‘I’m sorry, I am so, so sorry,’ he murmurs over and over again and for a moment I am reminded of the boy I used to know.
What if he is telling the truth? What if he really was brainwashed?
The murmuring continues for a few moments before they part and the camera zooms out again. We get another glimpse of Faraz.
‘Do you need some money?’ Faraz says. ‘Abbu must have been looking after you all these years. How much do you need?’
He almost had me.
The pounding behind my ribcage intensifies. I feel my hands ball up into fists.
I can only hope Noor can see through him.
‘Come on, Noor, get the fuck out of there,’ Alia whispers under her breath. ‘We have him.’
More silence. Noor breaks it this time.
‘I don’t need your money.’ The bitterness in her voice is unmistakable, but there is something else there too. Something that scares me. ‘Did you kill him?’
Next to me Alia gasps. My entire body goes cold, an icy chill spreading through me as I realize what Noor is doing and why she was adamant about going in alone. If Faraz really did kill his father, the only person who can get him to admit it is Noor.
On screen, Faraz’s face freezes. ‘What?’
‘Abbu. Did you kill him?’
The pause lasts less than a second, but that second, that slight hesitation, is all I need. He’s lying. I watch as he rearranges his face into a picture of indignation.
‘How dare you ask me that? Abbu had a heart attack.’
Noor’s voice doesn’t waver. ‘His heart was perfect,’ she says. ‘It was about the party presidency, wasn’t it?’
Faraz stills. His face darkens.
‘He told me. He told me that you were desperate to take over but he couldn’t trust you. Why would he? After what you did.’
I can see the anger ripple across his face. She’s pushing him too hard.
‘Shut up,’ he says, his words cut from steel.
‘He told me he was worried about what you might do.’ Relentless. ‘You threatened him, didn’t you?’ Noor presses on. ‘What did you do to—’
‘I said shut up,’ he yells. ‘He got what was –’
I only have to hear the fury in his voice and I am out of the car, scrambling through the bushes, rushing into the house, a single thought running through my mind. Not again.
Please.
Not again.
SABAH
I burst through the back door and into the kitchen.
I run into the living room, my heart hammering against my chest. I can’t believe I let Noor talk me into this. I know what Faraz is capable of. I should have stopped her. I should have—
‘How dare you?’ Faraz’s voice echoes through the room. ‘You have no idea of the sacrifices I’ve had to make.’
I stop in my tracks. Alia is seconds behind me.
Faraz has Noor pinned to the wall at the top of the stairs, his hands gripping her arms, his face inches away from hers. Even from this distance, I can see that she is terrified, the confidence from earlier long gone. I step forward instinctively, but Alia’s hand on my shoulder holds me back.
‘Wait,’ she whispers, coming to stand next to me. She holds up her phone. It takes me a second to work out what she’s saying. Her bodyguards. Of course.
‘Do you think it was easy for me?’ Faraz yells. ‘I earned that post. After all those years of doing exactly what he wanted me to do, playing by his rules . . . But he still couldn’t see that I had changed. That I was sorry. All he ever cared about—’
Faraz cuts himself off.
We all hear it, the sound of a door opening, the sound of footsteps over the marble floor.
It feels as though even the walls are holding their breath.
A knot of worry swells in my throat. No one is supposed to be here; if a guard sees us . . .
My heart drops at the sound of the voice booming in from the entrance hall.
‘Faraz? Are you awake, jaan?’
Faraz’s head jerks backwards but he doesn’t let go of Noor.
She’s supposed to be away. It was the one thing we had all agreed on. We had to make sure Fatima Aunty was away on the night that Noor snuck in and I had double, triple checked, ringing her late last night at her brother’s house to make sure she was still there.
Alia grips my wrist, her fingernails clawing into my flesh as we watch Fatima Aunty walk in. She stops abruptly at the foot of the staircase. Her hand flies to her head.
