1.00pm, Friday, 25 March 1994
As he followed Mr Todd down the maze of dank corridors, never before so empty or quiet, Sukhbir wondered about the urgent pace of one usually so languid.
‘What’s happening?’ he asked, hurrying to keep up with him.
‘World War Three,’ came the contemptuous gibe meant to silence him.
Scrutinising the bald patch on the back of his head, he thought he would try again. ‘Seriously,’ he said, ‘I don’t understand what’s going on. Why’s the whole school in lock-down?’
‘Armageddon,’ scoffed Mr Todd, turning a corner.
At the end of that corridor, the teacher stopped at a battered grey door, its previous coat of blue paint showing through the scratches, its plaque declaring, ‘taf on y’. Mr Todd punched four digits into the silver keypad lock and thumped it open, charging up a set of concrete steps between two white-painted breeze-block walls. Passing through another door at the top, they hastened along one more corridor, windows with views across the school grounds on one side, meeting rooms on the other.
‘Your sister’s in there,’ he barked, thrusting a door wide open and pointing him inside. ‘You better wait here until we get hold of your parents,’ he said, banging the door back into its frame.
Disorientated, Sukhbir glanced all around: at the magnolia walls, at the rough grey carpet floor tiles, at the low upholstered chairs arranged around a small coffee table, home to an empty plastic cup and a dead spider plant. Through the window in the door, he watched Mr Todd stomp up the corridor, banging through yet another door at the end.
‘What’ve you done?’ he frowned, his chest burning tightly, twinging with excruciating spasms.
‘What’ve I done?’ she howled, staring back at him with a great scowl.
Sukhbir paced across to the other side of the room, desperate to still the strange trembling within. With his back into a corner, he stared down at her, taking in her bloodshot eyes. He had never before seen her look so dishevelled, as if she just did not care anymore.
‘Are you okay?’ he whispered at last.
‘Oh wow,’ she jeered, ‘you managed to say those three teensy-tiny words. This must be bad!’
‘Well are you?’ he asked.
Satya stared at her brother with utter contempt. ‘No, I’m not,’ she sobbed, indifferent to the tears which gushed from her eyes. ‘Of course I’m not,’ she cried.
Listening to her, Sukhbir dropped onto one of the chairs across from her. ‘What’s happening?’ he asked tensely.
‘What does it look like?’
She watched as he got up again and pushed himself into the other corner.
‘Have you told them about…’
‘About what you did to me?’ she sneered. ‘If I did, do you think you’d be talking to me now?’ She observed the way he began pacing in one direction and then the other, backwards and forwards across the far end of the room. ‘No, I haven’t,’ she told him, ‘but I should.’
‘Anything I should know about?’
‘They rang home.’
Sukhbir averted his eyes from her and passed back over to the door. ‘What did they say?’ he asked, peeking through the wired glass.
‘I don’t know. Mum tried to call dad, apparently. But the line was dead. Weird.’
Returning to her, Sukhbir shuffled beside her and gaped down into her eyes. ‘Don’t say anything, yeah?’ he appealed.
‘Why? Are you scared?’
‘No.’
‘You are. I can see it.’
‘Don’t make any more trouble, Satya,’ he demanded. ‘Just keep your mouth shut.’
‘You’re agitated,’ she sniffed at him.
‘I don’t know what’s happening,’ he complained, ‘that’s all.’
‘Oh, you know, Sukhbir. Kris told you everything.’
‘But why’s the whole school in lockdown?’ he asked, pacing around in circles again.
‘Because your sister just made a fool of herself,’ she wailed. ‘And, well, because I’m Sukhbir’s sister. So it’s battle stations, isn’t it?’
Satya glared at her brother with such intensity that he nearly stumbled over the chair he had forgotten was there. It was as if her eyes had reached into his head, yanked his brains out through his nostrils and his cerebrum had got stuck halfway.
‘So it’s time for the truth now, isn’t it?’ she snivelled. ‘It was Ben you beat to a pulp that day, wasn’t it? I know now why dad punished you so bad. You almost paralysed him. You gave him a massive pounding. You left him in a mess. I still remember the way you gloated about it after school. You were so proud of what you’d done. But you never mentioned his name. No one did. Not even Ben himself. Until today. To think all this time, you’ve treated me like dirt simply because I knew your secret. If I’d known exactly how bad it was, I would never have let you. I should’ve told everyone.’
Sukhbir was off again, pacing. Pacing, pacing, this way and another, more quickly with every pass. He said nothing for nearly ten minutes, but Satya knew that something had stirred inside him.
‘Look,’ he growled finally, ‘keeping it a secret was never my idea. Dad didn’t want our family’s name dragged through the mud. He insisted on it, not me.’
‘More likely he didn’t want a race riot,’ barracked Satya scornfully. ‘You know who Ben’s family is, don’t you?’
‘Of course I know.’
