Chhaya was quiet.
‘That’s not to say that I’m falling into Andrew’s arms.’
‘In a way you had stopped living because of Andrew, stopped feeling. You would’ve gone along with anything and everything.’
‘Ravi is not anything and everything; it is a nice friendship.’ That was not the point she was making, I knew that.
‘Nice, yeah, like a scenery.’
My heart was thudding, sticks on drumheads.
‘You were hiding behind Ravi.’
She was right. It was a safe place to hide, even if the space itself was a tad lonely.
‘I always had this feeling that you guys were tiptoeing around each other.’
It was the truth. Walls, hedges and a little light. Eight years ago, it was what I needed.
‘There were places in his life he didn’t want you to go, and you didn’t.’
And vice versa.
I walked over to Andrew’s cabin, shutting the door behind me.
I inhaled his scent.
Andrew nodded; his eyes were on me.
I let the silence envelop us. I felt the activity around the room. We were approaching 9 p.m.; it was edition time. That’s when the editorial floor came alive, like a Deepavali evening.
Andrew took a deep breath. ‘I have a feeling it didn’t end well between them. Hari Rao’s reaction to me has something to do with that,’ he said.
Had Noelene tried to blackmail Hari Rao, to maybe get him back in her life?
‘It is what it is. I can’t change what happened between the two of them. Two adults who brought a child into this world. One of them looked after that child, the other walked away. Still, both of them are to blame.’
I nodded. ‘Acceptance is revenge,’ Andrew said. He was smiling.
There was a new equilibrium to Andrew. His face wasn’t blank, it was calm.It must be liberating,I thought as I rose from the spare chair.
I wanted to ask him about Bhumika Velu and Catherine Brown, but that carefully phrased question walked out with me like an invisible clock I had draped around my arm.
Chapter 21
I was anxious. I reached the coffee shop almost half an hour in advance. A first in our association.
I’m punctual, but you can’t set the clock by me. If and when I’m late, it’s by a few minutes. Ravi is always ahead of schedule. If he was picking me up at 11.15, he was there at 11. That showed me as slack perhaps, when in actuality, he was early. It was a little like our relationship.
I had decided to call it off with Ravi. I didn’t want to break his heart… Not that I had the power to do that.
The orphan boy… Was he even that? I had always wanted to ask him that question. It had slipped out of my mouth once, but Ravi chose not to answer it. I hoped at least he knew whose son he was. Was he the godson who became the grandson?
This is hard to believe, I know, coming from one who has made a living from posing them, but I hate questions.
Like Andrew, Ravi was a loner of sorts, too. He had some friends, fitness freaks like him, who met for a drink from time to time, but while he was good with the group, he kept them at arm’s length. It was his family ties, possibly, that made him wary, he had said.
That reserve didn’t extend to me; still, there were invisible walls I couldn’t scale, not for a lack of trying.
