For another seven days, I wandered around the city reconciling myself to the fact that unlike the other places I had prowled when wounded, Berlin would forever be a stranger to me. I felt no kinship with its people, no desire to excavate meaning from their language. I saw no humour in the silly bears, no beauty in its strong buildings and wide streets. When it was time to leave, I got into a taxi headed for the airport and made the decision to reach for it. It was so easy, and it was lying right there: white picket fence and a big fucking dog. A life with an Instagram filter sitting pretty on top of it—Valencia or Rise, one of the brightshinyhappy ones.

Daylight was melting into the Kurfürstendamm as I took my place on the horizon, on the edge of walking into a sunset that would be mine alone. And I felt a great hope rise within me. I think it is going to be okay. I think we might have escaped.

Epilogue

December 2015

Deep yellow sun, dusty yellow sky. Anaya Arora after school.

Light brown hair loosed from a braid, like wisps of satin, like bits of silk.

Seventeen,

So easy on the eye.

It was a blue January morning. Cold, but not clear. The sky dropped glaring hints of rain. Vir Dhillon looked up at the clouds outside his bedroom window, then down at the lawns below, where a hundred little penguin-suited figures were scurrying around setting up tables decked in white linen and Baccarat crystal. Sighing, he sent up a silent prayer for the rain to hold off for at least a few hours.

He turned back to the mirror, inspecting himself in all his wedding regalia. Almost, he thought, I’m almost good-looking. He didn’t like the sharp downturn of his nose, or the way his hair refused to sit still, but he went to the gym thrice a week and had himself sewn into Ford and Zegna and he made the effort and he was almost good-looking.

Reminding himself to check his persistent instinct for self-reflection and concentrate on checking the fit and fall of his midnight-black Rathore silk, he swept his eyes along the length of his frame, looking for faulty details. There were none, of course.

He quirked a quick smile. These were his moments, the small victories he scored for himself and himself alone. How can you wear black to a wedding, beta? How can you wear black to your own wedding?

The smile slipped off his face as he felt a momentary current of memory break through the surface of his consciousness like a drowning man flailing up for one last, desperate breath.