The Year of the Runaways

5. ROUTINE VISITS

Behind Avtar, the yellow cranes did their noisy browsing: giant birds biting up great mouthfuls of earth, only to jerk their heads to the side and spit it all out. The racket was such that Langra John limped up with a box of noise-cancelling earphones, and Avtar had one set circled loosely around his neck. He was hunched over his college folder, going through handouts forwarded on by Cheemaji. Most of them were stamped ‘College of North-West London’; underneath that, ‘Preparing You For Your Future’. Around him the lunchtime talk was of the latest raids.

‘Three last week,’ Rishi said, his foot recently out of plaster. ‘Two in Wolverhampton, one in Luton.’

‘See,’ Gurpreet said. ‘It’s always down there. Nothing for us to worry about.’

At this, several of them cringed and said a waheguru and threw some soil over their shoulders.

‘My fuffer — the one who works in customs — he says they’ve even started checking the marriage ones. He said one brother was sent back because when they visited he couldn’t speak English and his gori visa-wife couldn’t speak Panjabi.’

‘Arré, janaab, those pindu types are stupid. They give the rest of us a bad name. It’s like they want to get caught.’

Randeep reattached the lid onto his lunchbox in a series of tiny clicks. ‘How much time do they give before they visit?’

Langra John shouted at them to get back on it and so Avtar packed his folder away and re-secured the leather harness around his waist. He’d been paired with Gurpreet and together they had to climb the scaffolding and score off the lock-points between the planned executive rooms on floors ten through to fifteen. They were both complicatedly belted up and tethered to a double-chain rope that ran around the hotel perimeter, and the platform was wide enough to walk side by side. The ladders connecting the floors didn’t sway once in the wind and drizzle. Despite all that, they’d only made it up one floor and were walking round with their spirit levels and pencils when Gurpreet stopped and folded onto his knees.

‘What now?’ Avtar said.

He held up his hand, as if to say he’d be fine in a minute. Ten minutes later they were still there, their backs to the main drop and facing the grey mesh curtain that hung all down the inside of the scaffolding.

‘It’s the height,’ Gurpreet said.

‘You must love living in Sheffield, then.’

He smiled faintly. ‘It’s not easy, this life, is it?’

Avtar jutted out, then immediately withdrew, his lower lip. A facial shrug. ‘Who said it would be? But it’ll get better. Hard work, that’s all it takes.’

‘Yeah, I used to be like you, too.’

‘You’re nothing like me.’

‘I used to think I only had to work harder. Longer.’ He shook his head. ‘Bhanchod liars.’

‘You should go home. Eleven years is a long time.’

Gurpreet laughed. ‘Forget any ideas about going home. You’ll still be here, still doing this, in eleven years’ time as well.’

‘Nah. If I don’t pass my exams I’ll go home with what I’ve earned.’

‘That easy, is it?’

‘It is for me.’ The rain puttered against his yellow hat, dribbled down the back of his neck.

‘So how much have you saved so far? With all your working?’

Avtar stared straight ahead.

‘Thought so. I said the same. That I’d go home after one year with my money. You really are like me.’

‘Fuck you.’

‘You’re me in eleven years.’

‘I said fuck you.’

‘Why? Scared? And it’s only going to get harder. Now chamaars like him are coming over.’

Avtar dipped his gaze and saw Tochi far below, tiny, switching drills.

‘It makes you only care for yourself.’ Gurpreet spoke quietly. ‘This life. It makes everything a competition. A fight. For work, for money. There’s no peace. Ever. Just fighting for the next job. Fight fight fight. And it doesn’t matter how much stronger than everyone else you are, there’s always a fucking chamaar you have to share the work with, or a rich boy who can afford a wife.’

‘You play the cards you’re dealt,’ Avtar said.

Gurpreet clucked his tongue. ‘Or you tear up the game. You get rid of the players.’

Avtar checked his harness, his stay.

‘It’s not your time yet,’ Gurpreet said. ‘Don’t worry.’

‘I’m not the one who needs to be worried.’

‘But I would do it, you know. If it helped me, I would throw you over. And, one day, you’ll say the same.’

Tucking the orange uniform into his trousers, he ran across the road and into the Botanical Gardens. The grasses were starting to bud, the daisies closing for the night. He should ignore Gurpreet. Lazy and bitter, that’s all he was. Kirsty was waiting outside the shop, in jeans and a T-shirt printed with four faces he didn’t know.

‘Late again?’ he asked.

‘I didn’t know you came up that way. Wouldn’t it be quicker through the wood?’

He couldn’t remember where he’d told her he lived. ‘I was visiting a friend.’

‘Oh,’ she said, sounding unconvinced.

She’d started nearly four months ago, in the new year, to save for university. She said she was taking Criminology. At first, this had alarmed Avtar and his desi co-workers. They’d even complained to Malkeet, their boss, who’d had to come down and explain that they were idiots, the lot of them, and of course it didn’t mean she was going to tell the police. Her dark-blonde hair, when it wasn’t pinned into an orange net, fell about her face and shoulders. She had flinty eyes and a handspan waist, fingers that stroked the counter each time she walked by, and a way of standing — hip stuck out — that seemed both careless and defiant. She lived with her mam and her mam’s boyfriend, who wasn’t her dad.

A black Mini swerved into the forecourt and braked abruptly, so close to Avtar and Kirsty that they both jumped back. A middle-aged woman in leggings and a fluffy white jumper scrambled out, jangling keys. Diamond-studded sunglasses sat on top of her glamorous mane like a second pair of eyes: insect eyes.

‘I’m so sorry. So sorry. He goes away for two weeks and I can’t even manage to open up on time.’ They went to the entrance round the back. ‘There you are,’ she said, deactivating the alarm. ‘It’s all yours.’

Avtar went in, switching on lights, the fryers, the spit. Kirsty tied her apron round her waist.

Their boss’s wife hovered at the door. ‘All OK? Shall I leave you to it?’

‘Unless you want to get the chicken on,’ Kirsty said.

‘It’s fine, bhabhi,’ Avtar said hastily. ‘We’ll look after it all from here.’ He waited for the door to close, then gave Kirsty a look.

‘Well,’ she said, flapping a hand towards the window. ‘She goes round kneecapping people like a trout in a Ferrari. It makes me want to vom.’

He got the potatoes through the peeler and into the hopper, and then straight into the fryers. Harkiran, who worked the same shift, entered through the back door, his over-gelled hair swept to the side, and Avtar took his turn on the small settee in the back, beside the door to the toilet. They did this whenever their boss wasn’t around. It never got properly busy until around ten, so they’d have an hour each to try and catch up on some sleep. Only these days Avtar used the time to study. He set his chin in the palm of his hand and started on the first page: The Basics of Cryptography. He made it halfway down the sheet before he ceased taking anything in.

When Harkiran woke him, it was nearly 10.30: he’d been curled up asleep on the settee for almost three hours.

‘You should’ve nudged me.’

‘It’s not busy, and I’ve got the morning off to sleep.’

Harkiran zipped up his suede jacket — he did the graveyard shift as a security guard — and said he’d be seeing Avtar tomorrow.

Avtar splashed cold water on his face and went through to the serving area.

‘Everything OK?’ he asked Kirsty.

‘Quiet, but the numpties are starting so you might want to make yourself scarce.’

He nodded gravely and returned to the kitchen. When they’d first started, he and Harkiran had been warned that it was fine to go out front if it got busy early on, but to make sure they stayed out of sight once the pubs closed. Usually, this wouldn’t be a problem. Malkeet bhaji tended to arrive at around ten to help with the Drunk Rush and such was his reputation and size that things never got more lairy than the occasional loudmouth who couldn’t even stand up straight and had to be helped — thrown — out of the door. The last few days though, Kirsty had got the worst of it. They called her a slag when she refused to spade on extra chips, they asked her what she was like in bed, whether she took it up the shitter. Once, Avtar had come forward, hoping a male presence would hurry them on. It only made it worse.

Tonight, he was brushing around the trunk of the toilet when he heard Kirsty shouting at them to get out. He stopped with the broom and listened. Drunks.

‘Temper, temper.’

‘She’s a feisty one.’

‘Like a bit of sausage, do you, love? Battered?’

‘I said get out. Now. We’re closing.’

They didn’t.

‘I’ll call the police.’

There was laughter. One of them told her to get her rat out and, predictably, they started singing: ‘Get your rat out for the lads!’ It was a chant Avtar had heard a few times on his way home past the pubs. He hated the aggressive sound of it, and hated it even more once he’d discovered what the words meant.

They sang it again and again, clapping in time. Avtar ventured out and spread his arms either side of the counter, trying to make himself appear bigger. The singing stopped, though the laughter on their faces remained. He must look clownish to them, this man in an orange hairnet.

‘We need to close. Can you leave, please?’

‘What were that? Speaka da English?’

‘Kirsty, can you call the police, please?’ It was a hollow threat. All the staff had been warned never to bring in the police.

‘Oh, Kirsty, is it? Thirsty Kirsty?’

Avtar went through the counter flap and opened the door. ‘Get out.’

‘Or what?’

‘Kirsty?’

She lifted the receiver. ‘You’ve got five seconds or the pigs are here.’

One of them — light-brown curls cut close to his skull — moved to the door and spat right into Avtar’s face. ‘Cunt.’

They filed out, spitting in turn, and Avtar closed the door, locked it, dimmed the lights, and went back to the toilet to clean his face in the basin. He heard Kirsty behind him.

‘I’m so sorry, Avtar.’

He nodded, though perhaps even worse than the spitting was the quietness in her voice, the sense of someone being embarrassed for him.

*

Narinder took the letter from the pocket of her cardigan. It had arrived for her at the gurdwara, over a week ago now, and it was from Karamjeet, her fiancé. She reread the brief, typed message for perhaps the twentieth time. He said he knew she was in Sheffield and that he wanted to meet. If she refused then she left him with no choice but to tell her father and brother where she was. He reminded her of his mobile number and signed off by saying that he hoped she agreed that he deserved an explanation at the very least. As she slipped the letter back into her pocket, there was a knock on the door.

‘Sat sri akal,’ Randeep said. ‘The front door was open so I came straight up.’

She looked past him and down the stairs. ‘I must’ve forgot.’

‘I thought maybe someone had moved in. Into the flat. Downstairs.’

‘Have they?’

‘Sorry?’

‘Who is it?’

‘No one. I don’t — sorry?’

She shook her head, apologizing — she seemed agitated — and moved aside to let him past. ‘Please, sit down,’ she said and poured tea with her back to him. She wore one of her usual plain salwaar kameez. A light-blue and white one, like a Panjabi girl’s school uniform, which on some level Randeep was too anxious to reach for he found vaguely arousing.

‘I hope you don’t mind,’ he said. ‘I just thought it would be better if we discussed this face to face.’

‘No, I’m sure you’re right.’

They sipped their teas. She asked him how work was going, gesturing towards his hands. He looked at his rough palms.

‘It’s fine. Thank you for asking. Easier in this weather. Even if everything’s so damp. I hated the snow. And for you? You’re still enjoying living here?’

She smiled a so-so face. ‘The weather doesn’t really affect me.’

‘Yes. The summer will be nice when it comes.’

‘Let’s not get our hopes up.’

He wondered whether a joke might be appropriate here, something about how British they were being, talking about the weather like this. She stood and returned with a piece of paper from a low kitchen drawer.

‘They say the visit shouldn’t last more than a couple of hours.’

It was a confirmatory note from Her Majesty’s immigration people. As per the terms of the spousal visa, they intended to pay a routine visit which included interviews with both parties. The last line of the letter specified the date of the appointment and an injunction that Mr Sanghera and Ms Kaur make every effort to accommodate the visit, or to call them as soon as possible if this wasn’t possible.

‘It’s good they gave a date. They don’t usually do that.’

‘How do you know?’

He smiled. She must think he did this kind of thing all the time. ‘Someone told me.’

She closed her fingers around her tea. He could see her swallowing.

‘Please don’t be nervous,’ he said. ‘I’m here.’

‘It’s hard not to be.’ Then: ‘I suppose you’ll take the day off work and come here in the morning?’

He placed the note back down, adjusting its position by minute degrees until its edge sat exactly parallel with the table’s. ‘I was talking to some of the guys and they said the things the inspection people look for are signs that we’re definitely living together. For example, that I know my way around the flat. One couple was caught out because the inspectors asked the man if they could have a glass of water while they interviewed the wife. And the man didn’t know which cupboard the glasses were in. They got suspicious and then it was all over for them both.’

‘So shall I show you where everything is? It won’t take long.’

Randeep tried again: ‘Actually, Narinderji, my bhajis were saying I should spend some time living here before the inspectors come.’

She waited for him to go on.

‘They said two weeks, at least.’

Her face betrayed no reaction. She put her mug down.

‘I’ll be at work most of the time. And then after the inspection, I’ll be gone. I promise. As soon as they leave, I’ll go too.’

‘No. I’m not going to agree to that. Two weeks is a long time.’

He nodded that it was, it really was. ‘I just don’t want anything to go wrong during the visit, that’s all. And I’d sleep on the settee, of course,’ in case that was what was troubling her. She looked at him as if to say where the hell else did he think he would be sleeping?

He started on a routine of press-ups and crunches. Each morning, while he waited his turn in the bathroom, he leaned his mattress against the wall and did fifty of each, and the same again in the evening after work. When Avtar accused him of trying to impress Narinderji — ‘What are you going do? Walk around with your top off?’ — he laughed it off, saying that was only for those filmi hero types. On the evening of the move, he finished his press-ups, jumped to his feet and looked down at himself. His white vest seemed to hang on his frame as limply as ever. There was no discernible change in his soft biceps. No muscles showed through his stomach.

Avtar knocked, entered.

‘I shouldn’t have to do this, you know,’ Randeep said. ‘You’d think working on that building site all these months would’ve made some difference.’

‘Ready?’

The crack in the mirror ran right over his mouth, so he had to bend slightly to check his teeth were clean. They were. And, yes, his shirt buttons were done up correctly, as was the zip on his black trousers. He turned round and picked up his suitcase.

‘OK. I’m ready.’

They made a strange pair walking down Ecclesall Road. Tall, thin Randeep dressed as if for the office, rolling a suitcase behind him, and Avtar in his baked-bean orange. The neon of various restaurants struck out against the fresh damp evening, and queues were hedging up outside the more popular bars. Avtar read the signs out loud. Any chance to practise his English.

‘Cubana. Prezzo. Mud Crab. Café Rouge.’ He screwed up his face. ‘Abuelo? Is that right?’

Randeep looked. ‘That’s right,’ he said, not really knowing either way. ‘You’ll fly through the exams.’

‘Arré, Baba, don’t tempt the evil eye,’ and Avtar palmed up some imaginary dust from the pavement and threw it over his shoulder. ‘Was Vinny OK with all this?’

Randeep nodded. ‘He said he’ll pick me up from the station first and then do the rest of you.’

‘Makes sense. And it’s light when he picks us up now. You’ll be fine.’

‘Jashn-e-bahaar, bhaji.’ He inhaled. ‘My favourite time of year. Everything’s so new.’

‘Acha, acha, calm down. Don’t get too excited about staying with her.’ He sighed. ‘You on the rota?’

‘No. I checked.’

‘Good. And I’ll cover your milk run. I’ll speak to Gurpreet.’

Randeep thanked him, and at the bus stop he waited with his case while Avtar continued on to work.

*

That evening, Tochi was stacking cans of lager in the chiller cabinet at the shop when Aunty called him upstairs, saying her husband was back and wanted to meet him. The cans immediately doubled in weight. He dumped the cardboard in the recycling bins and slowly made his way up the steps at the side of the counter. He’d never been into the flat. The stairs turned at the top, into a living room papered sunshine-yellow.

‘Aajo, Tarlochan,’ Aunty said. ‘Come inside.’

She was sitting on one of two brown leather settees. On the other was her husband, a big, shaven-headed bloke with a scruffy goatee. From somewhere deeper in the flat came the sound of computer games.

The husband got up and extended his hand, as no one from back home would have done. So, one of those first-generation men: born here, married there. Tochi had nothing to worry about.

‘Kaise ho?’

‘Good, thank you,’ Tochi said, shaking the hand. ‘The work’s good. Thank you.’

‘More than good,’ Aunty said. ‘Not once has he been late or had time off. Everything is done quickly and cleanly. He even knows how to do the newspaper returns. You know how they hurt my back so.’ She sounded eager for her husband’s approval.

‘OK, OK. You did good. Stay for roti?’ he added, to Tochi, but Tochi said he’d already eaten and should get going if there wasn’t anything else.

Back at the house, he transferred his wages to a small metal box which he kept hidden in his room. He stroked the money rolls packed into the tin, like cigars in their expensive box. His savings really were mounting up. The shop work, the hotel work, plus what he’d earned in Southall. It was still early, but, who knows, by the end of the year he might even have enough to rent on his own.

Over the next week, the invitations upstairs became more and more frequent. At first it was to help move a cupboard from the living room into the bedroom, or to see if he could have a look at fixing the noise coming from the sink. Soon, he was asked to join them at the table, especially as Aunty was plating up anyway and the boys were heading out with their friends. ‘I’ll only be throwing it out,’ she said. ‘It’s already two days old. Keep us company.’ So Tochi asked to wash his hands and sat down tentatively. Uncle wondered if he’d join him in a whisky, and when Tochi declined, saying he didn’t drink, he saw a smile spread into Aunty’s face.

One evening, after using his clunky English to move on a couple of boys drinking outside the shop, Tochi was approached by Uncle who had a good long chat to him about his plans and hopes for the future. Did he intend on living illegally forever? Was he going to return home once he’d earned enough?

‘I don’t know.’

‘Your aunty says you have no family back home?’

‘Ji.’

‘They passed away?’

‘Ji.’

‘Brothers, sisters?’

Tochi shook his head, once.

Uncle nodded thoughtfully. ‘It’s up to us to think of something for you, then.’

He was asked up to another dinner a few days later and that was when Aunty came right out and said that she had a beautiful niece who would be the perfect match for him.

Tochi stared, then said, ‘No. Sorry.’

‘Just think about it only.’

‘No girls agree to marry boys like me from India.’

‘Well, she’s divorced and thirty-eight with a twelve-year-old boy, so obviously her choices in this life are limited. She needs to be realistic about who she can get.’ Then: ‘But she’s lovely. Really, she is. She can cook and clean and she’s such a respectful girl. She’s had some real bad luck in life, that’s all.’

After a short silence, Tochi said, ‘Thank you, but I don’t want to get married.’

She batted this nonsense away. ‘You boys all say that. Your uncle was the same. But once the hot fresh rotis start coming you soon change your mind. Now,’ she went on, tapping the table with a coin, ‘obviously if your matah-pitah were still with us I’d speak to them, but is there anyone else, an elder, I can speak to?’

‘I’ve said, marriage isn’t for me. I’m not the right person.’

Uncle seemed to register some of Tochi’s concern, and laid his hands flat on the table, warning them of the plain speaking to come. ‘As usual, your aunty is getting too far ahead of herself. All we are saying is that the family is desperate to get Ruby married. The longer it goes on, the less chance there is, and you know the stigma of having unmarried girls sitting at home. Especially ones with children. Secondly, we think you’re a hard-working young man. You’re a good Jat Sikh boy. You’ve been with us for several months now and we’ve been very pleased with you and we trust you. We feel we know you. We don’t think you’d run off and divorce her and get a normal bride once you got your stamp. So many boys do that these days and it’s a real worry for us.’

