2

But Thamma didn’t die with us. Her last two years she’d been in a care home in Bhowanipur that specialised in patients with dementia. One day they rang us with the news.

So how could Ma and Baba have plotted to kill Thamma?

Ma and Baba did not plot to kill Thamma.

Ma and Baba did not plot to kill Thamma.

My father was a bastard, but even he wouldn’t sink so low.

Ma and Baba did not plot to kill Thamma.

I miss most of the important shit like anybody else, but I wouldn’t have missed that.

Either my gift is going a bit haywire, or else I’m still scratching the surface of its powers and unable to control what I have. In my thirst to see more, to see as much as possible before it is snatched away, I’m overshooting the boundary between truth and fiction.

Thankfully, Tamal is too busy driving into me to notice when I’m absent. He is having me again, fifteen minutes after he last came.

Youth!

When he’s done emptying his balls once more — which truthfully has been a bit of fun for me as well, especially if one of these times he lasts slightly longer — I’m going to spring my request on him. Will he pay a visit to a doctor for me?

When I called him, I said I needed his help. He thought I was desperate to get my job back. He said, ‘Didi, you should ask one of your teacher friends, like Moushumi Madam or Anju Didi. Mrs Dhanuka won’t listen to a word from the likes of me. In fact, she might fire me. You know how she is —’ which was exactly right. I was moved by the timely reminder of how much more Tamal had to lose than I did. Nothing I requested should endanger him or his livelihood. I promised him the help I sought had nothing to do with school.

The sex was all me, because I wanted it. Not to soften Tamal up for the favour I was going to ask — nothing of the sort. I had seen his mind in the morning, and over the course of the day I discovered I wanted to fuck him back. It wasn’t even especially to do with my reaction to Ravi Tarun, even though this was only a couple of hours later.

(Oh, okay, it might have had a little bit to do with my reaction to Ravi Tarun.)

But I had known Tamal for three years now and was very comfortable with the kind of man I was letting into my bed. So I met him with a T-shirt and make-up on and no underwear, and we sat on the same sofa, and at a certain point I reached over and kissed him (I also had the advantage of being able to peek into his thoughts, where all I could see was an enormous amount of lust with some confusion and wariness in exactly the right amounts, and not the slightest shadow of wishing to do harm). As I expected, he overcame his hesitation easily, but then, to prove my instincts right, was an absolute gentleman about the condoms each time, which, as many amongst you will know, isn’t always the case.

I mean my instincts about wanting him, as well as seeking him out for help, which I’ll come to in a minute. Because no one else I trust can play quite the role I have in mind with Dr Arun Shome.

I think I now know what happened with Shivani. Perhaps the gift was withdrawn because a price was demanded. Perhaps it was guilt that did it: she, incredibly bravely, refused to use her ‘tainted’ gift as she plummeted down. And she was already fragile from the loss of her father and her inability to accept Ravi with her mum.

On my way home, what decided me to call Tamal — yes, yes, besides my reaction to Ravi Tarun — was a heightened urgency inspired by my certainty about what had happened with both Arati and Shivani: that the demand for an unacceptable toll followed by the swift revoking of the gift was probable at any time. Which meant I had to plant the seeds of a plan to find Tuntuni that wouldn’t require any superpowers, that would bear fruit even after I had returned to normal.

Shivani I hadn’t been able to help, but Arati I would do my utmost for. After sixteen years of unimaginable suffering, she would not have to kill in order to learn what had happened to her daughter. Everything else that was swirling in my mind — had Baba and Ma plotted to finish off Thamma; when would my knock come and what would the price be; would I see Ravi Tarun again; what is the true scope of my gift even if I have to surrender the chance to find out? — was at present lethal distraction.

Although now Tamal is hard again, because I’m back from the bathroom with nothing on, and I look at the clock and it’s half-ten, and I say why not: the plan for Tuntuni is as set as it could be (I picked the perfect moment to ask Tamal, after the second fuck, with my legs around him, and my hand still on his soft cock), but it’s not as though we’re going out sleuthing tonight.

In any case, I’m finding that fucking is really helping just now with my thinking.