For almost ten days, Ishaana had hardly thought about Casey. Having not spoken to him since the night before his flight, it had been a week and a half since they had last talked face to face, and she was subconsciously proving a point to Melody and to Pearl, and to everyone who had ever told her that no strings attached didn't exist. If there had been any strings, they were severed now: he and Bishop were in America now, a little more than a quarter of the way through their time stateside, and she hadn't felt the slightest urge to search their band, the name of which was constantly eluding her.

Instead, she had spent the time floating between her sister and her friends, hanging out with Melody and Pearl while Priya had been at school while the evenings were set aside as family time. She had yet to cook when every single dish she had mastered included at least one ingredient that her aunt didn't allow inside the house, laden with the meat and onions and potatoes that she was already beginning to crave. At least Sunita had variety, she thought, praising the effort her aunt put into each meal she created. She was a dab hand with all the spices in the rack, bringing flavour to foods that Ishaana had previously thought flavourless.

When she woke up as Wednesday morning teetered into Wednesday afternoon, officially three days into Priya's and Saffiya's Easter holiday, it was with the most intense craving for a curry that she had ever known. Her mouth watered at the thought of a creamy korma with a kick, or a rich masala, and her stomach twisted itself with a growing desire to find one for lunch. As she changed out of her pyjamas, lazily changing into a pair of jeans and a soft jumper, she found that she could hardly think about anything other than the burning need to satiate her tastebuds.

Sunita wasn't in. She worked on the weekdays, putting in tireless hours in a mediocre job to provide for her unconventional family, which meant that Ishaana was in charge from eight until five, Monday to Friday. Sometimes those hours were even longer, when Sunita picked up extra work for measly extra pay. Every little counted, she was always saying, making up for the hours she missed during term time to collect Priya from school. It ached Ishaana to see how hard her aunt worked, but there was little she could do to help except be there for her sister. Unable to drive and with hardly a penny to her name, her presence was all that she could provide.

Downstairs, Priya was lying across the sofa with a book in her hand, a dry old novel that she was required to read for her English class, and she scrawled notes in the margins as she scoured the pages. Across the room, Saffiya sat cross-legged in an armchair with her laptop balanced on her knees, occasionally tapping away at her phone with a smirk. Neither looked up when Ishaana entered the room, her bare feet making no sound on the soft carpet, until she leant over Priya and blew on the back of her head.

"Jesus!" Priya cried out, rolling off the sofa with a thump. Her pencil flew across the room, her book crumpled on the floor, and she lifted herself up on her elbows. "Don't do that, Ishy! You scared me! I thought you were a murderer!"

Saffiya raised a sceptical eyebrow at her cousin, snorting a short laugh before she returned to whoever she was texting. Ishaana folded her arms on the back of the sofa, a grin on her face.

"A murderer, Pri? Really?" She shook her head. "I'm not sure I could kill you by blowing on your head."

Priya tutted and picked herself up off the floor. "Don't sneak up. I forgot you were in the house."

"Hey." Ishaana frowned, flicking her sister and joining her on the sofa.

"You know something?" Priya bent down for her book, finding the page she had been on and dogearing it for later. There was plenty of holiday left to do homework, which she only resorted to when her boredom reached new limits.

"I know a lot of things," Ishaana said. "Got one in mind?"

Priya rolled her eyes, scoffing at her sister before she returned to her original train of thought. "This is the longest you've stayed here. Did you realise that? It's been ten days since you came back from Mel's – you've never stayed ten days in a row before."

Ishaana's frown returned, deepening a crease into her forehead. She was sure that there had been times she had stayed longer, after two years. "That can't be right," she said. "I was here for, like, two whole weeks over Christmas."

"Yeah, for a few days," Priya said. "Then you spent two days at a party in Manchester. Then you came home for a week, then you went back to uni. You come and go," she added, giving her sister a little credit, "but you don't usually stay."

The words snuck under Ishaana's skin, making her hands itch with shame. "I'm sorry, Pri. Reckon you can stand me for another three weeks?"

