Can You See Me Now?

by Trisha Sakhlecha

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me all this? Why lie?’

  ‘Because I didn’t want to go into it. It’s ancient history and you knew the most relevant parts anyway. Noor was a bitch.’

  I wince at the tone. ‘And she had it coming? Is that what you’re saying?’

  Niv has the presence of mind to look shocked, hurt even. ‘No. But she doesn’t automatically become a good person because she died. And I’m not sure what it is that Sabah’s after, but if I were you, I’d steer clear of her.’

  ‘It’s funny, that almost makes it sound like you have something to hide. Where were you the night of the party?’

  It takes a second for my unspoken accusation to land and when it does, Niv jerks backwards.

  ‘How dare you?’

  I stand, shockingly unbalanced on my feet.

  ‘Stay away from my husband.’

  I start to walk away but not before Niv’s delivered her parting shot.

  ‘You know, you’ve become so paranoid you can’t even see who’s on your side anymore.’

  SABAH

  My phone hasn’t stopped ringing all morning.

  I had heard of lightning fast pre-empts, of deals that raked up hundreds of thousands of pounds in advances alone, but nothing could have prepared me for the reaction from Amazon.

  Less than forty-eight hours after Andrew pitched it to them, Amazon sent in their opening offer, a figure so ridiculously high that I’d had to ask Andrew to repeat himself twice on the phone, certain that I’d misheard him. I needn’t have bothered. An hour after we accepted the offer, the contract landed in my inbox complete with the exclusivity clause and the release schedule that I’d insisted on.

  Exactly fifteen years after she died, the story of Noor’s life and death will be streamed in 200 countries across the world.

  There are more than a thousand likes and comments on my Facebook post linking to the announcement on Deadline. There are thirty-four unread texts and eighteen voicemails on my phone, messages of congratulations, people I haven’t seen in years telling me how proud they are of me.

  I should be happy. I should be celebrating. This is exactly the reaction that I wanted. Hell, it’s more than what I wanted. It’s the perfect follow-up to the Harriet Clarke documentary and yet with every congratulatory message that I receive, my heart sinks a little bit further. I have run through the case sequentially dozens of times, I’ve interviewed everyone involved, I’ve pored over photographs and watched hundreds of hours of archive footage and yet I have no new leads and my only theory has been completely debunked. If I can’t use this documentary to find Noor’s killer, to prove to the world that she didn’t commit suicide, then all I’m doing is using my best friend’s death to pay off my debts. I am exploiting her family’s pain to save my floundering career.

  This is how I imagine a leech must feel.

  I wonder if I got it wrong. Maybe Noor did commit suicide. Maybe the diary entry is nothing more than another example of Noor being dramatic for drama’s sake.

  My thoughts are jumbled.

  My memories of that year have become so distorted, so muddled up with my own guilt, I’m no longer sure of anything.

  I think about what Addi said, what my mother has been saying for years.

  Noor was an addict with a depressive streak. She had been bullied and shamed and pushed to the edge until she cracked.

  What if the only reason I’ve been so convinced that Vineet had killed her, that anyone had killed her, was that it was easier to believe that she had been murdered than to think that my stupid, childish actions, brutal in their imagining, relentless in their execution, could have been enough to tip her over the edge? What if the only reason I have been hell-bent on proving she was murdered is so I can assuage my own guilt over what I did?

  My phone lights up with yet another congratulatory message and I distract myself, taking my time typing out a response.

  Here’s the other thing; the thing I don’t allow myself to even think about. Believing that Noor committed suicide means finally saying goodbye. It means letting her go and focusing on the mess that is my life instead of obsessing over her death.

  But maybe that is exactly what I need to do. I’m thirty-one. Save for the occasional Tinder hook-up, I haven’t had a real relationship in more than ten years. I live alone in an apartment that I haven’t even bothered to fully furnish. I have plenty of colleagues but no friends.

  Perhaps I should look at this documentary as a chance at catharsis.

  I look at the webpage open on my laptop.

