Though we’re not so self-

important as to think everything

 

has led to this, everything has led to this.

Nicole Sealey, ‘Object Permanence’

the twins knew something was up. They were playing their cutest selves, old enough now to keep themselves entertained. Usually, Jyoti wouldn’t let Jenny out of her sight. After dinner, Jenny put a film on for them and they didn’t argue about what to watch. Jeevan fell asleep on her lap. Jenny should have taken him up to bed but didn’t. And when Aman, their mother, came home from her restaurant to let Jenny off, the boy was still there, his hands in small fists.

 

The calm didn’t last long. The next time she was over, they refused to go to sleep.

‘I want Priti to read the bedtime story,’ Jeevan said. ‘She does it better.’

‘When’s Priti coming?’ Jyoti asked.

‘She’s not coming,’ Jenny said.

‘Next week?’

‘She won’t be coming anymore. It’s just me now.’

 

They preferred how Priti made sandwiches. Why couldn’t Jenny just bring her over like normal?

‘It’s grown-up stuff,’ Jenny said.

‘Grown-ups are boring,’ Jeevan said.

‘You’re not wrong.’

‘Is she coming next time?’

 

They wanted the songs Priti used to sing. Jenny googled the lyrics.

‘What is greener than the grass? And what is smoother than the glass? What is louder than the horn? And what is sharper than the thorn? What is deeper than the sea? And what is longer than the way?’

She paused like Priti used to and they shouted their answers.

‘Water’s smoother than the glass.’

‘A fart is louder than a horn.’

Then she continued. ‘Envy’s greener than the grass, flattery’s smoother than the glass, rumour’s louder than the horn, slander’s sharper than the thorn, regret is deeper than the sea, but love is longer than the way.’

 

Jenny took the twins for a walk through Ealing. She avoided the high street – as far as she knew, Priti still worked at the café – and they headed towards the park. She peered into the large windows of the double-fronted houses. She remembered looking out at them as the E9 entered Ealing, Priti by her side, because Priti was always by her side, the two of them picking their favourites.

When Jenny first got the job babysitting for Aman, she phoned Priti on the bus home. ‘You wouldn’t believe the house. Parquet floors. A claw-foot tub.’

‘French doors?’

‘French doors.’

‘Oh God. Stop.’

They used to watch reruns of Grand Designs at Priti’s after school and make plans for their ideal place.

‘Are you going to get divorced?’ Jyoti asked, as they arrived in the park.

‘We weren’t married, silly.’

‘Yes, you were,’ Jeevan said.

And the kids talked about the afternoon when they’d married Jenny and Priti, napkins for veils.

Jenny sat on her favourite bench. There was a faded plaque set into the weathered wood: In loving memory of Montgomery and Jeanine Richards.

‘By that logic, you two are married, too,’ she said. The twins had got jealous that day and had a ceremony of their own.

‘Gross.’

‘We already got a divorce. I signed a prenut.’

‘You what?’

‘Girls have to protect their money, that’s what you said.’

‘You remember everything, don’t you?’

‘I can remember when I was born.’

‘Really?’

‘Yeah, I sneezed, and mummy cried.’

 

A few weeks after Jenny started, Aman agreed that she could bring Priti over to help. ‘But I’m not paying both of you,’ Aman said. ‘It’s a one-person job. It’s on you if you bring a friend. And I don’t want anything happening under my roof, you hear? This is more than most would allow.’

They were freer in Aman’s big house than they were at their own. Here they could be the people they wanted to grow up to be.

‘I know it’s awful,’ Jenny’s mum had said, when Jenny told her about the break-up. ‘But it’s good it’s happening. It’s an important part of growing up. If you stay together forever, you’ll always wonder what could have been, all those other closed doors. This is just part of life. One day, you’ll look back and this will all seem so small.’

Everyone she told echoed those lines. Young love was supposed to end. It was a phase everyone went through. Older people seemed to believe there was some threshold you crossed in your late twenties, where real life began, and that everything before then was a kind of game, make-believe. They seemed to suggest that the feelings you had as a young adult or as a child were at best lesser versions of what you would one day feel. But when the twins were sad or happy, Jenny had never seen anyone as sad or as happy. If anything, she thought, our most intense feelings happened when we were youngest.

