I know it’s a long shot but I plunge my hand through the opening anyway, stretching my fingers to feel along the inside, the wood rough against my skin. It doesn’t take me long to realize there’s nothing there. I’m about to pull my hand out when my finger brushes against something, a piece of metal wedged in the small gap between the wooden panelling and the wall. I curl my fingers around it and tug it out.
It’s a pendant necklace. A gold sparrow hanging off a flimsy chain that has turned reddish with age. One of Noor’s favourites.
A few days after the funeral, Javed Uncle had asked me to come over to help him clear out Noor’s stuff but my parents had thought it morbid, the idea of clearing out my dead best friend’s room or, worse, keeping something of hers for myself. I slip the necklace on and tuck it underneath my top. A talisman.
Standing in front of the mirror in the hotel toilets, I take a moment to compose myself. I take a deep breath. Pull my shoulders back. I undo a button on my top, check my reflection, spot the curve of Noor’s pendant resting against my chest, do it up again.
It is ridiculous that I’m nervous about seeing him, that despite what he did, I still care.
I feel that old niggle of resentment rise up my throat and I push it back down.
I’m the one lying now.
I cringe as I think of the phone call a few days ago.
‘Vineet,’ I’d crooned down the phone, my voice silky. ‘It’s Sabah. I’m in town for a few days and I wondered . . .’ I’d paused there, leaving him hanging for a long moment before continuing. ‘Well, I wondered if you wanted to meet up. Coffee, maybe?’
It was a cheap trick, but it worked.
He’d suggested lunch, probably so he could avoid any awkward questions from his wife. That’s what savvy men do – have the illicit meetings over lunch and play the doting husbands over dinner. I should know.
I run a hand through my hair as the hostess at La Piazza leads me towards a table at the back. I resist the urge to flinch as I spot the man who looks only slightly like the boy I’d swooned over as a teenager.
‘Sabah,’ Vineet says, getting up. ‘My God, it’s nice to see you again.’
He’s wearing a suit. Anonymous, black, boring. His tie is askew, the top button of the predictably blue shirt undone.
I feel my spine lengthen as I look over the menu.
I steal glances at him as we order, taking in the receding hairline, the slight hint of a belly, the heavy gold wedding band. I cover up the slight shudder with a laugh as he tells me about his kids.
After twenty minutes of bedtime rituals and cartoon characters, I work the conversation around to Noor. Vineet’s face pales over his carbonara.
‘Why are you bringing this up now?’ he says, motioning for the waiter to bring us more wine.
‘I guess I’m just curious. We never really spoke after that night.’
‘You never spoke. I called you nearly every day for weeks afterwards. I even turned up at your house to try and talk to you.’
I nod. I try to explain how quickly things had escalated at home. My parents had practically shuttered me in, I tell him. He doesn’t sympathize.
‘You could have called, emailed. You just disappeared. I didn’t even know you’d moved to London until two months after you’d gone.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I sigh. ‘I’m just wondering, you were the last person to see her. You were with her hours, if not minutes before. What happened? Did you go inside with her?’
Something passes over his face, a hostility that I’d forgotten he was capable of.
‘What happened?’ He sets his fork down with a clang. ‘Do I need to remind you why I had to take her home? Fucking hell! After what you did to her . . .’ Every word feels like an assault and I shrink back, my whole body clenching in retaliation. He must see what it’s doing to me, because he stops. His face softens. ‘She was messed up, Sabah. She could barely walk straight. I had to stop the car twice so she could throw up. But she seemed fine after I gave her some water. She told me she’d call me the next day. I dropped her off and I went home. If I’d known what she was about to do . . .’ He shakes his head. Smiles as if the whole thing was nothing more than an embarrassing but harmless teenage indiscretion. ‘Anyway, why am I talking about all this when I’m sitting next to Hollywood’s finest? Tell me, what are you working on next, or is it a big secret?’
