After All This Time

by Nikita Singh

  NIKITA SINGH

  After All This Time

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  Contents

  Prologue

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  Follow Penguin

  Copyright

  PENGUIN METRO READS

  AFTER ALL THIS TIME

  Nikita Singh is the bestselling author of seven novels, including The Promise, Someone Like You and Right Here Right Now, as well as a contributing author to books in The Backbenchers series. She is the editor of two collections of short stories: 25 Strokes of Kindness and The Turning Point.

  Nikita was born in Patna and raised in Indore, where she was brought up in a home of voracious readers. After graduating from college, she worked with publishers in Delhi as an editor and publishing manager. In 2013, she received a Live India Young Achievers Award. She is currently an MFA candidate in Creative Writing at The New School in New York City.

  You can find Nikita on Twitter and Instagram (@singh_nikita) or on Facebook.

  ALSO BY NIKITA SINGH

  Accidentally In Love

  If It’s Not Forever

  The Promise

  The Unreasonable Fellows

  Someone Like You

  Right Here Right Now

  This book is dedicated to all those who refuse to lose faith in love, despite the pain and horror and torment that accompany it.

  Love takes off masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within.

  James Baldwin

  Prologue

  New Delhi, 2007

  Lavanya clutched the books she was holding closer to her chest as she made her way through the school corridor. Maybe they wouldn’t notice her if she walked by fast enough. But in her rush to escape, she stumbled on the stairs at the end of the hallway. She stretched out her arms to break her fall, scraping her palms in the process. Without caring to dust them off, she quickly knelt down to gather her books.

  A boy approached her, and picked up the last book before she had a chance to. The rest of his group watched from close by.

  ‘Need help?’ the boy asked. He was in class twelve too, but in a different section. He had a square face, his tie was knotted loosely and the top three buttons of his shirt were undone. She had seen him around before but did not know his name.

  ‘Thanks. Can I have that back?’ Lavanya said nervously. She did not look at him, her eyes were fixed on the book in his hand.

  ‘Don’t wanna talk?’

  ‘I have class.’

  ‘Science class?’ the boy sneered.

  Lavanya could feel everybody’s eyes on her. Her ears were becoming warm. She wanted nothing more than to run away. ‘Can I have my book back, please?’ she asked again, barely controlling her shaking voice.

  ‘Why are you still stuck on that? What is this, the science book?’ the boy chuckled, flipping the pages of the book.

  Lavanya’s lower lip was quivering. She did not want to humiliate herself further and give them the satisfaction of seeing her break down in front of everyone. ‘Give it back to me,’ she said fiercely, putting all her courage into that one sentence, and snatched the book from him.

  There was hooting from his friends.

  ‘What’s going on here?’ a stern voice asked from behind her. Three teachers were walking towards them, looking from her to the boy’s group and then back at her.

  ‘Mrs Dey! What a coincidence! We were just discussing science,’ the boy said smiling, not intimidated in the least.

  ‘Is everything okay, Lavanya?’ Mrs Dey asked.

  Lavanya nodded and rushed away.

  1

  New York, 2014

  The sound of her five-inch heels clattering against the hardwood floors of the bright, fashionably decorated corridors of Paxton-Stark-Meester, one of the largest law firms in New York City, could be heard long before she came into view. But Lavanya Suryavanshi did not slow down to appreciate the minimalistic decor of the passageway; she had no time. She never did.

  Lavanya readjusted the folder tucked under her left arm for the hundredth time. All the documents were in order. It was a big day at work. This was her chance to impress her direct supervisor; something she had been trying to do ever since she’d joined PSM, a little over a year ago. Every year PSM hired twenty new graduates from Harvard Law School as junior associates. When Lavanya had opened her mail and found that she had been invited to join the company, she could not believe her eyes. The screening process had been a rigorous, three-week affair that included written tests, group discussions and personal interviews. Thrilled, she rushed out of Starbucks with a steaming cup of coffee, and right into a man entering the coffee shop. Her cell phone slipped out of her hand and fell to the hard concrete floor.

  ‘I’m so sorry! I totally didn’t see you there,’ she apologized, her mind whirling with the incredible news.

  ‘Watch where you’re going, lady!’

  ‘My fingers slipped off the sleeve. They make the cups so hot—I’m sorry,’ she repeated.

  ‘Yeah, I know it’s hot. You got it all over me!’

  Another five minutes of public grovelling passed before the stranger grudgingly accepted her apology, and Lavanya finally patted herself down with the tissues a Starbucks employee was kind enough to hand her. She picked up her phone; the screen had shattered completely and no matter how many times she molested the power button, it refused to turn on.

  ‘Perfect,’ she muttered under her breath. Had she read the mail correctly or was she celebrating prematurely? Doubts plagued her as she rushed back to her apartment, politely refusing the server’s offer for a replacement cup of coffee. It was only after she reached home and read the email again on her laptop half a dozen times that she allowed herself to relax. Maybe even smile.

