set, and they watched as another busload set out from the concourse.

‘Any paratha left?’ Randeep asked.

Avtar showed him the foil balled up in his fist. ‘Have you called those numbers Vakeel Sahib gave you?’

‘There was only one,’ Randeep said. ‘It’s too far.’

‘Where?’

‘He said Scotland.’

‘How far’s that?’

Randeep shrugged. Avtar walked over to the fag-holed timetable on the lamppost. Birmingham. Bristol. Derby. Edinburgh. Glasgow. Gravesend. Leeds. Manchester. Newcastle. Wolverhampton. But no Scotland.

‘It’s not on there,’ he said, sitting back down.

‘Because it’s too far.’

‘But if that’s where the work is. .’

They waited another half an hour and returned to the house. The daughter, Aki, was in the kitchen, pouring hot water from a kettle into a white plastic pot. It looked like noodles.

‘We have noodles in India, too,’ Randeep said.

She frowned, nodded, sat down to eat. Randeep wondered if it would be rude to ask if they might have some. Probably, yes, but not as rude as not offering some in the first place. Perhaps it was the effect of being brought up without a father. She glanced across to him and abruptly got to her feet and went upstairs, taking her noodle pot with her and muttering something about Pakis always fucking staring.

Massiji arrived late, with a paper bag of courgettes which she stewed into a quick sabzi for the boys. They ate two, three, four rotis, and for dessert a thickened-up bowl of milky semiya.

‘All that walking around must make you hungry.’

‘It tastes so good. Like home.’

‘Better than home,’ Avtar said.

‘Bas karo. I’m happy simply to have children to cook this for.’

Jimmy came thundering down the stairs in his tan stud-rind boots and reached for his leather jacket.

‘Are you going out, too?’ his mother said, in a voice disappointed and exasperated.

‘Just to the pub. Won’t be long.’

‘Your sister’s already gone. Why don’t you two spend some time with your cousin and Avtar? They look for work all day and have to sit here getting bored by me all night.’

Randeep protested — they weren’t bored, Massiji, that wasn’t. .

‘They’re eating,’ Jimmy said, as if they weren’t sitting just across the room.

‘They’ve finished,’ Massiji said, and there was a strained look on Jimmy’s face as he failed to summon a comeback.

Randeep and Avtar stood awkwardly at the bar, holding pints of cola up by their necks while Jimmy shot pool with his friends. Aki had been there too, but led her friends out as soon as she saw the boys enter. ‘PMS,’ Jimmy had said and Randeep had looked at Avtar, who’d shrugged.

Avtar wondered if this place was like that 1771 club in Jalandhar, with its secret upstairs gambling room. It didn’t seem to be. He couldn’t see any stairs, for one thing. Just lots of tables and around the tables lots of friends and couples of all different colours laughing and drinking. Women laughing and drinking. Indian women freely laughing and drinking. He imagined some impossible future in which he and Lakhpreet were settled with good jobs in Ilford and coming here together after a long week at work. The thought was funny. He sipped his drink.

‘I’d never let my sisters come here,’ Randeep said, because this was horrible. This was dirty and vulgar and he could feel the smoke sinking into his clothes. He was glad Jimmy had told him not to wear the tie.

A young black man appeared beside Randeep at the bar, waving a note to get the barman’s attention. Kaleh, Massiji said, were everywhere in Ilford, and the first time the boys saw one walking towards them they’d fallen silent, until the man passed by and Randeep whispered how frightening they looked. But he’d never seen one up close, right here beside him, like now. Their skin was so smooth, he thought. Not a blemish, no variation in tone, as if a machine had played some part in it all. He wondered how it would feel to touch. And that hair too. Like it had been stitched onto his head with silver thread. The man turned towards Randeep, a hard look in his eye. Randeep smiled, tight-lipped, edging a little closer to Avtar. Secretly, he watched the black man pay for his drink and rejoin his black friends at another pool table.

‘They’re fast, hain na? All the good runners are kaleh. Do they have their own language? Like ours is Panjabi?’

Avtar said he didn’t know, though they seemed to be speaking English.

‘Look how smooth their skin is. Why is that?’

Jimmy left his game of pool to ask if they needed a top-up. ‘Sure you don’t want a knock?’

Randeep asked if he knew any kaleh and what they spoke and ate and why their skin was so smooth.

‘Black don’t crack. E-vo-loo-shun, innit. Thought Mum said you were clever?’

‘What are they like?’

‘Like?’

The black man bounded over, his eyes bulging monstrously. ‘You got some beef with me, man?’ He was pointing, his face inches away.

Randeep lurched back, shaking his head.

‘You dotting me for time. Dot me to ma face.’ He stepped closer. ‘To ma fuckin’ face.’

Avtar moved Randeep behind him, protecting the kid, and Jimmy placed a hand on the man’s shoulder. ‘He’s fresh man, fresh. Lights out.’

‘Nang that. This Simon sidepart simpleton. . What, we taxed your fucking Co-op?’

‘Allow it, nigger. He’s learning. The rents were freshening up one day gone. Yours and mine. Same ends now, though, right? Same fucking drum. Right?’

A pause, then a chin-jut. ‘Standard, standard.’

‘Hectic,’ Jimmy said, emphasizing the syllables. He turned his back to the man and slurped the foam from his beer. This seemed to be some sort of message because the black man nodded and he and Jimmy touched fists, which Randeep thought must be an agreement to fight later.

On the walk home, Randeep was still shaking, his lips trembling. ‘I’m just cold.’

‘I don’t know why you freshies stare so much, man. Might be all right back home but it’s proper rude here, you know? People get really offended.’

‘Sorry, bhaji.’