‘And you still did that?’ she cried. ‘His granddad’s famous. He’s like the most violent racist in the north. He’s spawned a whole family of evil clones. God, Sukhbir, his dad went to prison for GBH. And you picked a fight with his son! You’re such an idiot.’ She glanced away from him, her penetrating gaze lifting the heavy floor tiles from their places. ‘So you deserved what dad did, didn’t you? You nearly paralysed some kid you knew wouldn’t fight back.’ Listening to his breathing against the silence, Satya glowered at him indignantly. ‘Don’t worry, I don’t expect you to answer. Just tell me one thing. What did he do to deserve it? Tell me, Sukhbir. It’s time for the truth.’
How pathetic, she thought: he could not even look at her now, choosing to show her only his back. She awaited his answer, but she knew it was pointless, for nothing emerged. ‘Between you, you kicked and punched him until he cried like a baby, and then you kicked him some more. You fractured his skull. Oh yes, you thought you were doing a good thing. Defending the honour of an Indian girl, no doubt. That’s what my question really is, isn’t it? Not why? Just who. Ah, but I know, don’t I? It was Anjana, wasn’t it?’
His awkward footsteps would testify on his behalf. ‘Just stand still, for God’s sake,’ she bellowed at him furiously, ‘sit down. Look at me!’
Startled, he came to a halt and turned back to her, shrugging his shoulders.
‘I know it was Anjana.’
‘Maybe,’ he whispered, eventually.
‘I wish I was dead,’ muttered Satya, her heart quaking. ‘And does she know?’ she added half a minute later.
‘I don’t know.’
‘How does that work?’ she cried, drubbing her own forehead with her fist, ‘You beat him up because of her, and you don’t know if she knows?. Because you didn’t know her, did you? You just thought you knew best. I hope you’re having doubts now.’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Is that good or bad?’
His feet were on the move again, carrying him back into a corner, as if the meeting of the walls could somehow substitute for a warm embrace he thought he had once deserved. Pushing his back into the angle, he rocked his head backwards, gazing up at the water-stained ceiling.
‘He spoke to me, you know?’ he mumbled finally.
‘Who?’
‘Him.’
‘When?’
‘About half an hour ago. He was brave. Or stupid. Or both.’
‘What did he say?’
‘He tried to persuade me to help you. But I refused. I was meant to race to your aid.’ His eyes were mesmerised by the brown rings above him, which had seemed to have arranged themselves like the patterns on a tie dye hippie caftan. ‘Yeah, but I told him where to stuff it.’ He looked at his sister restlessly. ‘I thought you were dating him,’ he growled.
‘You’re not the only one,’ sobbed Satya, shaking her head. ‘I like him so much.’ She no longer cared if he heard her. ‘But he’s obsessed with Anjana.’ She glanced back at him. ‘And she’s obsessed with him.’
Studying his face, she searched for some kind of reaction but only watched his gaze fall on the boring walls instead. ‘Did you never tell her what you did?’ she demanded. ‘Did she never find out?’
‘She was as much to blame as him,’ he barked back at her.
‘To blame for what?’
‘She shouldn’t have been with him.’
‘Says who?’
‘Even you know the answer to that.’
Listening to him, Satya bent forward, pushing her elbows into her thighs and jabbed her fingers into her black locks, massaging her scalp. ‘No Sukhbir, honestly I don’t,’ she cried back at him, rocking backwards and forwards. ‘You know, Anjana’s family’s not like ours. Her mum used to tell her to invite him around for dinner. So what were you defending? Who gave you permission to act on their behalf?’ In her heart, she was glaring at him furiously, but her eyes were tightly closed. Perhaps doing so would stem the flow of tears; perhaps it would just save her from confronting reality. ‘You screwed everything up, Sukhbir. You ruined their life, and now you’ve ruined mine. I wish I was dead.’
‘I never meant to.’
‘How can you say that?’
‘I was… I don’t know…’
‘You were an idiot. You’ve made my life hell, and all for what?’
‘I made a mistake, that’s all.’
‘A mistake?’ she spat back at him, freeing her skull from her hands. ‘You’ve bullied me relentlessly for three years because of that. Everyone believed your lies. And now that’s all you can say. A mistake!’
She was rocking again, backwards and forwards, her fist thumping her forehead right between his eyes over and over. ‘I wish I was dead,’ she murmured sullenly, shivers pulsating all over her skin. ‘It’s too late, Sukhbir,’ she muttered wretchedly, ‘I’m dead already.’
Silence would descend on them now. A heavy, weighty, painful silence. Over there, Sukhbir had frozen, shoulders cemented into the corner, his gaze affixed to the quarks dancing around in protons and neutrons spinning around their nuclei, deep within the dirty beige walls. He wished he could join them. Over here, Satya had managed to shrink herself, fitting into the flimsy white cup on the tabletop, rendering herself invisible. Every now and then, she peeked over the rim to observe her brother, only to scurry back into the void to hide. Perhaps this motionless lull was how the universe felt fourteen billion years ago, just before that mass of infinite density decided it would rip apart.
