I take a deep breath and half run, half walk up Tanvi’s driveway with my head down. The leaflets are halfway through her letter box when the door springs open and out she jumps, like a human jack-in-the-box.
‘Hi!’ she says.
She’s fully dressed today, wearing skinny grey jeans and a T-shirt with the Cookie Monster on the front, her wispy hair pulled into two slightly wonky Princess Leia-style buns.
Even though her appearance isn’t exactly a surprise, it still makes me jump, the leaflets slipping from my fingers and fluttering to the ground.
‘Sorry,’ Tanvi says as I bend down to pick them up. ‘I didn’t mean to scare you. It’s just that I’ve been sitting here for the past hour waiting for you.’ She claps her hand to her mouth. ‘Oh my God, did that sound super stalkery? I promise I’m not obsessed with you! Well not that much, ha ha ha! It’s just that I’ve been feeling sooooooo bad about what happened in choir yesterday.’
‘It’s fine,’ I growl, heading back down the driveway.
This is a lie, of course. I’m still absolutely furious with her.
‘No,’ Tanvi calls after me. ‘I was totally out of order and I want to make it up to you. Which is why I got you this.’
Curiosity gets the better of me and I turn round. Tanvi is holding out a big wicker picnic hamper, the sort posh people fill with champagne and fancy cheese at Christmas time.
‘A peace offering,’ she says. ‘Well, don’t you want to know what’s in it?’ she asks when I don’t respond.
‘Not especially.’
I know I’m being rude but I refuse to feel guilty about it. Not after yesterday.
‘I promise it’s nice,’ she says.
‘I don’t care what it is.’
‘Oh, just have a look, will you!’
She flips open the lid of the hamper to reveal an Aladdin’s cave of goodies – mini freshly baked baguettes, three different flavours of kettle chips, little tubs of olives and sun-dried tomatoes, hummus, chocolate chip cookies, Percy Pig sweets and bottles of pink lemonade. And that’s just the stuff I can see. My stomach lets out a quiet grumble. Breakfast was half a custard cream from the very bottom of the biscuit tin at work.
‘I thought we could eat it in the park once you’ve finished,’ Tanvi says, setting it down on the doorstep. ‘Have you got much more to do?’
Before I can answer, she’s already got her nose in the trolley.
‘You’ve hardly got any left!’ she exclaims. ‘Amazing!’
I open my mouth to protest but she’s already bounded back into the house, leaving the door wide open. She reappears less than a minute later, wearing a lilac hoodie over the top of her T-shirt and carrying a rolled-up tartan picnic blanket under her arm.
‘I really don’t have the time for this,’ I say.
‘But I really want the chance to make things up to you. I felt so bad last night I could barely sleep.’
‘Seriously?’
‘Uh-huh,’ she says solemnly. ‘Check out my eye bags.’
I frown. Tanvi’s under-eye area looks perfectly smooth to me.
‘Please,’ she says. ‘It would really mean a lot if you let me do this for you.’
She looks so hopeful, her hands in prayer position, her stupidly big eyes blinking expectantly. With every bat of her eyelashes, I can feel myself softening.
Damn it.
‘OK,’ I say. ‘But I haven’t got long.’
‘Yay!’ Tanvi cries, tying the blanket around her shoulders like a cape and picking up the hamper.
She insists on helping me with my last few leaflets.
‘This is so much fun!’ she exclaims, scampering back down the final driveway, her eyes shining.
‘You’re very easily entertained,’ I say.
‘I know,’ she replies, grinning. ‘It’s one of my very best qualities.’
I glance up the street. A middle-aged man is hovering about five metres behind us. The second he realizes I’ve clocked him, he widens his eyes in panic and leaps behind a bush.
‘OK,’ I say. ‘This is going to sound weird but I think we’re being followed.’
‘Huh?’ Tanvi says.
‘There,’ I say, pointing at the pair of legs with an overgrown gorse bush for a body.
