Healing Hearts

Chapter ~ 14

MANGALORE

The fan was going, and the curtains were drawn in the afternoon, and there were two people in a bed who should not have been in it together.

“You are a very good actor,” she said, when she had got her breath back. “I was genuinely impressed. All that at the gate — look after yourself for me — I nearly clapped.”

He laughed into her hair. “There are a number of things I am good at.”

“Show me, then.”

He did, and neither of them said anything for some time.

Afterwa. rds, she lay with her cheek on his shoulder, tracing something idle along his collarbone.

“You know,” she said, “At the start, I felt terrible about this. I actually did. And then I thought about it properly and I stopped.” She lifted her head. “She is so dull, Arjun. Honestly. How have you stood it for two years?”

“She never once let me near her,” he said, to the ceiling. “Two years. That is what nobody believes.”

“So end it.”

“I will.”

“When?”

“Soon.” He turned his head and kissed her forehead. “Let her settle in Mumbai first. It is cleaner that way. And then it is only us.”

“I am counting,” said Aneesha. “Do it soon. I have run out of patience with her.”

MUMBAI

Nandini looked in three rooms before she gave up on the flat.

She had been rehearsing it since dinner, and she had it more or less in order now, and she was going to say it to his face, because she had spent two nights lying awake failing to explain to herself what kept happening in doorways.

It was not that he was rude. She could survive rude. It was that he came close, and she let him, and she had a boyfriend in Mangalore who had said more than you on the telephone four hours ago.

“Where are you going?” said Priya, from the kitchen.

“Terrace.”

“At this hour? Alone? Nandu, this is not Mangalore, you cannot simply wander—”

“Ten minutes, dii. I want some air.”

It took another four minutes of negotiation, and then she was on the stairs, and it was only somewhere around the third landing that it occurred to her to wonder why she was so entirely certain that he would be up there.

She put the thought down and kept climbing.

He was sitting on the floor with his back against a pillar and his legs stretched out, playing something on a guitar with far more force than the tune required.

She crossed the terrace and put her hand flat over the strings.

He stopped. He looked at the hand first, and then up at her — and for about half a second there was something entirely unguarded on his face, and then it went, and he pulled his hand away and stood and set the guitar aside.

“What do you want now? Go away and leave me alone.”

“Not until I have answers, Mr. Malhotra.”

“Answers to what?”

“Why do you keep coming close to me?”

He went very still.

“Every time,” said Nandini. “Every single time. You pull me towards you, and then you are unspeakable to me. One minute you are — and the next you have said something designed to make me hate you. Why? What is the point of it? I want to know, and I am not going downstairs until you tell me.”

Manik Malhotra looked at her.

MANIK’S POV

She has asked the one question I have been asking myself since Friday and there is no answer to it.

None. I have looked. There is nothing at the bottom of it except a thing I am not going to say out loud on a roof.

So do what you do. Turn it round. Make it hers.

POV ENDS

He took her by the arms and pulled her in, not gently.

“Right. You want to have this conversation? Then answer mine first.” His voice had dropped. “Why did you never stop me?”

Nandini’s mouth opened.

“Every time. Your word, not mine. Every time I came close — did you push me away? Did you tell me to get off? Did you say one word?” He pulled her a fraction closer. “You want to stand there and tell me I was wrong. Fine. I accept it. I was wrong. Then why did you never once correct me?”

“That is not—”

“Say it, then. Go on.” His jaw was tight. “That is the whole trouble with a lot of you. Somebody must be at fault, and it will not be you, so it is me, and everything is very simple again. It is not a one-way street, Miss Murthy. There were two of us in every one of those doorways.”

Nandini could not find a single word.

She looked at the floor of the terrace and the water tank and the string of lights on the building opposite, and she thought about the last two nights honestly for the first time, and there was nothing there to defend herself with, because he was right.

And when she finally spoke it was not what either of them was expecting.

“Why don’t you trust anyone, Manik?”

His hands opened on her arms.

She looked up. The anger had gone out of his face entirely, and what was underneath it was not anger at all — it was something newer and much worse, and his eyes had gone bright, and he was staring at her the way a man stares at somebody who has just read out a page from a book he had burned.

How do you know that?

He did not say it. He did not have to.

Neither of them moved. A wind came up off the sea somewhere far away and went across the roof, and it took her hair with it, and it lifted across her face and got between them.

Manik reached up and put it back behind her ear.