 

When the twins were awake, Jenny wished for peace, but when they were down the quietness was unbearable. She tried to distract herself with Netflix, but a new season of hers and Priti’s favourite show had come out and that was enough to make her cry. She remembered the one time she watched an episode of it without Priti.

‘You’ve betrayed me. I feel betrayed.’

‘It was a moment of weakness. It meant nothing to me. I’m so sorry.’

‘I just – I need space.’

‘If it helps, I thought of you the whole time.’

They laughed. ‘Our first argument,’ Priti said. ‘We can tick that off.’

Jyoti appeared. Jenny wasn’t sure how long she’d been looking at the Netflix home screen.

‘What’s up?’ Jenny said, taking her into her arms. ‘Can’t sleep?’

‘I woke up and thought everyone was gone,’ she said.

Jenny sang a lullaby that occasionally worked during Jyoti’s colic phase.

‘I gave my love a cherry that had no stone. I gave my love a chicken that had no bones. I told my love a story that had no end. I gave my love a baby that’s no crying.’

She was already forgetting what Jyoti used to look like, what she used to be like. She could only recall the same few scenes of her early childhood, and the more she replayed them, the clearer they became and the further any other memories of her drifted away.

‘How can there be a cherry that has no stone? How can there be a chicken that has no bones? How can there be a story that has no end? How can there be a baby with no crying?’

Jyoti shut her eyes. Would she remember her, when she was Jenny’s age?

‘A cherry when it’s blooming, it has no stone. A chicken when it’s pipping, it has no bones. The story of our love, it has no end. A baby when she’s sleeping, there’s no crying.’

 

The weekend before her birthday, the kids baked Jenny a cake.

‘Wow, what flavour is it?’

‘Red.’

‘Red?’

‘With sprinkles.’

She let them watch YouTube on her phone. From the kitchen, she heard them giggling and talking. She could have sworn she heard Priti’s voice. She found them on FaceTime to her. Jyoti was standing on the windowsill showing Priti a plane that she’d spotted outside.

‘Did they call you?’ Jenny said. ‘Or did you–’

‘These geniuses phoned me.’

‘Sorry. You can go if you want.’

‘What? No, I miss you guys. What have you been up to, Jyoti?’

‘It’s Jenny’s birthday party. You’re invited!’

Jenny watched them talk, and then Priti asked the kids to put her on. She took the phone back to the kitchen.

‘How are you doing?’

‘You know.’

‘Yeah. I really miss those kids.’

‘You’re all they talk about.’

‘Are you okay?’

‘Can we do cameras off?’

 

‘You’re boring now,’ Jeevan said. ‘Why won’t you play with me?’

‘I am playing with you.’

‘You’re not even holding your gun.’

Jenny picked it back up.

Jeevan repeated his instructions. ‘You’re Russia and I’m America and when I shoot you, you have to die like this.’ He fell to the floor, gasping for air.

He shot her and she died.

‘What happens if I shoot you?’ she said.

‘That’s not the rules.’

‘Then why do I need a gun?’

Priti used to have such patience for his games. And she managed to get them to do proper activities, baking, arts and crafts, gardening. No, Jenny thought. That wasn’t true. It was Jenny who’d got them planting seeds in the garden. She knew she had a tendency to turn her every weakness into one of Priti’s strengths. If only knowing about a problem fixed it. It was tiring to be more aware. She was so tired, she realised, lying dead on the floor. She was exhausted. But her sadness had such stamina.

‘Get up! Rewind!’

 

Jenny lived a full bus route away from the twins. The stop closest to Aman’s house, Haven Green, was where she used to meet Priti. She would visit her at the café even before they were official. They fell in love waiting for buses, people-watching from the backseats, one earphone each. Jenny would walk Priti home from her stop. They’d slow their pace as they approached her house and as soon as they parted, Priti would phone her, not wanting her to walk alone. And though they’d just seen each other, they had so much to talk about, there was just so much to say.

 

The kids wanted aloo parathe. Priti used to make them, thin and crispy. They tasted just like the buss up shut roti that Jenny’s grandpa used to make. Jenny took a copy of Chatpata, Aman’s cookbook, from one of the bookshelves, and found a paratha recipe. Her dough was too wet and then too dry and none of her attempts were round. When she served the kids, she expected another ‘Priti did it better …’ comment, but they said nothing. Maybe, she thought, they’d finally begun to move on. She wasn’t sure if that was better or worse than the idea that they still missed her.