Tanvi lets out a deep groan. ‘Seriously, Dad?’ she says, her hands on her hips. ‘It’s a good job you’re a pharmacist and not a private detective, because you’d be utterly rubbish at it.’
Dad?
The man steps out from behind the bush and walks towards us with his hands up in surrender. He is short with a rounded belly and bushy moustache.
He smiles sheepishly.
‘Ro, this is my dad. Dad, this is Ro – the girl I’ve been telling you about. He’s a tad overprotective,’ she says, turning to me. ‘And by a tad, I mean a colossally mortifying amount.’
‘But this is your first time going to the park by yourself,’ he says.
Tanvi covers her face with her hands. ‘Dad!’ she wails.
‘But it is, bachcha.’
‘Well, it isn’t really. Since I’m not actually by myself, am I? You’re here.’ She jabs him in the chest with her index finger before whirling round to face me. ‘How long have you been going to the park without your parents, Ro?’
‘Er, I don’t know,’ I say, trying to think what an appropriate age might be. ‘Um, since I was ten or eleven maybe.’
‘See!’ Tanvi says, spinning back to face her dad. ‘You and Mum are being totally over the top!’
‘I prefer to think of it as being careful.’
‘Well, whatever it is, it’s annoying and totally unnecessary. I’m fourteen! Juliet was married at fourteen!’
‘Considering what happened next, that’s probably not the best example,’ her dad points out.
‘Well, maybe if she’d been allowed to go to the park by herself instead of being cooped up at home with her parents all the time, she wouldn’t have bothered with running off with Romeo in the first place? Ever thought of that? We’re just going to sit on the grass and eat our picnic. And if something does happen, which it won’t, I’ve got my phone.’ She pats the pouch of her hoodie.
‘We won’t be long,’ I add. ‘I’ve got to be home in a bit anyway.’
Tanvi’s dad looks from me to Tanvi. ‘OK then,’ he says. ‘Just … be careful.’
‘It’s my default state, Dad,’ Tanvi says. ‘Now go. Preferably somewhere out of sight.’
‘Nice to meet you, Ro,’ he says.
‘Er, yeah, you too.’
‘Love you, bachcha.’
‘Love you too,’ Tanvi says with a dismissive wave of her hand.
‘What does “bachcha” mean?’ I ask as we watch Tanvi’s dad slope back up the street.
‘It’s Hindi for “baby”,’ Tanvi says, rolling her eyes hard.
*
Ostborough Park is pretty busy. After much one-sided debate on Tanvi’s part, we settle for a spot of grass near the tennis courts, one of which is occupied by two elderly women wearing immaculate tennis whites.
‘Help me with this, will you?’ Tanvi says.
Together, we spread out the blanket on the grass, weighing it down in each corner with our shoes, and begin to unload the contents of the hamper.
‘I didn’t know what you liked,’ Tanvi says. ‘So I got a bit of everything.’
‘No kidding,’ I murmur, surveying the spread. There’s enough food to feed an entire family.
‘Sorry about before,’ Tanvi adds, prising the lid off a tub of hummus.
‘Before?’
‘With my dad. Like I said, he and my mum are a bit overprotective.’
‘Is this really your first time in the park by yourself?’ I ask.
That sort of concern is kind of hard to imagine when I’ve been left to my own devices for so long.
‘Yes,’ Tanvi admits, her cheeks glowing. ‘I bet you think I’m super lame, right?’
‘No. It’s nice they care so much.’
When it comes to parents, I’m hardly in a position to judge. I could probably tell Bonnie I’m off to join ISIS, or sell my body in Soho, and she wouldn’t even blink. And Dad is only capable of parenting when I’m right under his nose. Tanvi’s situation is so far removed from mine it’s not even worth comparing.
‘They’ve always been pretty protective,’ Tanvi says, pausing to dunk a kettle chip into the hummus. ‘But I definitely think my cancer sent things up a gear. Like, when I was in Year Seven, they let me walk to school on my own, but now they insist on dropping me off and picking me up.’
