When we get back to our street, Richa hands her dance bag over to me and runs home to check with her mum that she can stay for tea. She comes straight round to our house with a gigantic, ‘YES!’ and Patchy goes crazy when he sees her.
Richa asks for a doggy-brush so she can comb out all his fur clumps. As Richa works through his coat, Patch goes into a dream-like coma. A pile of mainly brown fluffy fur builds up next to my dog, getting bigger each time Richa cleans out the brush. I busy myself setting up a domino fall, keeping it a little distance away from the dog-grooming session to avoid a premature kick-off.
‘It was even better today,’ says Richa and I nod. ‘I felt sorry for that Tiffany girl yesterday. She was so bad.’
Patchy does a doggy sigh of happiness, as if every word Richa speaks is the unquestionable truth. Richa won’t have to wait until she’s a grown up to be DogGirl – Patch is her first canine follower.
‘Those girls are all from Lakeside Primary too, then? They in your class?’
I nod again.
‘They weren’t very nice to you. Nor were their mums,’ Richa says quietly.
Slowly, I add another domino to the line, keeping my gaze on them instead of Richa.
‘Is it because you won’t talk?’
That hurts, and before I can stop myself, I look up at her sharply. How can she ask that after reading my letter? She should know that’s one of the worst things to say to me. The most hurtful. I wrote it in big letters. I even underlined it: I want to talk, but I can’t talk.
I can tell from Richa’s face that she knows she’s said the wrong thing, but she doesn’t know how to make it right. She puts the brush down and twists round so she’s facing me properly. Noticing the grooming has stopped without his say-so, Patch rolls off his back and onto his side. His nose hits the fur pile and he immediately launches into a comedy doggy sneezing fit. The noise breaks the tension between us.
Richa slowly strokes his head to calm him. ‘It’s like it should be a secret, but it can’t be.’ Her voice is soft and her face is difficult to read. She looks serious, maybe even a little bit scared.
I stop doing what I’m doing and watch her. Richa moves away from petting Patch and picks up her bag. Feeling around inside, she pulls out the letter I wrote to her. She still has it with her. What does that mean?
‘Your secret has to be told. You can’t hide it, Leo.’ Richa says, still very softly, getting closer to me, the letter in her hand. ‘Anyone who meets you, knows almost straight away that you can’t talk, but I have a different kind of secret.’ She is close enough to touch now and she stops, gently tapping the envelope into her other, open, hand. She looks up at me, her face so close that if I leaned forward we would touch noses. Her eyes have tiny hazel flecks in them, right near her pupils.
‘One I can’t tell anyone.’
There’s a pause. I’m desperate to know what Richa’s secret is.
‘Except you. I’m going to tell you, Leo.’
This is huge and I remind myself to keep breathing.
‘I can tell you my secret, Leo, because you can’t speak. You can’t tell anyone can you?’
I shake my head.
‘I know I can trust you and I have to say it. It feels too heavy.’
I watch, entranced, as Richa slowly opens up my letter, spreading it out on her bent knees that fold between us.
‘I can’t read,’ Richa says simply. Her eyes are on my words in the letter, the words that I wanted to say to her. ‘I can’t read or write.’
She looks up at me and I meet her eye. And I can look at her, really look at her.
She’s ashamed. I can see it in her face, in her eyes. I know because it’s how I feel about not being able to talk. The shame is all over her, pouring off her hair, and her shoulders, and her skin.
Her lower lip wobbles. ‘Nobody knows, Leo. I pretend that I can, but I can’t and it’s getting worse. It’s getting harder to lie about it. I don’t know what to do.’
She takes in a shuddery breath and I wish I could tell her that it’s fine, that she can trust me, that she can tell me anything.
Richa takes a few more breaths and I can see that she’s trying to find a way to gather the right words.
It’s unbelievable to me that Richa has managed to live ten whole years and nobody knows she can’t read or write. This is a heavy secret to carry around. I wait, and once she can, she starts to tell me her story.
‘I told you already how we move around a lot?’
I nod, encouraging her to go on.
‘Well, that means I’m always changing schools. By the time someone notices I’ve already moved on.’ Richa pauses to chew at the side of her cheek. ‘Dad is always working or travelling. He was born here – well in Sheffield – same as me, and he can read and write English perfectly. He has no idea that I can’t and I feel so bad for pretending to him.’ Richa stares at me. Her eyes are big, wild-looking. ‘Mum is from a little village outside Surat in Gujarat in India. She relies on me to speak to people: to strangers. She’s got better, but she can’t help me with reading or writing in English. She has no idea that I can’t do it.’ Her eyes start to fill up and more words tumble out in a rush. ‘I don’t know why I couldn’t learn, but it feels horrible not keeping up. When I don’t understand, I just pretend I do. I’m better at pretending than I am at learning. The gap has got so big now that I can’t even try to catch up.’ Her eyes are too full to hold all the tears and the left one overflows. I watch a single tear run down her cheek. ‘I’m so scared about starting at Lakeside.’ She picks up the letter and waves it at me. ‘It’s all just squiggles on a page. It doesn’t mean anything.’
She looks stricken and, without thinking about what I’m doing, I put my arms around her. She leans against me, the letter crushed between us, and cries and cries and cries. Her body feels thin and frail as it shakes with her sobbing.
Richa is so strong. She seemed completely untouchable until this moment. To know her secret makes me like her even more. It’s such a big thing to keep secret, and yet she’s done it. How amazing that nobody else knows. How clever Richa has had to be to keep it hidden.
All that confidence: coming into my garden and finding out Patch’s name; sitting on the peg bench at Just Jive to change her shoes; refusing to dance with Scarlett, Maryam and Tiffany. On the outside so bold and all the time there’s this big, heavy secret buried inside.
Just like Tiffany who can’t dance, but can play football, here is Richa who can do and say anything, but she can’t read or write.
Nobody can do everything.
Nobody is perfect.
Patchy, fed up of being left out, noses his way between us, slowly wagging his tail. He edges in further and further still, making the letter slip to the floor. Eventually, Patch prizes us apart, until Richa isn’t sobbing anymore, but laughing. That choking laughter that comes after a really good cry.
She wipes at her eyes with the back of her hand and says, ‘I feel loads better now. Lighter. Thanks, Leo. You’re the best listener in the world.’
We both look down at the letter. The ink is blotched with Richa’s tears. The words run into each other making it impossible for anyone to read now. Even an expert in forensics might struggle.