  Amazon Studios Grabs True Crime Docu-series From Sabah Khan & Arch Films in Pre-Emptive Buy

  This contract is everything I’ve ever dreamed of.

  I decide I should at least try to celebrate.

  I head downstairs into the living room and put some music on. I order a takeaway meal, then open a bottle of red wine and sit down at the table. I raise a glass.

  To me and my ghosts.

  I pass out on the sofa, letting the wine lull me into the kind of sleep that wipes everything out and leaves you feeling like the earth has shifted on its axis when you do finally emerge. I twist myself to a sitting position and roll my shoulders to ease the pain that is making itself known, every muscle and nerve ending in my back objecting. I reach for my phone to check the time, but it’s dead, the battery worn out after a night of multiple notifications. I put it on charge and make myself a cup of strong black coffee as I run through my mental checklist.

  Jenny’s rescheduled my flight back to London so I can attend the initial meeting with Amazon next week, which means that instead of a fortnight, I now have three days to finish the preliminary research and figure out what really happened that night.

  I gulp my coffee down then run upstairs and go straight into the shower.

  Everyone who knew Noor believes that she committed suicide. Almost immediately after she died, there was a narrative that was set. The narrative of a troubled girl who was bullied by her friends, exploited by the media and persecuted by the nation, and looking at it from that slant, I can understand why the idea that she killed herself is so appealing. It’s tidy, the narrative picking up the strands of underage sex, drugs, toxic friendships and tying them up in a neat, cautionary bow. But if there’s one thing that I’ve learned, it’s that real life is never this neat.

  I get dressed and go downstairs to get my phone. Though there have been several tell-all books and documentaries about Noor, the police files have never been published. I think of some of the most high-profile cases from the past two decades – the Noida gang rape, the Arushi-Hemraj double homicide, the Ryan School murder; there are countless examples of the Indian police botching crime scenes, misplacing evidence, falsifying statements. Alia had said that the files were classified due to Javed Uncle’s position on the cabinet, but what if the real reason was more sinister?

  I send Alia a quick text before systematically checking my messages and voicemails.

  It’s another twenty minutes before I get to Dan’s voicemail. I listen to him go on about Amazon for a while before he says the word Trojan and I sit up, alert. He explains the process his hacker friend used, talks about VPNs and IP addresses before uttering the words I’ve been waiting to hear: he’s sent me an email with the GPS coordinates.

  The location of the person who sent me Noor’s diary entry.

  My fingers fly over my phone as I find Dan’s email and enter the coordinates into Google Maps. I pinch the screen repeatedly to zoom out.

  My insides twist into a tight knot as I realize what I’m looking at.

  My hand goes automatically to the gold sparrow resting against my chest. It’s ironic really. It’s the first place I looked, and the first person I ruled out.

  I look at the white speck surrounded by acres of green.

  The house I know so well.

  I slump back in my seat.

  The email came from the Qureshi house.

  ALIA

  Fif
teen years ago

  School hurt without Noor there, more so because in a weird way, she was everywhere, around every corner, in every classroom, at track practice, in the cafeteria. Everywhere I went all anyone was talking about was what she had done and all that was reminding me of was what I had failed to do. I was the cowardly one. I was the one who had walked away yet somehow it felt like she had abandoned me.

  Over the next week, things got even worse. Noor and Vineet were expelled. No amount of family money or influence could get them out of this, not with the whole country watching.

  By the time the police sprang into action and shut down the website, the video had been downloaded over a million times. Not only had it become national news, everyone from my granddad’s golf friends to our milkman had seen it. Everyone was talking about it.

  There was no way of knowing how many people shared it privately, but what I understood was this – Noor and Vineet were never named. People knew who it was, they knew whom to slander, because they watched it. The unfairness of it all left me reeling.

  Vineet had been walking around telling everyone that Noor had known he was recording the whole time. I’d even heard him tell someone that she was the one who sent it out, not him, and it was all I could do not to go and kick him in the guts myself. Noor, on the other hand, hadn’t said anything at all. It was almost as if she had dropped off the face of the earth and yet all anyone was talking about was her.