Priya smiled, and it turned into a chuckle. "I think we can working something out," she said. "But more importantly, I'm bored and I'm hungry. Can we go out?" Pursing her lips, she raised her eyebrows. Deep brown puppy-dog eye stared up at her sister, who struggled to say no to the girl she had let down so much already.

"Ok," she said. At least she would be able to satisfy her craving, she thought, dreaming of the curry she planned to order from whatever pub they ended up at. She would just have to say goodbye to a chunk of the pathetic contents of her bank account.The next installment of her student loan was due in three weeks, and it couldn't come soon enough. Being home helped in that respect, not having to pay for her meals each day when Sunita kept the cupboards stocked with Jain-friendly foods.

"Yes!" Priya cried out. "We can have a girls' day."

"Every day is a girls' day," Ishaana said. "There are literally no men in this family, Pri."

"You know what I mean, Ishy. Don't be pedantic." She stood, stretching out like a cat, and swept her long, thick hair off her face. Unlike her sister, who was made up of sharp angles and strong lines, Priya was a soft girl with rounded features and gentle eyes. "I'll be ready in five. You ready?"

"And waiting," Ishaana said, her mind slipping back to the food she had woken up ready for. Priya danced upstairs, her feet thudding on each step, and Ishaana was left with Saffiya, at whom she smiled. "You ready?"

"Me?" Saffiya asked, her eyebrows pulling together as though there was someone else in the room.

"Well, yeah," Ishaana said. "D'you want to come?"

Her face lit up, her cheeks aglow, and she nodded. "Yeah. Thanks, Ishy. I figured this was a you and Priya thing," she said, her voice quiet. "I didn't realise I was invited."

"Of course you are!" Ishaana laughed and stood, rooting through her bag to make sure she had her purse and inside it, enough money to cover food for three. She came across a twenty pound note, and then a ten, and she smiled: that would save her from using her card. It was so much easier to part with cash once it had already left her bank, sitting in her purse just waiting to be used. It was as though paying with hard money didn't count, not putting nearly so much of a dent in her finances when really, the damage had just been done earlier.

The pub was quiet. The afternoon hadn't sunk in yet, only just after twelve by the time they made it to the local Wetherspoons, where Ishaana knew she would find a curry to fill her begging stomach. People were milling about town, a slightly higher than usual proportion of kids Priya's age who didn't know what to do with themselves in the holidays, aimlessly hanging around in loutish groups while their parents worked.

Inside the pub was warm and cosy, natural light pouring in through the window seat that Saffiya chose. While she and Priya took a menu each, Ishaana didn't need to look. She already knew they served a chicken vindaloo, something hot and spicy to set her tongue on fire. Ordinarily, she wasn't the biggest fan of spicy food but she reasoned that Sunita was opening her eyes to broader flavours, and now that curry was all she could think about while she waited for her company to make a decision.

It took almost five minutes for Priya to settle on the scampi and chips, despite it being the first meal she had considered, while Saffiya settled for the chickpea and spinach curry. Accustomed to her mother's cooking, she rarely strayed far from it when she was away from home, no temptation towards the meat that her cousins craved. With the three orders in her memory, Ishaana hurried over to the bar, drumming her nails on the counter as she waited for one of the serves to pay attention to her. Food was within her grasp, mere minutes away. She was usually drunk or hungover when she felt such a strong craving but now, stone-cold sober, her mind was a one-trick pony.

The two minutes it took to order felt like forever, tapping her fingers against her thigh once she had paid, waiting as the waitress poured out two cokes and a water for Saffiya. The clink of ice against glass was music to Ishaana's ears as she awaited that first delicious sip and the feel of cool ice on her lips, sucking a cube until it dissolved. At the table, Priya and Saffiya were engaged in what looked like an intense debate, Priya leaning across the table a little as she talked, emphasising what she was saying with her hands.

