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  ‘Is Ba around?’ he said, hovering at the door and hoping Jaya would join them soon.

  ‘She’s praying upstairs.’ Asha poured the chai into cups and set them next to a plate of toast. She hesitated. ‘There’s breakfast . . . if you want it.’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Vijay. He sat down, wondering how he’d manage to eat a thing with the awkwardness hanging in the air. But they couldn’t keep avoiding each other forever, he knew that.

  She sat opposite him, gaze fixed on her plate.

  They ate in silence for a few minutes but he couldn’t take it any longer. He needed to say something. ‘Look, Asha—’

  ‘I think it’s going to rain later. Better take an umbrella, don’t you think?’ She carried on chewing her toast quickly, looking down at the table.

  ‘Maybe, I don’t know. But listen—’

  ‘I hope it’s not going to be too rainy when Pran arrives. I can’t believe he’ll be here in a couple of weeks,’ she said, as she stood up from the table.

  He watched her as she tidied the stove, her back to him. He had to clear the air, try and make things normal between them again, or at least vaguely normal, before Pran arrived. Vijay’s mouth went dry with guilt at the thought of him. How did things get so out of hand? He was about to say something but Asha got there before him.

  ‘Pran will be right here with us, something good after all that stress we’ve been under.’ A strained cheer in her voice. ‘And of course, we’ll all be busier once he arrives.’

  ‘Yes, I guess so.’

  ‘Not much time to sit around together.’

  ‘No,’ Vijay said quietly.

  ‘It’ll be so nice to have him back after all this time. Though it hardly feels like he and I have been apart, in a way.’

  ‘No,’ said Vijay.

  She carried on, still facing away from him as she washed up, talking about the plans for Pran when he arrived, how she hoped he’d manage to get a job in a factory soon, how nice it would be to spend time with him.

  It was plain to see: Asha had assumed her brother-in-law still wanted something to happen between them. But as he watched her by the window, dark hair shining in the light, there were two things that were clearer than ever to Vijay.

  He loved Asha.

  But he loved his brother more.

  *

  ‘It’s so green, isn’t it?’ Marie asked Vijay. The evening air was still warm. They stood at the gates, looking out at Regent’s Park. Marie wore layers of indigo and canary chiffon so long they swirled about her ankles. He’d offered to take her out as his way of paying her back for the job with her uncle Frank. Anything to take his mind off home, off Asha.

  Marie walked ahead, twirling like a butterfly ready for flight. The spring blossom had made way for bright leaves on the trees, layers of green as far as the eye could see. He didn’t have the heart to tell her that Uganda was just as green, vast hills covered in luscious grass, despite the fierce sun. He’d stopped telling people about that; it didn’t match their visions of Africa. England was pretty, yes, but all a bit too neat and tidy: clean slices of nature, far too formal.

  ‘We could go and visit the countryside one Sunday if you like, even greener out there.’

  He looked at her. ‘Maybe after my brother’s settled in.’

  ‘It’ll be nice to have him back with you soon.’

  Vijay looked at her, then nodded. He wanted Pran back with them, of course he did, but things had changed so much. He knew that his brother would want to take charge, like he’d done with the dukan, but life was different now for all of them. He couldn’t imagine being cooped up in that small house together. How would he look his brother in the eye? Vijay and Asha would have to pretend everything was exactly the same. That same pang of guilt in his stomach returned every time he thought of her.

  The sky turned indigo. He still hadn’t got used to talking about ordinary things, like going out for a drink, instead of getting back for curfew, keeping yourself safe. Marie saw England as home. That ease in Marie’s shoulders, the look of natural familiarity as she walked around her home city. He’d never thought about it in Uganda, but now he realized he’d never had that same ease, not really.

  ‘You look like you’re sucking on an old leather boot with that face.’ Marie walked up to a parked car, cranked the wing mirror and slicked on some coral lipstick. She hurried back over to him and put her arm through his. ‘Stop looking so maudlin. My mate’s having a party. Wanna go?’ Marie’s long neck glowed in the light of the street lamp.

  ‘All right,’ Vijay shrugged.