A single word escapes her lips. ‘Noorie.’
She takes a step forward, clutching the banister for support.
‘Noorie,’ she repeats, her voice thick with disbelief and longing and something else. Hope. She stutters. ‘You – you’re alive.’
Faraz turns, his grip on Noor loosening, and as he twists to look at his mother, Noor shoves him. She slips out of his grasp. I’ve almost exhaled, relief fluttering through me, but before she can get away Faraz lunges forward and grabs her. He drags her away from the stairs and forces her back towards the wall, his hands twisting around her neck, choking her.
The sound that Noor makes is chilling. Her voice is strangled and it takes me a second to realize she’s saying something.
‘Ammi.’ Her words come out garbled. ‘Faraz . . . Abbu . . . he –’
I know without a doubt that he will kill her. Faraz will do anything to keep his mother from finding out what he did. I yank myself free of Alia’s grip and run across the room.
I’m halfway up the stairs when Fatima Aunty screams. The raw, guttural sound of her wail is enough to distract Faraz and in that split second of confusion Noor presses herself back into the wall, her features warped with effort and concentration. One look at her and I know exactly what she’s going to do. She’s going to use the wall as leverage to push Faraz away. I look at the banister behind Faraz and the marble floor underneath.
I want to shout, warn Noor, but I can’t get my voice to work. I watch, paralyzed, as Noor pushes Faraz. I see the look of shock on his face as he realizes what is happening. It’s over so quickly he doesn’t even get the time to scream. All I hear is the horrible, sickening sound of skull against marble.
Followed by excruciating, chilling silence. Until Fatima Aunty’s scream pierces the air.
Noor bolts past me in a flash, prompting me out of my shock.
I run down the stairs.
Alia is crouched on the floor next to Fatima Aunty. Less than a second later, Noor is there, arms wrapped around her mother, holding her up.
‘Is he dead?’ I whisper but my words are lost under the sound of Fatima Aunty’s wails.
‘Is he dead?’ I shout and Noor whips around, registering my presence. There is blood on her hands, on her sleeves. Her neck is bruised, bluish streaks highlighting the space where Faraz’s fingers had been.
I take a step to the side and look past her. My knees buckle. Faraz is lying on the floor, neck twisted, limbs bent in awkward angles, blood pooling under his head.
The relief is to be expected; it is the lack of remorse that catches me off guard.
I close my eyes. In some ways, I had known this was the only way it could’ve ended, that any hope for justice was unrealistic.
I am vaguely aware of Alia shouting into her phone, calling an ambulance.
The two bodyguards that Alia brought along as a safety measure hover uselessly.
My eyes drift back to Fatima Aunty. She is clinging to Faraz, cradling his head, begging, pleading with him to wake up. Her only son.
I turn away, unable to watch.
What she’s asking for is impossible.
She got her daughter back, but she won’t be quite as lucky with her son.
He is dead, gone forever.
ALIA
Fifteen years later
I stand in the shadows and watch the last few members of the audience settle in. The lights have been dimmed but the mid-morning sun filtering through the windows is enou
gh to illuminate the auditorium. It’s packed, nearly every seat occupied by ministers and party workers.
I take a deep breath and hold it in for as long as I can. It’s a meditation technique I’ve come to rely on in the last few years, a gentler way to calm my brain than fidgeting, though the anxiety that used to unnerve me as a young politician has long since dissolved.
It’s been fifteen years since Faraz died. Fifteen years since I let go of the guilt that had been holding me hostage since I was a teenager.
I think back to everything I’ve done since then to get here, to this day, my mind replaying every risk, every sacrifice, every little step that took me in the right direction, even when it didn’t feel like it.
After the paramedics took Faraz away and the police left for the night, I pulled Noor and Sabah into the kitchen. We had a choice to make – Faraz was dead. He couldn’t be tried for his crimes posthumously, but we could release the recording to the world. Let people know the truth behind the facade. Or we could forget about justice and focus on rehabilitating our lives.