‘And she can still have more children!’ Aunty exclaimed, as if that was the clincher. ‘I know some of the girls you boys have to settle for can’t, but she can. She’s all there.’

‘Mum,’ her husband cautioned, and she withdrew, apologized. ‘Tarlochan, all we’re saying is why don’t you and Ruby meet and if you decide to take it no further then that’s fine. But if you do get on and things reach their natural conclusion, then, well, both Ruby’s problems and yours are solved, aren’t they? And isn’t that what we all want?’

They wouldn’t stop talking about the girl, saying how perfect she was, that once he saw the photo he’d soon change his mind. They weren’t listening, and, on the site, his frustration seemed to be powering the hammer drill all afternoon, until he saw Vinny parking the van. Very gently, Tochi released the drill brakes. He’d learned his lesson last time when he’d stopped drilling all at once and the shock of it had taken his feet from under him and the shooting pains in his shoulders lasted an entire week. Now, the metal growling calmed, died, and he shook each arm in turn until it felt normal again. He pawed at his face with the yellow plastic gloves and the oversized goggles slipped off. He tapped the chalk out of them. Forty metres, he guessed. Forty extra metres he’d drilled, all because some gora architect got the gas pipes on the plans in the wrong place. Vinny stepped out of the van. But it was too early to be picking them up. He had a tie on, too. Tochi watched him stride over to the foreman’s cabin, knock, enter. He didn’t look happy.

They teased him about the tie on the ride home. Interview, Vinny Sahib? Take us with you!

‘I’d rather eat my own turds,’ Vinny said, charmingly.

He seemed in a better mood now, but later, when someone asked why the electricians hadn’t turned up yet, his eyes flicked to the rear-view mirror and he told them all to keep their bastard mouths shut.

More suits turned up over the next five days, some leaving with boxes of files under their arms, and John, Tochi noticed, was spending less time on the site, more on the phone in his cabin. He watched Vinny on the rides home; at the tense, shifty way he sometimes glanced about. If they really were on to him, it wouldn’t be long before they found and raided the house. Maybe it was time to return to London. He could call Ardashir. Then, one evening, Vinny showed up at the shop. Tochi hid himself in the aisles. He didn’t know why Vinny would’ve come here. Or how he knew this was where he worked. He’d been careful to not tell anyone the shop’s name. Always checked no one from the house was following him.

‘Del!’ he heard Vinny say. ‘How goes it?’

‘Well, well, look who it is.’

They spoke for a while. The usual things. Family, football, work. Vinny said it was going well. That he had a big project — a hotel — in his portfolio and a couple more in the pipeline. ‘Happy days. Just waiting for the funds to come through.’

So, he needed money.

‘Well, if you need any more faujis,’ Uncle said, ‘I might know someone.’

And maybe he gestured or something because Vinny appeared at the top of Tochi’s aisle. ‘Him?’

Tochi came forward, nodding at Vinny. ‘Uncle, shall I start sweeping up outside?’

He was ignored, while Vinny explained that Tochi was one of his men, that he’d picked him up from a restaurant in Southall.

‘You didn’t say you worked on the building side?’ Uncle said.

‘I didn’t want to.’

‘Oh, I bump into them everywhere,’ Vinny said. ‘Fuck knows where the pigs are looking, cos I can’t go into a chippy without seeing one of my lot. You’ve got a good one here, though. Hard worker. Not the chattiest, mind.’

Uncle agreed. ‘But he’s stubborn. Maybe you can talk some sense into him. We want to get him set with my missus’s niece. Marriage-wise. I don’t know what’s wrong with him. He just says no.’

Tochi stared at the floor, heat rising horribly up his neck. It was all going to come crashing down. Right here. Vinny looked from Tochi to Uncle and back again. ‘That’s great. That’s really open-minded of you, Del.’

Tochi closed his eyes, waiting.

‘He’s a good lad,’ Uncle said. ‘He deserves a break.’

‘Still. Good on you.’

Vinny left soon after, saying he’d come again another day. They watched the van reverse out.

‘I was waiting for that,’ Uncle said. ‘He’s been everywhere with his begging bowl. Lucky for me you were here.’

Tochi said nothing.

‘He’s a nice boy but they’re on to him so if you’ve got any sense you’ll cut your ties. Find another job. And if you’re living in one of his houses, move.’

Tochi asked again if he should start sweeping up outside.

‘And if you’ve got any real sense, you’ll agree to meeting the girl.’

Tochi looked away.

‘Uff, so what if she’s divorced? Or is it her boy? Look, son, in your situation that’s the best you’re going to do. Most wouldn’t think twice.’

‘I’ll get the broom,’ Tochi said.

‘Yes, yes. Fob me off. But don’t think for a minute your aunty is going to be so easy.’

Alone in his room, Tochi made a call to Ardashir. There was nothing at the restaurant, he said — Tochi had been replaced by a fauji from Bangla.

‘Let me know if that changes.’

‘OK.’

‘I’d need somewhere to live, too.’

‘Was there something wrong with my floor?’

He went downstairs and sorted himself some water from the sink. He checked the rota. No, not his turn tomorrow. Beneath it, the naked girls calendar was still on March, a month out of date. The front door went and Avtar came in and walked straight past Tochi and to the cooker. He took two rotis out of their foil and spooned on some cold sabzi from the fridge. His rucksack hung squarely on his back, a textbook discernible through the thin material.

‘Vinny’s in trouble. We’re going to be raided,’ Tochi said.

‘Move, then.’

‘And jobs. We’ll lose our jobs.’

Avtar looked across. ‘How do you know?’

‘What’s it like where you are?’

‘There’s nothing.’

Tochi looked at him for a long while, then pushed off the counter and returned upstairs.

His eyelashes quivered, he wasn’t sure; something, some furry dream-tail, was trying to lead him back to sleep. But that was his watch pipping, which meant — what? 5 a.m. already? He remained beneath the duvet and it took another minute for sleep to evaporate completely. He could hear the pale sounds of the gurbani coming from her bedroom. Before he’d even arrived, she’d cleared the shrine from its corner, saying he could use the vacated space for his suitcase and things. At ten past, he swung his feet to the carpet and padded softly to the bathroom. He showered in the evenings after work — and what a joyous feeling it was to once again have a shower, and a hot one at that — so all he had to do in the mornings was brush his teeth and wash his face and take a piss, which he aimed at the side of the bowl. He didn’t want to disturb her praying. He dressed in his work clothes, reflector jacket over the top, folded the duvet to the end of the settee and at twenty-five past he started for work. It was a delicate and spotty light that greeted him these days.

He could have left the flat as late as six o’clock and still made it to the station in time to be picked up by Vinnyji. He just thought it was best to go as soon as possible — she seemed reluctant to come out from her room while he was there. No doubt she was afraid of walking in on him naked or something. She was a modest girl. Woman. A woman of mystery. He still didn’t know who she was or what was driving her. It definitely wasn’t the money. He wished she’d let him in. If she was in trouble, then, like any good husband, he wanted to help her.

Inevitably, the boys — at the site, in the van to and from work — wanted to know how it was going. Had he finally experienced his suhaag raat, his wedding night? Their questions and insinuations pained him, even more so as he deflected them, and when he was dropped off at the station in the evening he climbed down from the van and said, ‘Enjoy your night,’ as if suggesting that was exactly what he’d be doing.

Once he reached the flat they’d exchange a polite sat sri akal and Randeep would take some clothes from his suitcase and on into the bathroom. He’d shower and re-emerge barefoot in a white cotton kurta pyjama. They ate quietly opposite one another at the small round dining table, fresh daffodils in the vase.

One evening he asked her, ‘If you could go anywhere in the world where would you go?’

She was making some sort of list. ‘Pardon?’

‘Next year I’m going to go to New York. I’ve decided. And then one day Australia. I want to fly everywhere. Don’t you agree?’

‘Agree?’

‘Because the world is big! And we make life such a small thing. I want my life to be big, too.’

She went back to her list. ‘I’m happy with wherever God leads me.’

His smile wavered. ‘Of course. I didn’t mean you weren’t. I’m sorry if that’s how it sounded.’

She nodded, not looking up, and Randeep turned again to the map on the wall.

The following afternoon, the first of his two Sundays, he rushed back from the station. It was starting to rain, true, the fine drizzle beginning to soup up, but that wasn’t why he was running. He’d had an idea. When he got back, she was unpacking groceries. Raindrops beaded the edge of her chunni and a wet, peachy scent seemed to have swept in behind her. Going to the supermarket had been one thing he was going to suggest they do, like other couples, maybe tomorrow evening. But that could wait—

‘Narinderji, let’s go to the fair.’

She turned round, a jar of something in her hand. ‘The fair?’

He took the flyer out of his pocket and thrust it at her.

‘Oh, no. It’s not for me.’

‘It’s for everyone! And it’ll be fun. Please say yes.’

‘Sorry. You go.’

‘Oh, yes, I suppose I could.’ But the whole point was that they do something together. Open up to each other a little. ‘What about the gurdwara, then?’

‘Excuse me?’

‘The gurdwara.’

‘This evening?’

‘Just, with the visit next week, it might be good to get God’s blessing. Make sure He’s watching over us.’

She returned to her cupboards, her back to him. ‘There’s an akhand paat on. It’ll be busy.’

‘Is that a problem? Doesn’t that only make it even more auspicious?’

‘I don’t like to go when it’s busy. We can say a prayer here if you like. I have the rehraas on CD.’

‘We wouldn’t have to stay long.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘I don’t think you’ve been for a few days now.’

She said nothing.

‘What about if—?’

‘I said no,’ she snapped. ‘Why can’t you understand?’

Silence fell, filled the room. Her shoulders slumped. She closed the cupboard and he watched her disappear into her bedroom.

*

A crow swooped down from the hotel roof and up into the blue wash of the sky. Clouds turned the colour of mercury, grumbled, and in the space of a breath the air greyed and the rain came. Tupperware boxes were shoved inside jackets and the men rushed under the plastic awning John had kicked them into building a few days ago, in preparation for a downpour like this. The rain drummed harder, pooling where the awning hadn’t been pulled taut. Water slithered in streams, like eels making good their escape. They had only got an hour’s work done and by lunchtime John had to relent and call Vinny to come and take them home. A few refused to go, fearing the loss of half a day’s pay, but Vinny said he’d see them right and that they’d best get in the van now summat pronto, cos this pissing rain was fucking him right off.

She wasn’t there when Randeep let himself in. He wondered where she could be. Most days she stayed in with the doors locked. He’d already taken his muddy boots off outside and these he placed on the newspaper he’d arranged beside the settee. He looked around. It was strange being alone in the flat, silent save for the rain. It was the first time it had happened. He took his towel and a fresh set of clothes and headed straight for the shower, resolutely avoiding even a glance at her bedroom door. Dressed, he found an onion and some potatoes in the fridge and started dicing them up. He’d surprise her with a sabzi. Alu muttar, maybe. He added butter to the pan, then the onions, and now the next stage, he remembered, was to wait for the onions to soften. So he waited. A minute passed. Two. He removed some imagined fluff from his shoulder, then quickly, so quickly that he almost tricked himself into thinking it accidental, raised his eyes to her bedroom. What harm would a peek do? And shouldn’t he get to know all of the flat, anyway, in case the inspectors asked him something tomorrow? He gave the pan a quick stir, then before he had a chance to change his mind bounded straight into her room. Silence. No one shouted at him to get out, which he seemed to half expect. It smelled different from the rest of the flat. Nicer, somehow. Was it berries? He flicked on the light. The rail for her clothes was still there. The wardrobe was new but plain: it was all very bare. No photographs either side of the bed, just matching lampshades like mauve cubes. And the shrine, of course: images of the gurus placed all along the sill, a spent joss stick in the middle. The window itself seemed to be made of a million trembling raindrops. He opened the wardrobe. Perhaps a dozen salwaar kameez. All simple, drab even. Not a single item of western dress other than her cardigans and, on the bottom shelf, three pairs of near-identical black shoes. He moved to the bedside drawers and crouched to pull open the large bottom chamber. A pair of plain white knickers stared back at him. Underneath them, several more, all white, and a packet of ladies’ pads. There were bras, too, and it was one of these — white again — that he lifted out and held in his hands, running his thumbs over the spot he imagined her nipples to be. He opened the shallower top drawer. Photos. Her mother and father, he guessed, a devout-looking couple, kirpans at their side and gazing seriously into the camera. A young turbaned man who had to be her brother, though the resemblance was more general than specific to any single feature. He returned them to their drawer, in the same order, and tidied away the bra, too. Then, feeling simultaneously satiated and ashamed, he resumed his work in the kitchen. It was only when he heard the downstairs door shut that he remembered the light in her room, and sprinted to switch it off before she made it up the stairs.

That night they hung up their wedding photos, and around the TV Narinder stood the holiday pictures Randeep had brought with him on one of his first visits. They littered the bathroom with more of his toiletries, incorporated his clothes into her wardrobe, and hid the suitcase under her bed. She’d bought a pack of gummed Post-it notes, too, which she wrote on and stuck to the fridge: Back at 6 p.m. today. Can you put the rubbish out, please? Mummyji called.

Throughout this, the rehraas sahib played in the background, so that His blessings might be with them tomorrow. They hardly touched their dinner, Narinder especially, and went to their separate beds on empty, nervous stomachs.

They agreed Randeep should go down and open the door. There were two of them: an older man with a neat grey parting and a wrinkled handsomeness about him, and a younger round-faced lady with cropped, shiny dark hair and smiling brown eyes. They reminded him of TV news couples. They confirmed who they were, displaying their ID wallets — David Mangold, Katie V Lombardi. Randeep showed them up the stairs, where Narinder was waiting by the dining table.

‘My wife,’ he announced.

She smoothed down the back of her kameez and lowered into her chair. The inspectors took off their coats.

‘We’re really not inspectors,’ the woman, Katie, said, sitting down too. ‘We hear this a lot, but please rest assured this isn’t an inspection by any means. We’re immigration officers, and we really are just here to see how you’re getting on and whether you need any support. With finding work or getting around or language skills. That kind of thing.’

‘We’re here to check in, basically,’ David said, cutting across.

‘So, how are things?’ Katie asked. She pulled some papers from her briefcase. ‘It’s a lovely home you have here.’

Narinder and Randeep looked at each other. She spoke: ‘It’s going well, thank you. It’s going well.’

Katie consulted her notes. ‘You don’t currently work, Ms Kaur, and you’re in construction, yes?’

Randeep nodded. ‘It’s a very good job. I’ve been working there for nearly eight months now.’

‘Eight?’ repeated David.

‘I think it’s more like five,’ Narinder said. ‘We’ve only been here since the new year.’

‘You were both living with your parents before then, of course,’ Katie said. She went to her notes again. ‘London. Croydon.’

‘We moved here for Randeep’s work.’

‘There was no work in London?’ David asked.

Randeep smiled, nodded, shook his head. Already, he could feel his temples starting to hurt.

‘Would you like some tea?’ Narinder asked.

‘That’d be lovely. Would you mind getting it, Mr Sanghera, and we’ll finish chatting to your wife here?’

He scraped his chair back and turned into the kitchen. Left cupboard for mugs, the drawer nearest to the sink for spoons.

They asked Narinder about her days, what she did, whether she missed her family. Yes, lots, she’d replied.

‘But I suppose you’ll be looking to build your own family soon,’ David said, as Randeep arrived with the tea.

‘One day, sir,’ he said. ‘We are still getting on our feet.’

‘You’re both very young but I can tell you’ll make wonderful parents,’ Katie said, taking her mug from Randeep.

‘Oh, well, the first thing we need to do is save up enough to buy a house. With a garden. Instead of renting.’

‘Who’s the landlord?’ David asked, quick-smart.

‘Mr Greatrix,’ Randeep said. ‘I’m happy to give you his details.’

Katie seemed pleased. ‘Where would you like to move to?’

‘There are some very nice areas to the south of the city. Near the Peak District National Park. Those are good areas for schools, too. After that we can start thinking about children.’

‘Wonderful. What would you like?’

‘A boy and a girl. I think mixed families are best.’ He glanced at Narinder, who really wasn’t saying very much.

Katie smiled, taking in her colleague in a slightly superior way. ‘You’re so clearly very happy together. I can’t tell you the number of times we meet couples — ’ the word spoken with emphasis — ‘who seem to be struggling to adjust.’

They asked Randeep some more questions about how he was getting on: did he use the support facilities available to new immigrants? Did he know where they were in town? What about the free language courses? Not that he needed them, of course, though there were the advanced classes which might prove useful.

‘There really is a lot of support for you out there. You’re not alone.’ Katie placed some leaflets on the table, then shut her briefcase and checked her wristwatch. ‘Not even an hour. One of our shortest visits.’

She looked to David, who seemed unsure about something. ‘Could I use your bathroom?’ he asked.

‘Of course,’ Randeep said. ‘It’s that door just there.’

‘Sorry,’ Katie mouthed.

Randeep and Narinder smiled thinly, waited. The toilet flushed, which seemed like a slightly embarrassing thing for everyone to hear, and David came out looking just as unsure as when he went in. Randeep walked them to the top of the stairs. Narinder remained a few feet behind.

‘You haven’t taken your husband’s name?’ David said, looking at Narinder.

‘No.’ Then: ‘I didn’t want to.’

‘That’s a little unusual, wouldn’t you say? In your culture?’

Katie stepped forward. ‘So lovely to meet you both. We hope you have a wonderful future together. One of us will be in touch in a few months — it’s all routine, you know.’

The officers clomped down the stairs, she whispering something about regulation questions and the inappropriateness of his last remark, while he wearily held the door open for her. Randeep went to the window and watched them climb into their car, belt up.

‘They’ve gone,’ he said, as the car drove off. He turned round. ‘We did it.’

She’d insisted he leave that very afternoon, though he’d patently not wanted to. At first he said they should celebrate, that he’d noticed a new Indian restaurant on the way to the station. She was tired, she’d replied. She had things to do. The disappointment on his face was obvious, but she wasn’t going to indulge him. They settled for a celebratory ice cream. A van’s jingle sounded outside and before she could stop him he was out the door, returning with two flaked cornets. She ate hers sitting at the table, with him several feet away on the settee.

‘I’ve enjoyed living here,’ he said, in an exploratory tone.

She nodded carefully. She didn’t want him getting ideas.

‘It’s much nicer than the house.’

‘You mentioned friends, though. Avtar?’

‘It’s still much nicer here. I feel relaxed.’ He smiled at her.

‘It was always going to be a temporary arrangement. We did agree.’

‘I’ll pay more. I don’t mind.’

She said nothing for a while. Then: ‘What was all that about children? Schools?’

‘I wanted to sound convincing.’

‘You do know that this isn’t real, don’t you? This is only until the end of the year.’

‘Of course I do.’ There was a briskness to his voice. ‘I’m not stupid. I just thought we’d got on well these last two weeks.’

She took a deep breath. ‘I think you should go.’

He delayed further, taking his time to repack his suitcase, a palpable sadness in his slow movements. He tidied away the blanket, pillow and duvet and insisted he clean the bathroom, seeing as most of it was his mess. Then he shucked on his tracksuit top and picked up his case. She followed him to the door, feeling a guilty sense of relief. He handed her that month’s payment, smiling across at her.