‘Allow it. And don’t look so. . so defensive all the time. It gives you guys away like shit in a shoe. The way you lot stand close to the edge of the platform, eyes fixed on where the train’s coming from. The way you quickly take a look at everyone on the bus as you walk down the aisle. The way you stand so straight, as if your ankles are tied together. Spot you guys a mile off. Just chill,’ he finished, drawing out the word.

The boys nodded, not really questioning why these were things they ought to be trying to hide. Avtar had thought it was his clothes, his hairstyle, his sockless feet that had given his foreignness away to Dr Cheema. But it seemed alongside the cosmetic changes there was a whole system of other things to correct.

All night he heard Randeep rustling about on the other settee: smacking his pillows, throwing his blankets on and off, sometimes facing the room, sometimes not.

‘Arré, these things happen, yaar. Don’t dwell. Go to sleep. And for God’s sake let me sleep as well.’

‘It’s nothing to do with that. I’m hot-cold. I might not be well.’

Avtar sighed and brought the blanket over his head.

‘I think I will ring that Scotland number tomorrow,’ he heard Randeep say.

Somehow, Avtar kicked the blankets off at five o’clock for his two hours of study. He sat on a dining chair, the plastic clammy against his thighs, and set about untangling the wires of his headphones. He’d do an hour of Better English and then an hour of his course.

The sky was turning light grey and Avtar was still muttering along to his CD, as Aki came through the front door. He lifted away his headphones and let them hang around his neck. She’d been saying something to him.

‘Hahn ji?’

There was a liquid look in her face, as if she was struggling to coordinate eyes, mouth and brain, and — Avtar now noticed — her feet seemed to be constantly adjusting themselves. He felt an immediate rush of disgust.

‘I said, I suppose you think I’m bad.’

‘Ji?’

‘Bad. Do you think I’m bad? Do you think I’m nothing but a gorafied cow?’

Avtar said nothing. He’d probably not said five words to her in the time he’d been here. It wasn’t his place.

‘Well, fuck you. Fuck you, you freshie fucks.’ She took a step forward, one steadying hand on the wall. Half her face was in shadow. ‘Fuck you freeloaders. You come here expecting us to wait on you. What, because you’re family?’ She reeled back. ‘Where the fuck was you when my dad died, hey? Where was “family” then?’ She adopted a different voice. ‘Oh, sorry, that’s right. Because it’s my mother, she has to deal with it on her own. Because it’s a woman, she’s not allowed to turn to her family. Well, fuck you.’ She made shakily for the stairs, then stopped. ‘I’ll tell you who was here for us. My friends. They helped us. Were here for us. Got us back on our feet. The same people Mum wants me to stop hanging out with. Because she’s got the same fucked-up idea of family that you’ve all got. But I tell her. I tell her, the next time we’re on our knees it ain’t gunna be the Indian lot that come to help. It’ll be my friends again. Think of that. Think of that.’ She snorted, looked away. ‘You ain’t got a fucking scooby,’ she ended, quietly, and perhaps tearfully, though Avtar couldn’t be sure. She climbed the stairs, creaking her way up, and seconds later a door slammed shut.

Avtar looked down at his inked-up hands, then across to the settee, where he knew Randeep was lying awake under the blanket.

At the newsagent’s on the High Street they asked the Guju youth behind the counter to help them top up their phone. Then they found a bench down the side of Woolworths and Randeep folded out the blue chit with the Scottish number on it. He dialled and put the phone to his ear.

‘What do I say?’ he asked.

‘Say you’ve just landed in England with a marriage visa and that Harchand Vakeel Sahib said they’d give you work. Don’t tell them your name yet. Give a fake one.’

He half hoped no one would answer. But they did. ‘Hello? Hello. Who is this?. . My na—?. . I’ve just landed with a marriage visa and Harchand Vakeelji Sahib said you’d give me work. . Chandigarh, uncle. . Amritsar. . Yes, on marriage, uncle.’ A slow grin spread across Randeep’s face. ‘Yes, ji, I’m Randeep Sanghera. That’s me.’

It turned out that Vakeelji had already sent word of them to this Scottish uncle. He’d been waiting for them to call. In fact, he’d been saying to his wife only last night that he was going to call Harchand bhaji and say his men hadn’t been in touch yet and did they actually make it over OK.

‘But is there work?’ Avtar cut in.

‘He says so. He promised to call back later today.’

All afternoon he was checking the phone, or Avtar was asking him to check it. Then, as the high street filled with kids slouching home from school, the mobile rang and the Scottish uncle said there wasn’t anything in Glasgow or Aberdeen or Newcastle, but they weren’t to worry because there were plenty of other contacts he had to try. The main reason he was calling was to ask if they had National Insurance and City and Guilds cards, and if not, to make sure they had some passport-sized photographs handy, along with photocopies of their visas and passports. The boys went back to the house for their passports and visas and then back to the Guju youth in the newsagent’s to ask where they could get photostats. He laughed and said, here, pass them to him and he’d photocopy them in the back. I mean, not as if you’re faujis or anything, is it, he said with a wink. They found a photo booth in the chemist across the street, but didn’t have enough pounds and decided to wait until tomorrow before exchanging what rupees they had left. They returned to Massiji’s, Randeep excited at the prospect of work despite Avtar’s warning that they shouldn’t get their hopes up.

‘What kind of work do you think it might be?’ Randeep asked. The night had come round again, and they were under their blankets on the settees.

‘You’re the one who spoke to him, yaar.’

‘I didn’t ask. Sorry.’

Avtar frowned. He wished he’d stop saying sorry all the time. ‘Shop work, maybe.’

Randeep nodded in the dark. That would be all right. He’d hoped for something better, something software- or consultancy-related, but at least shop work would be nice and clean and easy.

The mobile vibrated hard against the glass top of the table, scurrying towards the edge. Randeep lurched for it — ‘It’s him!’ — and put it to his ear. ‘Hello?’ He listened for a long while. Avtar came and knelt beside him. ‘Tomorrow?’ Randeep said, and looked at Avtar, who nodded, urging Randeep to accept whatever the offer was, whenever it was. A little later Randeep said thank you, uncle, sat sri akal, and closed his phone.