His words fall into a silence as I take a slow sip of my water. I look at him across the table, waiting for it to hit home. I’d debated it for days before finally concluding the only way I’d be able to have this conversation with Vineet was under false pretences. After news of Noor’s suicide broke, I had been heartbroken but Vineet had been persecuted. Even though, or perhaps because there was no official investigation, Vineet had become the focus of suspicion and intense public outrage. The country needed someone to blame and as the spoilt son of a property magnate, he made for the ideal suspect. He’d spent years battling the media, his lawyers throwing out injunction after injunction. Being upfront with him would mean throwing away any chance of a conversation and even if I couldn’t interview him for the documentary, I needed to see him, to hear him talk about that night so I could lay my suspicions to rest.
‘Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me,’ he says, when realization finally dawns. He throws a wad of cash on the table, acting as if my little trick can even come close to what he did all those years ago. As he jerks his seat back, I am reminded of the boy I knew, full of teenage bravado and cockiness, traits that feel repulsive in a thirty-one-year-old man.
‘I’d forgotten what a manipulative bitch you are,’ he says before stalking off.
As I sit there alone, finishing my salad, the niggle of doubt I’d felt earlier reappears, only this time I’m not thinking about my duplicity.
I’m thinking about his.
ALIA
Fifteen years ago
Nothing happened for about two weeks. We had the midterms coming up and I spent most afternoons studying or helping Noor with her pitch for the Head Girl interview. Yash and Tanmay served their time and came back to school cockier than ever. It seemed as if the entire thing had just blown over.
We were in the cafeteria cramming for the Maths exam that afternoon when Sabah strode in.
‘You bitch,’ she hissed, leaning over the table to look at Noor.
‘Sabah, I –’
I looked at Noor as she stood up, confused at this sudden escalation of the cold war that had been waging for weeks. ‘What’s going on?’
‘You keep out of it,’ Sabah spat at me before turning to Noor, tears brimming in her eyes. ‘How could you? Of all the things you’ve done to me . . . you’re supposed to be my best friend.’
‘Sabah, just let me explain, please.’
‘Go on then,’ Sabah stood back, arms crossed in front of her. ‘Explain.’
‘It happened only once. We were drunk and stupid. We were talking about you—’
‘Is that meant to make me feel better?’ Sabah interrupted, her voice rising above the din of the cafeteria. ‘That you were talking about me while you were making out with my boyfriend.’
A bomb going off in the middle of the school would have caused less disruption. Heads turned as the entire year eleven student body turned to look at us.
Well, to look at Noor.
From the corner of my eye, I noticed another disruption. Vineet was pushing his way through the cafeteria towards us.
Noor stepped closer to Sabah and held her lightly by her shoulders. ‘I’m so, so sorry, Sabah. It was a mistake. You have to believe me, I never meant to hurt you.’
‘I don’t have to believe anything.’ Sabah pushed her away. ‘Was it not enough to screw every senior in school? You had to go after my boyfriend.’
‘It wasn’t like that—’
‘Sabah, it’s not her fault,’ Vineet jumped in. ‘We—’
‘We?’ Sabah shrieked. ‘I’m done with you. Both of you.’
‘Do you want to talk about it?’ I asked Noor after Sabah stormed off with Vineet chasing after her, making heads turn the other way.
‘There’s nothing to talk about,’ Noor said, sitting down and flicking through her book.
‘Those rumours in the summer,’ I said, only just working it out. ‘You were the one Vineet was seeing?’
She sighed. ‘We were just hanging out as friends to begin with . . . but then . . . It was a mistake.’
‘What about Sameer?’
‘He has his uses, but I don’t like him like that.’
I nodded, not sure how to respond to that. I thought of the pimpled boy who had acted as Noor’s personal porter the entire time we were in Oxford. He had had his uses too.
‘You think I’m a bitch,’ she said, mistaking my silence for judgement. ‘Go on, you can say it.’
‘No, of course not,’ I said, though of course I was judging her. Best friend’s boyfriend . . . who could resist the high horse when it came to something that scandalous and that cliché? ‘But I don’t understand. Why him? You can have literally anyone you want.’