"What's this?" Ishaana asked as she set down the drinks and took a seat beside her cousin, slipping into the bright booth with the sun on her cheek. It was hard not to feel happy and relaxed when the weather was so good, especially for an early April day when the forecast usually predicted grey skies and showers.

"Shakespeare," Priya said with a dramatic roll of her eyes, grabbing her coke and slumping against the seat as she sipped it.

"What about him?" Ishaana took her own drink, revelling in the sweet, icy liquid as it slipped down her throat and she gasped when the fizz overwhelmed her, buzzing on her tongue.

"I was saying that I can't wait to be finished with blooming Romeo and Juliet because I hate it, but Saffi actually likes it."

Saffiya shrugged in her own defense. "I like Shakespeare," she said, swirling her straw around her glass before she took it out and sipped from the rim. "It's clever. You always find something you missed before, each time you read it again."

"I don't know why you would read any of it more than once," Priya muttered, grumbling to herself, and Ishaana laughed. Her sister wasn't much of a reader to begin with, and that was only worsened when her school forced her to digest novels and plays that she couldn't make head or tail of. Ishaana didn't differ much herself. Secondary school English had taken it out of her, wiping her of any vague interest in literature, and yet she had found herself living with two English students who left the house littered the the books they devoured weekly.

"There's this thing called an opinion, Pri," she said, "and Saffi's entitled to one. As are you. I, for one, could not care less either way." Slurping her coke, she abandoned her straw in favour of an ice cube. Scooping one out with her fork, she popped it into her mouth and sucked on the slippery lump. It wasn't long before she gave in to the temptation to crunch it, earning her a flicker of a glower from her sister.

"The ice is for the drink," she said. "You're not supposed to eat it all."

"I like eating the ice," Ishaana said, popping a smaller cube into her mouth. It was only a few seconds before the cold got too much and she crunched it, and Priya reached out to snatch her glass away from her.

"This is confiscated," she snapped. "That is, like, the world's most obnoxious sound, Ishy. It kinda makes me wanna hurt you. But I won't, 'cause you bought us lunch."

"Which is why you'll give me my drink back," Ishaana said, curling her hand around the glass and bringing it to her lips for a mouthful of coke, trying to quell her desperation for the hot curry that would be out soon.

It was worth the wait. Ishaana could hardly control herself once the food came out after less than ten minutes had passed since ordering, not caring that it had probably been reheated in the microwave. She mixed the hot sauce and the chicken in with the rice before shovelling a forkful into her mouth, and she let out an audible groan of satisfaction at the heat that stormed her tastebuds.

"Oh my God, this is just what I needed," she said, forcing herself to pace herself so she didn't power through her meal when Priya and Saffiya had hardly started theirs. That first mouthful seemed to ignite the begging flame even more, hungry for the curry as she ate it.

"Careful, Ish," Saffiya said. "You're gonna throw up if you eat so fast."

"Since when did you like curry?" Priya added, leaping on the bandwagon of a jumpstarted conversation. "I swear you used to hate spice."

"I like spice," Ishaana said, though she never normally enjoyed something as hot as a jalfrezi when a korma was much more to her liking. "Don't you ever just really feel like something?"

Priya acquiesced, nodding as she hummed her agreement. "I really feel like an ice cream after this," she said, gazing out of the window at the unusually gorgeous weather that had fallen over the town. "Any chance you feel like a trip to the park? Because I could totally go for a spot of sunbathing. And maybe finish this bloody book." She patted her bag, in which she had packed the copy of Romeo and Juliet that she was reluctantly poring over.

"I don't see why not," Ishaana mused as she plowed through her curry, tearing her naan into pieces that she piled up high with the heavenly combination of soft rice and fiery sauce. The more she contemplated it, the more she liked the idea of wandering over to Farnleigh's beautiful green space, lying beneath the sun without a care in the world. She still had almost three weeks to go until she would return to university for revision lectures and her last assignment deadlines, and close to five before her first exam. Stress was far away. Exams didn't bother her, not when she crammed at the last minute, and it was odd not to have the daily drone of dragging herself onto campus for her lectures and seminars. A bit of relaxation was in order.

