priti hadn’t finished the hurricane. It sat on the windowsill where Mum had left it, still without its propellor. Priti had read the instructions cover to cover, knew that the nose and the body connected through piece forty-two. But it was always Mum that finished the planes.

Their fleet started with the Spitfire. Priti had spotted it at the RAF museum gift shop, and that was that. It was Priti’s job to read the instructions. Mum would sit on the floor and get frustrated with the small pieces.

Priti took the remaining parts of the Hurricane out of the box. She picked up a propeller blade. It was the colour of bone. She put it in her mouth. Ms McCarthy said plastic lives forever. In the future, aliens would discover her planes and piece them together like the dinosaurs at the Natural History Museum. She’d seen them in real life, the dinosaurs, though the skeletons were out of reach. In one room, her mum let her touch the mammoth. Its fur felt like coconut. Then a guard came over, and Mum pretended not to speak English. She talked away in Punjabi and they rushed out of the museum, laughing. But on the underground, Priti was asking too many questions, and Mum asked for Statue Time. She didn’t budge. In her head she was an exhibit in a future alien museum. This is a human, the sign next to her would say, in an alien language. They walked the Earth on two legs.

She spat out the blade and put it back in the box. It was shiny with saliva. Ms McCarthy said saliva breaks food down. They’d watched a video in Science of a bird throwing up food into its baby’s mouth. Mum hadn’t even known what regurgitate meant. Nani definitely wouldn’t know. She was singing in the kitchen. Mum said Nani was sharp and couldn’t keep time.

‘Nani, you’re sharp and can’t keep time,’ Priti told Nani that night, as she sang ‘sonja bai’ to her in bed. She smiled and carried on singing. Nani sang to her every night, even now she was eight. Priti pretended to sleep.

*

Seeing her little rani so soothed by her voice made Nani smile. She looked down at her granddaughter and remembered singing the same lullaby to her daughter, Priti’s mother. It was a lullaby she remembered from when she was a child, lying in her own mother’s lap. As she stroked Priti’s hair, Nani thought of that childhood home in Punjab, and in her head she walked from room to room, up the stairs, running from roof to roof, chased by her brother, shouted at by neighbours, who, playing cards or opening pea pods, huddled in the shade of hung washing. There was another family in that house now, those rooms held someone else’s memories.

*

When Nani finally left, Priti flipped open Mum’s phone. She clicked through the gallery, opening the last photo they’d taken together, Mum dressed up for a night out, her hair dyed blue, and Priti making a face. Then she loaded Asteroids and, level by level, slipped into sleep.

 

‘One!’ Priti said, as they left for school in the morning, pointing up to the first plane of the day.

‘Why no Punjabi, rani?’ Nani asked, as always.

‘Why no English, Nani?’ Priti said, bobbing her head like Apu.

‘…’

‘Two!’

Priti liked living on the flight path. She liked to count the planes in the sky, praying no one went to the loo. Fatima said that when you poo on a plane and flush, it drops straight out the bottom. Priti imagined walking to school one day and getting hit. But she had it figured out – if the plane was above her, it meant that it was near the airport, close to landing or take-off, which meant the seatbelt signs would be on, and no one could go to the toilet. This was the safest place to be.

‘Three.’

*

Nani sighed as another plane passed. Priti started saying something. Nani smiled and nodded, not understanding. It sounded like something to do with toilets. They’d only just left the house. Priti was saying something else. Nani’s English was bad, Priti’s Punjabi worse. At first, they couldn’t talk at all without Priti’s mum around to translate. But little by little, they made do. Nani learnt the words for eat your food and we’re running late. Priti learnt to say I don’t know in three different ways.

‘Four.’

*

Nani was saying something. They cut across the grass, dew squeaking beneath their shoes. The walk was long, but Nani still wouldn’t let her on the bus. ‘No car, no bus, rani,’ she’d say. No ifs, no buts. ‘Bas’ meant ‘stop’ in Punjabi, Priti knew that much. ‘Bas kar’ meant ‘stop that’. She heard that a lot. Bas kar, bus, car. Stop that bus. Car. Stop.

They crossed onto the path and Nani went back to whatever it was she was saying. Something about cars, or keys – car keys? Or lunch. While she talked, the possibilities grew in Priti’s head: Nani had put extra in her lunch money for sweets, or she’d been able to sell what was left of Mum’s car, or she wasn’t going to be able to pick Priti up today so–

‘Fucking pakis.’ A cyclist swerved past and stopped a few metres ahead. ‘Can’t you read? Cycle. Lane.’

He spat on the path and sped off. Priti imagined the saliva breaking the ground. Nani didn’t speak until the school gates. Priti carried on counting planes, but in her head.

 

At playtime, Priti and Fatima made paper planes out of their French quizzes. They stood on the roots of the willow at the edge of the playground and let loose, aiming for the sun.