  They took the Tube to Kentish Town and arrived at a small block of flats. Marie stopped by the entrance.

  ‘We’re not going in?’ said Vijay, bemused.

  Marie lit another cigarette, wrapping her lips around the paper, smoke weaving its way out through the tip. ‘Let’s just wait here a moment.’ She smiled at him, elegant wrist tipped back, holding the cigarette high in the air. Her smile an invitation, perhaps a dare?

  The door opened and a couple spilled out, laughing, the sweet scent of hashish following them into the night air.

  Marie grabbed the door handle before it closed. ‘Come on,’ she said.

  He followed her along a dark corridor and up a communal staircase. The air was hot and thick with smoke now, muffled music getting louder with each step. They came to a green door covered in layers of old, chipped paint. Marie nudged it open.

  Inside the flat, there was a narrow hallway with a mustard carpet and swirly brown fabric lampshade. Muted, buttery light shone on the people inside. Most didn’t bother to look at Vijay or Marie, too busy talking, smoking or downing drinks from plastic cups or glass bottles, and dancing in the tiny sitting room. Others seemed more interested in what he was wearing than in his arm or his skin colour. There was no furniture nor carpets or lights here. The faint light from the hallway highlighted the black spaces where the floorboards were missing, like a huge gap-toothed grin. Marie led him on, moving to the music, hips swaying, through the crowd.

  A shriek, so loud Vijay looked around the room to check someone hadn’t been murdered. Marie spread her arms wide, running to a man on the far side of the room. ‘Johnny!’

  As far as Vijay could tell in the dim light, Johnny had long blond hair. He and Marie hugged each other.

  ‘This is—’ Marie began.

  ‘Johnny, by any chance?’ said Vijay. Johnny went on staring at Marie.

  ‘And this is Vijay.’

  ‘Veejay,’ said Johnny, putting his arm around Marie. He smelt of Old Spice. Another reason to dislike him. ‘You want a drink? They’re over there.’ He pointed towards a kitchen filled with dirty mugs and glasses, half-empty bottles of vodka and Lambrusco.

  ‘All right, Johnny, we’ll see you in a bit. Come on.’ Marie took Vijay’s hand as they walked through the room.

  In the kitchen, Marie poured them both some vodka. ‘Cheers,’ she said, clinking her glass with his. They stepped out onto a balcony at the back of the flat. Her hair swirled around her jaw in the night breeze. In the distance, the lights of the other blocks glittered. They leant against the balcony edge as they talked.

  ‘You’ve known Johnny long, then?’ he said.

  ‘Schoolmates.’ She turned to face him. ‘He can be a bit intense, I know.’

  Intense was one word for him. Vijay changed the subject and they talked about Marie’s family, Vijay’s favourite music, the places they’d like to go if they had a bit of money.

  Marie lit a joint. She took a drag, coral lipstick circling the tip, then handed it to him. He waited for the heavy haze to filter though his body.

  ‘You don’t mind?’ he said.

  ‘Mind what?’

  ‘The way people look at us together?’

  ‘Do you?’

  Vijay shrugged. Strangers stared at him regardless of whether he had a pretty girl beside him.

  ‘Not our fault if their lives are so boring that they have nothing better
to do,’ she smiled.

  Vijay nodded. ‘Their problem, not ours.’

  ‘So how’s it going at work? Uncle Frank not giving you hell, is he?’

  ‘No, it’s OK.’ Hell was something he’d left behind, something that people like John back in Kampala were still dealing with. Frank and Woolfy were tricky, no doubt, but at least you knew where you were with them. ‘People are people, like you said.’

  They fell silent. The breeze was cool on his skin, the muffled music from the flat carried through the air. She moved closer and met his gaze. He pulled her to him, her curves against his body, the tang of lemon on her breath. Hoping to lose himself. He kissed her because she wasn’t Asha, because she had nothing to do with Uganda and his past. He kissed her to forget it all.

  30

  Asha

  Asha waited in Arrivals at Heathrow airport, Jaya and Vijay by her side.