‘Clearly, I can’t,’ she scoffed. ‘Look, if I hadn’t been so drunk, I wouldn’t have let myself act on it. I would never do anything to hurt my friends . . . you know that, right?’
‘Yeah,’ I said, picking up my pen and absent-mindedly scribbling an equation into my notebook. ‘Wait – what do you mean act on it? Do you, like, like him?’
‘No.’ Noor made a face. ‘I have standards.’
We had PE after the exam and the whole class emptied out quickly, relieved at the prospect of an afternoon of mindless laps and long jumps after three hours spent battling advanced trigonometry.
I laid my gym kit out on the bench. I had mastered the art of changing in a busy locker room without revealing more than an inch of skin than was necessary years ago. I pulled on my leggings underneath my skirt, and then started the somewhat more complicated dance of swapping my button-down school shirt for a vest top.
I was lacing up my trainers when Noor burst in. She had been summoned to the headmistress’s office right after the Maths exam, presumably about the Head Girl interviews.
‘How’d it go?’ I asked her, but she walked right past me to where Sabah was standing, surrounded by her usual posse. I followed her. The group parted to let Noor in and I caught a glimpse of Sabah standing there in nothing but a silky white bra and matching knickers. Spotless. Pristine.
‘You think you can just throw me under the bus?’ Noor yelled.
‘I did no such thing.’
‘You told Banerjee I brought the fireworks to school!’
Sabah smirked but said nothing. She busied herself with pulling on her light pink leggings.
‘She’s already taken me off the Head Girl shortlist,’ Noor continued. ‘And she’s talking about a suspension.’
Sabah made a show of twisting the drawstring on her leggings into a neat little bow.
‘Come on, Sabah, it was one kiss and I apologized.’ Noor sighed. ‘This is serious. You know what Abbu’s going to do.’
Sabah turned to face the locker as she unhooked her bra. She took her time changing into her sports bra and vest. It felt like a piece of theatre, the showdown between the wife and the mistress, while the audience waited, hearts thumping, to see who would come out the winner.
‘Sabah!’ Noor yelled when the silence had become excruciating, even for the rest of us.
Sabah turned around slowly. ‘You’re right,’ she said, her voice pragmatic, measured. ‘This is serious.’
I felt myself relax a little, relieved to hear something, anything other than Noor’s panicked voice.
‘If you think you can make out with my boyfriend and I won’t do anything, it’s really serious.’ She took a step towards Noor and slanted her head to one side, her profile lit up by the beam of sunlight leaking in through the skylight. A modern-day Medusa. ‘A kiss might not matter to someone like you, but it means something to me.’ She slammed her locker shut. ‘You had it coming.’
‘Fine,’ Noor said. She took a step back. ‘Fine,’ she repeated with an overtly casual shrug. A slow smile was spreading across her face ‘If this is how you want to play it, from now on, all bets are off.’
Noor spun around and marched away from the group before Sabah had the chance to respond, leaving all of us staring at her open-mouthed.
She was halfway across the room when she paused. ‘Oh, and FYI,’ she called out, without bothering to turn, ‘it wasn’t just the one time, and it definitely wasn’t just a kiss.’
SABAH
The lamp casts a spotlight across my desk as I work through the case from the beginning. I wade through pages and pages of archived articles, news clippings and interview transcripts, pulling out the most relevant extracts and pinning them up on the corkboard in front of me, mapping out the sequence of events. The box of family photos and videos that Faraz sent over is sitting on the floor ready for me to unpack but I am too wired to be able to focus on that particular task.
I’d expected a certain amount of hostility from Vineet, but it’s the slipperiness of his reaction that is bothering me. He had looked stricken, panicked almost when I asked him about that night, but then laughed it off a minute later. And then there was the detail about the bottle of water and the fact that Noor told him she’d call him the next day. After everything that had happened, why would she say that?