  The school launched an official investigation into the social lives of our class. No one knew what it was they were hoping to find, but we all knew there was plenty that we needed to hide.

  I waited to see if anyone would find out what I’d done, if I’d get punished, but knowingly or not, I hadn’t done anything that was technically against the rules. The school assumed that I was the impressionable new girl who had found herself in Noor’s vice-like grip. Everyone was so concerned that I had been damaged by my friendship with Noor; they never even stopped to consider that I might have been the one inflicting the damage. So I got away with it, and for a while at least life continued.

  After two weeks of angry silence, and an awkward phone call with my mother, who in the end couldn’t be bothered to visit, my grandparents un-grounded me out of pity. But it was obvious that the relationship I’d had with Nana and Nani was gone. They had seen who I really was and like every other person in my life, they had decided they didn’t like the real me.

  Sabah had allowed me back into the fold, but barely. I had been demoted to my old seat.

  I found myself missing Noor with a desperation I had not known before. Her madness, her chaos, her house, her family, her father. But more than anything else, I missed the camaraderie, the sense of belonging that I had never known before.

  I missed having friends and I wanted back in, no matter what the cost.

  I walked over nervously when Sabah summoned me after homeroom a few days later.

  ‘We were just talking about the leavers’ ball next week.’ Sabah smiled sweetly. ‘You are going, aren’t you?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said, trying not to get overexcited about what sounded like an invitation. Perhaps Sabah had finally decided to forgive me.

  ‘You should come. It’ll be fun,’ she said.

  Next to her, Saloni nodded enthusiastically.

  ‘Okay,’ I said.

  I allowed myself a small smile as I turned around and trudged back to my seat.

  ‘Oh, and Alia,’ Sabah called out after me. ‘Make sure you bring Noor.’

  Over the next week, I called Noor every day, left messages, wrote her a letter. I apologized a million times over but she refused to talk to me.

  I knew how important it was for me to make this up to Sabah. I had seen what she could do, what the boys at school could do. As much as I wanted to go to the leaver’s ball, turning up without Noor would come with consequences.

  I had resigned myself to the fact that I’d have to skip the ball altogether until the night before the party, when Noor finally called me back.

  ‘I was getting sick of listening to you whine in your messages,’ she said.

  ‘I wanted to apologize. I just – with all those boys surrounding us, I panicked. I’m really sorry,’ I blurted out.

  ‘Are you?’ Noor sounded bored.

  ‘Of course I am. School’s shit without you.’

  ‘Oh, gee, I feel terrible for you.’

  I sighed. ‘Sorry, that was stupid. I miss you.’

  ‘Me too,’ she mumbled. ‘What’s going on at school?’

  I filled her in on everything: the new girl, the new rules, Sabah’s tyranny, Banerjee losing it over bathroom graffiti. I really had missed her, I realized as we spoke. She was the only person who saw the real me and never judged me for it.

  ‘How are things with you?’ I asked her cautiously, after the gossip from school had run dry. Though the story about Noor and Vineet’s video had moved away from the front pages, the country’s reaction to it had prompted a bunch of talk show specials. Noor’s father was in the news almost daily, with his rivals using the riots in Kanpur as an excuse to pressurize him to resign, and the last I’d heard, Faraz had been suspended from college for beating up a bunch of boys who allegedly asked him for Noor’s nightly rates.

  ‘Shit. Ammi isn’t speaking to me. Abbu looks like he wants to kill me whenever I see him, and Faraz has just completely lost it. They’re sending me away.’

  ‘Where?’ I asked. Even with her father’s connections and all the money in the world, I doubted any school in the city would take Noor. I’d heard Vineet had just about managed to get into a school in north Delhi, not surprising perhaps since his father owned the building.

  ‘Somewhere so far away that they can forget I exist. Sometimes I think it would be easier if—’ She cut herself off.