"Sounds good to me," Saffiya murmured, making her way through her food. Ishaana watched her, her eyes idling on her cousin, and she was beginning to realise that her initial impressions might not have been correct. Saffiya wasn't anti-social; she was just quiet. She wasn't hiding away in her room; she was comfortable there. And when she smiled at her, she received a mirror of her expression.

Once Ishaana was lying down, having polished off a Mr Whippy cone, she had a feeling it might be a while before she would get up again. They had found the perfect spot in the park, lying on a slope with shade nearby in case the sun got too warm, though that was highly unlikely. It dipped behind white clouds that dotted the sky, its rays never quite hot, and it was with a sigh of contentment that she closed her eyes with her hands crossed over her full stomach. She didn't often eat so much in one sitting, but it was worth the bloat that pushed out the waistband of her jeans, absolutely stuffed.

"I ate too much," Saffiya said as she lay down beside her cousin, groaning as she made herself comfortable on her stomach. "I always know their portions are too big and I always get full before I'm done but I always finish them."

Ishaana laughed. "I know the feeling," she said, patting her own stomach. The curry had been enormous, twice what she would have served herself at home, but she had polished off every last morsel with the naan bread to boot.

On her other side, Priya dropped down with a thud, stretching out with her arms behind her head when she asked, "Can you go into a food coma? Like, if you eat too much food, can you actually, like, pass out?"

"You'd just be sick," Saffiya said with a yawn. An excess of food always brought on tiredness, the three of them lying beneath the gentle sun after binging on the hearty, reliable pub food.

"That's a waste," Priya murmured. She pushed out her stomach, her chin meeting her chest to look down at herself with her hand over her belly button. "Hello, Mr Food Baby."

Ishaana looked over at her, the grass tickling her cheek. "How'd you know it's a boy?"

For a moment, Priya pulled her eyebrows together in thought. "Well," she said, beginning slowly as she made up an explanation on the spot, "I ate scampi. And scampi is fish tails. And a tail is a -"

"I'm gonna stop you right there," Ishaana said with a laugh that ached her stomach, poking her sister in the side. Priya shrieked, jerking away, and she moaned as she rolled on the grass.

"Oh my God, Ishy, you can't do that. I'm so full. I could burst. I could actually give birth to a food baby right now."

"That's called having a shit," Saffiya said, her voice deadpan, and Ishaana couldn't help the surprised laugh that spluttered out of her, her cousin's words catching her by surprise.

"Language, Saffi!" she cried out, too tired to swat her. Saffiya sighed a smile, her eyes closed.

"You sound like Mum," she said. "You know Mum never yells, but she did her equivalent of yelling when I accidentally said fuck in front of her the other day." She shook her head, crossing her ankles. "Didn't even realise she was there and I stubbed my toe, so I told the coffee table to fuck off. She wasn't impressed."

Ishaana chuckled at the scene that played out in her head, tickled by the notion of her mild cousin swearing at inanimate objects. It was impossible to imagine Sunita angry, or anything stronger than quietly disappointed, but she saw the woman through an entirely different lens to Saffiya, who had grown up with her.

"Hey," Saffiya said. "Can I just say something?"

"Of course," Priya said. "You just did."

"Can I say something else?"

"As long as you're not proclaiming your love for Shakespeare," she muttered, and Saffiya smiled.

"No, not this time," she said. "I just wanted to say that I do actually like having you guys around. I know it probably doesn't always seem like it, and I'm not the best at actually saying it, but it's nice having a bit more family."

She let out a slow sigh, and Ishaana found herself hooked on her cousin's every word. It wasn't often that she had a conversation with Saffiya, who kept herself to herself for the most part, and she didn't want to miss a beat.

"Not gonna lie, I was really shitting myself when Mum said you'd be moving in," she mused, continuing her stream of consciousness. "It's just been us for so long. I've never had siblings and we didn't exactly know each other that well. I was just scared it'd be awkward, or I'd get jealous, or it'd change too much."