‘There’s work?’ Avtar asked, shaking Randeep’s knee.

Randeep nodded. ‘One of his relatives. He has work in a city called Sheffield.’ Randeep paused. ‘I’ve got to be there tomorrow at one o’clock.’

Avtar withdrew his hands into his lap. He understood. ‘Oh.’

‘He said there was only work for one. So you go. I’ll find work here.’

‘Don’t be stupid. That fat lawyer gave you the contact.’

‘But where will you stay?’ he said, then tried to backtrack. ‘Of course, Massiji won’t mind—’

Avtar shook his head. ‘I’ll be fine.’

Avtar and Massiji came to St Pancras to see him off. He seemed quiet, as if thinking of what might lie ahead.

‘Don’t be worried,’ Avtar said.

‘I’m not, bhaji. I’ll manage. This is the world we live in now. But I do wish you were coming with me. It’s been really nice having someone to talk to.’

Avtar looked away, hiding his face because, overnight, he’d decided that this parting was actually a blessing in disguise. The boy relied too much on him. Exchanging money, approaching strangers, buying things — in all these it had somehow come to pass that Avtar would take the lead, even with his poorer English. Yes, it was definitely a blessing. It would force the boy to grow up. And Avtar could forget about him and concentrate on looking after himself. He only had six weeks before Pocket Bhai was expecting the first of the repayments. God willing, work would come.

‘If I find work for you there will you come?’ Randeep asked.

Avtar laughed. ‘I’ll come swimming in boiling waters if that’s where the work is.’

Massiji passed Randeep a food parcel for the journey and some money, which he tried to resist. ‘Just take it,’ she said. ‘And if there are any problems you come straight back, acha?’

He pushed against the turnstile and onto the platform, waving from the door then stepping up into the carriage, walking through, lugging his shiny leather suitcase behind him, and, as Jimmy bhaji had advised, not staring at any of the other passengers.

The train juddered out of the station and into the mechanical sprawl of London: cranes, pulleys, industrial lifts; then suburbs, the charmless wet platforms of one outpost after another. Only when they reached a station called Leicester did Randeep experience a change in his spirits. He was used to nice things, nice surroundings, and here were flat green fields, cows, palm-sized villages in the far distance. The view grew more beautiful still when, some two hours from London, the landscape changed again: hills, tumbling clouds, a church with a strangely twisted spire. He smiled. It was all so — he thought hard — so civilized. An image came to mind, of his father before the illness, still writing reports at his desk while the rest of the family slept. It was a time when he thought his father could withstand anything; an innocent time whose return he pined for. He put Massiji’s food parcel aside and by the time the train pulled into Sheffield, thirty-five minutes late, he still hadn’t touched it.

The station impressed him. It wasn’t as draughty as the London ones, and seemed cleaner, airier. This Sheffield must be a good city. He wondered why he’d never heard of it. As he studied the electronic departure boards, he saw someone by the payphone, holding a piece of cardboard bearing Randeep’s name. He was a short man with a goatee, receding spiked-up hair, and a busy, impatient look about him. Randeep took up his suitcase.

‘Virender bhaji?’

The man stopped his whistling. ‘Randeep?’ He screwed up the cardboard and threw it over his shoulder. They shook hands. ‘Good trip?’

‘I’m really happy to be here. What a beautiful city you have.’

Virender looked surprised. ‘Hold that thought.’

The van ride took them out of the city and onto elevated roads that wound through narrow, boarded-up, wretched-looking streets.

‘Mostly clearance at the moment,’ Virender was saying. ‘Decluttering sites, blah de blah. But I’ve got my eye on a new contract soon. A hotel, fingers crossed.’

‘I have a friend who came with me if you need more help.’

Virender bhaji ignored him. Perhaps he heard this a lot. ‘You’ll be all right digging up rocks and shit, yeah?’ He reached over and shook Randeep’s shoulder. ‘Put some muscle on those bones! You’re like a stick! Ronny the stick!’

They parked outside a large Victorian house with an overgrown, bushy front garden. The curtains were drawn haphazardly and giant cobwebs hammocked above the door. Virender knocked, twice, loudly.

‘One of these days I’ll remember my keys.’ He kicked the door. ‘Come on, you lazy chimps.’

The handle shook, and the door was at last opened by a sleepy, unshaven man with long, loose hair. His red mesh vest stretched tightly over his gut, which was as large as the belly of a heavily pregnant woman.

‘Still asleep, Gurps?’ Virender said, pushing past. ‘Won’t earn your millions like that, now, will you?’

Randeep nodded at the man and followed Virender into the front room. There were mattresses, grey sheets crumpled on them, and the wallpaper was torn in several places, revealing the pink underneath. It wasn’t too bad, Randeep tried to tell himself, and wondered which bed was his.

‘This is Gurpreet,’ Virender said. The long-haired man raised an elbow to the doorframe. He looked older, unfriendly. Randeep said sat sri akal.

‘Where’s the others?’ Virender asked.

‘Asleep. Out,’ Gurpreet said.

‘Anyway — ’ turning to Randeep — ‘your room’s upstairs. At the very top. You’re lucky. You’ve got your own space. I’ve put a mattress and shit in there already.’

He said he’d call later about work tomorrow but in the meantime he needed Randeep to come back outside and sign some forms.

‘You got your visa, yeah?’

‘Ji.’

Gurpreet let out a forlorn little laugh. ‘Everyone’s got a visa.’

‘Should’ve paid a bit more, then, shouldn’t you?’