‘Honestly, Randeep, you’ll be fine.’ She felt as if she was sending a lamb into a cesspit full of snakes. But she wasn’t going to budge. She wasn’t. And she closed her eyes and started counting to ten, and had got to six when she heard the front door shut behind him.

All her energy seemed to have leaked in the last few hours. Still, she did have things to do. That wasn’t a lie, she told herself, though the appeal to her honesty brought no comfort. Standing at the window, she saw a bus pass at the bottom of the hill, brake lights coming on, and thought she made out Randeep running to catch it. Randeep. A strange boy. Clearly, he was struggling with life in England. It was a mistake to have let him stay so long. She was certain he’d been in her room, too, on that thundery day. Her clothes had looked handled.

Sighing, she took Karamjeet’s letter from her bag. It had been tugging away under everything these past two weeks. Once, when Randeep had asked to see ‘the letter’ again, she’d stared at him, her pulse surging. He’d looked baffled, as if wondering what he’d done wrong. He’d meant the letter about the inspectors’ visit, of course.

She returned to her bedroom, Karamjeet’s threat still in her hand. She’d have to meet him, she knew that. Maybe he’d tell her parents anyway, once he knew the full story. The police, even. It was a chance she’d have to take. She opened her phone and for nearly half an hour tried to compose a coherent text. She gave up, threw the phone aside. She’d do it tomorrow. Her mind might be clearer then, after a night away from Randeep and his inspectors.

6. NARINDER: THE GIRL FROM GOD

Narinder Kaur had been told the story so often she believed it must be her earliest memory: that she was four years old when she’d sprinted out of their Croydon semi and straight into the road. The car braked just in time. But the funny thing was that the car belonged to a reverend, on his way to open the church, and the reason Narinder had run out of the house in the first place was because her mother had said they needed to hurry, that God was waiting for them. In other words, God, sick of waiting, had come directly to Narinder. They’d been on their way to Panjab, to spend the entire summer in the service of their guru at Sri Anandpur Sahib, and on landing in India Narinder’s mother told the story to the other volunteers and they all ran their hands over the girl’s head and said she must be blessed and Waheguru really was watching over her.

It was Narinder’s first time in Panjab. Her mother came every summer and Narinder had always stayed behind with her father, her dadiji, and brother, but now she was four her mother said she was old enough to start understanding the importance of seva, of service.

They were given a bed inside the Anandpur temple complex, in a hostel less than a mile from the hundreds of marble steps that led to the Gurdwara Takht Sri Keshgarh Sahib. The hostel was cold and the beds narrow and hard, and each morning Narinder woke with pink welts across her back. Her mother said she mustn’t complain, that they were very lucky to be so close to the Takht and that most volunteers had to find accommodation in the villages beyond the city’s five forts. Worse than the welts on her back was the heat. It was too hot to make a four-year-old climb all the way up to the Takht. Instead, each sunrise, Narinder was passed to an elderly woman, a pilgrim, who took her up in one of the rentable donkey carts that hung around the back of the gurdwara. Narinder would then wait in the shade at the top of the steps, watching her mother’s prayerful ascent. She watched how deeply her mother would bend to touch each step with the tips of her fingers, and how she’d touch those fingers to her forehead and mouth a silent Waheguru. Only then did she place her foot on the step and in this way move up. It was an amazing sight for the young Narinder waiting at the top: the giant white expanse of the steps triangulating away from her, and, alone in the centre of it, as true as bread, her mother in quiet standing prayer, her chunni pinned over her turban so it wouldn’t slip each time she bent down, her feet pressed together at the heels, as they should be. It took her nearly an hour in that crucifying heat to reach the shade at the top, yet to her daughter she didn’t seem made at all hot or bothered by the effort. Travelling to our guru is no great hardship, her mother would say, adding, winking, though it would be nice if he was a little more down to earth.

Narinder’s mother was called Bibi Jeet Kaur and she was in her late thirties when Narinder was born, seven years after her brother, Tejpal. It was a great blessing, relatives had said. God had listened. Everyone at Anandpur Sahib — and everyone back in England, for that matter — said Bibi Jeet Kaur was a model gursikh. She could read the gurmukhi script with fluency. When she wasn’t running the gurdwara canteen or serving langar to the congregation or in the darbar sahib performing the kirtan, she was helping youngsters understand the importance of sikhi. She’d never cut her hair but swept it all up beneath a black turban, and over that turban she wore a long, wide chunni double-wrapped across her chest. Most importantly, she was bringing up her children as gursikhs, and by the time Narinder and Tejpal were eight they knew all of the sukhmani sahib and would be called down to perform a portion of it when relatives visited from Birmingham, Leicester or, once, from Vancouver.

During her third summer at Anandpur Sahib, when Narinder was six, she stood in front of the holy book and received the cloth from which she was to cut her first turban. It was of coarse orange cotton and Narinder’s arms jerked down as the old granthi dropped the material into her hands. Bibi Jeet Kaur indicated for Narinder to touch the cloth to her forehead. The whole congregation then recited the ardaas, asking Guruji to bless this child who was going to give herself in service to Him and his alms.

At the hostel, her mother took the cloth and folded it into the suitcase. ‘We’ll get it cut in England.’

‘Can’t I wear it tomorrow?’

‘What’s the hurry? I promise He won’t mind if you wait a week.’

‘But I want to wear it tomorrow.’

In truth, she wanted to be like her mother, whom she’d never seen without her kesri. Bibi Jeet Kaur did get the cloth cut the next day and a week after that mother and daughter stepped into Heathrow’s arrivals lounge sporting matching orange turbans. Narinder’s father awaited them. Baba Tarsem Singh was a tall, strong, shoulders-back man with a long, foamy black-grey beard whose sideburns were combed up into his turban. He nodded courteously at his wife, who nodded just as courteously back, and then he gathered Narinder up into his arms.

‘My beautiful little sikhni!’

She loved her turban. Her mother taught her how to wash it and keep it starched up, how to stretch it so it retained its shape on her head for the whole day, how to tie it up, remembering to make a slim pocket at the nape of her neck so that the thick pin needed to tuck away loose hairs could be hidden away.

Narinder and Tejpal were homeschooled, and each morning, after prayers, from seven through to eleven, her father went through their lessons. Afterwards, Narinder touched her forehead to the ground, said, ‘Waheguru ji ka khalsa, waheguru ji ke fateh,’ and accompanied her mother to the gurdwara, to spend the afternoon doing seva.

She pushed up the sleeves of her tunic and helped the women sift through the vast trays of lentils and beans and rice. They seemed to find her funny. Why don’t you go outside and play? But Narinder said she’d rather help. That that was why her bibi and baba sent her here. Sometimes she performed the kirtan with her mother, and while Bibi Jeet Kaur played the harmonium, Narinder sat by her side, clapping the two tiny cymbals only when her mother gave the nod.

‘Chatur disaa keeno bal apnaa sir oopar kar dhaario. Kripaa kattaakh avalokan keeno daas kaa dookh bidaario. Har jan raakhae gur govind. Kanth laae avagun sabh maettae daeaal purakh bakhsand rehaao. Jo maageh thaakur apunae tae soee soee devai.’

‘In all four directions the Lord’s might is extended upon my head. His hand protects me. His merciful eye beholds me, his servant. My pains are dispelled. I am saved by my Lord. In his embrace, by his compassion, my sins are erased. Whatever I ask of my Lord, that and more I am blessed with.’

It was Narinder’s favourite hymn, this hymn of encouragement. Reaching the end, she’d open her young eyes and it was as if the world seemed brighter, greater.

*

One morning, at Anandpur Sahib, after Narinder had finished distributing the prasad, she asked her mother for a roti. She took the roti out to the yard behind the gurdwara and tore it into small pieces and cast these pieces around. The birds came at once. They’d got used to Narinder this last week, perhaps even come to expect her and her roti. One bird seemed to be limping and each time she — Narinder always assumed any animal in pain was female — got near a scrap of roti, another bird would snatch it away. Crouching, Narinder placed a few pieces of roti in front of the creature, but it seemed too weak to take them. It tried to flap its ragged wing. Its feathers were sparse, as if other birds had pecked at it, and it made a thin sound that Narinder took as a cry for help. Gently, she gathered the bird into her palms and held it to her chest and carried it inside to show her mother.

At the hostel, she made a little bed for it out of a box that had once contained rolls of masking tape. She lined the box with a warm tea towel and placed the bird inside it. Then she turned down the ceiling fan so it wouldn’t get cold. She shook beads of water from a cartoon cup into its beak, even waking up to do this through the night. And all day Narinder softened roti in the same cup of water and fed the bird a few morsels, which seemed all it wanted to take. It didn’t seem to be recovering. Its skin appeared to be turning yellow and its eyes were dulled.

‘Bibi?’ Narinder said.

‘Did you pray?’ Bibi Jeet Kaur asked.

Narinder nodded.

‘Then it’s in His hands now.’

The bird died on the fourth day and Narinder wouldn’t stop crying. It wasn’t the death so much, more the suffering that preceded it, that seemed so unfair.

Her mother promised her a bird table when they got back to England, and so one weekend in September Baba Tarsem Singh drove them to a garden centre thirty minutes away and Narinder chose a mahogany feeder topped with a small square house. She and her father started putting it up straight away. Bibi Jeet Kaur said she was going to lie down for a bit, that her back had been hurting all week. They finished erecting the bird table and Narinder said a waheguru and headed inside. She met her mother on the stairs.

‘Fetch your baba, beiti,’ Bibi Jeet Kaur said. She had a hand to her lower back. She looked to be in agony.

It was a blood clot, and in the drive to the hospital it travelled up her spine, causing a blockage which stopped oxygen to her brain. The funeral was very well attended. No one had ever seen a better one, people said. Baba Tarsem Singh stood up and pulled round the curtain and pressed the button which activated the belt and carried his wife into the furnace. Narinder was sitting with her dadiji near the back of the room. She was nine years old and it was the first time she’d had to wear a white turban.

There was hardly any furniture in the room and what little there was looked as if it had been set there for a long time. The single bed coming out from the chimney breast, the plain wood dressing table at its side and the straight chair tucked neatly underneath. There was no wardrobe — the bed contained two drawers for her clothes. The evening light was the colour of dark amber and came through the window in two wide beams. The beams ran in parallel, along the brown carpet, over the bed, and then along the floor again, stopping just short of Narinder standing in the doorway with her suitcase. She closed the door and went down the dark staircase and into the hall. Her father was in his room, rocking on his chair, praying quietly to himself. He was so engrossed he didn’t seem to hear Narinder set down her case and enter.

‘Baba?’

He opened his eyes, turned his head. He was sixty-five now, and a stroke two years ago had knocked the strength out of him. His beard was fully grey. ‘Ah, is it time?’

‘Tejpal’s outside. He’ll drive me.’

Baba Tarsem Singh stood and when she touched his feet he blessed her and held her for a long time. She could feel his old hands quivering against her back.

‘I wish you would come,’ she said.

‘I know you’ll do our name proud.’

Together they said, ‘Waheguru ji ka khalsa, waheguru ji ke fateh,’ and then Narinder took up her suitcase and went down the hall.

She was on her way to Sri Anandpur Sahib. It was the tenth anniversary of her mother’s death and time to go back.

She arrived at dawn, the sky a concentrated orange, and she stood at the marble steps and looked up to the temple. Bending deeply, she touched her fingertips to the first step and began the climb. When she got to the top she turned round and the sky had turned a broad blue and it felt as if her mother was all around her. Be with me, she said, and before she’d even said it she heard Him there at her side.

The granthi was in the darbar sahib, flicking holy water through the hall. Narinder waited until he’d finished, then said she was Bibi Jeet Kaur’s daughter and wanted to do a paat in her mother’s name, so her soul might be at peace.

The granthi said this was a most excellent idea. ‘So few do that these days, when it is more important than ever. I assume you’ll be making a healthy donation, too, hmm?’

‘Ji.’

‘That is excellent. I’ll ask the readers to get straight on it.’

‘I’d like to do the reading, please,’ Narinder said. ‘All of it.’

‘On your own?’

‘If you will allow it.’

For three days and three nights she read the guru granth sahib from beginning to end, pausing only to sip water from a steel glass a pilgrim kept topped up at her side. Word got round that Bibi Jeet Kaur’s daughter was in town, doing this, and many came to watch her read. They said she really was her mother’s daughter.

At the end of it, Narinder was exhausted and slept for much of the next day in her room at the hostel. Then she started to volunteer at the gurdwara, mostly in the langar hall, sometimes in the darbar sahib, once in the villages. Every day, she worked from dawn until the evening, when she’d have a simple meal of roti-dhal and water. Before bed she visited one of the smallest gurdwaras in the town, Sisganj Sahib. It was her favourite place. During the day it filled with devotees, because, as the gold plaque put it, this was where Guru Tegh Bahadur’s head was cremated, after he was decapitated by the Mughals for refusing to convert to Islam. In the evenings, however, the devotees dwindled to a weeping few, and Narinder could sit by the window and listen to the evening rehraas prayers while, outside, the river lapped onward.

One evening, a shadow appeared on the carpet. Narinder looked round. It was a woman, at the open window. She had an elongated, V-shaped face, with severe rings of black around close-set eyes. Her salwaar kameez was an old-fashioned, over-washed thing, most of its sequins missing, though the fancy way she wore her chunni made Narinder think she’d spent some time looking in the mirror before leaving the house. The woman brought her hands together and said sat sri akal.

‘Sat sri akal,’ Narinder replied, hands together too.

‘Are you the one from England?’

Narinder said she was.

‘I heard you read through the speakers. You do it very well.’

‘Thank you.’

‘How old are you?’

‘Nineteen, biji.’

‘Do you live in London?’

‘Ji.’

It seemed the woman was working up to ask something of Narinder. It wouldn’t be unusual. She remembered people all the time asking for her mother’s help. To send a message to a relative in England. To arrange a UK — India gurdwara tour. But now the granthi of the gurdwara appeared and told the woman to leave.

‘You have no right!’ the woman said. ‘I can speak to whoever I like.’

‘We don’t want troublemakers here.’ He took her by the elbow and forced her on her way.

‘Call yourselves God’s people!’ she said.

Narinder didn’t see the woman again for the rest of the trip and by the time she’d returned to England had forgotten about the encounter.

*

All year she longed for the summer, when she could return to Anandpur Sahib and to the bustle of India. The intervening months were dull, made long with winter. Breakfast was in silence — there was no TV — and then Tejpal would go up to his room while Narinder stayed down to read the granth with her father. They walked to the gurdwara for lunch and so that, later, Narinder could take her turn on the harmonium. The evenings were given to prayer and after dinner she washed the plates and asked if she might go to bed. Her father would smile at her from his armchair, looking up from his book, and wish her a good night. One evening that winter she remained in the doorway.

‘Baba, might I ask you something?’

‘Of course.’

‘There was a poster in the gurdwara. About teaching Panjabi to some of the children after school. Do you think I might ask about it?’

‘I don’t think so, beiti. Do you need money?’

‘No, Baba.’

‘And in one or two years you’ll be married — these are things you can discuss with your husband.’

‘As you say, Baba. Goodnight.’

‘Goodnight, daughter.’

In her room, she allowed herself to feel disappointed, though she knew he must be right. To make herself feel better, she put on one of her CDs. It was a shabad — hymns were all they had — but anything would have filled her mind with musical delight. As she sometimes did, she started floating around the room, slowly, describing little circles every few steps, and when Tejpal banged on her door telling her to keep it down, she simply ignored him until he went away.

*

In the summer, the gurdwara committee sent her out into the villages with some of the other Anandpur Sahib volunteers. She handed out clothes and kitchen utensils and blankets, and international offerings with labels that read: Kindly donated by Mr and Mrs Prashant Singh, Portland, Oregon, or To our fellow Sikh brothers and sisters from attendees of Sri Singh Sabha Gurdwara, Darlington, UK.

Narinder made a little niqab of her chunni and gripped it in the corner of her mouth. It might just keep the dust from her eyes. Then she shook the metal bolt on the gate and stepped back, holding the blankets out. A lock wrenched and squeaked and the gate pulled open, and a tall, dark woman with a large gold hoop in her nose stood gazing down on her.

‘Waheguru ji ka khalsa, waheguru ji ke fateh. Please take a blanket for the cold nights.’

The woman stretched her elegant neck towards the woolly stack, then her eyes shifted all at once back up to the girl.

Narinder pressed the blankets forward once more. ‘Please. May God keep his hand on you and your family always.’

‘The valetheni’s come to do her annual pilgrimage. Her donations to the poor.’

Maybe it was the voice — snippy, too ready to retaliate — but like balls rolling into place Narinder realized that this was the same woman who’d come to the window. Last summer. The one who’d been forced away.

‘You needed help,’ Narinder said, without thinking.

The woman rested her hip against the gate. ‘You people don’t help. You pity. That’s what your gursikhi is. Go on, get away. We don’t need your blankets here. I’d rather freeze.’

The gate closed with a reverberating clang and Narinder stood there in the stony alley still holding her blankets. Something was wrong. She could sense it. This woman did need help. She knocked and, again, heard the shuffle and scrape of slippers crossing the courtyard. The woman was muttering even as she reopened the gate: ‘They don’t let you live, they don’t let you die. . What is it now? I told you we don’t need your blankets. Give them to your God. He can use them to warm that cold heart a little.’

‘Please, massiji. If you tell me what the problem is maybe I can help.’

The woman stayed silent, staring.

‘Please. Our gurus said we have to help one another.’

Inside, the weedy little courtyard was covered in trapezoid shadows cast by the trough, at which an old emaciated buffalo nosed mildly. Here and there were peaky slops of dark-green buffalo shit, and these Narinder worked hard to avoid as she tried to keep up. She was shown to a sticky leather settee in a dark, airless room.

‘The electricity,’ the woman said, both index fingers pointing to the sky. ‘It is gone.’

Narinder placed the blankets on her tidy lap and her hands on top of the blankets. Her silver kara dug uncomfortably into her wrist. The woman crouched on the stone floor, knees flaring out indecently.

‘You want to help?’

Narinder nodded. ‘Please.’

‘How old are you?’

‘Twenty, with the guru’s grace.’

‘The same age my daughter was when she left here.’

Narinder lay on her bunk that night unable to sleep. In the bed underneath was a young sikhni from Fresno and her quiet sighs swept the room. The moon hung tiny in the far window. Narinder turned back to the ceiling. Everything was so peaceful, the night so heavy-lidded, that she half thought she had only to lie there as still as she could and she’d catch herself in the act of thinking. That she’d be able to observe herself thinking. It was something she’d often tried to do, and in some unexplainable but vital way it was an impulse linked to the idea that if she flicked her pupils quickly enough she’d be able to glimpse the side of her face, the part that was otherwise only visible to her when looked at in the mirror. Childish habits, for the child in her.

She’d left the woman’s home promising to do her best and, God willing, find her daughter and tell her to contact her family. Narinder imagined the girl wandering lost in England. Asking for help and no one listening, no one caring. Strangely, sleepily, this feeling of loss opened out into a further memory. They’d been sitting together at the back of the Croydon gurdwara, Narinder playing with her mother’s green rosary, when Bibi Jeet Kaur smiled and said that if she were to die now, by her twenty-first year Narinder wouldn’t even be able to recall what her mother had looked like. Lying on her bunk, sadness washed over Narinder in a single large wave, for her mother had been right. Already her face was becoming nothing more than a warm smile surrounded by a faraway blur.