‘How come? I mean, what exactly do they think is going to happen to you?’
Tanvi grins, obviously pleased by my question. ‘OK, so I have a few theories. So, the kind of cancer I had, it’s called rhabdomyosarcoma, and it’s pretty aggressive. It’s also really rare, like fewer than sixty kids are diagnosed with it every year and most of them are boys under the age of ten. And I was a twelve-year-old girl. Based on the tumour location and stage, I was given a forty per cent chance of survival. Put all that together, and the odds were stacked against me the entire way. And yet here I am. Which is obviously amazing, but has also made my parents super crazy and convinced there must be a catch or something.’ She pauses and dunks another kettle chip. ‘Ever watched the film, Final Destination?’ she asks.
‘Isn’t that a horror film?’
‘Uh-huh. They’re my absolute obsession by the way. Well, one of them. I kind of have a few.’
‘You’re into horror films? Really?’
With all her peppiness and overflowing optimism, Tanvi strikes me as more of a Disney fiend. The idea of her getting off on blood and gore is more than a little unexpected.
‘Yep,’ Tanvi says, grinning. ‘I love ’em.’
‘But why?’ I ask. ‘I don’t get it.’
‘I dunno. I just really like being scared, I suppose,’ Tanvi says. ‘I like the adrenaline rush I get. My mum and dad would go bonkers if they knew.’
‘Wait – they don’t know you’re into them?’
‘No way. You met my dad just then. As if he’s going to be cool with me watching The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.’
‘He’d be upset?’
‘Big time. He thinks The Great British Bake Off is too tense half the time. Anyway, back to Final Destination. So, in it, a load of high school students narrowly avoid being in this massive plane crash when one of them has a premonition about it and tells them all not to get on the plane, but after that they all start dying in really bizarre accidents.’
‘Right,’ I say, not quite sure where Tanvi is taking this.
‘See, the thing is,’ she says, shuffling in closer, ‘it turns out they were supposed to die in the crash, which is why they’re all getting killed now, because Death is ultimately in charge and they’re on borrowed time.’
‘Wait, are you saying you think you were supposed to die? That you cheated death or something? That’s kind of messed up, Tanvi.’
‘Well, it is when you put it that way! It’s more like I get the feeling my parents think we were lucky, that they don’t quite trust that we’re out the other side yet. It’s not quite like in the film, obviously. It’s not like they actually think I’m going to be impaled on a kitchen knife or decapitated by flying shrapnel any second now. They just worry a lot, and want to know I’m safe at all times, hence my dad’s stalkery behaviour before.’
I take a deep breath and ask the question that’s been playing on my mind since Tanvi started talking.
‘Could you get ill again? I mean, could the cancer come back?’
‘The doctors don’t think so. There’s a possibility I might develop side effects in later life: a possible reduction in bone growth, infertility, a change in the way the heart and kidneys work, a slight increase in the risk of developing another cancer’ – she ticks them off on her fingers, the way you might items on a shopping list – ‘and my immunity is still a bit weak, but there’s no point in fixating on any of that stuff. It’s all ifs and maybes. Try telling that to my mental parents though.’ She rolls her eyes and drowns a veggie Percy Pig in hummus.
Another deep breath. ‘How close were you to dying?’ I ask.
Tanvi’s face changes slightly and for a second I’m worried I’ve gone too far.
‘I was pretty poorly for a while,’ she says slowly. ‘I never thought I’d actually die though, even when things were really touch and go and my parents had puffy eyes from crying all the time, even though they always pretended it was hay fever. Like I said the other week at school, I kind of always knew I was going to get better.’
‘Wow,’ I say softly.
‘Anyway, enough about me. What about your mum and dad?’ she asks, licking her fingers. ‘Are they ever overprotective?’
‘Lucky.’
‘Maybe.’
‘Do you have brother and sisters?