I push my chair back and stand up, a thought forming in my head. Every teenage girl has a secret life, but I’d always believed that Noor’s secrets and mine were knotted together inextricably just like our histories. We had been inseparable, spending hours analyzing every little crush, dissecting every conversation, poring over every tiny thing that happened in our overly dramatic lives. I thought I knew her better than I knew myself and yet I hadn’t seen it coming. Not the kiss with Vineet, not the stuff with Alia, none of it.
And if I had missed that, what else had I missed?
I set my plate on the kitchen counter and slide the phone towards me.
I draw my face into a smile. ‘Jenny. Hi.’
‘I wanted to touch base and see how you were doing.’ She sounds a bit breathless and I am reminded of how young she is. Young and overeager.
‘I’m fine,’ I say, trying to keep the exasperation out of my voice. Jenny had insisted on doing a full risk assessment before the trip, as if I was heading out into a war zone, not my childhood home. Though perhaps going to a war zone would have been easier than my lunch with Vineet had been. I think about the next interview on my schedule and my shoulders stiffen.
‘Amazing. You had the ex-boyfriend yesterday, didn’t you? How did that go?’
I flinch at the categorization.
‘Good. The interviews are coming along well.’
‘Are you able to send me a copy of your notes? Just something to give us a bit of flavour over here,’ she says, adding, ‘You know how Andrew likes to be kept informed.’ Her nervous giggle hops and skips across continents to irritate me.
‘I’d rather wait till I’ve completed all the interviews. I don’t want to lead you all down a path I don’t end up pursuing,’ I say, knowing full well how much that will annoy her. The path had been set, as evidenced by the corset-tight schedule she’d put together for me.
There is a long pause as Jenny comes up with a response.
‘Um, sure, okay,’ she says, finally. ‘So I can see the next interview is scheduled for tomorrow afternoon. Would you mind dropping me a text afterwards, let me know how it goes?’
I’d mind very much.
I glance at the clock. It’s just past eight but if I leave now, I might make it.
‘Sabah?’ Jenny’s voice crackles in my ear.
I slide my uneaten dinner into the bin.
‘Actually, Jenny, there’s been a change of plans. I’m heading out for an interview just now, but I do need to speak to Dan before I go. Can you put him on?’ I speak quickly, leavin
g no room for her to interrupt.
There is a short pause while Jenny tries to figure out whether or not it’s worth telling me off for meddling with her schedule. She must decide to let it slip because I hear a few short beeps and then Dan’s voice hollers down the phone.
‘Sabah! How’s it going?’
I smile. I’ve always liked Dan. Not only is he one of the best archive producers I know, he’s a genuinely nice guy and one of my few friends at the company. I spend a few minutes complaining to him about Jenny before I get to the point.
‘And there I was, thinking you’d rung to hear my dulcet tones,’ Dan says before going on to explain that he’s sent requests out to all the big archive agencies for the footage I’d asked for. ‘I should have the clip log ready for you in a couple of days.’
‘Great.’
‘I’ve got to be honest, though,’ he says, ‘I’m not having much luck with the Delhi police. I’ve filed the right to information request but they just keep bouncing me around. I’ll try ringing them first thing tomorrow, but I think you might have to sort this one out on the ground.’
I groan. I should have expected this really. ‘It’s just classic Indian bureaucracy at play. I’ll probably have to hound them down physically before they release the files.’
He laughs down the phone. ‘Okay, I’ll let you go do your thing. Let me know how it goes.’
‘Dan?’
‘Yeah?’
‘Did you say you were good with computers?’
‘Not as good as I am with the ladies but I know my way about.’
‘Oh, fuck off,’ I say, smiling.
‘What do you need?’ he says, his tone serious, reminding me that he’s one of the most strong-nosed researchers I know. Even though it was outside his remit as archive producer, he’d spent weeks tracking down old suspects’ information for the Harriet Clarke documentary. More than that, I know I can’t do this alone and I trust him.
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