She told her father about the encounter with the woman and the missing daughter in England. He was at the dining table, going through his pension statements, and light from the standard lamp made his beard glow red.

He listened to Narinder without interrupting, then returned to his work. ‘It’s a police matter, beiti. Let’s not get involved.’

‘Ji,’ Narinder said, nodding. She looked down, looked up. ‘I’m sorry, Baba, but does she not need our help?’

‘I agree she needs help. She should go to the police.’ He looked across, smiled. ‘You can’t take on all the world’s troubles. I’ll say an ardaas for them both tomorrow. Theek?’

‘Ji. It’s just that I thought I could maybe—’

‘Narinder? We’re not getting involved, acha?’

She nodded. ‘Yes, Baba.’

She regressed into the daily shuffling between the house and the gurdwara, to reading and tidying and heating up meals, to working at the langar hall and awaiting her turn on the harmonium. If a verse was unfamiliar, she brought the songsheets home and stood them on her dressing table, against the wall. She practised by imagining keys on the wood, eyes slightly scrunched in application, whispering the words. Time seemed to vanish and her father had to shout to get her attention.

‘Ji?’ she said, moving onto the landing and stretching over the banister.

‘I said I’m going to the bank. I’ll be back before lunch.’ She heard the door shut. She paused. She was still leaning over the banister. The house was silent. She returned to her dressing table and took the piece of paper from the drawer. It was the number of the agent in Ludhiana who’d arranged the missing girl’s transit. She went down to the hallway and dialled the number. The agent answered and very happily gave Narinder ‘full, all disclosure’ details of the fabric factory the girl was headed to on reaching England. Encouraged by how easy that was, Narinder called the factory. Another man answered — gruff voice, thick Indian accent — and said he had no sister-fucking idea who she was talking about and to leave him the fuck alone. Shocked, Narinder put the phone down, her hand shaking on the receiver. She looked over her shoulder, though she knew the house was empty.

In August, Baba Tarsem Singh said he’d arranged for her to perform the kirtan during the gurdwara’s morning service.

‘It must get very boring for you to spend so much time in the house with me.’

‘I’m not bored, Baba. I love you.’

‘You’re a kind daughter. Nevertheless, it will do you good.’

She loved these services, with their accompanying birdsong, and afterwards she had at least four hours before her father arrived to escort her back home. Usually she did some sort of seva, but one morning she buttoned up her duffel coat and caught the train to Newham and waited outside the factory boss’s office. She was a girl to whom waiting came easily and when the man showed up he didn’t seem able to turn her away. He pored through his battered tea-stained register and said that the girl had left some months ago. He did, however, have the girl’s telephone number. Did Narinder want that? The next day, she called the number from the payphone in the gurdwara and it was several minutes before the old lady understood that this wasn’t her granddaughter Anastasia calling. It transpired that she had had an Indian girl staying in her basement — ‘lovely-looking thing she were, too’ — but not any more.

‘Said she was going to Poplar. God knows why.’

Narinder smiled into the phone at that.

It was almost September before she had sufficient opportunity to attend the Sri Guru Go bind gurdwara nearest to Poplar. The granthi, a snowy-bearded man with a wooden cane, sighed disappointedly and confirmed that it had been brought to his attention that they had a handful of daughters living illegally in the area, who needed the community’s help. It was rumoured they lived in some sheds backing onto one of the alleys. He gave Narinder the address and, in the name of their gurus, asked her to help these sisters of hers.

‘Third one along, pehnji. Look for the rubbers,’ a brown girl with severely straightened hair directed, and at last Narinder walked up the alley, sidestepping the used, teaty condoms, the thrown-out sofas and TVs. She wasn’t sure which of the wooden gates to knock on first and then, sooner than expected, found herself at the alley’s end, facing a concrete wall sprayed with rude green graffiti. She frowned at herself. Be brave. Guruji is with you. She firm-stepped it to the first gate but hadn’t even knocked when it was hauled open and a frightening Indian woman loomed above her. Chapped pink lipstick and emerald eyeshadow. Orange-henna hair frizzing back like an afro. All on a thick, angry face with a pronounced chin-wobble.

‘What the fuck you spying up and down for?’

‘I’m sorry. I’m looking for Savraj.’ Then, more confidently: ‘I have a message from her mother.’

The woman shifted her weight onto her other foot. ‘What message?’

‘Does Savraj live here?’

‘I said what message?’

‘Her mother’s worried. She hasn’t heard from her daughter in months. I promised I’d try to find her and see how she is. If she needs any help.’

‘We all need help, sister,’ the woman said, laughed. With some effort she turned herself around and padded up a wispy little path barely visible in all the overgrowth. ‘She’s in her room, I think.’

Her room, it turned out, was the shed at the bottom of the garden, a small wooden structure with a white net aslant across the only window. Narinder knocked with the back of her hand. No response. She tried again, and this time she heard movement — a mattress groaning — and footsteps. The door opened but remained on its flimsy chain. A high-boned face with sharp, darting eyes showed itself. Her mother’s face.

It was a dispiriting little room: damp, cold, unloved and unloving. Not quite enough height to stand up straight. The mattress lay on the floor, beside a dog-chewed armchair probably taken from the alley outside. No electricity. Narinder wondered how she cooked or went to the toilet. Perhaps the orange-haired woman let her use the house for things like that.

‘Your mother asked me to tell you to call home. She’s very worried.’

Savraj sat on the grey mattress and pulled her oversized woolly jumper over her knees and black leggings, so just her feet poked out. She must have cut her hair that short in England.

‘You mean she’s worried about not getting any money,’ Savraj said.

It had occurred to Narinder that at no point had Savraj’s mother expressed fear for her daughter’s safety, or concern over her welfare. The message had simply been that they’d run out of money and Savraj was to stop messing about and call home without delay.

‘If you could call her, I think that would help.’

Savraj looked up, cocked her head to the side. ‘You got money? I’ve not eaten for two days.’

She refused to go to the gurdwara, so Narinder took her to a coffee shop she’d seen near the station. They perched on high stools by the window, overlooking some workmen drilling. Narinder sipped at her small sugarless tea. Savraj dipped cake into her hot chocolate.

When she’d worked out how to phrase the question, Narinder put down her cup and said, ‘Pehnji, can I ask how many sisters are in the same situation as you?’

Savraj didn’t answer straight away. She finished off her cake, licked her fingers. ‘Honestly Pehnji? You sound fresher than me.’ She shrugged. ‘A few. There’s three patakeh sheds in my alley.’

Narinder didn’t understand. ‘You keep fireworks?’

‘It’s what the men call them.’ A tiny smile, as if pleased at the shock she was about to deliver. ‘We make their fireworks go off.’

Narinder gazed at Savraj and nodded slowly. She didn’t blink.

Savraj looked annoyed. ‘We have sex.’

Narinder nodded.

‘They pay. For sex.’

‘I understand. I’m sorry.’

And now it was Savraj’s turn to gaze at Narinder, to scrutinize her. Then she threw her head back and a great laugh burst forth. ‘Oh my God! You want to make me into one of your turbanwallis!’

Her shoulders were shaking, each breaking wave of laughter rapidly overtaken by another. People were starting to stare, but Savraj’s laughter kept coming, so Narinder slipped down from the stool and tried not to look like she was rushing for the door.

For all of the next week, the last of the summer, her days fell back into place: morning chores, kirtan at the gurdwara, evenings of silence and prayer. She couldn’t stop thinking of Savraj, though. How strong she’d seemed. How exciting Narinder had found it, going into the world and seeking her out.

‘Don’t think too hard,’ her brother, Tejpal, warned.

He was chaperoning her home from the gurdwara. Since she’d turned eighteen her father had decided she was never to take the evening walk alone. For your safety, he had said.

‘Or maybe he doesn’t trust you,’ Tejpal had later suggested. ‘Maybe he’s seen something in you that worries him.’

He was about a foot taller than she was, with a vast gym-trained chest that made his shoulders pop up.

‘What do you mean, don’t think too hard?’

‘You’re thinking. Don’t. Girls shouldn’t think.’

‘Oh, shut up.’

‘You’ll get into tra-ble.’

She ignored him — there was no way he could have known about Savraj — and the following Monday she effected a return to the sheds of Poplar. Her gurujis wouldn’t have just left it at that, she told herself. No one answered the door, so she waited beside the battered green gate, shielding her eyes from the low sun. A kid raced up on his bike, wheelied round at the wall, then just as quickly disappeared left out of the lane. Later, a postman emptied his sack of mail onto the rubbish tip. ‘Fuck that!’ he said, grinning at Narinder.

Savraj arrived, and, ignoring Narinder, unlocked the gate. Narinder followed her in, maintaining a distance.

‘Pehnji—’

‘Don’t. I’m not your pehnji or your bhabhi or your didi. I don’t want you babeh-brains near me.’

Narinder stopped at the shed door. She reached inside her pocket and held out the brown parcel. It was tied with orange thread. ‘For you.’

‘What is it? A gutka?’ Savraj said, snatching at it. It was a velvet box inside which rolled a tube of red lipstick.

‘Yours is running out. I noticed, last time I came.’

Narinder visited Savraj once, sometimes twice a week, leaving the gurdwara after her morning kirtan and always getting back before her baba arrived. Usually she’d take along a margarine tub filled with whatever sabzi they had at home. They’d give the tub to the landlady to put in her fridge and head to the coffee shop near the station. The workmen were still drilling outside.

‘You should know I’ve started talking to my family again.’

‘Oh, peh—! Savraj!’ Narinder embraced her. ‘I can’t tell you how happy that makes me.’

‘Calm down. Your turban’ll fall off. I guess I’d just got sick of her always pestering me for money, like I’m earning millions. Like everyone in England must be earning millions. But I think she understands now. I’ll only send what I can.’

‘Oh, that’s brilliant! It’s so good that you help. I knew you would.’

‘Did you? I don’t see what’s so good about helping others, though. If they only become reliant on you. Then you’re just part of the problem.’

‘But we have to help,’ Narinder insisted. ‘I couldn’t live with myself if I just walked away. I don’t know how people can do that.’

Savraj laughed a little. ‘I’ve never met someone who talks like you.’

‘There’s nothing wrong with giving your life to His teachings. Our gurujis—’

‘Oh, shut up. I’ve met worse fundos than you. I don’t mean the things you say. I mean the way you say them. It’s like you actually believe in your words.’

Narinder didn’t know what was wrong with the way she spoke her words. Did she sound too serious? Was that it? ‘I’m better when I’m singing.’

‘You sing? A singing preacher?’

‘It’s true,’ Narinder said, laughing. ‘Come and hear me. I’m singing tomorrow morning.’

‘To the gurdwara?’ Savraj clucked her tongue. ‘Not my scene. If a beardy’s going to touch me up, he can pay for the privilege.’

‘I’ll be with you.’ She reached out and placed her hand on Savraj’s arm. ‘You don’t have to do what they make you do. We’ll look after you. We look after each other.’

Finger by finger, Savraj released her arm from Narinder’s hand. ‘What who make me do?’

Narinder could tell from her voice, like a knife being unsheathed, that Savraj knew what she was driving at. Narinder said it anyway: ‘The men.’

‘Hmm. The men. What if I told you that some of those men are from the gurdwara?’ Savraj leaned in. ‘What if I told you that they don’t make me do it? That I enjoy doing it?’

‘Stop it. Please.’

Savraj laughed, mirthlessly, and Narinder looked away.

On the Tube she stood staring at her reflection in the knife-scratched windows. Two months now. For two whole months she’d tried to help this woman. Perhaps she wasn’t strong enough. Good enough. Why hadn’t she been made good enough? She exited at East Croydon and tunnelled through the press of humanity, surprising commuters with her turban, and walked home via the clock tower, whose advertised music library she thought she might one day visit. Outside her front door she straightened the chunni over her turban, and, stupidly, wiped a hand across her lips, as if she’d been the one wearing lipstick. She twisted the key and slipped inside, up the hallway, and was turning into their front room when a blow came crashing down on her face, sending her sprawling to the floor. She heaved, staggering up onto her hands, only for her brother to grip her at the neck and drag her across the carpet and into the centre of the room. She could hear her father rushing down the stairs, the thud-step thud-step of his cane.

‘Tejpal! How dare you strike your sister!’

‘If she’s going to hang around with whores then we’ll treat her like one.’

‘Enough!’ Baba Tarsem Singh said, struggling to kneel beside his daughter.

‘Let her do more, you said. Let her do her singing. All day in the house is not good for her. What has it got us? What will people think?’

‘I’m helping!’ Narinder said. ‘You can’t stop me!’

‘Watch me.’

‘I’m not doing anything wrong!’ she shouted, and launched the CD remote by her hand at her brother’s face. It cracked against his forehead.

‘You nasty little. .’

But Baba Tarsem Singh banged his cane hard on the table. ‘I said, enough!’

*

On the night of Diwali, Narinder covered their dining table with a hundred and one tiny clay dia lamps. She did this every year and it was always a ravishing display. Liquid shadows slid across the ceiling, and the shapes thrown against the wall were a dark vibrating mass. It made her feel as if she was underwater, submerged deep within His love. She drew out a chair, closed her eyes, and, quietly, began to sing. She felt weightless, like she was gliding. The words seemed to generate inside her a different heartbeat, and behind her interlocked lashes, sunlight squandered itself across the world. Swallows swooped over copper fields. And in the penance of song she could hear His breathing. At the end of the shabad, she opened her eyes and saw Savraj outside the window, staring with her forbidding brown eyes.

‘I need money,’ she said.

Narinder had shuffled her down the side of the house, away from Tejpal who was upstairs with his Khalistani friends. They huddled together for warmth, to whisper.

‘You haven’t come to see me in months,’ Savraj went on.

‘How’d you know where I live?’

‘I asked. At the gurdwara. I was sure you’d be there tonight. What happened?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Your baba?’

Narinder was silent, then: ‘I’ve never been so angry. When they said what I was doing was wrong, I just wanted to scream. I wanted to shout. I’ve never been like that.’

She looked across to Savraj, who seemed to be considering this, saying nothing.

‘Your chunni,’ Narinder said, and Savraj pulled her chunni — borrowed from the gurdwara, Narinder could tell — forward so it veiled her face completely, comically.

‘Happy? Now all I need is a husband who doesn’t mind me hiding my ugly face all day.’

‘Shh! And you’re not ugly. You’re so beautiful.’

‘Do you wish you were as beautiful as me?’ Savraj said, lifting the chunni away.

Narinder was wounded. ‘I’m fine how God has seen fit to make me.’

‘You God people.’ She reached for Narinder’s hand. ‘You’re not even close to being ugly. Your eyebrows are a bit bushy and maybe some make-up once in a while, but other than that you’re fine. I wish I had eyes so clear.’

Narinder didn’t know what that meant. To have eyes so clear.

‘Nin,’ Savraj went on, more seriously, pressing Narinder’s hand. ‘You have to help me. You’re my only friend. I don’t know what’ll happen if you don’t.’

‘You need to escape. Tell the police.’

‘Police!’

‘I’ll speak to Baba. I’ll make him understand.’

‘Just this one time. Can’t you help me just this one time?’ She looked at her wristwatch — a digital thing with a white plastic strap. She was in a hurry.

‘How much do you need?’

They cut through the adjacent avenue, and, under the glowing green cross of a pharmacy, Narinder handed over one hundred pounds, taken from a savings account her father had opened for her wedding. Savraj kissed her, thanked her, promised she’d pay it back soon, and then ran for the Tube, her borrowed chunni trailing around her neck.

Tejpal was waiting in the hall and it was clear he’d seen them.

‘I’ve warned you,’ he said. ‘What’ll Dad say?’

She looked at him, into his long, thin face on which a beard had only this year started to stake a claim. It gave him a harder look, the beard. Or maybe he was just hardening into a man, and the beard made no difference. And when did he stop calling their father Baba?

‘Don’t cause a drama, Tejpal. It’s late. Have your friends gone?’

He stood firm. ‘See her again and I’ll really do something.’

‘Tej! Should Guruji not have fed the hungry sadhus? Should he have walked past? Now come on, and shut the door — it’s freezing.’

He yanked her back by the elbow. ‘Your duty is to uphold our name. Mine is to protect it.’ His face softened and his hand moved to her cheek. ‘Don’t force me into doing something I don’t want to.’

Narinder laughed, nervous. ‘Tej, you’re scaring me.’ She freed her elbow. ‘Let’s forget about it and go to sleep. We’ll wake Baba up.’

A week passed, then two, and when Savraj still hadn’t been in touch Narinder told her baba she was going to the community centre to use their new harmonium, and instead caught the train to Poplar. It didn’t take her long to find the alley, despite the months since her last visit, and the green gate was, somehow, hanging on. Narinder knocked, twice, and twice again before she heard a door shut and the woman saying that she was coming for fuck’s sake.

She still wore pink lipstick and emerald eyeshadow, and her hair was braided into thin lanes of orange cornrows.

‘Hello,’ Narinder said. ‘You might not remember me. I—’

‘I remember you.’

Narinder nodded. ‘Could I see Savraj, please?’

The woman shrugged. ‘It’s a free country,’ though she made no move to let Narinder pass.

‘Could I come in, please?’

‘Why?’

‘To see Savraj. Is she not in? Can I leave a message?’

‘Sure you can. But I won’t be giving it to her.’

Narinder looked at her, confused. ‘Has something happened?’

The woman bit into an apple that Narinder only now noticed had been in her hand the whole time. She spoke as she chewed. ‘I don’t know. Perhaps it has. She don’t live here no more, does she. Hasn’t done for months.’

‘Oh, I see.’

‘Did your friend not tell you?’ the woman said, smiled.

‘Do you have a forwarding address?’

She shrugged.

‘Please?’

The woman, seemingly tired, seemingly bored, dropped her shoulders and looked away. ‘Nothing for free, turban lady. Not in this life.’ Then, with something of the full sadness of things: ‘We all need help, now, don’t we?’

Later, she stood outside the estate agent’s — Randhir Chahal Lettings — and stared at the brown-framed windows of the flat above. It must be round the back, the stairwell. She walked for perhaps fifty metres, the street spawning buses, until a gap between two launderettes led to a partially concreted car park. She cut a diagonal towards the rear of the estate agent’s, where a metal staircase led to a carrot-bright front door, a rose painted into the glass. Narinder knocked once and took a careful step back, mindful of the drop. The door opened.

‘Sat sri akal,’ Narinder said.

The young woman nodded, smiled.

‘Is — I was told my friend lives here?’ She didn’t know whether to use Savraj’s name, or if that would blow whatever cover she might have created for herself.

‘Your friend?’ the young woman said, just as Savraj walked into view behind her and Narinder lifted her hand to wave.

Savraj’s room-mate brought Narinder orange squash in a china cup riven with cracks and asked her to take a seat. ‘Please, sister.’

Savraj was quiet. She wore the same blue-grey apron as her friend — it said Dasbwood’s in a modern font along the hem — and sat on a straight wooden chair near the fan heater. The heater’s clackety whirring was pretty much the only noise in that sparse room.

‘You go,’ Savraj said, and Narinder looked up, but no, it wasn’t aimed at her. ‘I’ll follow.’

The friend asked Narinder to forgive her leaving — ‘But I hope we meet again’ — then grabbed her phone and went. They listened to her quick tread on the metal staircase.

