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  Asha took the letter from her.

  Jaya struggled to breathe, as though the air had suddenly thinned. She watched Asha’s eyes move from left to right.

  ‘He’s in Austria,’ said Asha.

  ‘What’s he doing there?’ Vijay took the letter from Asha.

  That didn’t make sense. Why wasn’t Pran in India? Jaya put her hand on Vijay’s arm. ‘What does it say?’

  ‘The Red Cross helped him to get out, he’s in one of the transit camps there.’

  ‘Why, he was safe with my family in India?’ said Jaya. A maze of questions, none of them leading to answers.

  Asha shook her head. ‘It doesn’t say why, maybe he wanted to be careful about what he wrote in the letter? But he’s a stateless refugee. There was always a chance India wouldn’t take him either.’

  ‘So he’ll have to get to England somehow?’ Vijay reread the letter as though it would reveal something new.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Asha. ‘They won’t let him come here. Even if he could afford the airfare to England.’

  ‘He must have hidden some money,’ said Jaya. ‘He must have got some out of the country?’

  Asha caught Vijay’s eye, but he looked away.

  ‘He’s not hurt, is he?’ said Jaya.

  ‘He doesn’t say much, just wanted to tell us he was safe. He got out, that’s the main thing.’ Vijay’s words were a ribbon of hope, as he leant back against the hallway wall to let a couple of people pass. He was too young to understand, thought Jaya. Pran was alone with little money. He didn’t speak German. What would he do now?

  ‘He hasn’t given an address where we can contact him,’ said Asha, scanning the letter again.

  Jaya put her hand to her mouth. After all this time, every second of silence, she couldn’t stand waiting to hear from him again.

  ‘I’m sure he’ll write soon.’ Asha briefly rested her hand on Jaya’s arm. ‘He was able to write to your brother and get the barracks’ address, wasn’t he?’

  She stared at the letter in Asha’s hands. There was nothing to do but wait.

  25

  Jaya

  Jaya walked past Arnos Grove Underground station, taking in the circular facade, the strange flat roof. Why anyone would build something that looked like one of the spaceships from Vijay’s childhood comic books was beyond her. Though she’d passed by it for weeks since they’d moved out of barracks, she still couldn’t get used to it. At the bus stop, a man with long hair waited, his neck covered in flowery writing: a tattoo, though it looked as if someone had decided to write their shopping list on him instead of finding a piece of paper.

  Jaya waited to cross the street, the hem of her sari gathered at the top of her lace-up shoes. The glowing green man told her to walk across the road, but as usual she panicked as the symbol started to flash, skip-jogging the rest of the way to make it across before the red man appeared.

  Inside the shop, she wandered around looking at the tomatoes, giving them a sly squeeze for ripeness when Mr Johnson the grocer wasn’t looking. The handwritten prices on the signs above the fruit and vegetables were just about decipherable: some of the corners and lines of English numbers were similar enough to the loops and slants of Gujarati, and she’d been taught the rest by Asha and Vijay. But like a tourist, she found herself converting the money back to Ugandan shillings. Jaya picked up the other goods she needed, having memorized the cobalt blue and bright orange of the washing powder; the familiar teal of the tins of beans; the red, yellow and green cockerel on Vijay’s breakfast cereal. She had to look around and above and below the letters to understand this new world, looking at the pictures, colours and shapes as though she was a child again. It made her think of Gayuri, her friend in her parents’ village, who’d taught her to read when she was a little girl.

  Gayuri was usually busy, helping her forever-pregnant mother until she was ready to have the latest baby. Gayuri could be found wandering the narrow lanes of the village, bony hip jutting out to hold the weight of a young sibling, while she shouted at her younger brothers to behave.

  And yet, even with all the new children in her family, she was able to go to school for three years longer than Jaya. Gayuri’s father was a successful farmer who had money for educating his ever-growing brood – even the girls – while the younger children were looked after by the large extended family.