‘Not really.’
The second the words leave my mouth, I regret them. Why didn’t I just say ‘no’?
Tanvi tilts her head to one side ‘“Not really?” What does that mean?’
I should have known she wouldn’t let that one slide in a million years.
‘It’s no big deal,’ I say, picking at a piece of bread. ‘It’s just that my dad’s wife has a daughter.’
‘So you have a half-sister? Cool!’
‘We’re not related by blood,’ I say stiffly. ‘She was four when my dad got together with her mum.’
‘So he’s not her dad?’
‘Not biologically, no.’
‘Wow, that must be hard for you,’ Tanvi says, reaching over and giving my knee a gentle squeeze.
Her sympathy makes me feel uncomfortable. Time to deflect.
‘Not really,’ I say swiftly. ‘So how about you? Brothers? Sisters?’
‘Two brothers.’ Tanvi says. ‘Anish and Devin. Both older than me. Anish has got a family of his own and Dev’s doing his masters at the moment. He’s living back at home to save money and driving me up the wall. His girlfriend just dumped him, so he’s being a total misery. And when he’s not moping around, he’s winding me up. They both do that actually, at the same time as being ultra-protective. It’s a very annoying combination.’
I used to fantasize about having a big brother – Jake, I called him. Jake was kind and wise and knew exactly how to handle Bonnie, and together we were a united front – strong and capable and in control. With Jake on the scene, there were no worries about Social Services. With Jake on the scene, we were untouchable.
I’m relieved when the conversation moves on to safer topics – school, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, how to make the ultimate toasted cheese sandwich, the future colonization of Mars, whether Tanvi should get a fringe cut in.
And it’s actually sort of fun.
‘Try one of those seedy cracker things with a dollop of hummus, a couple of olives and a Percy Pig,’ Tanvi instructs. ‘I promise you, it’s heaven in your mouth.’
‘You sure about that? It sounds horrible.’
‘I know! That’s what’s so amazing about it. Go on, try it.’
I grimace but for some reason find myself doing as I’m told. As I suspected, it’s beyond disgusting and I have to spit it out into a tissue.
‘You’ve got messed up taste buds, Shah,’ I say, swigging down some pink lemonade to get rid of the taste.
‘I prefer to think of them as sophisticated,’ Tanvi replies in a posh voice. She loads up another cracker, this time adding a sun-dried tomato and a wedge of Brie into the mix, cackling with delight when I pull a face.
‘I meant what I said before,’ Tanvi says, breaking a chocolate chip cookie in half, crumbs going everywhere.
‘About what?’
‘Yesterday. In choir. I really am sorry.’
Weirdly, Tanvi mentioning it doesn’t reignite my anger the way it did earlier.
‘It’s … fine,’ I say. ‘Well, it’s not fine. I don’t know, just don’t do anything like that again, OK?’
‘I absolutely promise,’ Tanvi says, swiping her finger across her heart. ‘I just didn’t want that Bailey girl taking another solo. Especially when you’re so much better than her.’
I make a face.
‘But you are!’ Tanvi insists. ‘She can hit the notes and make a pretty sound and all that, but then so can loads of people. When you sing I get all goose-pimply.’
‘Whatever.’
‘It’s true! Sing something and I’ll prove it.’ Tanvi yanks up the sleeve of her hoodie and thrusts her bare arm in front of my face.
‘Don’t be a dick,’ I say, batting it away.
‘I’m not! I’m telling you, your voice makes me all tingly.’
‘Shush, no it doesn’t.’
‘It does! If I had a voice like yours I’d never shut up. I’d sing entire conversations, the way they do in Les Mis.’ She plucks a broken cookie from the packet. ‘This cookie is delicious,’ she trills, holding it aloft. ‘Don’t you agree?’ She pauses, gesturing for me to reply in song.
I roll my eyes at her. As if.
‘But don’t you want to show off?’ Tanvi asks.
‘Nope.’