The decision was simple, really.
The video of Noor confronting Faraz got more than two million hits in twenty-four hours. I still remember the pride that rippled through me. I held on to it for a long time. That video, the public outpouring of support, that deep sense of justice – it became about more than just Noor and Salma. I turned to it every time a rapist walked free, every time a victim was slut-shamed, every time a woman was silenced.
I held on to it when the party president called me and asked me if I’d consider running for the general election.
I held on to it when I won by the highest majority the party had ever seen.
I held on to it when I was sworn in as the WCD Minister two terms in a row.
I even held on to it when under the weight of all the lies and the secrets, my marriage finally crumbled.
Noor, Sabah and I tried to keep in touch but as the years wore on, the lunches turned to phone calls, then to emails, finally trickling down to the odd birthday message.
Sabah’s documentary about Noor broke records, winning every award under the sun and establishing her as one of the best documentary film-makers in the UK. Since then she has made a dozen more documentaries, focusing on everything from war crimes to human trafficking, fraught subjects always presented with a sensitivity and compassion that seems so unlike the girl I went to school with. The last I heard, she had married an archive producer and moved to LA.
Noor went back to Scotland as soon as the investigation was over, taking her mother with her. I saw a picture of her beaming, standing next to Kate and their two little boys at the opening of her first solo show at the Saatchi Gallery a few years ago. I’ve toyed with the idea of buying one of her pieces for years, but I never get around to it. Her paintings remind me of a version of myself that I’d rather forget. They remind me of the outsider, always lurking in the shadows, waiting to be let in. That’s not who I am any more.
My mind flashes back to an evening nearly thirty years ago. It was a few weeks after the funeral – Salma’s funeral – and the Qureshis had organized a memorial at their house. It was a small affair, limited to the immediate family and a handful of friends, which is why I was surprised when a uniformed officer, the man I would later come to know as the police commissioner, walked in. I followed him down the corridor. I hung back while he spoke to Javed Uncle, their whispers getting more and more urgent as they talked about Noor and Faraz and the crime that they had covered up. I understood that day what power meant. What it could do. How it could alter perceptions and change truths.
It was astounding.
Years later, I used the power that I had to balance the scales of justice. Javed Uncle treated me like a daughter and for years, I kept quiet out of respect for him. But what happened to Noor was an injustice that had gone on too long and after Javed Uncle died, I knew it was up to me to do something. Faraz seemed determined to claw his way to the top and he was so entitled, so power-hungry, he couldn’t see that he was destroying lives in the process.
He was destroying the career I had worked so hard to build.
I couldn’t let him get away with it. He had to be stopped. But I knew Faraz and I understood that the only way he would own up to his crimes was if he was brought face to face with Noor.
And the best way to reach Noor had always been Sabah.
I sent that diary entry to Sabah. After she told me about the Trojan Horse trap, I drove up to the Qureshi mansion and logged in to the burner email I’d set up, knowing that Sabah would assume it was Fatima Aunty who had sent it. It was simple, but necessary. Sabah had always liked playing saviour to Noor and I was certain that even the slightest hint that Noor was murdered would be enough to get Sabah going. I was right. Less than two weeks after I sent her the ‘tip’, Sabah was in India, digging, asking questions, trying to uncover the truth under the pretence of making a documentary. Sabah had always had a dogged determination, especially when it came to Noor, so all I had to do was nudge her along and wait in the sidelines until she managed to draw Noor out.
I pull myself out of my thoughts as the compère finishes introducing me. I hand my phone to Omar.
Javed Uncle used to say that the most dangerous people are the ones who believe that they’re doing right, doing good. He said that there was nothing more toxic than the combination of steely resolve and self-righteousness. I never understood that. The world needs people who are willing to do whatever it takes to balance the scales.
I take a breath, adjust my sari and then move out of the wings.