  Jaya filled the hours until Gayuri’s return by doing her daily chores. Sometimes she spent time grinding and pounding the millet, using the stone ghunt, which Jaya thought the perfect name, just like the sound it made, heavy and tough. Other times she helped her family harvest the millet, placing her feet flat on the ground, leaning back and pulling the ragged yellow pokers out. Some of the other girls used their feet to kick off the earth but Jaya liked the feel of it in her fingers, shaking off the soil, revealing the twisted roots beneath. Day after day she worked, as the sun burned across the sky and the skin on her hands and feet grew rough.

  The best part of her day was when she sat down with Gayuri, who taught Jaya how to read the letters of the Gujarati alphabet, ‘Kuh Khuh Ghuh’.

  A few years later, a stranger came from the village across the river to meet her father. Jaya had sneaked into the courtyard with her younger brothers, listening to their conversation from outside the window.

  ‘She’s strong, works hard,’ her father told the stranger. ‘And she can read and write.’

  ‘We have no need for that,’ said the stranger.

  But it didn’t matter. Jaya had a need for it, even after she was married. Through those stolen moments with Gayuri, Jaya had learnt to do something that, for the first time in her life, was hers alone.

  When had she become someone so different from the girl she’d once been in a tiny village in India? Someone who had crossed seas and oceans and now found herself in a corner of London. A lifetime away.

  She handed over the money to Mr Johnson, a smile her only means of conversation. Even though she’d had to learn Swahili from scratch when she’d arrived in Uganda, her mind couldn’t absorb English as quickly, her tongue wouldn’t fold itself into the sounds she needed. Forcing English words into her head was far more difficult, as though there were too many other words crammed in there already. She tried to form simple sentences but couldn’t find the right words; instead, her mind pulled out a jumbled mass of the Swahili, Gujarati and Hindi words she already knew. Vijay had taught her some phrases: ‘One adult to Stanmore, please,’ ‘thank you,’ and ‘I’m sorry, I do not speak English,’ but she’d learnt them without fully understanding the meaning of each word, and so remained without the ability to express her own thoughts and feelings in this strange new language. She knew she sounded like a child: broken sentences, fractured vowels.

  She envied Asha, going out to work, talking to Mrs Houghton who lived next door, moving with ease in their new world. Jaya had to make do with a series of polite smiles and nods, standing back while the women chatted about . . . well, she was never quite sure exactly what they were talking about. That morning, she’d watched Asha as she spoke to their neighbour about the tree at the end of the road. Jaya could tell from the smiles and the tone of their voices and their laughter that they were saying something positive, how big it had grown, perhaps; but without English, she had to construct her own conversations in her head, or wait until she heard them second-hand.

  Once she’d finished her shopping, Jaya hurried along the street, shopping bags rustling at her ankles. In Uganda and in India she’d walked slowly, calmly, not wanting to get sweaty and hot. But here in England there was no choice but to try and outrun the cold, to hurry, sticking her neck out, rushing as fast as she could, like a bird about to take flight. She felt the chill in her bones, felt as though the blood in her veins was shrinking.

  Their house was sandwiched in a long terrace, with crumbling white window frames and a patchwork roof where the terracotta tiles had fallen off. Jaya opened the door and looked down at the mat the same way s
he did every day, just in case there had been another letter from Pran while she was out. Nothing. Who knew exactly where he was?

  Weeks after they’d found out he was in Austria, they’d finally received a long letter from him, forwarded by the Ugandan Resettlement Board. He explained that when he’d been expelled he’d decided to go to Austria instead of India, believing that there was more chance for them to be reunited if he went to Europe.

  ‘It’s so typical of him,’ Asha had said, in a sour tone. ‘Making decisions on everyone’s behalf.’

  ‘He just wanted to be closer to us,’ said Jaya.

  ‘We’ve been so worried about him. And we can’t even write back.’ Asha’s voice faltered. Pran’s letter said that he would soon be moving to another camp, so they should wait until he’d confirmed a new address.

  Asha had eventually calmed down, trying to focus on contacting the Resettlement Board and their local MP in case they could help. After all, there were other families just like them, separated by passports and circumstances. It was even being debated in parliament.