  Now, fourteen months later, she was still trying to make it into her supervisor Mr Cather’s good books. Her first impression had been ruined when she arrived at the PSM office thirteen minutes late on the day of her orientation. When she explained how she got confused reading the subway map, Mr Cather’s exact words had been, ‘I hope for your sake that you read corporate law better than you read maps. We’d hate for a junior associate to leave us so soon.’

  Ever since then, no matter what Lavanya did, she never could win points with Mr Cather. She was never assigned to any of the major cases, and was constantly saddled with mountains of paperwork, which meant she was inevitably the last one to leave the office. Irrespective of the late nights, she was always the first one to reach office the next morning, but of course, Mr Cather was never there to see that. And even if he did accidentally stumble to the office that early on occasion, he never had any reason to go all the way to the corner of the room where her cubicle was and see her immersed in work, an hour before the rest of the junior associates even checked in.

  After fourteen months of being unimportant in the eyes of anyone consequential in the law firm, Lavanya had finally been given an opportunity to prove her worth to Mr Cather and hopefully the rest of her colleagues, who revelled in her humiliation. After all, it was easy for the nineteen of them to gang up against the one person who was already being picked on. Lavanya did not mind being the one who was repeatedly bullied by the rest of the junior associates. It gave her a reason to not hang out with them socially and make idle small talk. And though there wer
e moments when she wished she had friends around, mostly she would much rather be left alone. ‘It is the best way to be—you get more time to focus on your career and improve on your work.’ Something—the only thing—she had been concentrating on for the past seven years.

  Lavanya sighed again. She was ready for this. Everything she had done from the time she first started preparing for the law entrance examinations years ago had led to this very moment. This was her chance. She had everything in place—every single document double- and triple-checked, all of them arranged in the sequence she anticipated she would need them.

  As she strode into the conference room now, she was relieved to see that Mr Cather was not yet in. She greeted Mrs Conklin and the opposing counsel briskly and took a seat across them, next to her client, Mr Bauer. Mrs Conklin was suing Mr Bauer for fraud and money laundering and although unfortunate for both of them, it was good news for Lavanya since it was the first major case she had been allowed to assist Mr Cather on. Or so she thought.

  Fifteen minutes later, Joshua Saks, another junior associate, marched in through the glass door, huffing and puffing. He took the vacant seat next to Lavanya, the one Mr Cather was supposed to have occupied, and demanded to see her file.

  ‘What do you think you are doing?’ Lavanya hissed under her breath.

  ‘Filling in for Cather. He’s not going to make it,’ Joshua responded, looking a little too pleased to be announcing this piece of news.

  ‘What?! Why?’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry. When he called and asked me to take over, I didn’t realize I was supposed to question his reasons.’

  ‘What’s with the attitude?’ Lavanya responded heatedly.

  ‘What’s with the third degree?’

  ‘This is not a joke; this is important. And you are also just a junior associate—’

  ‘A junior associate who has been to a hundred such meetings in the past year. I’ve got it under control,’ Joshua said with an air of finality and pulled the file out of Lavanya’s hands. He turned to Mrs Conklin and the opposing counsel, ‘Mr Cather sends his apologies that he won’t be able to join us today. My name is Joshua Saks, I’ll be filling in for him.’

  And just like that, Lavanya’s long-cherished fantasy of one day proving her mettle in front of Mr Cather was crushed yet again. She sat through the meeting with that ass Joshua instead of Mr Cather, feeling slighted, watching him say and do things that she had dreamt of saying and doing herself. She had to sit silently next to a colleague who was doing so for the hundred and first time, just because he had arrived at PSM thirteen minutes before she did.

  The case was settled. Using her ideas and the laws she had read through and outlined to fit the case, Joshua convinced Mrs Conklin and her lawyer to drop the case in lieu of a settlement amount that was much smaller than what their client might have had to pay had the case gone to court. And as Joshua acted like a total rock star who basically lip-synced her songs, Lavanya sat quietly and stared at her lap, where chips of her fingernails were falling on her skirt as she assaulted them.

  After the meeting was over, Lavanya nodded curtly at the others and watched them leave through the glass door, one by one. She stayed back. She had nowhere to go. For the past week, all her energies had been streamlined towards this meeting. She had been looking forward to presenting her ideas to the client in front of Mr Cather and dazzling him with her competence; not to having someone else snatch away her hard work and cakewalk through a meeting that had taken her a string of sleepless nights to prepare for.

  She slumped back in her chair and sighed. Lavanya was constantly tired; not sleeping for more than five hours a night for seven years in a row would do that to anyone. Her head was bursting, but she could not even take her migraine meds for some relief, because she was going to a blood drive later in the afternoon and she could not have any drugs in her system.

  Sometimes, on days like this, she would question what she was doing with her life. But not today. She was completely drained and had absolutely no energy left to reflect on her life choices and push herself further into depression. Instead, she just sighed once again, leaned forward, rested her forehead on the desk and closed her eyes.

  Three minutes later, Mr Cather walked in and slapped the table Lavanya had fallen asleep on, jolting her awake in alarm.

  ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ he bellowed.