  Travellers burst through the doors, trolleys piled high with suitcases, some dazed and jet-lagged, others excited to find their loved ones in the crowd. Shrieks of joy, slaps on the back, a shout from a waddling toddler: ‘Daddy!’

  ‘Is that him?’ Jaya said, standing on tiptoes to see beyond the mass of people.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ said Vijay, leaning over the barrier.

  For weeks, Asha had waited for the anticipation to kindle inside her, longed for excitement to build in her chest. It never came. Even now, standing in the airport, hoping that Jaya and the other eager families would somehow cast their spell on her too, there was nothing. Perhaps, after all the crushing terror, the grief that weighed heavy, the worry that churned in her stomach even now, perhaps there was nothing left for him.

  Pran. There he was, feet shuffling, shoulders hunched, pushing a trolley carrying one small suitcase. He looked around with a hesitant smile. He picked up his pace. As he hugged Jaya tight, it made Asha ache for her own parents, to feel their embrace just once, instead of always consoling herself with Ba’s airmail letters.

  ‘Kemche?’ Jaya’s voice unsteady, tears on her cheeks.

  ‘I’m good, Ba. It’s so good to see you,’ said Pran, as Jaya laid her hand on his cheek.

  Pran turned towards Asha, eyes expectant yet uncertain. What would he make of her now? She brushed her new fringe away from her eyebrows, felt him taking her in, her skin paler than it had been in Uganda. He looked different too. His hair was longer, the waves curling around his neck, almost as long as Vijay’s. Pran hated it that way, but then he’d had more important things to worry about, clear to see in all the weight he’d lost. They embraced briefly; anything more wouldn’t be appropriate in public. Still nothing. Why no rush of joy, or relief, something?

  He was dressed in a light cotton shirt, flared grey trousers. She handed him a checked jumper they’d bought for him to wear.

  Pran greeted Vijay with a hug. ‘Not been eating enough chips and fish, where’s the rest of you gone?’

  Vijay patted him on the back. ‘I could say the same for you!’ Vijay caught Asha’s eye for a moment, but they both looked away quickly.

  On the Tube home, Pran answered Jaya’s many questions as best he could, explaining how he’d muddled along in Austria, struggling not only with the language but the food, having to rely on charity from the Red Cross, and a little manual labour here and there for Austrian people, who communicated by pointing and gesturing. Pran looked tired, his skin dull. Each time he glanced at Asha, she found her gaze settling elsewhere, on the seat opposite or the doors as they whooshed open and closed.

  ‘But you were supposed to go to India, beta?’ said Jaya.

  ‘What was the point? There was no guarantee I’d get into India without a passport.’

  ‘You couldn’t stay in Uganda. Of course they would have taken you.’ Jaya shook her head.

  ‘Maybe. I wanted to take a chance in a country closer to all of you, not further away.’

  ‘But when we left Uganda, we’d already agreed you’d go to Gujarat,’ said Asha, shifting in her seat so that she could face him.

  No answer.

  ‘You knew you were going to go to Austria from the start? You planned it, all that time before we left, you knew what you were going to do?’ said Asha. Another lie.

  ‘I just didn’t want to worry you all,’ said Pran. ‘I didn’t know if it was going to work, what was the point in telling you?’

  ‘Well,’ Jaya patted his arm, ‘you are here now. That is what matters.’

  ‘What was it like when you left Uganda?’ said Vijay. More people piled on at South Kensington. Further down the carriage, a woman tried to calm a screaming baby.

  Pran sighed. ‘There weren’t many people around, it was getting difficult with the food shortages. Rice and salt ran out for a while. The streets were so quiet, it was like a ghost town.’

  Asha felt a flash of guilt: others were still there, suffering, surviving as best they could. Or worse, like December. ‘And what about getting to the airport?’ she said, sharing a look with Jaya as she recalled their own journey out of the country. Pran had no idea what they’d been through, but there was no point in worrying him. ‘How did you get out?’

  ‘I took the government bus. They stopped us at the checkpoints. They beat up an old man when he refused to give them his wedding ring. He couldn’t walk onto the plane without our help.’ He paused for a moment and took a breath. ‘I was fine, although like everyone else I was many shillings lighter by the time I got to the airport.’