  Jaya took the shopping through to the kitchen. They’d refused the house the council wanted to give them, instead teaming up with Vikash, an acquaintance of someone they knew from the barracks, who lived in the room upstairs and shared the burden of the bills. Vikash worked night shifts at a factory. ‘Moonlight pays better than sunlight,’ he liked to say. Usually, though, he was upstairs sleeping or out with friends. Jaya rarely saw him, although sometimes she could hear him shuffling around the kitchen in the twilight hours like a giant mouse. It was inevitable: in these tightly packed houses, you were reminded of the people all around, eating, washing, living nearby. The walls on either side were thin and it startled her when the little girls next door giggled or the man sneezed violently, ghostly sounds, as though people were trapped inside the walls.

  They’d set to work to make the house as homely as they could, cleaning each room, hands gloved in yellow rubber and armed with Vim and Domestos, scrubbing the mantel that framed a grumpy electric heater, mopping the patterned kitchen linoleum, until the whole house was filled with a chemical tang that lingered for days. Better that, though, than the must and the damp.

  In Uganda, like many other people Jaya had kept the plastic on all the new furniture, even the mattresses, so that when you turned in bed you could hear it crinkle and squeak under you. She’d even wrapped plastic around the sides of Vijay’s record player and over the top of the radio (though he’d ripped it off straight away). But what was the point now? Why bother saving anything when it could be taken away from you?

  She missed the space of the old house. The family made the best of it in their terraced home: Asha and Jaya shared a small double bed in the second bedroom and Vijay took the sofa in the sitting room downstairs. The kitchen doubled as a dining room and led straight through to the bathroom, which had an enamel bath and matching sink in avocado green. Outside the kitchen, there was a small brick enclosure housing a toilet with a pull flush, which, despite Jaya’s efforts to clean it, seemed to be regularly draped in cobwebs and bits of dead leaf from the garden shrubs. And the worst thing was going out there, the icy slap of the toilet seat on her bottom, and washing her hands in water so cold it made her fingers ache.

  She’d never got used to the showers at the army barracks but now she had to adjust again. A bathroom right next to the kitchen meant that once you were clean, you had to step out to the waft of chai or rotli, depending on the time of day, or alternatively step from the smell and warmth of the kitchen into the icy bathroom.

  She unpacked the shopping, lining the shelves with tins and packets. The day seemed endless. She looked at the clock on the wall: half past eleven, quarter past twelve, willing the hands to turn faster. She’d already ironed all the shirts, rearranged the crockery and gathered the clothes to take to the launderette at the weekend. Sliding the leftover rotli under the grill, she left the heat low so it would take longer to cook, and watched it crisp and brown. She ate it with a lime pickle they’d picked up in Southall; it was one of the few places where they could reliably buy Indian goods.

  What would December have made of all this? He’d probably have looked in horror at the carpet sweeper, for a start (‘You roll some metal over it and expect it to be clean?’). Many chores were faster here, designed to save time, so you could do other things, but what if there was nothing else with which to fill your time?

  After she’d finished washing the dishes and cutting the vegetables for dinner, she poured some chai and went into the sitting room. She hadn’t thought it possible, but the house was colder than the barracks. Here there were no warm bodies to fill the air, and the conversation had been replaced by silence. She’d spent her life being chased by the sun, moving inside the house in Kampala when the shade crept away, going back out to the veranda when the shade grew longer. But now, with the tiny fragments of winter light seeping through the clouds, she craved the warmth that she had taken for granted for so many years. When it was time for bed, Jaya buried her whole body under the blanket, making a little fold to create a gap, like a whale’s blowhole, so that she could breathe.

  Night loomed. Though it was only three o’clock, the time she might wake up after an afternoon nap in Kampala, in England the darkness was already creeping in. Gone were the days of afternoon visits to neighbours, daily trips to the temples, wedding invitations to gather and celebrate with friends. Gone were the days of Motichand heralding the end of a meal, downing his large glass of chaas in one, slamming the glass on the table, tugging his shirt over his belly, the buttons lowering their faces in dismay. Gone were the days of gathering in the sitting room, listening to the World Service or trying to watch the news despite the running commentary from Motichand.