Randeep spent the rest of the afternoon in his room, up two flights and at the end of the landing. He wiped his suitcase down with dampened toilet paper and stored it on top of the single-door wardrobe. He moved the mattress to the wall, so the sun wouldn’t wake him up in the morning, and aired the powder-blue blanket that had come with it. Then he stood at the window, texting Narinderji his new address and details, looking out at this new world. He hadn’t realized they were so high up. That there were so many hills.

He crept downstairs in the early evening, at the sound of voices and laughter. There were loads of them packed into the kitchen, more than he had expected. Eight, nine, ten. . Where did they all sleep? Most ignored him. One or two asked where he was from, how he got here. Randeep explained that he’d been staying in London with his massi but had to come up here for work.

‘My chacha’s son was the same,’ someone said. ‘Went from Uzbekistan all the way to Hull until he found a job. He’s back home now. Idiot got caught in a raid.’

Gurpreet’s voice came over the top. ‘He’s got a visa, the boy has. Not a deadhead fauji like us lot.’

The background chatter sank as swiftly as water down a plughole. ‘You a scooter?’ someone asked.

‘I’m on a marriage visa.’

There were whoops and cheers. His shoulders were rubbed. You’ve hit the jackpot, they said. Lottery nikhel gey. ‘Arré, janaab, you don’t even need to work. One year and all your dreams come true.’

Gurpreet thrust a plate into Randeep’s hand. ‘Welcome to England. Maybe you’ll bring us all some luck.’

It took two of them to convey the steel vat of food into the front room and steady it on a three-legged stool. Gurpreet invited Randeep forward. You first, he said. Randeep thanked him, and smiled hard to conceal how revolting he found it all. The tomatoey streaks on his plate that hadn’t been washed clean. The flies in the room. Even the tips of his cutlery were slick with some sort of green jam. He took up the large spoon and moved it through the grey mixture. He couldn’t tell what it was. It looked like nothing he was used to. This was just a grey-yellow slurry, the odd carrot and pea. He shook a small amount onto his plate and held the spoon out to Gurpreet. But Gurpreet said he had to have more.

‘Don’t be shy. You’re the guest today,’ and Gurpreet hurled down two huge ladlefuls of the stuff onto Randeep’s plate and sent him away with a couple of chapattis.

He didn’t want to appear ungrateful. He sat on the plastic trim of the mattress, plate balanced on his knees, and told himself he had to finish it. But he couldn’t. The chapattis were like wet cardboard and the sabzi had a gritty, slimy, sludgy texture, and all this seemed somehow to connect with the notion that there were things crawling out from the carpet and up his ankles. He started to sweat. He looked across to Gurpreet who was smiling at him, encouraging. Randeep smiled back. He tried one more mouthful, forcing his lips to close around his fingers and take it all in. He managed a few seconds of chewing before he felt his insides contract, refuse. He clamped his hand over his mouth, but the vomit seeped between his fingers and down onto his lap.

*

The work was a few miles away in a place called Catcliffe. An old building had been demolished and the ground had to be prepared for a new one. They were split into groups. Some were dispatched with orders to find all the intact bricks and pile them to one side, so they could later be sold. Some had to work the JCBs and clear the rubble and topsoil. And some, like Randeep, had to gather the boulders and wheel them to the waiting yellow skips. He’d been given a pair of worn-looking boots, and thick gloves for handling the stones, but could still only manage one rock at a time, and it became almost comical how often he had to stop the barrow and turn the thing round. The rocks were so big they had to be rolled up a laddered plank leaning against the skip.

‘My grandmother could go faster,’ the guy who was rolling said.

‘Sorry,’ Randeep replied and trudged back with his barrow.

At the end of the week he got his wages from Vinny and went to the supermarket to buy a plate, a knife and fork and spoon, and a bar of soap. That evening, he came down into the kitchen holding his purchases by his side, hoping no one would notice. But Gurpreet was dishing out and as soon as he took hold of Randeep’s clean white plate he looked up.

‘I see. So what we have isn’t good enough for you?’

‘It’s not that, bhaji. You saw how I was sick. My stomach is just very sensitive.’

‘O-ho! He is just very sensitive! Did you hear that, faujio? And I suppose you think the rest of us are barbarians compared to you?’

‘I’m sorry. I’ll take it back. I’m sorry.’

‘No, no. If the prince is sensitive, then we must respect that.’ He shook the brown porridge from the spoon and onto the bright white centre of the plate and handed it back to Randeep. ‘Enjoy.’

No one spoke to him during the meal. Afterwards, he cleaned his plate and spoon and went to lie on his mattress in his room. He called Avtar but it went to voicemail. He didn’t know how he was going to survive a year. Maybe if he asked Vinnyji if there was somewhere else he could live? He could say he’d be happy to take a pay cut. He drifted off to sleep, still in his boots.

He did ask Vinnyji if there was alternative accommodation, catching him on his own before he drove off one morning.

‘Look, I sympathize, mate. You like the finer things. My missus is the same. If it ain’t Gucci I get no smoochy. Know what I’m saying? But — ’ he shrugged — ‘it’s one in one out. The other house is full and, to be honest, it’s best to have everyone in one place. Easier.’

Randeep listened miserably, but as he listened he remembered his friend Michael. ‘Vinnyji, how far is Doncaster?’

‘I ain’t picking you up from fucking Doncaster.’

‘Could I live there? I have a friend there. Could I live with him?’

Vinny sighed and said he supposed he could live on the fucking moon if he wanted as long as he arrived to work on time.

‘So I can move there? With my friend?’

‘Like I said, just be here on time, every time.’

Before dinner, he called Michael. He’d rung him so often Randeep could picture perfectly the telephone number printed below the address in the office filebook. Someone answered. ‘Yes?’

‘Michael? Is that you? It’s me. Randeep. Your friend from India. I’ve just arrived in England. In Sheffield.’