  ‘Huh?’ Lavanya stood up hurriedly, her head spun, causing her to fall back in the chair, holding her head in both hands.

  ‘Aww, did I wake Sleeping Beauty? I do hate to interrupt a fairy tale.’

  ‘I am—I am so sorry . . .’ Lavanya shook her head to try and make sense of the situation, but the motion just made her headache worse. She blurted out, ‘I have a headache . . .’

  ‘Get your shit together, Suryavanshi. I don’t want to have to repeat myself. I’ve tolerated your sloppiness far too long. Have you gotten the message yet that I am not pleased?’

  ‘Yes, Mr Cather . . .’ Lavanya murmured. On multiple occasions, for no apparent reason other than pure wickedness. She sometimes wondered why he didn’t just give up. Surely, some of the novelty of picking on her should have worn off by now, it had been going on for so long. She really was not a bad employee. In fact, trying to earn points with Mr Cather had driven her to push herself as hard as she could to be the best she could. Yet the way she was treated at PSM was downright spiteful.

  ‘Good. Now, what happened with the Conklin meeting?’

  ‘Mr Cather,’ Joshua peeked into the conference room. ‘I was just looking for you. The meeting went really well. We convinced them to settle.’

  ‘Settle? You’re joking!’ Mr Cather’s eyes lit up.

  ‘I’m expecting the paperwork by the end of the day,’ Joshua said, almost giddy with excitement, either on settling the case or impressing the boss, Lavanya neither knew nor cared enough to find out which.

  ‘I have to say, that’s some remarkable work, Joshua.’

  Lavanya did not need to be a part of this. She got up, slowly this time, and walked towards the door after muttering a soft Excuse me. As she was about to exit the room, Joshua spoke up, ‘Actually, Mr Cather, it wasn’t just me. It was Lavanya’s work. I used her notes and her arguments.’

  ‘Where do you think you’re going?’ Mr Cather said, disregarding what Joshua had said.

  ‘I’m . . . umm . . . to . . .’ she mumbled. What just happened? Had Joshua just put in a good word about her to Cather? That was a first.

  ‘Go grab your medical documents and get down to the blood drive. You know how important this client is for us. We need to show our support,’ Mr Cather bit out.

  ‘Uh . . . yes. That’s where I was going,’ Lavanya said.

  Mr Cather shook his head and stepped out of the conference room. Joshua looked at her apologetically for a second and shrugged before following him out. So, finally, someone else had started pitying her situation. Awesome.

  Lavanya rushed to her cubicle and gathered the test reports from her desk. Their client, one of the biggest healthcare centres in the country, had organized an all-day blood drive in the city. To show their support, the name partners at PSM had sent a circular throughout the offices, requesting all employees to volunteer.

  Lavanya wondered if she could just hop in and out of the blood drive, quickly making her donation, and head home. She could not bear the idea of returning to work again, not that day. She needed rest.

  She opened the envelope with her blood reports and quickly scanned through it. Just the basics: Suryavanshi, Lavanya . . . 10/10/1991 . . . O+ve . . . The rest of the medical jargon did not make much sense to her. She was about to fold the report and keep it back when her eyes caught something. She froze.

  Forcing herself to stay calm, she scanned it again. The motion was mechanical; as if her eyes were following orders her brain was sending, without consciously realizing what she was doing. Her eyes focused on one particular section.

  The world ar
ound her fell silent. She became strangely aware of all her body parts. She heard and felt the incessant thumping of her own heart. Her breathing became more laboured with every second. Her palms became clammy and her vision blurred until she could see nothing . . . nothing except . . .

  HIV status: Positive

  Shourya slipped into the apartment at 5 a.m., yawning widely. He took off his shoes, and picked them up, careful not to make any noise. Padding softly across the floor, he gently laid them down, and placed his books on the study table. He undressed himself in precise movements, not taking a second more than required. After gathering his clothes and throwing them in his laundry basket, he grabbed his towel, tiptoed out of his room and into the bathroom and bolted the door.

  He breathed out. This was the tough part; no matter how hard he tried, the shower was going to make noise. His best bet was to block the spray with his body and make sure it did not touch the bathtub—that made the least amount of sound. He had plenty of experience; he had been doing this every morning for the last four months. He did not know if they couldn’t hear him, or if they knew he was there and didn’t come out of ‘their’ room while he was in the house out of courtesy. Or shame, hopefully.

  A minute later, Shourya turned off the shower and dried himself. Wrapping the towel around his waist, he quietly unlocked the door and stepped out, intending to return to his room. Instead, he ran straight into her. His heart missed a beat.

  Instantly, Shourya felt a dead weight at the pit of his stomach. He had not seen Deepti in three weeks. She had cat eyes and lips so thin they sometimes disappeared completely when she laughed. She was wearing a man’s shirt—his shirt—reaching mid-thigh, and her waist-length dark brown hair cascaded down one shoulder in a bundled mess. She looked like she had just woken up; her eyes were still sleepy, yet somehow completely awake upon seeing him. She blinked rapidly as if in confusion.