  Here in England, when the chores were done but it was too early to turn on the heater or to start dinner, all she had was her memories.

  *

  The latch. The front door slammed shut. Relief, someone else in the house. Jaya waited for Asha to come through from the hallway to the kitchen. ‘How was work?’ Asha had fortunately found a secretarial job after answering an ad in the newspaper.

  ‘Good, thanks.’ Asha’s cream blouse set off the caramel tones of her skin. She asked where Vijay was and Jaya explained that he’d gone out with friends.

  Asha washed her hands. ‘I’ll go and change in a minute, then I can help with dinner. What did you do today?’

  Jaya wondered if there was any way to make her day sound more interesting than it had been. ‘I went to the shops, made a start on dinner, not much. I thought perhaps we might have heard from Pran.’

  ‘No letter, then?’

  Jaya shook her head. ‘It’s so difficult, not being able to write back to him.’

  ‘It won’t be for long.’ Asha looked down. Jaya couldn’t tell whether Asha truly believed this.

  Jaya sank into a chair. ‘There’s always something else. Why can’t we just get on, together?’

  Asha leant against the worktop.

  ‘We can’t even tell him we’re OK,’ said Jaya. ‘He must be worried about us.’

  Asha didn’t say anything.

  ‘What is it?’ Jaya leant forward.

  ‘He could have gone to India like we talked about. You’d be able to write to him, he’d know we were all right.’

  ‘But he thought there was more chance he’d be able to join us if he went to Austria, you know that.’

  Asha shrugged. ‘I suppose. But what difference did it make where he went? India or Austria, he’s still not here with us.’ She paused, looking at her red fingernails. ‘It doesn’t bother you, all that time we waited for news about him?’

  ‘What’s the point going over all that again? Doesn’t it bother you that’s he’s all alone? That he has no idea when he’ll see his family again?’

  ‘Yes, it bothers me.’ Asha stood straight, her tone resentful. ‘But it also bothers me that he’s caused us all more stress. He could have told us
before he left. Why keep his plans from us?’

  Jaya knew she was right. But the anger she felt, the injustice of being separated from her son, was stronger. ‘There’ll be time to talk about all that when he’s here. But what will we do now? We will keep going. We’ll write to the Home Office again.’

  ‘Yes, but—’

  ‘But what?’ Jaya stood up, hand firm on the table. ‘Nothing else matters, we need to get him to England. He’s lost enough. We all have.’

  26

  Asha

  A few days later, Asha had barely closed the front door before Jaya called out to her.

  ‘You’re back.’ Jaya pushed a letter into her hand.

  ‘From Pran?’ It had been weeks since they’d last heard from him.

  ‘No, I think it’s something official.’

  The envelope was made of silky cream paper, addressed to her. She tore it open.

  ‘What does it say?’ said Jaya. If she’d been taller, Jaya would no doubt have stood and read the letter over Asha’s shoulder.

  Asha scanned the information from their MP. ‘The Home Office says that “my husband and I can be reunited”.’

  ‘That’s good news.’ Jaya’s voice was joyful. ‘When? What else do they say?’

  ‘Reunited in another country. Back in India. That’s what they’re saying.’

  Jaya dropped her smile. ‘India won’t let you in either, you’re not a citizen. I don’t understand.’

  ‘It’s the same as the High Commission in Kampala. Just because I have a British passport, doesn’t mean they’ll let my husband come here. All those news reports, saying we’re “burdens on the state”?’ said Asha. ‘If we want to be together, it won’t be here.’

  Jaya gripped the end of her sari chundri, the cotton curling and wrinkling in her hands. ‘One person. Why’s it so difficult for them?’

  ‘But there are others, aren’t there? I’m not sure what else we can do.’ There were dozens of men classified as stateless citizens. They had families in England too, some with young children. Asha walked through to the kitchen and poured herself a glass of water, trying to take it all in. What could they possibly do now? And could she really go to India, start all over again, even if they did let her into the country?