‘Mine can fly backwards,’ Fatima said.

‘Mine’s a Boeing 747. It has 660 seats.’

Priti knew all about 747s, she’d been on one when she went with Mum and Nani to Punjab. It was her first time, and she’d printed off the Wikipedia page about the plane. It was just like the photos. There were stairs inside. India, though, was not what she’d had in mind. When they landed, there were no elephants basking in the sun. Monsoon season had just begun, and cars waded through the flooded streets.

Mum’s hair was black for the first time in ages. They spent the whole holiday visiting people. Priti’s cousins found it funny that she couldn’t understand them; she was sure, when they spoke, that they were making fun of her. When the adults asked why Priti didn’t speak, her mum answered for her. Nani, on the other hand, didn’t stop talking. Wherever they went, their relatives gathered around her like she was famous. She made them all laugh with different stories and jokes that Priti pretended to understand.

On the plane back – a 720 – Nani stared quietly at the home screen in front of her while Priti and her mum watched cartoons. Priti wasn’t even scared when there was turbulence. At Heathrow, Nani asked Priti a question. Mum translated: ‘How did you like it?’

‘I love flying.’

Mum translated this back, but what she said was longer.

Nani said something else.

‘She says you’ll have to visit lots when she moves back.’

*

While Priti was at school, Nani watched cartoons.

‘I love muddy pudders,’ she said, along with Peppa. She paused. ‘I love muddy puddles. Puddles.’

She’d wanted to know English ever since she was a child. Her brother’s school taught it, and each evening, she’d watch him do his homework. He promised to tutor her: ‘Say fuck. Say shit.’

It wasn’t fair, he didn’t even like school. He dropped out as soon as he was old enough to drive a taxi. In the months she spent waiting for her visa, she rode around in her brother’s cab, listening to English lessons on cassettes. Sitting in the passenger seat as he drove around Ludhiana, she imagined London. ‘Thank you, Sir. Thank you, Madame,’ she recited. When she finally had her ticket, her brother drove her to Delhi, her parents quiet in the back. On the plane, she craned her neck to see the ever-shrinking cars below, trying to guess which one was his.

‘Thank you,’ she said to her husband, getting into his car. She expected him to want to speak English, but he seemed so happy to be able to talk to someone in Punjabi, so eager to chat after long shifts of conveyor belt silence, that she stopped trying to speak English at home. She got a job at the airport and expected to have to learn. But all the other cleaners were immigrants too, and, in the middle of the night, as they glided across the vast halls of Departures, not a word of English could be heard.

Now, a lifetime later, she watched cartoons with determination. She imagined watching TV with Priti, laughing together at the same jokes. She squinted at the screen, trying to concentrate, the edges of her vision a dark blur. This shrinking of her sight had started when her daughter died, or at least, that’s when she first noticed it. She thought it was the grief, that the darkness she felt within was seeping into her eyes, onto the world; whenever she saw something, she was made aware of a visible absence, her periphery obscured. She struggled, now, to take in the whole TV. Peppa she could see, but the other pigs were fading. The show ended.

‘Go compare! Go compare!’

The ads always reminded Nani of her daughter. She could recite most adverts line by line, would hum every jingle. She’d had such a good memory, and Nani had enjoyed nothing more than to sit with her and reminisce, her daughter telling her about that time they got lost in Wolverhampton and ended up at the wrong Gurdwara, sitting through a stranger’s Sukhmani Sahib, or the time they got that flat on the M1 and the two of them changed the tyre, or when she took Nani out for her first ever cappuccino, her first ever croissant. Her daughter had never forgotten a face, or a name, or a birthday. It was impossible to know just how much had been lost.

Nani enjoyed having the house to herself when her granddaughter was at school. For Priti, she spent so much energy trying to seem like she had everything under control. But she didn’t want to be okay. Certain things you shouldn’t move past. At times, she felt almost resentful of Priti, felt she’d somehow been robbed of her own grief. How could the child ever be happy if her grandmother was forever sad? A few weeks back, when Priti wet the bed again, Nani found herself full of anger cleaning the sheets, getting Priti in the shower. She’d been up late finalising the sale of the house that she was supposed to spend her retirement in, had to do it all over the phone, not even getting one last trip. It was supposed to be passed down to her daughter and then to Priti, but here it was disappearing in the dark, so that she could afford to raise her granddaughter. The girl was crying, and Nani wanted so badly to join in, to let it all go. But she dried Priti off, brushed her hair and plaited it for school. ‘Okay. It’s okay. Bas. We’re running late.’

‘Don’t delay,’ the next advert said. ‘Claim today.’