‘That’s Karthika. We work together.’

‘At Dashwood’s,’ Narinder said.

‘It’s owned by him downstairs. One of our former “customers”. We clean offices.’

Narinder smiled, encouraging. ‘That’s good. That’s so much better.’

Savraj frowned, as if unconvinced. The lines, Narinder thought. The two lines that widened down from her nostrils to the twin tips of her mouth. How much deeper they’d got. Furrows now. And her eyes. They seemed dimmed. Grey hairs, too. She hadn’t noticed it last time. Perhaps it had been too dark. She’d aged so much in a few months. The winter, the work, the worry.

‘I hope you’re taking care of yourself,’ Narinder said.

Savraj stood and went into a doorless room in which Narinder could see only the corner of a candy-striped mattress. She came back pulling a slim roll of notes from a maroon purse. ‘I can give you the rest later. Next month. I’m sorry you had to come all this way.’

Narinder stood up too, so they faced each other. ‘I didn’t. . I don’t. .’ She shook her head. ‘Please keep it.’

Savraj’s arm fell to her side. She moved to the grubby white settee and perched on its edge. ‘I need to ask for more money.’

Narinder sat beside her. ‘What’s the matter?’

She stayed silent, staring.

‘Tell me, please. I want to help.’

Savraj rubbed together the notes in her hand, the crisp insect rustle of them. ‘Mamma’s not well. They say it’s cancer.’

Narinder put an arm around her friend.

‘We can’t afford the treatment. That’s why I came round. It doesn’t matter how hard we try. We were hoping the rice would pay for it, but the land caught a disease and my brother doesn’t know what else to do. None of us do.’

Narinder squeezed her friend’s shoulder. ‘Stay strong. God will find us a way.’

‘There is no way,’ Savraj flashed. She looked up to the ceiling as the tears coursed down.

No brother, no mother, no father. She sits with face turned, no turning known. These lines kept coming to Narinder. For several nights now, she’d lain awake in bed thinking of Savraj cold in that flat, face turned away from God, and the thought seemed to clot into a physical ache along Narinder’s abdomen. Throwing back her duvet, she headed downstairs and into the kitchen. She put the japji sahib on a low volume and closed the kitchen door. She prayed for Savraj’s family. Her lips moved in rapid silence, hands clasped in her lap, thumbs together and knuckles directed to heaven. She spoke to Him and He spoke back, the wingbeats of His presence changing the air around her. When the stereo clicked off, she raised her clasped hands to her face and finished her prayers. So deep had those prayers been that she hadn’t heard her father come in and sit beside her. It was still dark outside.

‘Your kesri?’ Baba Tarsem Singh said.

‘Upstairs.’

It was strange how unprotected, fearful even, she felt without her turban during the day, but how much closer to Him she felt without it at night. She didn’t understand it.

She told her father about Savraj and the hardships she and her family were facing and how much she wanted to help them.

‘I went yesterday and gave her food and a little more money. But I want to do more, Baba. Please don’t be angry.’

‘You’ve done what you can. She’ll find her own way to Him. Let’s just hope your brother hasn’t found out.’

‘You’ve always said we should help people find their way.’

‘She’s as loose as dust. The night will bark before she thinks of anyone but herself.’

Narinder looked away, at the night shadows along the wall. ‘Her mother’s dying,’ she said flatly. A long silence followed. Then, something that had been bothering her: ‘Baba, why does God make people suffer?’

‘Hm?’

‘I’ve asked Him. Maybe I’m not listening hard enough, but I don’t know why some people have to suffer so much.’

Baba Tarsem Singh sighed. ‘You do ask difficult questions, beiti. Must we know all the answers? Might not we trust Him?’

Narinder looked down at the table and pressed her thumbs together until the tips blushed.

‘Our gurus suffered. They gave their lives for us. There’s an answer of sorts there.’

‘Yes.’

‘Why would we do anything, feel anything, for anyone else? If there’s no pain, how can there be love?’

‘Yes,’ she said again, and put her hand on his.

*

One spring evening, she brought Savraj kadi-chawl and munghi-di-dhal, food that could be preserved and eaten over several days. ‘How is massiji? Have you spoken?’

Savraj nodded, ate, running her tongue over grey teeth. ‘Same. Hopefully soon we’ll have enough for the operation. My brother found a job.’

‘See? I said God would show a way.’

Before she left, she reminded Savraj that, as normal, she’d be going to India in the summer. ‘To Anandpur Sahib.’

‘Oh good, out of this cold. Does it ever get warm?’

‘Anything you want to send your mother?’

‘You’re going to visit?’

‘Of course I’ll visit. I’ll even stay a few nights and help if I can.’

Narinder buttoned up her cardigan, her duffel coat. Savraj walked her out of the door, onto the metal landing, and said, ‘Mamma will be so pleased you’re coming.’

It was the hottest summer. Only ten o’clock, and the men were out of the fields and rushing indoors, to ceiling fans and chilled glasses of nimbu-pani. In the bazaar, shopkeepers lay asleep on their menjhe, not expecting any trade. A buffalo lay sprawled in the tree shade, blinking fatly each time a guava fell onto its wide head. Standing at the bottom of the marble steps, she took the metal pin from its neck pocket and scuttled it along the brim of her turban, and as the turban loosened the sweat oozed down her forehead. It felt nice. She heard her name and saw her mother at the top, holding a basket. Then they were together and the basket was piled high with slippers.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ Bibi Jeet Kaur said. ‘I’ll do it myself.’

When Narinder woke, she lay still, recovering, gaze fixed on the three dazzling white blocks the sun had painted on the ceiling.

She couldn’t remember the route to Savraj’s house and all she had to help her was the family name. The teller at the grotty municipal bank waved her away, saying couldn’t she see it was deposits this morning? Further on, outside the mandir, a man with pyramids of Spanish apples arranged on his cart accepted a ten-rupee note and directed her to an alleyway about twenty paces back.

She recognized the gate, the solid metal and slope of it. Even the wild spiderbush sprouting from the wall cast a shadow at her feet that seemed familiarly menacing. She knocked two, three times, pushing the tall hatch open.

‘Massiji?’

There was no one in the courtyard, just the same buffalo that had been there the previous year. She stepped through the hatch, hitching up her salwaar so it didn’t snag on the rivets. A television played in the back room, and maybe that was a foot dangling over the menjha. She started across the yard, head tilted, peering. Something shot down beside her.

‘Bibi!’ she called out, arms protecting her head. But it was a man, only a man. She looked up to the roof from which he’d jumped, then back at him.

He clapped the dust from his hands. He had the same sharp nose as Savraj and his white shirt was so full of sweat she could see the hair underneath. Narinder averted her eyes.

‘Sorry,’ they both said.

He laughed. She didn’t.

‘I’m Savraj’s friend. From England. I’ve come to see massiji.’

‘Oh, Narinderji?’ He took a step towards her, so close she was forced to lean back slightly. ‘Savi’s always talking about you.’

Other than siblings and cousins, no boy had ever stood this near to her. She wished he’d move away, though he appeared to be enjoying her flutter of awkwardness.

‘Mamma’s just lying down.’ He bowed, making a sweep of his arm. ‘Please allow me to take you before her.’

‘No, no, please don’t wake her. Let her rest. I’ll come back tomorrow.’

He had a languid, appraising smile. ‘It’d be like turning away the Rani of England.’

Savraj’s mother lay propped against the wall, a gold cylinder of a pillow squashed behind her. The TV showed a game show, similar to one Narinder thought they had in England. She slipped out of her chappals, her feet warm on the stone floor.

‘Massiji?’

She said it twice more before the eyes opened and a greyer face than she remembered turned to look at her. Narinder spoke softly: ‘How are you? Would you like some water? Did you get my messages?’

Massiji pulled herself up straight and blew the hair from her eyes. ‘When I’m dead, then talk to me like I’m a baby. And even then I’d still wipe the floor with you, chikni, cancer or no.’

They talked. Narinder reassured the woman: Savraj was doing fine. Working, eating, living with friends. Nothing to worry about.

‘Tell her we need double next month. The rent on the bike is due.’

‘Any other message? How much you miss her?’

Massiji looked across, doubtful. ‘I don’t understand.’

Later, Narinder asked how the treatment was going — they want to slice off my breasts, Massiji said — and put forward her plan to stay around and help for a few days.

‘You don’t have to.’

‘But I want to.’

The older woman snorted.‘I can imagine the look on everyone’s face.’

‘No one will mind. It’s a form of seva, in my eyes.’

Savraj’s brother returned with three glasses of pomegranate juice. He must have been to the bazaar to get it.

‘Maybe you can sleep in Kavi’s room,’ Massiji said, laughing, and Narinder blushed.

She didn’t stay, in the end. She didn’t seem to be needed. And Savraj’s brother unnerved her, with his smile and the way he’d whistled for a rickshaw even though she’d have preferred to walk. She passed the following week improving her harmonium skills: a renowned ragi was visiting from Bikaner and offered to help the young ones with their playing. It was a beautiful time, full of devotion and song. On the Sunday Narinder was chosen to play for the evening rehraas prayers and afterwards the famous ragi told her that her singing was like a balm for the troubled soul. Pleased with herself, she packed the instrument away into its wrinkled leather bag and heaved it to the metal cupboard in the adjoining room. Coming back through the alcove, she saw Savraj’s brother — Kavi — lounging around with his friends at the back of the darbar sahib. A blue ramaal was tied around his head like a bandana and his feet were bare. He saw her too and pressed his hands together in respectful greeting. Narinder responded likewise, and then one of the granthis ushered the boys out, saying this was God’s house, not one of their cricket grounds.

She started seeing him everywhere — in the market, near the hostel, eating at the dhaba she passed on her way home. She saw him one gruellingly hot afternoon in the langar kitchen, handing out cold lilac sweat towels to the women. And there he was the next day, too, praying with his head bowed. His kara was as it should be: chunky and clean on his wrist. And his hair, she noticed, wasn’t slopping with smeary oil like that of his friends. It was blowier, the lengthier strands tidied away behind his ears.

‘You have a lovely voice.’

He’d caught her in the tiny garden outside Sisganj Sahib, singing to herself, as she did sometimes of an evening. One of the best things — perhaps the very best thing — about coming to India was being able to roam, to breathe. She drew her chunni onto her head. ‘Sat sri akal, ji.’

By rights, she should have addressed him as bhaji, as brother. That would have set the proper and chaste tone for their encounter. But she hadn’t. She didn’t know why. And of course he’d picked up on it. Look at him smiling.

‘How’s massiji? I keep meaning to visit.’

‘I thought maybe you were avoiding us.’

‘Of course not.’

‘Avoiding me, then.’

Her mouth moved, until: ‘The seva this year is more than usual.’

He plunged his fists into his pockets and sighed deeply. Irritatedly? His top two buttons were undone. He had long eyebrows. She could feel something at base start to unstitch, releasing into her feelings she’d not experienced before.

‘When do you go back?’ he asked.

‘In two weeks. If you have a message for Savraj I’d be happy to deliver it for you. I’m sure she’d want to receive a message from her brother.’

‘Don’t you think we have phones?’

Narinder felt herself redden. ‘Of course. I didn’t mean to say—’

He was laughing at her, and almost but not quite tweaked her elbow. ‘I’m only joking, Narinderji.’ He emphasized the ‘ji’, which made her feel threatened. ‘So you’re telling me I’ve got two weeks to convince you to give me a kiss?’

She didn’t know what to say. She looked around but no one was paying them the least attention. She stepped away — ‘I have to go’

— and concentrated on the sound of her footsteps on the stone path, which seemed to be flaunting her exit.

A week before her flight home, it was time for the blanket distribution, and she wrote her name against the three sub-district villages to the west of the city.

It was the festering, sticky end of the afternoon when she got to Savraj’s house. The spiderbush plant had bloomed horrendously well, conquering both sides of the metal gate and most of the sandy wall. Blankets against her chest, Narinder opened the gate hatch and stepped over the gutter and into the courtyard. To her right, a small cardboard box kept crashing against the wall, the feet of a cockerel padding underneath. Narinder lifted the box off the poor thing and the bird squawked away in a flap.

‘Massiji?’ she said, turning back to the courtyard.

She could hear noises from the back room. The TV, probably: Massiji watching one of her game shows. Narinder wandered across the yard, ducking neatly under the washing line. She stopped at the door. It wasn’t the TV, and she knew she should turn right round and leave. She pushed the door open, silently, smoothly. On the menjha Kavi was lying on top of a girl, both of them naked. Narinder watched, fascinated, feeling pangs of shame and excitement. The girl smiled and tapped Kavi’s shoulder. He twisted round and Narinder said sorry and hurried back across the courtyard and out of the gate, the blankets still clutched to her chest.

She could not shift from her mind the image of him locked against the girl, the look of pleasure on the girl’s face. She went to bed feeling wretched. She wasn’t jealous. Either of the girl or of what they were doing. She’d never so much as touched a boy — she’d never so much as seen two people kissing, with her own eyes — and she had no intention to start. It was more that she felt inadequate. She felt like a child. No. She felt that the world made her feel like a child. Because she had no conception, let alone experience, of the thing that it thought was the most adult act of all. She moved onto her back and placed a hand under the blanket, on her abdomen. All evening, a warm glow had been spreading out from her stomach and down towards her thighs. She slid her hand beneath her navel, then further down, and clenched her buttocks and pressed them hard into the mattress. The metal springs resisted. From below she heard this year’s room-mate lift her head, then, perhaps a full minute later, put it back down.

Narinder collected her ironing from the dhobi. The ironing board at their hostel had gone missing a few days earlier.

‘I hear you’re leaving soon,’ the dhobi said.

Narinder said she was.

‘Arré, then why so glum? There’s always next year.’

Narinder paid the man and made her way back through the bazaar. It was true. She did feel glum and she wasn’t sure exactly why. She forced her clothes into the overstuffed suitcase and with renewed determination zipped it closed. Because this moping was ridiculous. She was twenty-one, for God’s sake.

She was on kitchen duty that afternoon, chopping coriander mainly, when she saw him through the doorway. He was taking off his shoes, tying a ramaal around his head. Surely he wouldn’t dare come and talk to her. In front of all these people. But that was exactly what he seemed to be doing, smiling with each step. Narinder tried to concentrate on her chopping.

‘I’d like to give my sister a message.’

She looked up, wrong-footed. ‘Oh. Of course. I’d be happy to.’ She waited for him to go on.

‘It’s a private message. Can I talk to you later?’

She frowned, resumed chopping. ‘I’m sorry. I’m leaving soon. No time.’

A silence, then he said, ‘I’ll be outside after rehraas. I’ll see you there.’

‘I said I don’t—’ But he’d moved away already.

He was waiting for her at the bottom of the marble steps, his back to the gurdwara. His cuffs were folded to midway up his forearms, thumbs hooked into his rear jeans pockets. Narinder’s sandals clacked loud on the marble, louder still in her ears. He turned round and waited for her to complete the descent.

‘Shall I take those?’ he asked.

She gave him a couple of the blankets from the stack in her hands. ‘If anyone asks, we’re talking about tomorrow’s donations.’

‘You’ve thought of everything.’

‘I’m busy, bhaji,’ she said combatively. ‘Please tell me the message and I promise to deliver it as soon as I return.’

For a long time he looked off to the side, where a handful of boys were getting caught up in the sunset. Still looking away, he said, ‘Mamma doesn’t have cancer.’

Narinder blinked, confused, but then thought she understood and her arms loosened across her chest, her hardness dissolving. ‘But that’s the best news! Oh Waheguru! How long have you known? Does Savraj know? I have to call her!’

Kavi raised his hand, speaking over her in a clear voice: ‘She never had cancer. We thought she did but they got it wrong. There’s nothing wrong with her.’

Time halted. Narinder didn’t move.

‘I think when Savi first borrowed money from you, she wasn’t lying. But then they wanted to keep you thinking she had it.’

‘Your mother and sister.’

‘So you’d help us.’

‘Help you?’

‘Help me get a visa.’

Visa. Cancer. Lies. It all floated around Narinder’s head, dots she wasn’t able to connect. Kavi made an impatient noise.

‘I was meant to get you to like me so you’d agree to being my visa-wife. So I could come to England and earn enough to pay for the cancer treatment.’

‘But there was no cancer.’

He shook his head again impatiently, as if he needed to get beyond this. ‘But after meeting you in the garden that time I told Mamma I wasn’t going to do it that way.’ He paused. ‘I don’t know why.’

‘Because you have a girlfriend,’ Narinder supplied, not really thinking straight.

‘What? Oh — ’ he made a swatting motion with his hand — ‘she’s just one of the chamaars. She gets passed round. I’d never treat one of our own girls like that,’ he added, apparently keen that she understood this fact about him.

She said she had to go. She wanted to get away from him. From him and his cruel, lying family.

‘Wait.’

She ignored him.

‘Please.’

The desperation in his voice stalled her. He came closer. She could smell his aftershave, like old leather.

‘I’m an honest man, believe it or not, so I wanted to ask you honestly. Not through deceit. Savi said you’re a very caring girl, so if you could see it in your heart to help us I’d be forever in your debt.’

‘Help you how?’ she said, her voice rising until she could hear the pain in it.

She saw him swallow. ‘We’ve saved and sold enough to cover the visa permit. Of course, when I start working in England I’d pay you every month. I promise you that.’

‘You want me to marry you?’ The question came as a shriek.

His finger leapt to his lips. ‘It would only be for one year. You’d be free again after.’

Narinder said she was going. He blocked her off.

‘Let me go. You’re being crazy.’

‘We can’t make anything of ourselves here. Land rents keep going up. Rates are going down. Nothing’s growing. It’s impossible. I’d be forever in your debt.’

She believed him. She was sure she did. But before she could allow herself to be even halfway persuaded, she looked away, away from him and his aftershave. Darkness had fallen in the sudden way that happened here in summer. She said he could keep the blankets, seeing as she’d not left them with any last time.

She couldn’t go to India the following year; she had to stay at home and meet potential suitors. There was another one coming tonight. From Surrey, Narinder thought, as she stepped into the bath and under the shower.

It would be the fifth family so far this year. Three had been rejected for not being sufficiently gursikh, and the one family who had seemed suitable was discovered to have an older daughter who’d married out of caste. The boy’s parents hadn’t mentioned it during the initial meeting, and it only came out when Tejpal asked some relatives in India to dig into the family’s background.

Narinder turned the shower off and pulled her long rope of hair, as thick as her wrist, forward over her shoulder, wringing the water out. She hoped this match would be suitable, if only for Baba’s sake. Tongues would start to wag if they kept turning boys away. She dressed in a simple chocolate salwaar kameez and chose her saffron turban from the cupboard. When she was halfway down the stairs, Tejpal said they were here, parking up. Narinder returned to her room and sat on the bed, waiting to be called. She’d spent hours here these past few months while prospective families were entertained downstairs. It gave her time to think. She was certain there were women out there who’d view her with pity, women who’d implore her to live her own life and thought all marriages of this design were the product of some sinister family pressure. She wondered what that meant: living your own life, as if your life was a thing closed unto itself. Did these women not understand that duty, that obligation, could be a form of love? That the pressure she felt was the pressure of her love? It might not be their kind of romantic love, but maybe it was all the purer for that. Sometimes she wanted to ask these women to imagine some manure on the side of the road, with all their friends and family circled around it. Now imagine leading your parents to the manure and burying their faces deep in it, in front of all of their friends and all of their family. She wondered how many of them would actually do that, in the drive to live their own life. There was an uncle when Narinder was young who’d cut a razor blade across his wrists because his daughter had run off with a Muslim boy. That, obviously, was an extreme case. Most parents whose daughters had strayed lived with their aura of shame, and everyone else gave them a wide berth, as if they really did stink of shit.