He couldn’t be quite clear how much the old man had understood. But definitely Randeep had said he’d like to come over tonight and definitely Michael had replied that he looked forward to seeing him.

He lifted his suitcase down from the cupboard and had made it as far as the front door when Gurpreet entered the hallway and asked where he thought he was sneaking off to.

‘Nowhere, bhaji. My friend called and asked me to visit him.’

‘So you’re taking all your clothes?’

‘It might be a little permanent.’

The taxi from the station dropped him off outside a pebble-dashed bungalow, at a flame-red gate almost hidden in its privet hedge. A light was on in the window. Randeep wheeled his suitcase to the door, ringing the bell, and had to wait a good few minutes before he heard the lock turn, and even then the door stayed on its chain.

‘Yes?’

‘Michael? Oh, it’s good to meet you at last. This is great.’

He was seated on a comfy plaid armchair by a three-bar heater glowing blue. There were an oppressive number of family photographs on the walls and the window ledges, the side tables and mantelpiece. Black-and-white images of Michael in his uniform, of Michael and his late wife — Janice, Randeep remembered — and colour photos as well, of children slurping ice cream or grinning on their bicycles.

‘I wasn’t expecting visitors until you called,’ Michael said, coming in from the kitchen with a glass of milk. He was a slightly hunched man with a silver comb-over, his face a network of deep wrinkles connecting the soft nodes that were his mouth, nose and ears. His left eye didn’t open fully. Several times he had to ask Randeep to speak up.

‘I said, I remember you telling me the story of you and Balwant Singh.’

‘Oh, yes, Billy.’ Michael made a sympathetic noise. ‘He was a good one. An engineer, you know. He had a girl waiting to marry him back in the Punjab. Don’t think he’d ever clapped eyes on her, mind. One of those arranged jobbies. Is that what you’re here for?’

‘No, sir. Too young for that. I’m here to work only.’

‘Because there’s plenty of them knocking about Donny. Your sort. And a young chappie like you won’t have any trouble to start a-courting.’

‘Sir, actually, I have a girlfriend back home waiting for me, too.’

‘Have you seen her, though?’

Randeep asked if he might remove his jacket — to get more comfortable, sir. When he came back from the cloakroom, Michael was waiting at the frosted-glass cabinet, beckoning Randeep over.

‘My grandchildren.’ He went through their names, ages, how far they lived, what they were like. ‘They all take after their nana, if you ask me. Bright as butterflies, the lot of them.’

Randeep suggested that he — Randeep — make them both something to eat. Michael said he’d eaten. ‘But you help yourself.’

He found some sort of pie in the fridge and a tin of baked beans and he heated this all up in the microwave. As long as he kept making himself useful, Randeep thought, waiting for his food to cook. Maybe then Michael would let him stay. He hoped so. It would make all the difference, knowing he had a cosy home to come back to, that he’d never have to spend an evening with Gurpreet again. He could suggest a walk to the park one evening next week, or to the cinema, even, to watch an old wartime film.

He returned to the front room, hot plate in hand. Michael was rousing awake the television. He wanted to watch the news and for the next half an hour the two of them sat there quite companion-ably: Randeep, for once, enjoying his meal, while Michael wielded his remote at the screen and swore at the flaming Tories.

After the news came the weather, and the bearded man with the map said they expected a mild, dry day tomorrow, with only a small chance of showers.

‘Maybe when I come back from work I can take you to the park. For some fresh air.’

‘That’s kind of you. I’d enjoy that.’

‘And I also want to talk about rent. I insist. What sort of payment would you like for all this?’

‘Rent? You staying?’

The front door opened and a man started backing into the room. ‘Sorry, Dad, the pigeons took the arse-end of forever. I tried calling but you must’ve been fast on.’ He wore a fluorescent raincoat, though it wasn’t raining, and was dragging over the doorstep some sort of trolley covered in tartan. Only when he rested the trolley against the wall and turned round and pulled off his hood did he see Randeep sitting in the armchair.

‘Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t know you had company.’

Randeep stood and offered his hand. He tried to sound assured. ‘I’m Randeep Sanghera. A friend of Michael’s. From India.’

The man — ‘Philip,’ he said, accepting the hand — looked to his father. ‘I didn’t know you had friends in India.’

‘Many a thing that many a man knows not many about.’

Philip unzipped his raincoat, slowly, with an air of deliberation. His light-blond hair was so wispy that his pink scalp showed through, and when he spoke his whole face seemed taken over by the twin avalanches of his fleshy cheeks. ‘Been in the country long? Holiday, is it?’

‘No, sir, I’m here to work. I work in construction. Building.’

‘Oh, nice. I’m in the medical profession myself. Thirty-two years this August just gone. We see a lot of you lot. Builders.’ He turned to his father. ‘How did you two become friends?’

‘On the telephone, weren’t it?’

Randeep confirmed that it was. ‘I used to work as a claims officer in India and one day I called your father and we became very friendly. He’s a very kind man. You’re lucky,’ he added.

‘The telephone?’ Philip said, confused, or maybe suspicious.

‘I helped your father with his claim,’ Randeep went on. ‘I did my best.’

The man was staring at Randeep’s suitcase, stowed neatly beside the cabinet. ‘How long are you visiting Dad for?’

‘Oh, Philip, that’s no way to treat a guest in our country. He only landed today, the poor bugger.’

Randeep moved to collect the dishes. ‘I’ll clean all this up.’ His hands were shaking.

‘Is that my washing?’ Michael asked brightly, nodding towards the trolley.

Randeep washed the dishes, including the pans and mugs collected in the sink from earlier in the day, then carried in Michael’s clothes from the trolley and folded them into neat piles on the small Formica table. All the while, he could hear Michael’s son asking what the hell was going on, Dad? How could you be so gullible?. . For the love of God, tell me you haven’t given him your bank details?. . Of course he can’t stay here!