‘I’m going to tell everyone the truth,’ snapped Satya all of a sudden. ‘Mum, Jas, Meeta. Dadaji. Everyone.’
Taken aback, Sukhbir glimpsed back at her. ‘No don’t,’ he stuttered. Then: ‘I’ll tell them myself.’
Satya could feel herself expanding again, back to full height. Then she felt herself grow taller, rising higher and higher into the air, scattering the chairs around her, her neck bending as it hit the ceiling. Towering over her brother, he looked so tiny suddenly; so insignificant. He was just a dot down there, far below her, like a microscopic worm, wriggling about amidst the dust and fluff in the corner.
‘What about Anjana?’ boomed the giant. ‘Will you tell her?’
Cowering, the squirming maggot squealed out its best defence: ‘It was three years ago,’ it said.
Hearing him, the titan collapsed in on itself, tumbling back down to earth, her transitory psychosis swerving away into the aether. ‘Oh, so that’s alright then. No harm done,’ she sneered back at the worm man. ‘I’ll have to tell her, won’t I?’
Sukhbir stared back at her, freeing himself from his nook. ‘Why dig up the past?’ he demanded, landing on another of the low chairs opposite her.
‘Says the guy who digs it up every single day,’ scoffed Satya. ‘Ah, it’s okay as long as it’s only Satya getting bashed with it.’ She laughed in his face. ‘You’re the one who dug it up when you threw Ben down the stairs last night,’ she cried, ‘You dug it up, not me.’ She laughed and cried at the same time. ‘Ben never even told me about that day until this morning,’ she spat. ‘It was you. You raked it all up again.’
‘Dad won’t want it,’ he muttered.
‘Dad? Why bring him into it?’ she sighed, staring at him, ‘What kind of crap excuse is that?’
‘Think of his reputation,’ he told her.
‘You’re telling me to think of it? Do you hear yourself?’
‘If it gets out…’
‘If it gets out,’ she barged in, ‘maybe Anjana will understand everything that happened over the past three years. Maybe it’ll mend her broken heart.’
‘Don’t say anything, Satya,’ he yelled, ‘Keep your mouth shut.’
‘You want me to lie to my friend?’
‘You don’t lie,’ he said firmly, ‘You say nothing. It’s ancient history.’
‘Like it’s ancient history to them!’ she protested. ‘Have you seen them? He’ll beat himself up to protect her. God, I’m so stupid coming between them. And Anjana: she’ll even fight with Bal to defend him now.’
‘That’s no surprise to me,’ shrugged Sukhbir. ‘Bal told me exactly what happened. She’s the one who told me what they did. She told me everything.’
Satya’s hands were on her head again, eyes screwed shut. ‘Everything but the truth!’ she bawled back at him, her eyes ripped open.
‘According to Ben,’ said Sukhbir.
‘No, according to my heart,’ she moaned. ‘You have no idea what you’ve done,’ she said, seething with loathing. ‘Lies upon lies,’ she cried, shaking her head at him. ‘Well, they stop tonight.’.
‘If you say anything, I’ll…’
‘No, if you stop me,’ she insisted, ‘I’ll tell Mr Todd exactly what you did to me this morning. Have fun explaining the bruises all over my body. I have witnesses. I showed Anjana first thing. I’ll press charges if I have to.’
‘You wouldn’t dare.’
‘Let’s try this: if you don’t tell mum and Jas and everyone else exactly what you did three years ago, I’ll show Ms Carlton the bruise you left on my chest this morning.’
‘They won’t believe you. Not after lunchtime.’
Satya let out a raucous guffaw. ‘Like the bumps would leave me with a bruise like that,’ she sneered. ‘Just so you know, it’s all purple and black and blue, and it feels like you ripped something inside.’ Nodding her head, she released a feeble smile. ‘Yes, I learnt the art of blackmail from you,’ she sniggered. ‘So it’s up to you.’
Hearing her, Sukhbir ignored her and glanced away, hunting for the right words with which to rebuke her. He was perturbed, for wicked put-downs were usually dancing on the tip of his tongue.
‘Fine,’ said Satya, rising to her feet when he said nothing at all, ‘I’ll tell Ms Carlton now.’ Disregarding him in return, she made for the door, pulled it open, and steamed along the corridor. ‘Sir,’ she cried at no one through the door at the end, ‘do you know where Ms Carlton is? I need to tell her something.’
‘Don’t,’ cried Sukhbir, leaping after her. ‘Leave it,’ he balked, thoroughly routed. ‘I’ll tell mum. But let me warn dad first.’
Leaving the door to swing back into its frame, Satya glanced back at him. ‘Do whatever you have to do,’ she said firmly. ‘I promise you,’ she added, coming to a standstill in front of him, ‘if you don’t, I will.’