‘What?’ she asks, incredulous. ‘Not even a teeny bit?’
‘Not even a teeny bit.’
‘Interesting,’ Tanvi says, reaching for another cookie. ‘You know what you are, Ro?’
‘What?’
‘An onion.’
‘An onion? Wow, thanks.’
Tanvi punches me on the arm. ‘I mean it in a good way! Because onions have loads of layers that need peeling away and that’s exactly what you’re like.’
‘No, I’m not,’ I say. ‘I’m more like a …’
My brain frantically gropes for the most straightforward of vegetables.
‘… a turnip!’
‘A turnip?’ Tanvi repeats, sitting up straight and putting her hands on her hips.
‘Yes!’
She shakes her head. ‘I must say, I’m not sure I’ve ever witnessed someone align themselves with a root vegetable quite so enthusiastically.’
‘What can I say? Typical turnip behaviour.’
‘You’re crazy,’ Tanvi says, chucking a Percy Pig at me.
It bounces off my shoulder and lands in the hummus. I fish it out and throw it back at her. She attempts to catch it in her mouth and misses and it ends up in the grass. She lunges for it, popping it in her mouth without even looking at it.
‘Five-second rule,’ she declares before chucking a ball of mozzarella at me, somehow managing to get it down the front of my V-neck T-shirt.
‘Tanvi!’ I shriek, jumping up and un-tucking my T-shirt, freeing the offending (and surprisingly cold) mozzarella ball while Tanvi rolls about on the blanket, howling with delighted laughter.
Using a kettle chip as a scoop, I catapult a dollop of dip in Tanvi’s direction. My aim is perfect, the hummus hitting Tanvi square on the nose with a satisfying splat.
Tanvi blinks in shock, and for a moment I’m worried I’ve taken things too far.
There’s a beat. Slowly, Tanvi sticks her tongue out of her mouth and licks the tip of her nose, her eyes glinting.
‘OK, Snow,’ she says, reaching for the breadsticks, brandishing one in each hand like they’re Samurai swords. ‘This means war.’
Five minutes later, the picnic is pretty much demolished. I’m soaked and sticky from a dousing of pink lemonade and Tanvi has crumbs in her hair from where I crushed two massive handfuls of kettle chips directly over her head. Giddy and exhausted, we lie on the blanket, our heads just centimetres apart, chests heaving up and down as we catch our breath.
‘Is that your phone?’ Tanvi asks, propping herself up on her elbows.
I sit up and listen. My phone rings so rarely I’m not entirely familiar with its nondescript tone.
‘Hello,’ I say.
‘Ro, it’s Eric. Everything OK?’
‘Fine. Why?’
‘It’s just that it’s nearly two and you’re usually back by now.’
‘It’s nearly two?’ I say, jumping up. ‘I’m so sorry, I’m on my way now.’
I hang up and begin stuffing our rubbish into the empty hamper. How did I manage to lose track of time quite so spectacularly? If you’d asked me what time it was, I’d have said midday at the latest.
‘Do you have to go?’ Tanvi asks, her eyes clouding over with disappointment.
I blink at her. I feel a bit like I’ve just woken up from a weird dream. ‘I really do,’ I say.
‘But we haven’t opened the eclairs yet.’ She digs a packet of chocolate eclairs out from the bottom of the hamper. ‘Ta-da!’ she says, stroking the packaging. ‘They’ve got salted caramel cream inside them.’
‘Sorry, but I’m already really late,’ I say, pulling on my shoes, the blanket they were holding down flapping in the breeze.
‘Time flies when you’re having fun and all that,’ Tanvi says, reluctantly returning the eclairs to the hamper. ‘Give me a few minutes to pack up and I’ll come with you.’
‘Sorry, but I need to go now. Er, thanks for the food and stuff. I’ll see you at school.’
I stride towards the gate without looking back. I may have had fun just now, but the very last thing I need is a new friend, especially one as nosy as Tanvi Shah.