 

By the time the bougainvillea bloomed, the kids had forgotten the day they’d planted it. The bright pink petals held their attention for a brief moment before they continued with the water fight. Jenny was in charge of refills, which made her neutral, but they fired at her anyway. She retaliated with the hose. They laughed. But then Jeevan made Jyoti cry and Jenny had to separate them.

 

‘Why don’t you get a new girlfriend?’

‘I don’t know, Jyoti. It’s not that simple.’

‘I have two boyfriends.’

‘You do?’

‘Yeah, it’s easy. You just hold hands.’

‘I’ll bear that in mind.’

Jeevan joined them. ‘Did you know there’s seven billion people in the world?’

‘That’s so many people, isn’t it? And how crazy that out of all the billions of people, the three of us could meet? Do you know how many millions and millions of things had to happen in the exact way they did for us all to end up together?’

‘And did you know there’s ten quadrillion ants in the world?’

‘Quadrillion isn’t a word,’ Jyoti said.

 

The twins wouldn’t sleep. Jeevan wouldn’t brush his teeth and Jyoti was hiding somewhere. How much easier it was when she and Priti could take one child each. The memories of those nights had collapsed into one idyllic image, the kids tucked in and Priti singing. ‘I’ll love you ’til the bluebells forget to bloom. I’ll love you ’til the clover has lost its perfume. And I’ll love you ’til the poets run out of rhyme. Until–’

 

The next Saturday, Jenny took the kids out for McDonald’s. They passed Haven Green. It was time to move somewhere else, Jenny thought, to a place that held no memories. What she really wanted, she realised, was to be able to be someone else, even for a moment, to get out of her head. How cruel it was to be thrown into this big world, and to only see it from one small angle.

The kids fought over their Happy Meal toys. Jenny took Jeevan to the toilet, leaving Jyoti to finish her nuggets. But when they returned to the table, she was gone.

The place was packed. She picked Jeevan up and rushed around the restaurant. She couldn’t see Jyoti anywhere. She asked the servers, but they hadn’t seen anything. She took Jeevan into the men’s and women’s toilets, calling out for Jyoti. All the stalls were empty. The cashiers had checked the CCTV. She’d walked out alone. Blue raincoat, blue shoes.

Jeevan was crying now, asking to be put down. Jenny had never seen Ealing Broadway so busy. There were so many people – all potential threats. So many shops, so many roads coming off the high street, and so many roads coming off those. Cars sped by. Jyoti was a quick runner. She could have been anywhere. Jenny rushed in and out of shops, looked down alleys. Was she in the shopping centre, at the park, heading home? Jenny tried and failed to think like her.

She arrived at Aman’s restaurant. She could hardly get the words out. Aman called the police and ran out. Jenny gave Jeevan to one of the line cooks and left with the waitresses to cover more ground. Everywhere she looked, she saw glimpses of blue. She ran around the park, calling her name. She took out her phone to check in with Aman and saw three missed calls from Priti. She phoned her back.

‘Jyoti’s here. Where are you? She’s come to the café. I called Aman, but she says they were with you.’

Jenny ran to the café.

‘They just left,’ Priti said, hugging her. Her hair was back to its natural colour. She smelled the same. ‘She was fine. She wanted to show me her Happy Meal toy. I made her a hot chocolate.’

‘Was Aman–’

‘I think she was just glad Jyoti was okay. She didn’t say anything.’

‘I just.’

‘Come on. Sit down.’

Priti went to make her a drink and Jenny’s breathing slowly steadied. Jyoti’s toy had been forgotten on the table by the window. Jenny put it in her pocket and took a seat. The people around her continued to eat and drink. Acoustic covers of pop songs played on the radio. The coffee machine groaned and hissed; cutlery clinked on ceramic. Priti finally joined her, setting down two coffees. She asked about the kids, about what had happened before Jyoti disappeared, what it was like to look for her. Jenny answered, watching people pass outside. More customers arrived, but Priti didn’t get up to serve them. She sat with Jenny until they finished their drinks, the two of them quiet now, despite having so much, too much, to say.