The applause as I step onto the stage is deafening. People are shouting, chanting my name, yelling out the campaign slogans we spent months perfecting. I smile as two words rise above the din and settle into my ears, my heart, my soul.
Prime Minister.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
First, thanks must go to my outstanding editors, Vicki Mellor – whose intelligent, incisive and tactful feedback has made me a better writer and Can You See Me Now? a better book – and Gillian Green, who guided this book to publication with extraordinary enthusiasm and a multitude of ingenious ideas.
Huge thanks also to everyone else at Pan Macmillan: Matthew Cole, Kate Tolley, Mel Four, Rosie Wilson, Ruth Killick and all the other people working behind the scenes. Your passion, attentiveness and all-round brilliance never fail to amaze me.
My agent, Annette Green, always has my back and I’m constantly grateful for her support in getting to grips with everything that comes with being a published author. Calling myself a published author still gives me goose bumps – something that I’ll always (happily) blame you for, Annette.
Thank you, Simon Yeoman-Taylor, for sharing with me so candidly everything that goes into making a documentary. Needless to say any mistakes are my own, but there would have been a lot more without your help.
The hardest part of writing a novel is starting it, and I’ve got my brilliantly supportive Faber Academy writing group to thank for reading the first few chapters and cheering me on at that crucial early stage.
Anjola Adedayo, thank you for stepping in to help with the part of the writing process that I hate the most: outlining.
Huge thanks, as always, to Anvi Mridul and George de Freitas, both of whom took time out of their very busy lives to read stacks of pages and helped me figure out which ones not to light on fire.
Rishabh Sakhlecha and Ashmi Mridul, thank you for listening to me go on and on about murders and plot twists, offering world-class feedback and calling me out, in the way that only family can, on my more ridiculous ideas.
Having grown up in a political family, I was lucky to have access to a number of people who helped with research and offered invaluable advice on the political set-up in the book. However, this is a work of fiction and I must acknowledge that while I’ve tried to stay true to the essence of modern Indian politics and used several real-life cases as inspiration – as eagle-eyed readers will have n
o doubt noticed – the criminal cases, constituencies (and their demographics) and political parties depicted in the novel are fictional.
There is nothing that feeds my soul quite like a Nirula’s hot chocolate fudge sundae, nothing that brings me greater joy than Sunday brunch overlooking Delhi Golf Club’s greens and nothing that makes me smile as quickly as stepping off a plane and walking across the depressingly brown carpets of Delhi’s IGI Airport. This book is a love letter, albeit a slightly dark one, to the city that I grew up in that, no matter where I live, will always, always be home. Dilli meri jaan
I cannot possibly talk about Delhi without mentioning the people who make it home: my family. Thank you for always believing in me and for always being up for a Nirula’s HCF.
Next, the girls I grew up with, Avny, Prerna and Shivani, who are nothing like the characters in this book and who remain, nearly thirty years after we first met, my middle-of-the-night friends (I’m looking at you, Shivani) and the keepers of my secrets.
And finally, huge thanks to all the readers, booksellers, authors, bloggers, reviewers and bookstagrammers who have been so supportive of my writing – I appreciate every one of you.
Praise for Trisha Sakhlecha
‘A deliciously dark and original debut about love, loss and lies, with an ending that is impossible to predict’
Alice Feeney, author of Sometimes I Lie
‘Original and evocative, I was completely hooked by the longing, love and envy simmering sometimes unseen, yet ever-present. With an ending I couldn’t predict, this debut is one to savour’
Karen Hamilton, author of The Perfect Girlfriend
‘Well written, with plenty of twists and an excellent sense of place’
Guardian
‘I couldn’t move until I’d finished . . . An original voice, and an intricate, unpredictable plot. It was really refreshing to read a psychological thriller set within a different culture. I loved it’
Emma Curtis, author of One Little Mistake
Can You See Me Now? Page 28