Wait!Did he think I had done this for him? Visited a salon a week ago to give myself a new look.
‘I had it styled a few months ago,’ I said.Why was I offering an explanation?
Andrew’s grin was galling. His eyes danced as they studied me. Dangling filigree earrings, bare neck, just a watch on my wrist.
‘I committed to returning a few months ago, too.’
‘LuckyMorning Herald!’ Damn the teasing.
I consciously didn’t take a deep breath but did the mental equivalent of the same. I pressed the reset button in my head, not to start again but to take a step back, to relax. I needed to be in charge. My mind was moving in a hundred different directions.Was he married? Did he have a family?I crushed the questions before they found a voice to break into the open.
He smiled. ‘No place like home.’
I wondered where he was staying. He had sold his family’s crumbling mansion in the CBD before he left for the United States. A high-end apartment complex had come up in its place. I knew he had been offered a flat by the builder as part of the deal, but I wasn’t sure how that had panned. If he had taken ownership of the 3,000-square-foot facility on offer or if he had banked the equity.
‘I would agree, even though I don’t really know any other place other than home,’ I said.
‘You should try your wings. Test yourself.’ He wasn’t mocking; the tone was encouraging. Still, it wasn’t his place to advise me.
‘Some of us fly in our own spaces, but fly we do.’
‘You certainly are,’ he said. ‘I was reading some of your stuff before coming here. You’ve captured the people’s market, shifted the dialogue back from trends to people. Your crime series is outstanding.’
My smile was slow to show. How long had he been reading my pieces? Was he surprised when he saw my byline for the first time? I hadn’t decided on print journalism when he was in Bengaluru, but that was the direction I was headed in. I had a job well before his blogs struck a chord in influential corridors. Maybe I was his role model.
I was delirious, drifting like a sun-kissed wave.Myra!
‘Is crime your beat?’
‘No,’ I replied, startled by the question.
I reached for my water bottle and took a swig. A drop dribbled down my chin. I’m clumsy. Put your last rupee on me dropping something every day, and you won’t be poorer. Several times each day actually. As I returned my bottle to its place, I noticed Andrew reaching forward. I pushed back in my seat, panicking, and wiped the stray droplet with the back of my hand.What was he thinking?
He’d done it every time I drank from a bottle when we were together. Sometimes, he used a tissue, but most often, it was just his hand.
‘I’m in features,’ I said, before correcting myself, ‘heading features. That’s just a column I write.’
‘Your USP.’
I smiled. ‘You’d recognize quite a few of the stories,’ I said, refusing to let this charming little interlude waylay me.
‘Some are big cases from our younger days. I’m trying to track the journey of this city – once a quiet cantonment town, to the bustling metropolis it is today – through its crime scenes. Does that make sense?’
Andrew nodded. ‘It’s not the most innovative idea, revisiting popular crime stories, but I like how you’velinked it to the city, cultural backdrop, economic growth. It is a secondary character almost.’
I was smiling. Hopefully, in my head only.
‘How did it start?’
It wasn’t fortuitous play.
Days after my mother’s death, I started scouring crime stories, sections in newspapers, segments in the news, and as much of the meta space as I could get to, looking for answers for what I believed was a motivated homicide.
My parents were locked in a heated argument the night before my mother was mowed down. I heard the words ‘loan’ and ‘not cleared’. I had put it down to my dad’s fitful dalliances with funds at the time. He could never get that right.
Though the accident in which I lost my mother was declared a drunken-driving case a few months later, I wasn’t convinced. The file was closed, but my doubts were open wounds.
Drunk at 8.30 a.m.? He would’ve been lying under a couch, dead to the world, not behind a steering wheel.