Shyly, Randeep re-entered the room. ‘Sir, please don’t send me away. I understand your concern. Really, I do. But I want you to know that I mean your father no harm. I’ll pay rent. I’m from a good family. My father works in government.’

‘I’m sorry, Mr Singh. Truly, I am. But this just isn’t on. I know in your culture guests can come and live willy-nilly, but that’s just not how we do things. Perhaps that’s all to the bad, but it is how it is. If you don’t have a bed for tonight then by all means you’re welcome to stay, but I’d be grateful if you’d respect my wishes and find somewhere else tomorrow.’

‘Oh, Philip. .’

‘I’m sorry, Dad. He seems like a very nice boy but I couldn’t forgive myself if something happened to you.’

Randeep said he understood. He took his jacket from the cupboard, picked up his suitcase and thanked Michael for the meal. He tried to give him a few pounds for the pie and beans, but neither Michael nor Philip would hear of it. Instead, Philip drove Randeep to the station and helped him catch the last train back to Sheffield.

*

‘Why are you so bhanchod slow?’ the guy at the skip said, as Randeep upturned another barrowload at the foot of the ladder. ‘It’ll take a whole other week like this.’ His name was Rishi, a fair-skinned and good-looking boy from Srinagar. Perhaps five or six years older than Randeep, he had a reputation for causing trouble.

‘They’re heavy,’ Randeep said. ‘I’m all on my own.’

Rishi snorted, saying that wasn’t his problem, and on the van ride home he told Gurpreet that Randeep had been complaining, that he said he was having to work harder than everyone else.

‘I never said that,’ Randeep said, shaking his head fast. ‘I didn’t.’

Gurpreet smiled. Randeep’s fear seemed to be satisfaction enough.

He stayed in his room that evening, reassuring himself that one day he would be reunited with his family, his father; that the loneliness he was feeling would not be for ever. When he was sure everyone had gone to bed, he took his laundry to the bathroom, filled the tub with a few inches of tepid water, and started scrubbing the clothes with soap. He was on his knees, leaning over, and aching from the day’s work. He was determined. Then a noise started up, a sound like an angry bull trapped beneath the bath. Randeep froze. It was getting louder, closer: the others would wake. Gurpreet would wake. Panicking, he pulled out the plug. The noise stopped, only for a green sewage to gurgle up from below. He watched it circulate and make a mess of everything. He called Avtar, who answered, sleepy-voiced, but confirmed that, no, he hadn’t found any work, let alone work they could do together. And then it was five o’clock and his alarm was going and he was sure he’d rather have been dead.

One in one out, Randeep kept thinking, as he wheeled to and fro. That’s what Vinny had said. One in one out. At lunchtime, with everyone else gathered by the van, sharing round the achaar, he approached the plank ladder propped against the skip. He loosened the knots around the middle two rungs. Not so loose that they fell on touch, but loose enough that they might collapse under pressure. Then he went round the back of the skip and continued on to the van to collect his own lunchbox. He wasn’t sure what he was doing. He convinced himself he was helping a friend.

‘You’re getting faster,’ Rishi said in his nasal voice.

It was the first barrowload after lunch. Randeep tipped out the rocks at the foot of the ladder and started back down the slope. Maybe it wouldn’t work. Please, God, don’t let it work. He’d not made it halfway down — a significant crack, the sound of thick wood snapping, a scream. He turned around. The ladder and the rock had fallen away and Rishi had crumpled to the ground, thrashing his fists as his foot lay twisted oddly on itself. The others relinquished their spades and released their drills and ran to gather round, while Randeep stood there, shocked, almost wondering if he really had done it.

Later, when Vinny bhaji dropped them off at the house, Randeep hung back and asked what would happen to Rishi bhaji. He wanted to get in first — it wouldn’t be long before everyone started advocating some brother or cousin or friend.

‘Maybe he’ll learn his lesson now, yeah? Maybe he’ll spend less time pratting about and more paying attention to his job. Let that be a lesson to you all. Meantime, I’ll get my cousin Manny to take a look at his foot. Didn’t look pretty, though, did it?’

Randeep shook his head.

‘Puts me in a bit of a posish though.’

Randeep waited.

‘I’ll need to find another one of you chumps. Smartish. Don’t suppose you’ve got a cousin breaknecking it across the Channel as we speak, by any chance?’

Randeep told him that he had a bhaji, Avtar, who’d come with him, but he’d left him in Ilford because there was only work here for one of them.

‘Visa?’

‘Ji.’

‘Marriage? Holiday?’

‘Student.’

Vinny shook his head. ‘Been burnt by enough scooters in my time. Lying, argumentative. Always quoting their fucking rights.’

‘Bhaji, I promise. He will work very hard. You have my word.’

Avtar moved out of Massiji’s house and walked towards the high street with no clue where to go next. He spent the afternoon going in and out of the Asian businesses, though no one had work or seemed to know where to find it, and as the day tapered to dusk he made his way to the gurdwara. He put his suitcase and rucksack at the foot of the nishaan sahib and said a short prayer with his forehead to the flagpole. Then he took a ramaal from the wire basket at the entrance, secured it over his head, and went into the food hall. They were serving a langar of roti, dhal and water. Afterwards, he put his dishes in the sink and carried his belongings up the stairs and into the darbar sahib. The rehraas was being read. He bowed his head to the guru granth and found a spot against the rear wall where he could sit in peace and close his eyes for a while. The gurdwara elders gave him a ledge inside the shoe room to sleep on, and in the morning, leaving for the college, he asked God to make this the day he found work.

He knocked on the open office door — Room 625F, it said — and peered inside. ‘Sat sri akal, uncle.’

Dr Cheema was at his whiteboard, in the middle of drawing something. ‘Avtar! I thought you had forgotten all about us.’