She couldn’t hear a thing — usually there’d be laughter or some sort of exaggerated exclamation as they discovered an acquaintance in common. But there was nothing. Perhaps they’d gone already. Maybe the boy had rocked up puffing smoke into Tejpal’s face and been straight away sent packing. The thought made Narinder smile. She stepped across to the window and held aside the net. The car was still there. A black estate-type thing.

When Baba Tarsem Singh did come up he held Narinder by her shoulders and said he thought this might be it.

‘They seem like a decent family.’ He kissed her forehead.

Eyes lowered, she followed her father into the room and sat next to Tejpal. Her chunni hung far forward, like a veil. They could probably only see her mouth, her lips. Through the crêpe of her chunni she counted seven maple-cream biscuits, brought over by some massi in Calgary. There were half-empty cups of tea, too, and samosas arranged into a squat pyramid. Beyond the table was the boy and his parents, or their knees, at least. His must be the middle pair of legs, in trousers a delicate shade of green. The parents continued chatting as if she hadn’t even entered the room. What plans did they have for vaisakhi next year? Do they go to the nagar kirtan? And then the boy’s mother asked if the girl might be shown and Narinder felt her father’s hand on her elbow. She raised her head and pulled back the chunni a few inches. Still, her eyes were cast down, fixed on a woody knot in the coffee table. This was always the worst bit. Wondering what they’d make of her face. It never seemed to get any easier. ‘Beautiful,’ the boy’s mother said, like all the boys’ mothers have to say.

‘Karamjeet said he’d like to talk to the girl alone,’ the boy’s mother went on. ‘If you don’t mind?’

Perhaps her father looked to Tejpal, because after a pause it was her brother who spoke. ‘What’s there to mind? We’re as modern as anyone else.’

They left — ‘I’ll show you the conservatory’ — in a rustle of salwaars and closing doors.

Alone with him, Narinder looked up. His turban was a deep royal blue and maybe a touch big for his round face. His beard was nice and full — no trim-singh, he — and a neat little kandha hung on the chain around his neck. Just like the one she wore.

‘Hey,’ he said. ‘You as nervous as me?’

‘I thought I was going to be sick.’

He nodded — he knew the feeling. ‘I’m Karam, in case no one’s thought to tell you.’

‘They did,’ she said, relieved he had a sense of humour. ‘And your age, job, education, height and complexion. Always complexion.’

‘You practically know me inside out, then. Let’s get married.’

A silence formed, which Narinder tried to find words to dispel. She settled for an inadequate smile.

‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Nerves. You nervous, too?’ A shake of his head. ‘Sorry You answered that already.’ A sigh. ‘I’m making a hash of this, aren’t I? I was aiming for funny-but-sincere.’

Narinder took hold of the situation. ‘Did you have any questions? They’ll be back soon.’

‘Oh. OK. Well, I think your father said you go to Anandpur Sahib every year?’

‘I try to. I enjoy the seva there. And I fully intend to carry on even after my marriage.’ She said this with conviction, ready to argue her case, though he didn’t seem to have been listening.

‘To be honest, I just wanted to make sure you weren’t being forced or anything. I’m five years older than you and. . Well, you hear stories, don’t you?’

She assured him no one was forcing her to do anything.

‘And you’d be happy living in Surrey?’

‘I don’t see what difference that makes.’

He seemed like a good person. They’d spoken on the phone a few times this last month and often she’d found herself smiling into the receiver. He was kind and honest and had twice now said how happy he was and how lucky he felt that she’d agreed to become his wife.

Narinder felt a hand on her shoulder, making her start. It was her baba, come to walk her home.

‘I was calling you.’

‘Oh, sorry, Baba. Is it time?’

‘What is this?’

He gestured to the posters on the gurdwara notice board, of Panjabi men and women who’d died trying to cross into the UK.

‘It’s very sad,’ Baba Tarsem Singh said.

She hadn’t really been reading them. The posters had been on the board for many months now. ‘Yes. I’ll pray for the families.’

‘Is that what’s been on your mind?’

‘Nothing’s been on my mind.’

‘You’ve been lost in your thoughts a lot recently.’

‘I’m sorry, Baba.’

‘You’ve been very quiet.’

She smiled. ‘I’m always quiet.’

He tried a different approach. ‘Is it the wedding? You are happy with the match?’

‘Yes, Baba.’

‘It’s a good family.’

She nodded.

‘It’s natural to be nervous.’

‘I’m fine. Really.’

‘And excited. Nervous excitement, they call it.’

She wondered whether to tell him that she didn’t feel excited. Not at all. But she couldn’t. Instead, they linked arms. ‘Why don’t you take the evening off?’

‘Oh?’

‘Yes. I’ll escort you,’ she finished, emphasizing the pronouns.

*

During dinner one evening she received a text message: call me. urgent. Savi di. Narinder slid the phone under her thigh. That ‘di’, she knew, had been calculated to remind Narinder that she was the younger of the two, the one who should obey.

‘Still enjoying your new phone?’ Baba Tarsem Singh said, reaching for the pot of raita.

‘Who was it?’ Tejpal asked.

‘No one. A friend.’

‘You don’t have any friends.’

‘And how would you know?’ Narinder said.

He really was getting insufferable these days. With his collection of Khalistan turbans and Puffa waistcoats. Only last week he’d had a go at Narinder for not bathing before evening prayers.

She deleted the message. They’d not spoken once in the last year. Probably she needed money. Probably she was only going to feed Narinder more lies. A week later another text arrived, Savraj threatening to turn up at Narinder’s house if she didn’t agree to meet.

‘I don’t want to meet you or any of your family,’ Narinder said, on the phone. ‘You’re all liars.’

‘Meet me for Kavi’s sake.’ Before Narinder could work out how to respond, Savraj said, ‘The gurdwara at six? Today. For Kavi’s sake.’

They met in the langar hall and sat cross-legged on one of the runners. Opposite them, two young girls raced to finish their bowls of rice pudding. She’d changed her hair, Narinder noticed. Even shorter, with streaks of cheap copper. She’d given up her cleaning job and gone back to the sheds.

‘More money for less time,’ she said, pulling a few notes from her gold lamé purse. ‘What I owe you.’

‘Is that it? Is that why you wanted to see me? Can I go now?’

She made to get up. Savraj stayed her with a hand to the knee. ‘Do it for us.’

‘Do what?’

‘What Kavi asked of you.’

It was so ridiculous she nearly laughed. ‘I’m leaving.’

‘They can’t survive. Kavi’s even talking about selling his organs.’

‘Lies. More lies.’

‘Do you think we’d have lied if we weren’t desperate? Do you think I wanted to go back to the sheds?’

Narinder turned her face away; she wished Savraj would stop.

‘It would be one year only. And no one would have to know. Not even your family. I thought if when you’re over there this summer you could go with Kavi to see the agent, then it could all be taken care of before you have to come back.’

All the time Narinder was shaking her head. ‘It’s illegal. It’s against the law. People could go to prison.’

‘Think of the number of people you’ll be helping. Not just us. But our children, and their children. We’ll love you till we die.’

‘No one has to die,’ Narinder said, facing Savraj full on. ‘Come to the gurdwara. We’ll get advice. We’ll help Kavi find a job. In India. A good job.’

‘There are no jobs. There is only corruption. Or if there are jobs they go to the fucking chamaars with these government quotas.’ Savraj reached for Narinder’s hand. ‘Please. Help us.’

Narinder shook her head, said sorry, that she couldn’t take the risk, couldn’t do it to her family, her father, and she kept shaking her head and saying sorry until Savraj gave up and left the langar hall for the dingy evening outside.

She told her father what had happened. Baba Tarsem Singh had been marking out passages in his gutka when Narinder appeared in the doorway and asked if she might interrupt him.

‘It’s not enough that they trick you, they also have to make you feel guilty,’ he said afterwards.

‘I’m scared they’ll do something dangerous.’

‘You’ve tried harder to help them than anyone else ever has. It’s between them and God now.’

‘What if her brother comes to harm?’

‘Let’s pray that doesn’t happen.’

She knew he was right. And yet: ‘I’m worried I should be doing more. That I’m not doing enough.’

‘There is nothing more you can do, beita. It’s in God’s hands. You’re getting married. Did you tell her that?’

Narinder hesitated.

‘Narinder?’

That evening she was summoned down from her bedroom. In the rocking chair sat her father, a guilty look on his face. Her brother stood with his back to the portrait of their mother. His arms were folded across his chest, hands arranged in a way that cupped each elbow, and his beard shone blue in the mix of lights playing through the different windows. He’d set his turban on the sideboard, so his topknot flopped like a loose apple. When they were children, he used to let Narinder pull on this funny-looking hairball.

‘Are you happy with this match?’

She’d been prepared for this. ‘Of course. It all seems fine to me.’

‘You’re sure? Certain?’

‘Get off my case, Tejpal.’

‘Don’t be too hard on her,’ Baba Tarsem Singh said.

Tejpal raised his hand and their father withdrew into the chair.

‘If you’re not happy tell me now. While I can still do something about it. Because if you leave it any longer I won’t be able to do anything. And I won’t let you shame us. I won’t let you make it impossible for Dad to walk into the gurdwara with his head held high.’

He approached, the blue light falling abruptly from his beard to his feet.

‘Well?’

She could feel herself glaring at him, at the idea that she would ever do anything — had ever done anything — to shame their father. ‘I’ve told you. Get off my case.’

*

Every so often she’d try calling India or Savraj. She wanted to know that the family was OK. That they’d not been ensnared by the kinds of agents she’d read up on recently. The ones who took all your money in exchange for a shoddy visa that wouldn’t even gain you entrance to the airport. But the information from India was sketchy — the PCO she called didn’t really know the family she was asking after — and Savraj never returned her messages. In time, winter broke to spring, and then summer, and somewhere along the way Narinder gave up trying to contact them. She was getting married in December and she needed to start coming to terms with that fact.

She’d seen Karamjeet twice since their introduction. Once when he’d come with all his relatives to drape a phulkari chunni over her head and officially claim her into the family. They’d not spoken that day. She wasn’t absolutely certain she even remembered having seen him. The second time, they met secretly in Hyde Park on a Friday afternoon in late May. He brought along a small hamper full of posh vegetarian bits and pieces and they’d found a bench by the Serpentine, the basket of food balanced awkwardly between them.

‘More juice?’

She said no, thank you.

He put the carton back. ‘You’re not going to Anandpur Sahib this summer?’

‘There’s too much to do. For the wedding.’

‘Well, maybe we can go next year. Together. It’s a while since I’ve done some proper seva.’

She nodded. ‘That’d be nice.’

He nodded, too. Seconds ticked.

‘So, have you thought any more about where you’d like to go? After our wedding?’

‘I don’t mind. Hemkund Sahib sounds nice. Isn’t it only open in the summer?’

‘June to October. But I have contacts. It is a lot of walking, though. I wouldn’t want you to be bored.’

‘It’ll be worth it.’

‘Maybe we can ask them to read an ardaas. For us. For our future together.’

‘That would be nice.’

Nice, nice, nice. She wished she could think of something else to say.

‘It’s funny we both wore the same colour,’ he went on. Their turbans, camel-brown. ‘Maybe it’s a sign. We think similarly.’ He was smiling determinedly through his beard.

‘It’s good that we have shared interests,’ she said, relieved to have landed on something positive.

‘Yes. Though I think shared attitudes is more important. And I think we have that as well. Don’t you?’

‘Yes. I do. You definitely need that because otherwise things can be very. . very. .’ She didn’t know how to end the sentence.

‘Not nice?’

On their way to the Tube at South Kensington, past the Science Museum, he spoke more about his job teaching physics in a secondary school, the joys and frustrations of it. As she listened, she realized that she was fond of him. He was gentle. He was patient. He made allowances for her nerves and understood how much bigger a step this was for her. He had so many sweet qualities that surely it didn’t matter that she felt no. . No what? Sometimes she remembered the moment Kavi had nearly touched her elbow. That flare of desire. She felt none of that walking beside Karamjeet. Instead, the thought of lying next to him one day soon came trailing a strong undertow of disappointment.

He followed her through the barriers before calling her back. ‘Mine’s the District.’

‘Oh, OK.’ She smiled. ‘I guess I’ll see you at the wedding.’

He was looking at her. He seemed on the brink of something. Then he stumbled in for a kiss, his eyes open and intense. She recoiled, and perhaps even made some sort of sound.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

‘No, I just. . You surprised me.’

‘I know. Anyway — ’ he shook his hamper pointlessly — ‘I’ll telephone you?’

‘I’d like that.’

He nodded — he didn’t seem to believe her — and headed for the escalator. Narinder watched him descend, his turban last to disappear. He looked crestfallen and she felt terrible.

For the wedding everything had been more or less decided. It would be a simple occasion, with none of the ostentation that most families engaged in these days.

‘I hope you don’t mind not having a reception,’ Karamjeet said. ‘The sooner we get you home the better. Only six months to go,’ he added, laughing anxiously.

She closed her phone and felt better, lighter, their conversation set aside for another three days. She was fond of him, though, she reminded herself, as the front door opened and Tejpal came hurtling towards her.

‘She’s here.’

‘What? Who?’

‘Your friend. The whore. I can’t believe Dad let her in the house.’

Savraj was sitting on the sofa, fingers threaded around a mug of tea. Her black PVC coat was several sizes too small, straining at the armpits, and her white chunni had fallen off her head. Baba Tarsem Singh sat beside her.

‘Savraj,’ Narinder said. The white chunni. ‘What’s happened?’

She couldn’t speak. Tears ran haltingly down her cheeks. Narinder looked to her father, who explained that the brother had died. He’d tried to make it across in a coach. Hiding in a gap cut into the ceiling. It seems they suffocated. Three of them.

‘They found the bodies in Russia,’ Savraj said. ‘They just dumped them in the snow.’

Narinder groped behind her for a table or chair to lean on. ‘That can’t be true.’ She spoke as if to herself.

‘I don’t know how we’re going to survive. Mamma’s on her own.’

Narinder saw her father nod at Tejpal, and perhaps Savraj did too because she suddenly tugged her coat about herself and said she should go. That she’d bothered them enough with her grief.

‘I just didn’t know what else to do. I’m sorry.’

Tejpal left the room briefly, returning with a small wad of notes which he passed to his father. He in turn pressed it into Savraj’s hand. ‘Take care of yourself, beiti.’

Savraj touched his feet, then tipped the money into her pocket and walked straight past Narinder and out of the door.

She couldn’t sleep and at first light she left the house and walked fast to the gurdwara. It was locked. She banged on the door and a sleepy-eyed granthi in white robes let her in. She raced up the steps, dragging her chunni on over her turban, and entered the darbar sahib, brought up short by the silence of it, as if she’d expected to find Kavi there. There was no one save for a second granthi, sitting with the holy book. Narinder fell to her knees and muttered prayers, rocking to and fro, speaking to Him.

When she returned home, her father called her into the front room. ‘It’s true. I made some phone calls and she’s not lying.’

It hadn’t occurred to her that Savraj might have been making it all up. She stood in the doorway, agitated, unsure where to put her face.

‘You mustn’t blame yourself,’ Baba Tarsem Singh said, coming to her. And the voicing of this possibility, that she could have averted this death, arrived as both relief and accusation, and Narinder slid down the doorframe and covered her face with her hands.

One night, a week later, her father came into her room and she felt his weight on the end of her bed, heard the slight rattle of his cane.

‘It wasn’t your fault, daughter. You couldn’t have known.’

‘But I did know. I knew they’d try something like this. And still I did nothing.’ She pressed her knees together to stop their shaking. Her bedside clock ticked gamely on.

‘You’re not sleeping. You’re not eating. Look how dark your eyes have become. From all this worry.’

‘I destroyed a family, Baba. My actions killed someone and I don’t know how I’ll ever forgive myself.’

‘God will forgive you. He knows your heart.’

‘But why did He let it happen? Is He teaching me a lesson?’

‘Narinder, we’ve spoken about this. We have to trust Him. I promise you it will all make sense in the end.’

She turned round. She needed to see his face. ‘Does it make sense that my mother died?’

He looked away, with clear difficulty ‘If it pleases Him.’

It was a frightening thought, that God might be pleased by their suffering.

In the morning, hoping it might help, she went to the gurdwara. There was a poster on the way in reminding the sangat to make time for next summer’s trip to Anandpur Sahib. When she’d volunteered last time she’d felt a great sense of goodness, that she was on the side of goodness. But real goodness, she now understood, wasn’t chopping vegetables in the canteen or distributing blankets. It was what her gurus had all done. It was putting yourself at risk for other people. It was doing the things that others wouldn’t do. It was sacrifice. And she’d never done that. The opposite was true. The one time she’d been tested, the one time someone had asked her to take a risk, to make a sacrifice, she’d walked away.

She stared ahead, mouth open, as if the granthi’s words were sliding right down her throat. Maybe it wasn’t such a ridiculous idea. Maybe she could do it. It seemed to be something that had been in the dark suspension of her mind ever since Kavi first asked her, but only last night had it poured over her brain, like a ramallah lain over the granth. It would be a risk, and that was the point. It wouldn’t help Kavi but it would help someone like him, someone who was struggling to survive. Maybe it would help her, too. Because how could she stand by and do nothing? Knowing what she now did? The wedding could wait. Karamjeet could wait. It was only for one year and then she’d come back and get married and life could carry on as expected. One year of her privileged life. One year. That’s all it was. As she thought these things, the guilt seemed to lift a little and for the first time in weeks she felt a smile come to her face, a smile in which could be seen a curl of excitement, in which the wedding was so happily, so boringly far away.

*

She was in Amritsar, showing the man her diary and indicating the number. She’d been coming here every day for the last week, at more or less the same time, and still the man asked if it was a UK call. He dialled the number from his side of the counter, and when the phone in the booth started to ring he pointed to the receiver. Baba Tarsem Singh was on the line.

Ringing home every day had been one of her father’s conditions. She’d said she needed to spend some time doing seva, to gather her strength before the wedding. Tejpal had been hard against it. Barely six months from the wedding. How would they explain it to Karamjeet’s parents? Baba Tarsem Singh talked him round and it was agreed that she could go for two weeks only and that, other than to call home every day, she wasn’t to leave the grounds of Anandpur Sahib. Narinder hadn’t set out to go against their wishes. The whole idea of marrying someone to help them come to England had begun to seem slightly mad; though that was before she pulled her white chunni from her suitcase and headed out to see Savraj’s mother. The gate was repeatedly padlocked and there was no sign of the animals. A woman on the neighbouring roof shouted that they’d gone. She didn’t know where. Maybe the city? They couldn’t pay the rent, you see. Did Narinder know the son had died trying to get to valeyat? Narinder tried to find a lawyer, but the closest the town had was a local man who dealt primarily with village disputes. He advised her to go to Amritsar, which was two hours away.

