Arathi laughed.

‘Are you plotting a diamond heist to retrieve the Kohinoor and restore it to its rightful place in India, Ma?’

‘Well, my arthritis has been playing up, so that may not be possible,’ said Toshi. ‘But Jai, this is now your life’s mission—to reclaim the Kohinoor as our national heritage. Do not return empty-handed, is that understood?’

Jai nodded distractedly. He was concerned with more immediate missions for the moment. Such as how to give a fitting reply to Pesky Girl, should he see her again—which, with his luck, he was bound to do.

The Bridge

Inaya whistled as she waited outside Adeela’s home, having rung the doorbell four times.

Then it dawned on her that her grandparents and Adeela Khaala had gone visiting a cousin of theirs and had left a spare key under the mat for her.

Inaya strolled into the house and kicked off her shoes, before she guiltily realized that she should stow them away tidily in the shoe cupboard to avoid getting another lecture. Finally, she plonked herself down on the sofa.

It still hadn’t sunk in that she had qualified for the next round of the league. But now, she knew without a doubt that no matter what happened, whether she made it any further or not, she was going to give everything she had to tape-ball cricket. Nothing else made her as happy.

She had an overwhelming urge to tell everyone about this win. Especially Abba. She missed him—whether or not she admitted it to herself. More than anything else, she wanted to hear the pride in his voice when she gave him the news. However, deep down, she knew that this wouldn’t be the case. He thought so little of her cricket. How she wished Ammi was alive. Somehow, with Abba, there was always a yawning chasm that neither of them could ford, however badly they both wanted to. Inaya decided to try and bridge that gulf today. She reached for the phone, and then remembered that he would still be at work. Perhaps she should wait until he got home. She sat back down.

But then, on an impulse, Inaya got up again and went to look for her father’s work telephone number in her grandmother’s diary. As she rifled through the large brown moleskin diary, some papers fell out. Inaya picked them up and was about to return them to the diary, when she caught a glimpse of something on the pages.

They were sketches and they looked like they had been drawn by a small child. Inaya held them up, bemused, wondering why her Daadi had saved these in her diary. They weren’t even pleasant to look at—the images looked chaotic, with many huddled figures drawn in a circular scribble, all dark and gloom. And strangely, each of the pictures had a jagged line running across it—as if the picture had been crossed out after having been drawn.

Inaya put them away and went back to looking for her father’s number. When she found it, Inaya took a deep breath and dialled the number from the London phone that Adeela Khaala had given them.