They spoke for only a short while — the doctor had a lunchtime tutorial to lead — but Avtar was to wait, and when the doctor returned to his office he handed him a decent wodge of papers.

‘Handouts from your course. I just picked them up. I’ll keep sending them to you once you give me your address.’

‘Thank you, uncle.’ And then, after a pause: ‘I need a job. I’m running out of time.’

Dr Cheema sat down and picked up his pen and started to press the nib of it into his desk. ‘Do you have somewhere to stay?’

He lived in a large detached house towards Harrow-on-the-Hill. As they came up the long, winding gravel drive, the doctor said he was sure they’d find Avtar work, that there must be lots of jobs for hard-working men like him.

‘I don’t mind what it is, uncle. Building, cleaning, delivering. Anything.’

‘Don’t worry,’ Dr Cheema said, opening the front door. He fixed Avtar with a look. ‘You’re with your own people now.’

Everything in the front room was white or gold: the huge white leather sofas, the gold-trimmed coffee table with its glossy fan of magazines. A fashionably tarnished mirror hung above the fireplace, and on either side of this were. . paintings? Slabs of colour layered one on top of another.

‘Rachna?’ the doctor called.

A tiny bird of a voice replied. ‘Amo?’

The doctor strode into the next room — the massive kitchen — where a small baby of an old woman in a white salwaar kameez sat scowling at her reflection in the long table. There was a bowl of something in front of her. Dr Cheema helped her out of the chair and to the sofas in the front room. It seemed she was blind. ‘Just there, Biji. Sit. That’s it. Have you eaten?’

She made a face, nodded.

‘Do you want something else?’

‘What that witch gave is poison enough.’

Dr Cheema sighed. ‘Biji, I wish you wouldn’t.’ He gestured for Avtar to come closer. ‘I’ve brought someone with me. One of our students at the college. He’s from Nijjar.’

The old woman leaned forward, jutting her chin up slightly. ‘Who?’

‘My name’s Avtar Nijjar, Biji. Grandson of Jwala Singh Nijjar.’

She said the name sounded familiar and patted the space beside her. ‘It’s been so long. Did they live near the marsh?’

Dr Cheema sat on the sofa opposite, teasing out the stories, watching, listening, encouraging. He seemed desperate to hear, even at second hand, of this past of which he had no experience. An hour passed in this way, until there was the sound of a lock clicking, of heels on tiles. A magnificently tall woman in a business suit appeared in the doorway. The two halves of her sleek black hair met sharply, precisely, at her chin. Red lipstick, Avtar noticed.

‘Oh, hello,’ she said, seeing Avtar.

Avtar moved his head, a cross between a bow and a nod. ‘Sat sri akal.’

‘Why did you leave Biji alone?’ Dr Cheema asked.

She stepped across the room, sliding her earrings off with two swipes of her hand and placing them on the mantelpiece. ‘I had an emergency. I had to go. I paged you.’ She sounded tired.

‘You don’t leave Biji alone like that. Anything could’ve happened. She could’ve hurt herself.’

‘We live in hope.’

‘What was the point in us deciding that you go part-time if this still happens?’

‘Darling, I think you decided, not me. And I’m doing my best but I had no choice. I’m sorry. I made sure she had food and I came back as soon as I could.’

‘Well, don’t let it happen again,’ he said, conceding a little.

She looked to the ceiling, shaking her head. ‘My patient died, by the way. Thanks for asking.’ And with that she left the room.

The Cheemas’ son was off in America on something called a gap year, so Avtar was given his room.

‘Uncle, this is too much. I’d be happy on the floor downstairs.’

‘Let’s just concentrate on finding you work. Sleep well. We start tomorrow.’

‘Uncle?’

The doctor turned round.

‘Thank you for all this. I don’t know why you’re doing it, but thank you.’

The doctor’s mouth pursed up, then he said, ‘I remember my father telling me that back in the day people would open their houses to young men like you. To help you get started on this new life. That’s all I’m doing.’ He paused. ‘Something happened a few years ago that made it clear to me that I’m only ever going to be a guest in this country. That it didn’t matter how many garden parties I threw for my neighbours, this would never be my real home. It’s important that a man has a sense of a real home. A sense of his own ending.’

For over a week Dr Cheema drove Avtar around London — Harrow, Ealing, Southall, Hounslow, Grays, Brixton, Hackney, Uxbridge, Croydon, Enfield. They enquired in newsagents’, fish-and-chip shops, market stalls, in gurdwaras and factories. They criss-crossed the capital following leads, acting on tips, pursuing half-chances. They left each day at a little after dawn, packed lunches in the boot, eager to miss the traffic, and when they arrived back at the house it was long past ten o’clock. But none of their efforts resulted in a job for Avtar and after the tenth day of this he collapsed onto the sofa and said he wasn’t going to impose on Dr Cheema’s family any longer. He’d leave the next day.

‘Of course you can’t leave. Where will you go?’

‘But, uncle—’

‘Let’s give it a few more days, hain? We’re so close. I can feel it.’

That night, Avtar came downstairs and into the kitchen, textbook in hand. He couldn’t sleep. He had little money left and no job in sight. And now Pocket Bhai’s nephew had got in touch. They wanted the first repayment.

‘I still have a few weeks,’ Avtar had said.

‘Fair enough. A few weeks. I’ll be in touch.’

That was already two days ago and still he didn’t know what he was going to do. He heard footsteps on gravel and the kitchen door opened and Rachnaji stepped in with her briefcase. ‘Oh, hi. Up late.’

‘Studying,’ he said, indicating his book.

‘Good. Studying is good.’

She dumped the briefcase on one of the high stools and poured a glass of water from a hatch in the fridge. She drank deeply, then brought the glass down hard.

Avtar flinched. He took it as a sign of her frustration that he was still in their house. ‘Thank you, aunty, for everything you and uncle are doing.’