She heard the letterbox open and close. The letter was from the hospital; she knew ‘NHS’. She could read the date and her name but not much else. She folded it and put it in her bag, noticing the time. She was supposed to have cleaned before picking up Priti. She pulled the Henry Hoover around the house, ending in her granddaughter’s room. She went over the carpet, watching the nozzle disappear into the dark edges. She imagined the blurring as a layer of dust framing her eyes, imagined the hoover cleaning it all up, sucking whatever it was out of her, the world returning clear and full.

She heard the crash before she saw it, one of Priti’s boxes on the floor, little pieces across the carpet.

‘Fuck. Shit.’

 

Ms McCarthy’s class was late to let out at home-time. The sun was out, and Nani was wearing her favourite suit, the pink one with the flowers. The other parents talked at the gates. Nani remembered picking her daughter up from the same school decades ago. Not that she picked her up often, normally sleeping through the afternoons ahead of her night shift. Seeing how her daughter was with Priti, all those years later, always playing games with her, taking her out, Nani realised that she hadn’t been much of a mother herself. She used to have selfish thoughts, sometimes fantasising about a life alone. During her shifts, she dreamed up a vision of retirement, moving back to the house in Punjab, a manja in the shade. But here she was, in grey London, doing it all again. Hard not to think her life was repeating itself as Priti left her classroom – the girl was a carbon copy of her mother. Before the ridiculous hair, before the useless boy.

*

As Priti left 4C, her heart sank. Nani had on Mum’s old trainers, the Reeboks. Bright green with that suit! Priti tried to rush over before the other girls saw, but Ms McCarthy called Nani over for a chat. While her teacher talked at Nani, Priti looked at the hair on Nani’s arms. She wished she would get rid of it.

‘Do you understand?’ Ms McCarthy said.

‘Thank you, Madame.’

Ms McCarthy asked Ms Khan to translate. Ms Khan talked in Urdu and Nani responded in Punjabi. Priti pulled a piece of paper out of Nani’s handbag. It had her real name on it, a name Priti had never heard out loud. She read the letter in her head. Glaucoma. She tried to split up the sounds. She knew a coma was sleeping for a long time.

‘I think she got the general gist,’ Ms Khan said.

Priti continued to read the letter. Was Nani entering a coma? She imagined having to visit her at the hospital, her body a statue. In the shows Mum liked, people always came out of comas and remembered nothing. Maybe Nani would return happy, cracking jokes again.

Priti folded the letter, making a Concorde, long and thin. Ms McCarthy called Gujan’s mum over from the gates. Gujan and his mum spoke Punjabi to each other, even though they both knew English.

‘Could you say that tomorrow we’re doing our time capsule assembly?’

Gujan’s mum smiled at Nani and started talking in Punjabi. Ms McCarthy continued. ‘The kids need to bring something special to go in the capsule. And to practise public speaking, they’re to give a speech. Every year we ask the parents and guardians …’

Priti threw the plane, but it didn’t go far. She couldn’t keep up with the conversation. Next to Punjabi, even English sounded foreign. Ms McCarthy said something, then Gujan’s mum, then Nani, then Gujan’s mum and so on. It was like they were playing pass the parcel, unwrapping another sentence each time it went round. It ended with Nani, and the two of them walked home through the park, looking both ways.

 

It didn’t take Priti long to realise that piece forty-two was missing. Without it, the propeller would never attach. Without the propeller there was no plane and the fleet would be incomplete forever.

*

Priti tore through the house, lifting everything she could. She kept shouting words that Nani didn’t know. Nani had no idea what she was looking for. When Priti showed her the plane and the box, Nani rushed to her bedroom. Nothing under the bed. Nothing behind the chest of drawers. She explained what might have happened to Priti.

‘I don’t know what you’re saying. Say it normal or don’t say anything!’

‘Bas kar,’ Nani shouted, not wanting to be angry.

Priti made a point of storming off, almost tripping over the hoover.

*

Priti couldn’t sleep. She didn’t want Mum’s phone or TV. She wanted to sit with Mum and play Air Traffic Control. She listened to the sirens outside, her room flashing blue. She thought about all the times Mum lost things, usually her keys. The last time, she was late for a party and frantically retracing her steps around the house. Panting, she came into Priti’s room, ‘Bug, you seen Mum’s keys?’

Priti helped her look, and it became a game. They ran around the house shouting: ‘Not by the door,’ ‘Not under the sofa,’ ‘Not in the bath.’ It was Priti who finally found them – in the fridge! She ran to her mum and placed the cold metal in her palm.

*

Nani ran her fingers over Henry’s head, trying to figure out how to open the thing. It had always been her daughter’s job to hoover; the last thing Nani wanted after a shift at the airport, or the hotel, was more cleaning. She found the latch and slowly emptied the bag onto the kitchen floor.

Amongst the dust was all sorts, but mostly hair. Long strands of Priti’s hair were intertwined with Nani’s white, wiry knots. And in the mess on the floor, Nani found some of the different-coloured strands of her daughter’s hair.

