The Blue Bedspread by Raj Kamal Jha

the touch of her hands and the way she clasps the pin over the excess fabric makes her feel somewhat safe.
    ‘Now it won’t slip off,’ she says closing the door behind her. ‘Sleep well, Didi. I’ll see you tomorrow.’
    She can hear her footsteps echo in the hallway, the sound of the trolley being wheeled back to the kitchen or wherever it came from.
    And like the darkness in her room which flows out of the window and merges with the darkness of the city, she can feel, for the first time since her miscarriage, long before you ever came, that she is not alone.

 
M URDER M YSTERY
     
    ‘That’s the hospital, over there,’ he points out.
    He points to a strip of white, far away, over her head and her shoulders, across the trees, the clusters of houses, to the left of the plume of grey smoke rising in the sky from some roof, to the right of the white marble dome of the Victoria Memorial.
    ‘That’s the hospital where you were stuck for two weeks,’ he says. ‘And that’s Park Street, can’t you see the lights?’
    Yes, she can, but tonight is his night to show and hers to see and she doesn’t want to spoil anything.
    Two days to go for 14 April, the Bengali New Year, it’s time for the nor’westers, they are standing on the terrace of the new flat they’ve moved in to and she can feel the wind, the end of her sari clap gently against her leg.
    She looks around, at the two huge black water tanks, a piece of wire strung across the TV antennae. There’s a clothes clip dangling on the wire but there are no clothes to dry. In one corner, she can see a broken white ceramic toilet bowl, stained, its cover surprisingly shining, black. As if it were new.
    They never come up to the terrace although the landlord was sweet the first day they moved in, one week ago, after her miscarriage. His mother and father had said, ‘Why don’t you people spend some time together, we will come later.’
    ‘You can use the terrace whenever you want. During March and April, it’s very nice there,’ the landlord had said. ‘Colder than your house, you should take a scarf if it’s too late.’
    ‘It’s a bit dirty but you are young people,’ the landlord’s wife had said. ‘You can do it up, put some flower pots, get the mess cleaned up. We are too old.’
    She had smiled at the landlord’s wife as she pressed her hand into hers, looked at her husband as he read the rent papers. She could see the veins in his hand as he signed his name.
    ‘Come here, this way,’ he says and she follows him, like a child, looking at his white striped shirt and grey trousers, which she ironed twice this morning since he said the crease didn’t fall in a straight line, she can see the peak of his white socks, the lights on Park Street, the big white one is the Continental Hotel where they change the mannequins every week.
    The line of small red ones, the twinkling lights, must be the Chinese restaurant where they have a picture of a huge dragon on the wall, the menu painted on its tongue. She can see the Calcutta Electric Supply Corporation, its huge lighted globe spinning round and round in circles, Africa is facing her now.
    His hands are on the railing and he’s looking in the distance, his shirt stretched tight across his back, marking his shoulder blades. He yawns once and rubs his eyes, she knows he will now ask her for a drink.
    ‘Will you get me a drink from downstairs?’ he says and she says yes, goes down the steps, she can feel her hands rub against the wall, it’s much warmer here, she enters the house, it’s dark, she switches the lights on and then she walks into the kitchen.
    She picks out two ice cubes from the deep freeze, puts them into a steel glass, she can see her name engraved on it.
    She remembers the old man who came every afternoon into the neighbourhood, stopped for a while to look at the pigeons in the oil mill, and then shouted something she then couldn’t make out.
    One day Mother called him upstairs, gave