  ‘Are you okay, Noor?’

  ‘Look, I don’t need you psychoanalyzing me.’

  ‘No, that’s not –’ I started, but that’s exactly what I had been doing. I twisted the cord around my finger. ‘What are you doing tomorrow? Should I come over after school?’ I asked, trying to keep the desperation out of my voice.

  ‘Aren’t you going to the leavers’ ball?’

  ‘Yes, but . . . are you going?’

  ‘I don’t think anyone wants me there,’ she said. Noor hadn’t exactly been uninvited but it had become pretty clear that she wasn’t welcome at any of the Wescott parties anymore. ‘Plus, I’m grounded for life.’

  ‘Since when do you do what’s expected of you?’

  Noor gave a short, dry laugh. ‘Actually, you’re right,’ she said. ‘Come over.’

  It cost me an hour and 150 rupees to get there and all the while I kept telling myself I was doing this as much for myself as for Sabah. I missed Noor. I wanted to see her. That much at least was true.

  ‘What’s going on?’ I asked Noor. I’d seen TV vans parked on the drive and I could hear loud voices filtering through from the living room.

  ‘Abbu’s having a press conference so all his stupid karyakartas are here. They talk so much shit, it’s unbelievable.’

  ‘Where’s Fatima Aunty?’ I asked. Something about the way Noor was sitting alone in her room didn’t feel right.

  ‘Visiting my grandparents. It wasn’t enough to shut herself in her room, she needed a whole city between us.’

  I felt my throat constrict as Noor told me how her mother had told her she couldn’t even bear to look at her anymore, how her father kept his eyes trained on the floor when he spoke to her, how Faraz had been vacillating between spouting quotes from the Quran to ignoring her completely, how he walked around so angry that she was scared he would implode.

  ‘Have you spoken to anyone from school?’

  ‘No,’ she said, looking everywhere except at me. It hit me then how completely alone she was and it made my guilt feel even heavier. ‘The only one I want to speak to is Sabah, and she refuses to even pick up the phone.’ She spoke matter-of-factly b
ut I could see the tears bristling in her eyes.

  ‘Are they still talking about me?’ she asked after a few minutes.

  ‘A bit,’ I waffled, the lie twisting around my insides, tying them up in a tight knot. ‘It’ll pass, though . . . you know what it’s like, they’ll tire of this and move on to something else in a few weeks.’

  ‘I think you and I both know that this isn’t going to die down anytime soon. I just wish I hadn’t been stupid enough to trust Vineet.’

  Noor was sitting in the window seat, lit up by the late afternoon sun. There was something so unsuspecting about her in that moment, I felt my heart crack open.

  ‘Do you love him?’

  ‘I wish it were that simple,’ she said so softly that I had to lean forward to hear her.

  I had been hoping, somewhat selfishly, that she would tell me that she had secretly been in love with him, that they couldn’t imagine being apart, that the video was just the result of teenage idiocy. The idea that she had done those things with Vineet simply so she could hurt Sabah sickened me.

  Yet I couldn’t help but feel sorry for her.

  ‘Have you spoken to him since . . . you know?’

  ‘No, and I don’t plan to.’

  ‘He’s saying you knew about the video.’

  ‘Of course he’s saying that.’

  ‘Did you?’ I asked, desperate to know but also aware that our newly reinstated friendship was still fragile.

  ‘How can you ask me that?’ She turned so sharply it made me jump. There were tears in her eyes.

  ‘Sorry, I just – He’ll probably be there.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Are you sure you want to do this?’ I asked her, no longer concerned about what Sabah wanted. I knew the kinds of things people were saying about Noor. They would rip her apart, and knowing Sabah, she certainly hadn’t called her there to make up.

  ‘I need to see Sabah. I can’t stop my parents from sending me away, but I can’t leave without speaking to her. We’ve been best friends since we were five. I have to make things right.’

  We waited till the commotion had died down, till Noor’s father had left and the house was eerily quiet.