She told her father that, yes, she was still in Anandpur Sahib, then replaced the receiver on the prongs of the phone and paid the man. It was a five-minute walk up the Jallianwallah Bagh road to her lodgings inside the Golden Temple. Dusk was falling, and a passing cyclist switched on his flashing red headlight. She walked through the channel of water at the entrance to the temple and went in through the eastern gate. She loved the view from here, especially at this time of day, when the evening-red sun dipped behind the temple and the lake became a wet pasture of liquid gold, and the whole world seemed but a reflection of His glory. She’d prayed that morning, asking Him what to do, and had received direction. It was only for one year. She thought of three young boys lying dead in the Russian snow and knew she was doing the right thing.

‘There’s a good supply of lawyers near the furniture market, madam. In Hall Bazaar,’ the auto driver added, early the next morning.

The streets were already steamy with traffic and the bazaar was impossibly clogged. She’d walked and with some loose directions from the driver picked her way through the rickshaws and golguppe sellers, the scooters and carts and students on their way to college. Huge banners hung between rooftops, images of a bespectacled man who reminded Narinder of a distant uncle.

The lane widened out and she took the rightmost fork in the road and then the left turn immediately after the big wedding-card emporium. A little further on was the tatty white-and-blue board of R. K. Santoshi Advocate. She peered in. It seemed busy. At least three people were fanning themselves in the waiting room. With an internal waheguru she pushed open the glass door and waited for the receptionist to look up from her huge white box of a computer. She had heat-frizzed hair and — now she looked up — a strikingly beautiful face.

‘I’d like to speak to a lawyer, please,’ Narinder said.

The woman plucked a form from her in-tray. ‘Fill this in. The next available appointment is in two months.’

‘But I need to speak to him today.’ She took the form. ‘I don’t mind waiting. It’s only that I’m not here for very long.’

‘Two months,’ the woman said, returning to her keyboard.

By the early afternoon, Lawyers4u was the fifth office she’d tried, though the first to offer her an appointment for that same day. It looked shabby — a second-floor operation with peeling beige paint and a giant plant starting to brown. There was no receptionist, just a man in a khaki two-piece handing out numbered green chits. Narinder took her ticket — 00183 — and a young man in a white lunghi offered her his chair. The chit-man called out, ‘Ticket number 155.’

Four hours later, her turn came. The lawyer’s office was tiny, the size of their bathroom at home, and far too small for the huge oak desk he seemed to insist on. He was older than she’d expected — it had looked like the outfit of someone at the beginning of their career, not that of a slight, elderly, grey-haired man like this. A brass prism on his desk read D. S. Yadav LLB, and on the wall hung a certificate confirming his membership of the Amritsar Bar Association. There was nowhere for her to sit.

‘And how can I help you, miss?’

Narinder cleared her throat. ‘I’m looking for a husband.’

It took a few minutes for the details to be straightened out. She wanted to help someone who needed to come to England. It was important that this person really needed the help. Money wasn’t a consideration — she’d need a little for when she arrived back in England, but that was all. The important thing was that the person must really need her help.

Mr Yadav called for a chair — ‘Forgive me, but if I let everyone sit down they’d never leave’ — and he leaned back, fingers making a steeple beneath his chin.

‘I hoped you might be able to assist me?’ Narinder said, taking her seat.

‘People have such strange ideas, madam. They think we break the law, not uphold it.’ He must have seen the alarm in Narinder’s face because he flung out his arms. ‘But how could I not help a daughter of God, hain?’

He made several phone calls, one call seeming to link to the next, and by the time it sounded like he was getting somewhere the window behind him had darkened.

‘I heard there were a few desperate for visa-wives at the club last month,’ he said, dialling again. ‘It seems our Mr Harchand might be one of them.’ Someone must have answered. ‘Dinesh Yadav Advocate. Call for Vakeel Sahib, please — I see. Is he coming back tonight? — That will be all. Thank you.’ He reached for a letterheaded pad and spoke to Narinder as he scribbled. ‘Take this with you. Go to the Circular Road Basant Avenue crossing. I’ll ask Bilal to flag an auto. There you’ll see H. S. Dokhlia Law Association. Give him this.’ He tore the page off and held it out. ‘He’ll help you.’

Narinder looked at the paper, at the darkness outside.

‘What was I thinking?’ Mr Yadav said, and crumpled the paper into a ball, letting it fall where it landed. He stood and removed his lawyer’s cloak from the back of his chair. ‘Come, madam. Let’s find you your husband.’

They took an auto across the city, over misshapen concrete roundabouts and past a grand-looking cinema that Narinder somehow recognized. At the lawyer’s office, the receptionist rose to explain that Mr Dokhlia wasn’t back yet but would they please take a seat in the waiting room and she’d bring them some tea-coffee.

Narinder sat down. She slipped her hand into her bag and touched the picture of her mother she’d packed that morning. Beside her, Mr Yadav was flicking through a waiting-room magazine. It had an X-ray of someone’s teeth on the cover. She should thank him for all this, she thought, and was just opening her mouth when the door buzzed and an obese man in a lawyer’s white collar entered.

‘Harchand!’ Mr Yadav exclaimed, striding over, arms wide. ‘How long you make us wait, to experience the pleasure of your date.’

‘Arré, Poet Sahib, what can I say? It’s sangraand, no? And when Mother insists, Mother insists.’

They embraced casually and Mr Yadav took this other lawyer by the elbow and steered him into a corner. She caught bits — spouse-visa, England — and every now and then this Mr Harchand looked over. They seemed to finish by agreeing Mr Yadav’s cut — percentages were mentioned — and then the new lawyer started making his way across the grey carpet, smiling at her. Narinder stood up — do the right thing, she kept telling herself — and readied herself to greet him.

7. JOB PROTECTION

Late spring, and the shell of the hotel was finished, a modern cuboid touching the sky. The ceilings were next, and they worked into their lunch break to get the first one in and levelled off, girders fixed at the mortise points. Afterwards, they swung down from the scaffold, took off their yellow hats and reached for their flasks. It was always water now; getting too warm for tea.

‘I think we should drill the holes in first,’ Randeep said. ‘It’s hard holding them up like that. My shoulders kill.’

‘Can do,’ Avtar said. ‘But if the grooves go wrong it’ll be coming out of our bhanchod wages.’

‘What do you think?’ Randeep asked Tochi.

‘What you asking him for?’ Avtar said.

Tochi tore his roti in two. ‘Nothing’s coming out of my wages.’

They ate in tired silence, hard hats upturned in their laps to dry the sweat out.

‘Where is that limpy bhanchod, anyway?’ Gurpreet asked.

‘In his cabin,’ Randeep said. ‘All day on the phone.’

Gurpreet sent someone to find out what was the matter and the envoy returned saying that there’d been a delay on the drainage system and the engineers would come tomorrow. In the meantime, they should get on with the work they were being paid to do.

The drainage system didn’t arrive the next day. Neither did the crane drivers, nor the electricians, who were meant to have started wiring up the site nearly a month ago. One other team of migrant labour hadn’t turned up either. Mid morning, they all gathered around John’s Portakabin, demanding to know what was going on.

‘There’s a few problems with the council that need ironing out,’ John said. He had a defeated air about him.

‘Where is everyone?’ Avtar asked.

‘They’re not happy with the financial accounts for this project. They say some things aren’t adding up.’

They stared at him, not at all sure what this meant for them.

‘I’ll give your lad Vinny a call. No point in standing around here. Too nice a day for that,’ he added, closing the cabin door on them.

‘Vinny bhaji will sort it all out,’ Randeep said, as they waited.

‘He better,’ Avtar said, throwing him a tennis ball. He looked over to Tochi, sitting alone by the windbreak. ‘Because I don’t trust your room-mate one bit.’

It was late and the light patchy when the van parked up. They grabbed their backpacks and ran towards it, shouting.

‘It’s just a few glitches,’ Vinny said, raising his hands in a calming gesture. ‘Big project like this, it’s inevitable.’

‘What does that mean?’ Avtar asked.

‘It means this greedy cunt’s been taking a bigger cut than he should’ve,’ Gurpreet said.

‘It means,’ Vinny said, drawing out the word, ‘you get a few days off while I sort it all out. Enjoy the sunshine. ’S not often we get weather like this. Make the most of it.’

‘But what about our money?’ Avtar asked.

‘You live rent-fucking-free,’ Vinny said, suddenly sharp. ‘What more do you scrats want?’

Gurpreet and a few of the others took a bat and a ball and a crate of beer from the fridge and swaggered off to the park. Avtar, meanwhile, made for his room and split what money he had into the usual four piles. Then he made his four piles into two. He wouldn’t eat. He’d tell his parents he couldn’t help with the household bills this month. Still he was short for the loan. He had to make a decision. If he didn’t pay the mortgage the bank would seize the shop: that wasn’t an option. So his only choice was to ask Pocket Bhai’s men if he could make up the deficit next month. It was a risk. They’d slap him again, but perhaps this one time — he turned his eyes to God — they’d stay away from his family.

Later, Randeep knocked and poked his head into the room. Avtar was sitting cross-legged on his mattress, a computing textbook in front of him and his hands hovering over the open pages as if for warmth. He was gazing towards the window, at the brick wall beyond, and seemed not to have heard Randeep enter.

‘Studying?’

‘Hm?’ Avtar nodded, winced. ‘Not really.’

‘When are your exams?’

He closed the textbook, hard. ‘Two weeks. I’m not going, though. I’ve decided.’

‘What do you mean, you’re not going? Of course you are.’

‘I can’t risk leaving my job. Not now.’

Randeep dropped to the mattress, beside Avtar. There was an excited gleam in Randeep’s eyes. ‘So you’re going to go fauji?’

If he went, even if he didn’t pass — as long as he showed up — then Dr Cheema said his visa would almost certainly be extended for another year, and he could carry on without any fear of being deported. As long as no one found out about him working. If he didn’t even show up then his visa would be revoked, and the police would come to find him. He’d be worse off than those who snuck in illegally, because at least no one knew who those young men were. Therefore, not showing up would be, at least according to the doctor, a really stupid decision.

‘Fryers off?’ Malkeet asked. He was a big, chesty dump truck of a man, topknot showing through his American baseball cap, sweat patches in the pits of his T-shirt.

‘Ji, boss.’

They locked the back door and walked round to the forecourt, where Avtar helped pull down the shutters.

‘You not got a home to get to?’ Malkeet said.

Avtar passed him the padlock. ‘Actually, bhaji, I was wondering—’

‘Here it comes.’

‘—if there were any extra shifts I could do?’

‘Nope. Ask me in September. When the gori’s gone.’

Avtar nodded. ‘Would it be OK to get an advance on next month’s pay, then?’

‘What do you think?’

‘It’s only that the building work seems over and I owe—’

Malkeet flung out his arm, palm raised, as if to stop an onrushing vehicle. ‘Don’t. Don’t tell me. I don’t want to know what you are or who you owe. I don’t need to know your problems. Now, was there anything else?’

Avtar asked if he’d still have his job when he came back from London.

‘Why?’

‘Please promise me I’ll still have my job.’

‘Is someone coming for it?’

‘They might.’

‘Well, that’ll be for me to decide then, won’t it?’

‘I’ve worked hard for you. Can’t you promise me my job?’

Malkeet took his car keys from their apron pouch and de-alarmed the old estate; he left the Mini to his wife. ‘Do you think I’d have got anywhere in this country if I made promises like that?’

*

Tochi ate his evening meal early, then washed and shaved. He returned to his room, locked the door, and, in his underwear, sat facing the cracked swivel-mirror propped against the window. He draped a towel over his shoulders and twanged the tortoiseshell comb — several of its teeth missing — and combed his wet hair forward so it clung together in thick slats over his eyes. Because he was now trusted to work on the till, Aunty had told him always to come looking — he grasped for the English word she’d used — ‘presentable’. He patted his hand around the sill, docking on the scissors, and began to snip.

There were noises downstairs: doors shutting, laughter. A plate smashing, maybe. Tochi cut about two inches off his fringe, the hair falling into a child’s red potty gripped between his feet. He rinsed the scissors and the potty and returned them to the bathroom, where a quick head-bath dealt with the fussy little filings of hair stuck to his neck. Back in the room, he unfolded the letter. The handwriting was untidy, loopy, with great curling tails and circles drawn above certain letters. Or perhaps the circles were letters in themselves. There were crossings-out, too, probably where she’d decided against a word or simply misspelled it. In any case, it all made no sense to him. Maybe he should have accepted Aunty’s offer of translation. But he hadn’t wanted to give her false hope. He looked at the photo again: a pretty, shy, nervously smiling face. A fullish body, nicely curved, wrapped in an orange-and-brown salwaar kameez. The doorknob rattled, followed by a knock. He stashed the letter and photo under his mattress, then dressed. As he opened the door, Randeep was standing up from the keyhole.

‘Gurpreet’s back. Drunk again,’ he said, passing inside, speaking quickly — caught out. ‘I threw my dinner down as quick as I could. They’ll be drinking all night now.’

Tochi reached for his boots and forced them on, leaving the laces untied for now.

‘You going to work?’

‘Looks like it.’

‘Some of the guys are saying that Vinny bhaji’s finished. That it’s dangerous to stay here.’

‘It is. You should find somewhere else.’

Randeep placed his cutlery on the windowsill. He noticed a few hairs stuck to the mirror. ‘What about you?’

‘London.’

‘Really?’ He turned round. ‘Have you found work there?’

‘Not yet.’

‘But when you do, you’ll go?’

Outside, a bus rasped up the hill.

Tochi stuffed his hand under the mattress and brought out a sheet of light-blue paper. ‘Read this for me.’

‘What is it? Is it from home?’

‘Just read it.’

It was a short letter, which Randeep read to himself first and then translated sentence by sentence: Hello and sasrikal, Bhuaji asked me to say a little about myself. Well, I’m Ruby. I’m 37 and I have a little boy who’s 12. His name’s Santokh (which probably tells you how strict my in-laws were! Bhuaji said she’s spoken to you regarding my divorce so I won’t go into that here but I’m happy to talk about it if you want to meet.) I’m a homely girl and like being with my family. I work part-time in a supermarket. I’d prefer to stay in the area after marriage as I don’t want to disrupt Santokh’s schooling again, but if that’s a problem I’m happy to talk about it. I don’t mind that you’re illegal but if things do move onto the next stage then I’d like to do things properly (i.e. get proper visas from India and live here by the law). I’ve included a photograph of myself. Thank you and best regards, Ruby.

Above the salutation Randeep discerned, vigorously crossed out, ‘Bhuaji says you’re very good-looking!’ She must have decided that was a bit too much informality.

‘So where’s the photo?’ Randeep asked.

‘They don’t listen,’ Tochi said heatedly. ‘I’ll have to find another job.’

Randeep understood. ‘You lied.’

‘I had to.’

He passed the letter back to Tochi. He felt quite moved that Tochi had asked him to read it, that he’d trusted him. ‘You know, there’s a flat sitting empty underneath Narinderji’s. We could go there: you, me, Avtar bhaji.’

Tochi was standing at the window, looking out.

‘You’ve never mentioned your family,’ Randeep said, pushing a little further.

‘I’m not going to start.’

‘I’m here because my daddy isn’t well. He tried to kill himself.’

Tochi nodded, slowly. ‘Be happy yours is still alive.’

At the shop, they seemed to have heard everything.

‘I don’t think he’ll get away this time,’ Uncle said, about Vinny. ‘They know too much.’

‘Poor boy. He’s only trying to help. What his family must be going through.’ Aunty double-kissed the air, sympathizing. ‘What about you? How are you surviving now?’

‘Fine,’ Tochi said.

‘Do you want any extra shifts?’

‘I wouldn’t say no.’

Uncle asked him to do an hour on the till because Aunty would be cooking upstairs and he needed to complete next week’s cash-and-carry order. She came down at ten o’clock, the ends of her fingers yellow with turmeric, and started to cash up. Tochi seized his jacket.

‘Staying for dinner?’ she asked.

Tochi said he wasn’t.

‘I spoke to Ruby today. And I know you keep saying no, but she’s so keen to meet you. She’s a great girl.’

‘I’m sorry, aunty.’

‘But I don’t understand. It could be everything you’ve dreamed of. None of this hiding or lying or worrying about the police. A passport. A British passport. Isn’t that what all you boys want?’

‘I’m sorry,’ he said again, and nodded at her husband on his way out.

He could smell the saag as he arrived back at the house. He made for the stairs — he wasn’t hungry — but froze when Gurpreet called his name.

‘I hear congratulations are in order! You’re getting married!’ Others joined in, laughing. ‘You’re reaching beyond your dreams, Bihari!’

Tochi bolted up the stairs and into the room. Randeep followed, running. ‘I’m sorry! They overheard. I was only telling Avtar bhaji. I thought he might be able to help. With work.’

Tochi pushed him to the wall and held him there. Fear sprang to Randeep’s face.

‘You’re the same. You think I’m just someone for you to laugh about.’

He shoved him again, then let go, and Randeep stood there gasping, a hand to his throat.

They’d tied coloured ribbons to the cabinets and scattered confetti over the kitchen counter. He could hear them still laughing behind the door to the TV room. Tochi filled a glass with water. He downed it, one hand on the tap, filled it again, drank half and chucked the rest.

Avtar came through the beads and leaned against the fridge, running a hand down his tired face. He hadn’t changed out of his uniform.

‘Randeep told me what happened. He’s sorry.’

‘Right.’

‘Maybe you should apologize, too.’

‘He should learn to keep his mouth shut.’

‘It was an accident. He was trying to help you.’

‘I don’t need anybody’s help.’

‘He’s a kid. He’s the youngest here.’

‘About time he learned.’

Avtar pushed off the fridge, sighing resignedly. ‘Whatever. Just don’t let it happen again.’

‘Right.’

‘I mean it. I’m giving you a chance now. Next time, pick on someone who’ll fight back.’

Tochi turned his face, sharply, as if someone had pressed a button in his neck. ‘Like you?’

‘If it happens again, or if you steal my job, I’ll wrap your head around that fucking wall.’

Tochi put his glass in the sink.

‘I’m not scared of you,’ Avtar said. ‘You act like some man of mystery, some tough guy. It doesn’t scare me.’

‘Maybe it should.’

‘There’s only one person I’m scared of.’ He pointed up.

‘Good for you.’

‘Meaning?’

‘Meaning your God’s a bastard.’

‘I think you should take that back.’

Tochi came into the centre of the room. ‘Is this all you can do? Talk?’

They circled round, fists raised loosely. Tochi aimed one to the stomach, which Avtar dodged. ‘Nearly,’ Avtar said, and crunched a blow across Tochi’s cheek, cutting it. Tochi reeled back, then flicked in and caught Avtar twice: chest, side. Avtar doubled up, heaving. Sick came lurching up his throat. He forced it back down and with an almighty roar launched himself at Tochi, throwing him back onto the counter and sending all their Tupperware boxes whirling about. They grappled, cussing and punching, and were still kicking out when the guys from the TV room rushed in and split them apart.

Two evenings later, Tochi shouldered the final sack of potatoes from the storeroom and carried them into the shop proper. He took a knife from his back pocket to slice the bag open and was counting out the first few when a gold saloon parked up, half on the kerb. The driver wore an oversized turban and had an impressively floury beard. Two women got out as well, and all three walked past the window to the metal stairs at the side of the shop. It was the girl from the photo, and her parents, no doubt. Aunty came round from the counter.

‘It’s only a meeting. There’s no harm in you two saying hello.’

‘I can’t. I won’t.’