‘Huh? Oh, it’s nothing. It’s your uncle. Nothing to do with me.’

‘But I think I will be leaving tomorrow. It’s time.’

‘And you think my husband will let you?’

He wasn’t sure he understood. Was he held captive here?

Rachnaji slid out of her heels and sat a few chairs down from him at the table. Up close like this, he could see the powder-sheen of her face. The chalky grey at her temples. ‘The last one he brought home was here for nearly three months. A girl. How the aunties tittered.’

‘Ji?’

‘I don’t even pretend to know what it is. I used to think it was just nostalgia. Some attempt at connecting with his roots. Some regret at living the life he does. I don’t know. All I know is that it’s become much worse since he became president of that IndiSoc or whatever it is. He’s become much concerned with “ideas of belonging”,’ she said, holding up fingers.

Avtar nodded. But, no, he didn’t understand.

‘It really is a pathetic thing. To mourn a past you never had. Don’t you think?’

*

Lakhpreet called early one morning, so early it was dark outside. He was still half asleep and her voice sounded creamy in his ear, gently stirring his dreams away. I wish you were here beside me, he said, murmured, so I could hold you, touch you. .

‘Randeep’s in trouble,’ she said.

Frowning, Avtar sat up, wiping a crust of sleep from his eyes. She’d always had a leaning towards the dramatic interruption. ‘What trouble?’

‘I don’t know, but he called yesterday and he sounded so down. I’ve never heard him like that. I’m really worried, janum. Have you spoken to him?’

‘Once or twice. Briefly. He’s just homesick.’

‘Maybe. Do you know the men he’s living with? What are they like?’

Avtar said he hadn’t a clue.

‘You just let him go? On his own? Without knowing anything about. . anything?’

‘I’ve got my own worries,’ he said, a little peeved. ‘And he’s not a kid.’

‘He is though, in some ways. .’ She trailed off.

‘Jaan, is there something else?’

‘No, no. I just. . I guess Daddy being how he is, is making me more worried.’

‘Randeep’s not like your father.’

‘I know, I know. But can’t you just keep an eye on him? Stay in touch? Just keep making sure he’s all right?’

Days passed, a week, and he still hadn’t called Randeep. He was putting it off. He didn’t want to discover that the boy really was in trouble. In which case, Avtar would have to do something. Wouldn’t he? He was thinking of this, folding clothes into his suitcase, when Cheemaji knocked. It had taken Avtar a while to get used to this — people knocking — and he still wasn’t sure whether to get up and open the door or tell them to come in from where he was sitting. On this occasion, Cheemaji walked right in. He was excited. He still had the cordless in his hand.

‘That was the factory-wallah. From that clothes factory we went to last week. He has a job.’

They drove down to Southall, past kebab joints and sari shops and curry houses and travel agents promising the cheapest fares to Amritsar through Air Turkmenistan. The factory was towards the old gasworks, and a dark-skinned, full-lipped man in a green safari shirt came into the loading bay to greet them. He wore a gold watch, too.

‘Avtar, you remember Mr Golwarasena?’

For half an hour it was very slowly and very tediously explained to Avtar that the job was 7 a.m. to 8 p.m., six days a week, with two thirty-minute breaks to be taken in turn by all the workers on the line. He would be paid at the standard level for the twenty-two hours per month his visa permitted him to work, with the rest of his hours paid at the reduced level. The fauji level, they called it. The contract, of course, would itemize the standard hours only.

‘The job has many angles,’ Mr Golwarasena went on in his strangely accented English. ‘From patternation to executive stitching to industrial storage.’ And he proceeded to detail exactly what the duties in each of those angles entailed.

‘And the pay?’ Dr Cheema asked, sounding exhausted already.

Mr Golwarasena’s eyes became heavy-lidded, as if talk of money was beneath him. He gave the figures. Avtar tried not to let his delight show. It sounded like an obscene amount to earn.

On the drive back, Avtar asked why they hadn’t just accepted the job. Instead they’d invited Mr Golwarasena over for dinner that night.

‘Because he’s the type who’s impressed by a big house and shiny things. So we ask him to dinner, give him a few whiskies, he becomes a friend, and then he offers you more money. Good plan or what?’

The plan was never executed. As Avtar was pulling his best shirt out of the suitcase and wondering if it would be rude to ask for use of the iron, his phone rang.

‘Randeep! You’ve called on a great day!’

‘Bhaji? Is that you? I have good news.’

And Randeep launched into something about how they could now work together because someone had broken their foot and all he had to do was come up tomorrow and even accommodation was included and it’d be great and he couldn’t wait for Avtar bhaji to join him because he was lonely and had no friends but it was all going to be all right now because he was going to come up too.

‘There’s a job? Working with you?’

‘Yes, yes. So what time will you come? I’ll meet you at the station.’

Avtar made Randeep go through it all again, slowly, calmly, explaining what the job was, the pay, how long-term.

‘Very long-term. Vinny bhaji is always thinking of new projects.’ The silence on the phone grew. ‘Is something the matter? You will come, won’t you?’

Avtar said he needed to think and that he’d call Randeep later — and what a horrible feeling it was, hearing the disappointment in the boy’s voice as he came off the phone. Really, the choice should have been easy. The job here, in Southall, was better all round — better pay, better accommodation, better hours. He’d have to get a second job in this Sheffield place to come close to earning as much. And yet there was no choice. Lakhpreet was right. Something had sounded wrong, and because Randeep was her brother, and younger than him, weaker than him, and because they’d come across together and stayed with Randeep’s aunt that first month — all this seemed to have conferred on Avtar an irritating and exaggerated sense of responsibility towards the boy. He smiled ruefully. Funny how God offers you everything you’ve asked for, only to force you to turn it away. He sat a few minutes in the silence of the room, then went downstairs to tell Cheemaji that the dinner wouldn’t be necessary.