  They sat in silence for a while listening to the rickety Tube train making its way through the tunnels. Asha tried to catch hold of her thoughts. So much to make sense of. All the unsaid things between them. She felt the drum of the carriage rolling along the tracks beneath them. She sensed Pran’s eyes on her again and looked down at the floor, self-conscious. She found herself catching her words, thinking about the right things to say to this man she’d married.

  *

  ‘This looks expensive,’ Pran said, eyeing up the velvet seats. ‘Is the ticket more expensive than other cinemas? Maybe we should have gone to one of those?’

  Asha took in the twinkling chandelier above them, the sleek columns, the red velvet drapes across the front of the cinema screen.

  ‘No, it’s about the same as the other ones,’ Asha said, recalling the simple decor of a cinema trip they’d been taken on during their time at the barracks. This building was much more opulent than any she’d set foot inside, in Kampala or London.

  The usher showed them to their seats. ‘Shall we get some ice cream?’ Asha said.

  Pran gave her a look. ‘Shouldn’t it be me asking you that?’

  She paused. ‘Well, if you’re happy to go, I’ll have a strawberry tub.’

  Pran checked for the change in his pocket – money that Asha had counted out for him earlier. ‘Will this be enough?’

  She nodded. This was the first time that Pran and Asha had been alone since he’d arrived. They didn’t share a bedroom because Vikash hadn’t moved out from the spare room. While he looked for somewhere else to live, Asha and Jaya shared the second bedroom and Pran and Vijay slept downstairs in the sitting room.

  It was Jaya who’d suggested Asha and Pran go out for the afternoon, presumably to help them get back to normality, whatever that looked like now. Why couldn’t they settle back to the way they’d been before? Life would be so much simpler. Asha was relieved when Pran suggested watching a film, an excursion that wouldn’t require much conversation, then felt guilty for being more interested in the swindling gangsters on screen than she was in spending time with her own husband.

  Pran returned with two tubs of ice cream, already melting at the edges, the cardboard starting to sag from the moisture. They ate quickly and in silence.

  When the film started, Asha struggled to concentrate, conscious of Pran’s arm on the armrest, his elbow nudging hers. After a while, like a nervous teenager on a first date, his hand hovered over her own. But before so much as a finger could touch her, she’d alre
ady reached for her handbag. She put it on her lap, made a big show of opening it and rummaging for something she didn’t need before snapping it closed and clutching it with both hands. It stayed there for the rest of the film.

  During the intermission, the velvet curtains rustled as they were drawn across the screen. Pran went over to the smoking area, although the haze had already spread throughout the cinema. It took her back; everything did, his voice, his soapy-musky scent, his dark eyes, they all brought back memories. The night December was taken, when she’d found Pran with a cigarette on the veranda, not a scratch on him, while Vijay was lying there on the ground, blood pouring from his head. That strange look on Pran’s face. And later, in bed, when he still couldn’t explain himself properly. Her thoughts seemed to splinter into a million pieces, always trying to make sense of things. Yet she could barely look at him, let alone speak to him about it.

  When the film finished and their eyes had adjusted to the daylight outside, they took the bus home. The conductor made his way from seat to seat. To pass the time, Asha pointed out the shops nearby; the post office, the grocer’s, carrying on the kind of polite conversation that was usually reserved for acquaintances. But after a while, they ran out of things to say and the drone of the bus filled the silence. Pran turned towards her.

  ‘I know it must have been hard for you here, Asha, without me.’ Pran spoke in a hushed tone, even though it was unlikely that anyone around them could understand Gujarati. ‘I know it’s been difficult, all these months.’

  ‘It’s been difficult for both of us,’ said Asha, because it felt like the right thing to say.

  ‘I wished I’d been here with you, but at least you had Ba and Vijay,’ he said, leaning in towards her.

  She couldn’t look at him, staring straight ahead. Uninvited thoughts of that moment in the park with Vijay.

  ‘Things are going to get better now, I promise,’ he said.

  ‘I – We just need time, that’s all.’ Asha rang the bell and stood up before he had another chance to speak.