She started fussing over his cuts, touching his face. ‘Better. Now wait down here and I’ll call you when the time’s right.’

He stared at her, at the tremendous glee in her eyes.

‘Oh, you’ll thank me in the end,’ and she disappeared behind the sliding panel and up the stairs.

He could run. He should run. They didn’t know where he lived. But he hadn’t had his wages — he wasn’t working for nothing — and back at the house they were still laughing about it all. It filled his ears. The man had a big turban: obviously Indian-born, raised. It was reckless, asking for trouble. But he wasn’t going to run. Not any more.

Aunty led him upstairs, where the girl — woman — was sitting on the settee, clearly anxious. Her mother sat beside her, and sunk into an armchair was the girl’s father, legs crossed at the knees, thumbs drumming the mahogany whorls of the armrests. His sky-blue turban gave him at least an extra foot in height, and it came to too precise a point at the tip, as if it could be used to prise Tochi open. Uncle invited Tochi to come and sit next to him, on the settee opposite the girl.

‘How are you, beita?’

He looked up. It was the girl’s mother. She had a kind smile, an understanding voice. Tochi nodded.

Aunty came back into the room — she’d closed the shop for half an hour, she said — and handed round plates of snacks, which Tochi declined with a single shake of his head. No one said very much.

‘Maybe we should give Tarlochan and Ruby some time alone?’ Aunty suggested.

‘We haven’t even heard the boy speak yet,’ the girl’s father said. ‘He looks like he’s been in a fight.’

‘Twelve, fifteen boys in a house,’ Aunty pointed out. ‘Tell me where there won’t be scuffles?’

‘How long have you been here, son?’ the mother asked.

He took care to speak in flat, accentless Panjabi. ‘Nearly two years.’

‘Two years and already a chance of a passport. You must think you’ve won the lottery,’ the father said.

‘It’s kismet, isn’t it?’ Aunty retaliated. ‘It’s God’s plan.’

‘What’s your pichla?’ the mother went on.

Tochi said nothing. Aunty spoke: ‘I told you. His matah-pitah are no more. He was an only child.’

‘What? No taih-chacheh, no land, no anything back home? Everything he has is here?’ The father moved his hands, as if displaying the air in front of him; as if by ‘here’ he really meant ‘nothing’.

‘He’s here — ’ the word said with force — ‘trying to make a better life. He works on a building site all day and for us in the evening. What more do you want from him?’ Aunty turned to the girl’s mother. ‘Bhabhi, you understand? I don’t know why my brother is always looking for badness.’

‘This is about my daughter’s future. It’s my job to look for badness.’

‘Tell me about your pind,’ the mother asked.

‘It’s Mojoram,’ Aunty said.

‘The one close to Jalandhar?’ the father asked.

Tochi nodded.

‘And how long had your people been there?’

A pause. ‘Forever.’

‘I thought most families there settled after the troubles?’

‘Some, not all.’

The father nodded. ‘So what happened to your family land?’

‘I sold it to come here.’

He tilted his turban towards the ceiling, peering down the length of his nose. He uncrossed his legs and crossed them the other way, and there was something ominous in the way he did this. ‘You must’ve had buffalo?’

Tochi nodded slowly.

‘Remind me — it’s been so long — what’s that knot called our people use to tie the buffalo?’

Aunty made a face. ‘Keep your nostalgia for another day. We’re here to discuss these two and their marriage.’

‘How many kanal make a khet?’

Tochi said nothing.

‘And how many marleh go into a kanal?’

‘Bhaji,’ Uncle said, in a firm tone that kept its inflection of good cheer. ‘I think nerves are getting the better of us all!’

‘I just want answers,’ he said. ‘Answers that our people would know in their bones.’

They all turned to Tochi, whose eyes hadn’t moved from the carpet.

‘And I don’t know any of our people, especially if he’s a doabi like he claims, who would say “sold” in the way he did.’

Vho bikhegiya instead of eh bichhdah.

‘What nonsense,’ Aunty said. ‘And enough of this. It’s time we gave these two some space alone.’

The father stood up, turban inches from the ceiling. ‘I think we four should talk, too, because something here smells very wrong to me,’ and they vanished into a bedroom, leaving Tochi and the girl sitting opposite one another on the hard brown settees.

‘I’m sorry about my dad,’ she said. ‘He’s overprotective. After everything that’s happened.’

She was trussed up in scarlet clothes and gold jewellery, chunni twisted vine-like across her throat. Only her eyes gave away her age — some fourteen years on Tochi.

‘Do you want to get married?’ she asked.

‘I don’t think your father’s going to let that happen.’

‘It’s my decision.’

Tochi nodded.

‘Your Panjabi’s different.’

He nodded again.

‘It doesn’t bother me, you know. If you’re not Jat Sikh. Been there, done that.’ She added, ‘T-shirt so wasn’t worth the effort.’

What a ridiculous situation. Sitting here with this middle-aged woman who had to dress for the part of a virgin bride. He supposed it was the same for her as it was for him, that she too felt the grand impossibility of trying to recast her life. He could hear their voices through the door, the father’s especially.

‘He sounds angry,’ she said. ‘Maybe you should go.’

He stayed where he was. He’d see it through to the end.

It wasn’t the father, though, it was Aunty who flung open the door and charged towards him. ‘Is he right? What are you?’

‘I am a man,’ Tochi said.

‘Don’t get clever. You a chamaar?’

Tochi stood up. ‘I’ve told you what I am. Now give me what you owe me.’

And this — this demand — seemed to enrage her further, and her eyes widened horribly. ‘You bhanchod cunt! You dirty beast! What do you think you are?’

‘Davinder,’ her husband said, a hand on her shoulder. But she wouldn’t be restrained.

‘To think we trusted you. To think we let you into our home. Marry my niece? Go back to cleaning shit, you dirty sister-fucking cunt.’ She spat at his feet. ‘Go on. Get out of my home. I said get out!’

Uncle passed him a few notes and Tochi turned to leave.

‘Get out!’ she screamed. ‘You people stink the whole world up!’

He didn’t return to the house immediately. He walked for what seemed like miles: back along Ecclesall Road and down into the city, pausing at the train station to study its map of the area, then through Attercliffe and into Brightside. The houses narrowed, the streets darkened. He’d only ever seen the address typed on the inside of the kid’s diary. Perhaps that was why it felt a little magical to see the street name for real, nailed to the real red brick of someone’s real house. He started the climb up the hill, stopping a few doors from the flat and crossing the road to get a better look. A light was on upstairs. There was maybe even the shadow of someone pacing the room. Downstairs, though, nothing. He went back across the road and slipped down the gennel and over the wall. He peered through the window. A cooker stood stranded in the middle of the room. The cupboards were smashed in. There was evidence of mice — a nibbled loaf, saucers of poison. But it was empty. When the time came — when he got that big-mouth Avtar’s job — it was somewhere he could live alone.

*

There’d still been no word from Vinny. Avtar tried to get hold of him, but his phone just rang out.

‘Does anyone know where he lives?’

No one did. Rumours sprouted. Customs people. Tax office. One of the boys said he’d heard from his cousin-brother in Halifax that Vinny had run away to Panjab. A couple of the boys packed their bags to take their chances on the streets. The rest of them decided to sit it out.

‘If there was going to be a raid, it would’ve happened by now,’ Gurpreet said, forehead to the net curtain. He turned round. ‘But we should pool all our money together. Until work starts again.’

No one said anything.

‘What are you waiting for? We still need to buy food. We’ll get more this way.’

He held his hand out. It was trembling.

‘Give it me. I’ll sort it.’

Shaking his head, Avtar kicked aside the milk crate and left the room. One by one, the others followed.

He switched SIM cards and called Lakhpreet that night. Her voice was sleepy — ‘It’s not even five o’clock, janum’ — and she complained how hot it was. The air conditioning was down and she’d been up twice already to take a cold shower. He wouldn’t believe how breathless and horrible everything was again. It was like living in an oven. He was lucky to be away from it all and even luckier to be going to London tomorrow. How she wished that was her!

‘I’m missing you,’ he said, cutting in.

He could hear her smile. ‘Me, too,’ but the words fell lightly and didn’t provide the warmth he needed. Perhaps it was the distance. Still, he half wished he’d not called. Too often these days he felt closer to the stars out of the window than to anything Lakhpreet said.

Randeep walked with him to the station the next day. He even offered to buy the ticket, but Avtar said he’d hide in the toilets or something. And barriers could always be jumped.

‘You just don’t tell anyone where I’ve gone, OK? Especially your room-mate. You do understand?’

‘Yes! I understood the first time. And the time after that.’

Avtar stroked the swelling around his eye. It hadn’t quite gone down. ‘I know that bhanchod’ll try something.’

‘He’s not that bad. I shouldn’t have said anything.’

‘He didn’t even take off his rings.’

‘I don’t think he wears rings.’

Avtar gave him a look, as if to ask whose side was he on? ‘We’ve tried to be friendly, but he’s ungrateful. I hate that. Have you ever even seen him smile? No. Exactly.’

As the train pulled in, he again reminded Randeep not to tell anyone where he’d gone.

‘If someone asks, say I’m at work. I’ll be back in a week.’

He nudged his rucksack into the centre of his back and climbed on board. Randeep waited on the platform, watching Avtar find a seat. He must be having money problems, he thought. Or worse money problems than the rest of them. It wasn’t something he ever spoke about. Randeep gave him a thumbs up, and then the train began to move and Avtar’s worried face slid slowly up the track.

It only took two days. Randeep had returned from delivering Narinderji her monthly payment — she’d barely let him through the front door — and was in the kitchen pouring himself some cereal. It was all they had in the cupboard. Tochi was sitting at the table, hunched over his roti-dhal. He hadn’t said a word to Randeep since he’d told everyone about the girl’s letter, and Randeep was beginning to wonder if he’d ever be forgiven. The beads were slapped aside and Gurpreet came in. He found a couple of empties in the bin and managed to shake a few drops into his mouth. Then he threw them back down.

‘Pour me some,’ he said to Randeep.

‘There’s no milk, though.’

Gurpreet nodded, wiping his perpetually runny nose with the back of his hand. Randeep handed him a bowl and they ate standing against the counter.

‘Where’s your friend?’ Gurpreet asked Randeep.

‘Work.’

‘Not seen him for a few days.’

‘He’s busy.’

‘He used to talk about his exams. When are they again?’

Randeep chewed his cereal, playing for time. ‘I’m not sure.’

Gurpreet nodded. ‘Is he still at the chip shop?’ And there was something about the way he said this. Less an enquiry, more a confirmation.

Randeep looked to Tochi. ‘He’s still at the chip shop.’

Tochi raked back his chair, harshly, and hurried into his jacket. Gurpreet threw his bowl into the sink, charging forward, grabbing Tochi by the collar and yanking him back.

‘Bhanchod chamaar. It’s time you learned your place.’

He took Gurpreet’s legs from under him and slammed him onto the table, pinning him there with a forearm to the throat. Gurpreet thrashed. He made strangulated sounds. A knife appeared in Tochi’s hand, held high above his shoulder. He trained it on the space below Gurpreet’s turban.

‘Say that again and I’ll slice your fucking eyes open.’

At the chips-and-chicken joint, a girl with hair the colour of hay looked up from behind the counter. She asked Tochi something in English.

‘Foreman. Please,’ he added, as if remembering.

She stared for a few seconds, her brow contracting, then sloped off into the kitchen and said something in English again. A man appeared, big, with strong, fat arms that he was wiping down. He nodded up at Tochi. ‘Ki?’

‘I need work.’

‘My name’s Malkeet. Bhaji to shits like you.’

Tochi adjusted: ‘I need work, bhaji.’

‘Welcome to the world. Nothing here.’

‘Wait. Please.’

Malkeet waited.

‘I’ll work for less than the one that’s gone to London.’

He seemed amused by this. ‘That takes guts.’

A customer entered and Malkeet told Tochi to go outside and come round the back. When he made it round, Malkeet was already in the doorway, pointedly keeping Tochi standing outside. Blue plastic crates were stacked against the wall to Tochi’s left, watery blood pooled across their bottoms. Chicken, he made out, from the pictures if not the words.

‘What’s your status?’

‘Fauji.’

‘How long?’

‘Long enough.’

‘Now, now.’

‘Two years.’

Malkeet thought on this. ‘Well, I suppose it is true: you are cheaper than scooters. Always wanting time off for this or that exam.’ He said this loudly, airily, and the desi guy in the kitchen banged his fryer against the rim and flounced off into the shop. Malkeet chortled.

‘You’ll make enemies.’

Tochi said that was nothing new.

Randeep paced the room, mattress to wardrobe, wardrobe to mattress. Sometimes he paused at the window, but it was getting too dark to see much down the road. He put his head to the wardrobe. He might not have. He might not have stolen the job. The boss might not even have given it to him. Anyway, he had nothing to feel bad about. Even if he had wanted to make it up to Tochi, he hadn’t said anything he shouldn’t have. Had he? Outside, the gate opened, hinges screeching. Randeep went to the window — it was him — and rushed out of the door, meeting Tochi halfway down the stairs.

‘You didn’t?’

Tochi pushed past, carrying on into their room.

‘I’ve told bhaji. I’ve called him.’

‘Good.’ He took his holdall from the wardrobe and began to stuff it with his clothes.

‘What are you doing? Where you going?’

‘To the flat.’

‘The empty one?’

Tochi nodded. It was time to leave. He zipped up the holdall and slung it on. ‘If your friend asks, tell him. I don’t want him to think I ran away.’

‘You can’t do this,’ Randeep said, following him onto the landing. Then: ‘I saw your scars.’

Tochi halted. He didn’t turn round. Then he went down the stairs and out the front door.

Some students got up and left the hall long before the invigilator instructed everyone to put down their pens. Avtar never did. It would only draw attention, especially as he sat near the front and the exit was right at the back. He waited, listening to the giant clock, seeing shapes in the tiles of the parquet floor. Once or twice he paged through the booklet again. It made no difference. It was all beyond him.

Today was his fourth exam — two more to go. Head down, folder to his chest, he burrowed through the hordes of students comparing answers in the corridor. Usually he went to Cheemaji’s office. Not this time. He cut across the car park, past the library and out of the college grounds. He went under the roundabout that had once so confounded him and used Cheemaji’s travelcard to take the Tube to Kings Cross. It had been deliberate, suggesting somewhere public, and this was the only place in London he really knew.

He waited near the ticket office and when the other two showed up they all moved to an empty table outside a coffee shop. The nephews took teas. Avtar shook his head.

‘Sure?’ Bal said.

‘I’m sure.’

‘Fair enough. ’S good of you to meet us here,’ he went on. ‘Saves us a trip up north for once.’

‘I was here anyway.’

‘For your exams. You said.’

Avtar reached into his shoes and pushed across the table a small roll of notes. ‘It’s not enough.’

‘I can see that.’

‘I’ll make it up next month.’

The teas arrived. The waiter left.

‘Is that why you wanted to meet here?’ The nephews looked at each other, smiled. ‘Did you think we’d play nasty?’

‘I’ve said I’ll make it up next month.’

‘Let’s go for a walk.’

Avtar didn’t move.

Bal swiped up the money and put it in his pocket. ‘Get up. We don’t have long.’

They took him into the toilets where Bal covered Avtar’s face with a hood and held his mouth under a running tap. The other nephew kept watch.

‘Stop taking the fucking piss,’ Bal said, whacking up the water pressure. ‘If you take the money — if you accept the money — then pay it the fuck back, yeah? Isn’t rocket science, is it?’

Avtar beat his fists against the basin, clawing at it. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t see. He thought he was going to drown. Black and silver strings vibrated behind his eyelids.

‘If it happens again we’re clearing your family out. Do. You. Understand?’

He let go of Avtar’s neck and removed the hood and Avtar collapsed to the floor, on his hands and knees, gasping.

It was late when he got back to the doctor’s house, though the sun was still taking its time to set. He went in through the garden and found Rachnaji, the doctor’s wife, the proper doctor, balanced on the squashy lip of the sofa, slicing a carrot on the coffee table. Her hair was tied into a Spanish net and shelved to one side.

‘Is uncle around, aunty?’

‘He’s at the gurdwara,’ she said, and chopped the head off the carrot. ‘He’s always at the bloody gurdwara.’ She turned her face to Avtar. ‘I found him weeping a few weeks ago. He said he didn’t know what he was for. That he felt empty.’

Avtar thought it best to stay in his room after that, emerging only when he heard Cheemaji’s car outside, the gravel spraying under the wheels. He needed to ask about that Sri Lankan factory job from before. There was nothing keeping him in Sheffield, not now that cheat had stolen his job. He took a breath. He needed to keep his mind straight. He needed to find a job.

The doctor was mixing a whisky-soda from the cabinet. The lights were low and there was no one else about. Avtar coughed.

‘Ah, you’re still up. Revising?’

‘Ji,’ Avtar lied.

‘Good, good.’

He tilted his glass towards Avtar, who said no, thank you.

‘Probably best,’ Cheemaji said, and necked his drink in one. He exhaled. ‘That hit the spot.’

The front door opened and Neil, their son, came through in an oversized NFL sweatshirt. He went upstairs and slammed the door shut.

‘Everyone’s a little upset with me,’ Cheemaji said. ‘You’ve no doubt noticed.’ He refilled his drink. ‘They don’t understand. We don’t belong here. It’s not our home.’ He raised his glass to Avtar. ‘You’ve helped me realize that. People like you.’

‘Me?’

‘We’re like flies trapped in a web. Well, I don’t intend on waiting for the spider.’ He took a sip this time. ‘I said that to Rachna. Do you know what she said? She said I seemed to have forgotten that for the fly, once webbed, it’s already over.’

Avtar returned to his room without asking about the job. He sat on the bed and gave in to his anger. What decadence this belonging rubbish was, what time the rich must have if they could sit around and weave great worries out of such threadbare things.

He couldn’t sleep that night, and when he called Lakhpreet, she didn’t answer.

*

Randeep locked the door and turned back into his room. He hoped Avtar bhaji would agree to moving in. He’d got used to having a room-mate and didn’t like being alone, not now the house was beginning to empty. For the first time, the rooms felt too big. He pulled his bag free from behind a panel in the wardrobe and counted his money. He had enough to cover another month’s payment to Narinderji, maybe even two, and if he only sent home half of what he normally did he should be fine for food as well. By then surely they’d have found work. He wondered what he’d tell his mother. Going by the pearls in her last photo, she’d got used to the cash. There was a big click and the lights went out. Randeep clutched his money harder, until his eyes adjusted and the darkness settled into something less confrontational. He folded the notes into the bag and returned it behind the wardrobe panel. Then he unlocked the door and stepped onto the landing. The whole house was black. One or two others came out from their rooms as well.

‘What happened?’ Randeep asked.

‘The meter, probably,’ someone said sleepily, smokily.

Randeep tiptoed down the two flights of stairs, a hand on the painted white globe at the end of the banister. He could hear voices up the hall, in the kitchen. Gurpreet, threatening someone to put money in the meter or else.

‘It’s your bhanchod turn,’ the other guy said. ‘Look at the sheet.’

There was the sound of someone being pushed hard against the fridge and slapped. Gurpreet’s voice: ‘Bhanchod, who taught you to talk back?’

Very quietly, on the balls of his feet, Randeep turned around and went back up to his room. He locked the door and reached for his blanket. At least Avtar bhaji was back tomorrow.