The Year of the Runaways Read Online Free PDF Page A

just people at work talking. And there are always rumours. But it’s better to be prepared. Maybe I should come and live here?’ he said, testing the water a little.
    The shock of the suggestion seemed to force her mouth to open.
    ‘I was not being serious.’
    ‘It’s too small. And the weather,’ she said, randomly.
    ‘I understand completely,’ he said, layering smiles over his disappointment. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been so warm in a house, with food smelling as good as that on the cooker.
    She made to walk him to the door.
    ‘Shall I help you with this first? It’s not fair to leave you to pack it all away.’ Delay tactics. She said she’d do it later. That it wasn’t a problem. Reluctantly, Randeep followed her down the stairs. As she opened the door he took the notes out of his pocket and handed them to her.
    ‘Another month,’ she said. ‘The year will be over before we know it.’
    ‘Yes!’ he replied, shaking his head, as if amazed how quickly the time was passing, when really it seemed to him that each new week took on the span of an entire age.
    After he’d gone, she collapsed onto the armrest of the settee, face hidden. This was too hard. This was too much to give. What had she got herself into? She lifted her head out of her arm and was met with the images of her gurus. They spoke to her, reminding her that she always knew it was going to be hard, that doing the right thing is never the easy choice, but to remember that Waheguru is her ship and He would bear her safely across. She felt Him beside her, and felt her resolve return, as if the blood was pumping more thickly through her body.
    She fetched from the drawer the map she’d picked up from the station and zoned in on her street. The surrounding areas didn’t sound like places she wanted to visit: Rawmarsh, Pitsmoor, Crosspool. Burngreave. Killamarsh. They sounded so angry, these northern places, like they wanted to do you harm.
    Across the city, Randeep lay on his mattress. Everyone had eaten early and gone to sleep, tired out from a whole muddy week of shovelling up and levelling out cement. No one had even mentioned his second visit to the wife. He replayed their conversation and was more or less pleased with how it had gone. They seemed to understand each other and if the year carried on like that everything would be fine. He was hopeful of that. He heard the downstairs door go and the kitchen beads jangling. Probably Avtar would stay in the kitchen for an hour, eating, studying, counting how much money he had, or didn’t have. Randeep wouldn’t join him. The last few times he had gone downstairs he’d got the impression he was only getting in the way.
    Rain pattered against the glass. He turned his head towards Tochi. Yesterday, Tochi had moved his mattress out from under the window and turned it at a right angle, so he and Randeep now lay parallel to each other, the door at their feet. Randeep guessed it was so he could sleep facing the wall. His boots were crossed at the ankles and were the only part of him that poked out from under the blanket. Randeep’s blanket. Which he’d not even been thanked for.
    ‘Bhaji, are you awake?’
    Nothing.
    ‘Bhaji?’
    ‘What?’
    Randeep didn’t know what. He hadn’t had a conversation planned. ‘I can’t sleep.’ Then, a minute or so later, ‘This is strange, isn’t it?’
    ‘Go to sleep.’
    ‘I mean, when you were a kid, did you ever think you’d be working in Sheffield, in England, and living in a house like this? I’d never even heard of Sheffield.’ There was silence and Randeep asked, ‘Do you still have people back home?’
    Tochi didn’t reply. The rain seemed to be plashing harder and Randeep drew his blanket up around his neck.
    ‘Bhaji?’
    ‘What?’
    ‘I like hearing the rain outside.’
    A pause, and then Tochi: ‘Me too.’

2. TOCHI: AUTORIDER
    Tarlochan Kumar was bent double under the last huge sack of fodder. He shook it into the