The Year of the Runaways Read Online Free Page B

back from the door and looked up to the window. The light was on. He rang the doorbell again and this time heard feet on the stairs and Narinderji appeared on the other side of the thick glass – ‘I’m coming, I’m coming’ – and let him in.
    ‘Sorry I was in the middle of my paat.’
    ‘I didn’t realize,’ Randeep said, following her up to the flat.
    With each step his suitcase hit the side of his leg, and, as he entered, the gurbani was still playing. She hadn’t changed anything much. It was all very plain. The single plain brown leather settee. A plain tablecloth. The bulb was still without its shade. Only the blackout curtains looked new. A pressure cooker was whistling on the stove, and the whole worktop was a rich green pasture of herbs. In the corner, between the window and her bedroom door, she’d created a shrine: some kind of wooden plinth swathed in a gold-tasselled ramallah, and on top of this both a brass kandha and a picture each of Guru Nanak and Guru Gobind. In front of the plinth, on a cushion, her gutka lay open, bound in orange cloth, and beside that a stereo player. The gurbani began to fade out and the CD clicked mournfully off. Randeep set his case by the settee.
    ‘How have you been?’
    ‘I’m getting used to it.’ Her hands were clasped loosely over her long black cardigan.
    ‘You are getting to know your way around?’
    ‘Yes. Thank you.’
    ‘At least the weather is getting a smidgen better now. I thought the snow would never stop.’
    She gave a tiny smile but said nothing. Randeep wondered if she just wanted him to hurry up and leave again. He knelt before his case and thumbed the silver dials until the thing snapped open.
    ‘Well, as I said on the phone, I’ve brought some clothes and things for you to keep here.’
    He draped a pair of matching shirts across the creased rump of the settee, along with some black trousers and starched blue jeans, all still on their bent wire hangers. He took a white carrier bag tied in a knot at the top and left this on the table. ‘Shaving cream, aftershave, that kind of thing. And also some underwear,’ he added in the casual manner he’d practised on the way down. Then he reached back into his suitcase and handed her a slim red felt album. ‘And these are the photographs I think we – you – should hang up.’
    He watched her palming through the pages. The first few were taken on their wedding day, in a gurdwara outside his city of Chandigarh. The later ones showed them enjoying themselves, laughing in a Florentine garden, choosing gifts at a market. ‘They look believable to me,’ she said.
    ‘Vakeelji sorted it all out. He said sometimes they ask to see where we went on holiday.’ He sidestepped saying ‘honeymoon’. ‘There are dates on the back.’
    ‘Are there stamps on our passports?’
    ‘It’s all taken care of.’
    Suddenly, her nose wrinkled and she held the album face-out towards him: the two of them posing in a busy restaurant, his arm around her waist.
    ‘Vakeelji said there have to be signs of – intimacy.’ He’d looked past her as he’d uttered the word.
    ‘I don’t care what Vakeelji said.’ She shut the album and dropped it onto the settee. ‘This isn’t what I agreed to.’
    He felt himself getting riled, as if discarding the photos in some way reflected her feelings towards him. ‘Look, can’t we just do what Vakeelji said? I’m the one with everything to lose here.’
    ‘I’ve put a lot at stake too.’
    ‘Yes. I’m certain you have. And I’m very thankful for all you’re doing. I’m sorry if that isn’t clear. We won’t use the photos.’
    The silence seemed calculated, forcing her to relent.
    ‘Most are fine to use,’ she said, and he nodded and retrieved the album.
    ‘I only hope we’ve got enough. I’m hearing rumours of raids.’
    There was a sort of frozen alarm in her face which thawed to incomprehension. ‘You think this place will be raided? By who?’
    ‘It’s