Her daughter’s friend owned a salon on the parade down the road. When Nani was watching Priti, she’d go for a few hours and return looking like a different person. The dying had started off years before as an act of rebellion, a call for attention. But when her daughter moved back home with a daughter of her own and no husband, Nani barely noticed the changing colours.

By the time you got used to the silver, it would be purple and cropped. Nani was only ever shocked when it was black as the day she was born. She could remember it so clearly; everyone who’d visited the hospital marvelled at her full head of hair. The morticians had dyed it black for the funeral. When she saw it, she wished she’d told them to leave it as her daughter had wanted it. Dark green, or was it blue?

She put some of the strands to one side. Humming the Peppa Pig theme tune, she sifted through the rest of the dust, picking out objects: the odd screw, a few coins. LEGO, popcorn kernels, pistachio shells, the little crescents of cut nails, small shards of glass. And finally, nestled in a Starburst wrapper, she saw it, the missing piece.

She binned the dust and rubbish but hoovered up the hair. She washed her ashy fingers with Fairy and went to Priti’s room.

 

‘Nani Ji!

Priti hugged her tight. She got her to sit on the floor with her. She pointed to the instructions and chatted away. Nani smiled and nodded. She could make out certain words, but by the time she pieced them together, Priti was on to something else.

*

Priti read the instructions one final time. Nani sang and stroked her hair. The propeller slipped into place. She spun the blades. The aliens of the future would marvel. She showed it to Nani.

‘All right! Priti for the win,’ Nani said in English, quoting a cartoon.

‘Nani, how do you say thank you in Punjabi?’

‘Sorry?’ Nani asked, smiling slightly.

 

Nani sat next to Gujan’s mum at the show and tell assembly. She was wearing normal shoes. They were talking, and Gujan’s mum was laughing.

Priti span the propellers, waiting. Fatima had brought a Bratz doll, and Gujan a Yu-Gi-Oh shiny. When it was their turn, they had to talk about their object, and why they wanted it to be put in the capsule. Priti’s name was called, and she went up to the stage.

*

When Priti finished speaking, she put the toy plane in the box. Nani asked Kaz, Gujan’s mum, to translate for her.

When the assembly was over, Kaz told Nani how Gujan had lost the book he was supposed to put in the time capsule. He phoned her from school, asking if she could go home and look for it, but she couldn’t just leave work.

‘Now I’m the world’s worst mum,’ she said. ‘Because he had nothing on him to give except his favourite card.’

‘He’s like me. I lose everything,’ Nani said. ‘I got a letter yesterday afternoon, and by the evening I had no idea where it was. Not a clue!’

They followed everyone outside. Someone had dug a hole near the giant willow. The teacher lowered the box into the ground and covered it with dirt.

 

Afterwards, Kaz and Nani took Priti, Fatima and Gujan to the park. The sun had turned up, bringing along its joggers and buggies. The grass was patchworked with picnic blankets, balloon-sized bubbles and barbecue smoke filled the air. ‘Greensleeves’ played on repeat from the Mr Whippy.

‘Can we? Please?’

The kids ran off, coins clenched in tight fists. They darted past a vendor selling scoobies, and around a group of men playing cricket, using a tree trunk for wickets. Someone was playing bhangra from a stereo and Priti sang along, making up the words.

 

Nani and Kaz found a bench and talked. Once Nani got started, there was no stopping her. She could talk for England as long as it wasn’t in English, her daughter used to say. She told Kaz about her pindh, had she heard of it? And if so, did she know so-and-so from such-and-such? The questioning continued until they found some common link, an uncle of Kaz’s who might have been a teacher at the school Nani’s brother had gone to all those years ago.

‘Oh, look at them,’ Kaz said, spotting the children at the top of the climbing frame. They sat, dangling their legs between the ropes, watching two other kids hanging upside down from the monkey bars, on opposite ends, swinging and swinging, with their arms outstretched, inches from touching.

 

After planning the next playdate, Gujan and his mum left with Fatima. The park slowly emptied. Priti lay next to Nani on the grass. Nani stroked her long black hair and started to sing, softly, ‘Sonja bai, sonja bai.’ Priti, tired from all the running, drifted off. The sun set, the grass grew cold. Nani replayed the day in her head, committing it to memory. She looked up at the sky and she started to see the stars. She could still remember some of the constellations her mother had taught her. Out of the edges of her vision, the blinking light of an airplane emerged, joining the dots between the stars, before disappearing again. Nani wondered where it was headed. She thought of all the people on it, looking down at this shrinking park, out at the city, the endless red and white lights of cars heading home or venturing out – the plane rising, levelling above the clouds. As the view vanished, she thought of them pulling down their window shades and turning back to the screens in front of them, tracking their own small progress across the pixelated map.

‘One!’ Nani said, waking Priti up, and they walked home, counting out loud.