"It has changed a lot," Priya interjected, and Saffiya hummed.

"But it's been good change. For me, anyway. Shit, sorry."

"It's fine," Ishaana said. "We know what you mean."

"And it has," Priya added. "I know I annoy you sometimes – ok, maybe a lot of the time – but it's nice having an extra sister."

The smell of spring lifted on the breeze, lilting across them with the floral bouquet of the season's first flowers that were beginning to bloom along the riverbank. The water flowed over the reeds and beneath the bridges, a gentle tinkle that was music to Ishaana's ears. It was the perfect soundtrack to an easy afternoon, the prelude to summer, and she felt at ease as she relaxed with her sister on one side and her cousin on the other.

Sunita was going to be late. She had rung at four o'clock, an hour before she was due home, to let Ishaana know that she would instead be back at seven after the opportunity for overtime had come up and she couldn't afford to turn it down. Now, closing in on six, Ishaana's stomach was beginning to rumble and she realised that it was up to her to do something about that. Today, for the first time in nearly two weeks, Sunita wasn't there to put a meal on the table.

She looked up from her phone to see that Priya was back to her play, trawling through the old language she hated, and Saffiya was reading a book that she seemed to be enjoying, zooming through the pages she was engrossed in.

"We need to cook," Ishaana said, catching the attention of both of them. "I don't know any of Suni's recipes. We should cook, make sure there's something ready for when she gets back."

"I'm not allowed to cook," Priya said without looking up from her book, and Saffiya nodded.

"That's true. Pri in the kitchen is a bull in a china shop. A really angry bull in a small shop." She put her book down on the floor, swinging her legs over the arm of the chair to stand. "I can show you how to make pulau, though. It's super easy, and Mum loves it."

Leading Ishaana into the kitchen, Saffiya tied her hair off her face and began to pull ingredients out of the cupboard, lining up coriander and cumin alongside turmuric and fenugreek. From the fridge, she took out a pot of ghee butter and a tub of cottage cheese and pulling open the freezer drawer, she took out a bag of peas.

"Can you get the garam masala?" she asked. "In the cupboard. Orange powder. And the rice."

Ishaana did as she was told, neglecting to correct her cousin's assumption that she didn't know what garam masala was, the mix of spices. Her father had spent a lot of time in the kitchen, working on and perfecting recipes, and their spice rack had always been well stacked. She watched like a hawk as Saffiya rinsed the rice, leaving it to soak in pan while she began to chop the herbs and measure out the spices, narrating her actions.

"You like cooking?" she asked, and Saffiya nodded with a smile as she used a tiny, sharp knife to finely chop the fenugreek along with the coriander, not bothering to separate them.

"I love it," she said, a slightly dreaminess to her voice. "Mum and I have always cooked together. She wanted to share the recipes and I wanted to learn them. I know I can't exactly convert you, and I don't have any intention of trying, but I love what we eat. So many of my friends freak out when they realise what I don't eat, as though it's the weirdest thing in the world not to eat potatoes, but it doesn't bother me." She shrugged and pulled a pan out of the cupboard, setting it on the hob and waiting for it to get a little warmer before adding a teaspoon of ghee along with the cumin seeds.

"As if you know all this off by heart," Ishaana said, a little baffled by the ingredients she recognised but never used for herself. At university, she cooked what she knew, only stepping out of her box when Melody or Pearl decided to be more adventurous with their creations.

"I've been making it for, like, ten years," Saffiya said with a light laugh. "It's like riding a bike. Or making a cake." She tapped her temple with one hand, the other tipping turmuric and salt into the pan. "Drain the rice, will you?"

Ishaana followed the order, handing the cold, heavy pan back to her cousin and watching with her arms folded as Saffiya stirred the washed rice into the spice mix she had concocted, coating it with the ghee. There wasn't much she could do when it was so under control already, watching a master at work. Saffiya expertly kept an eye on the cottage cheese she was frying with sauteed peas and herbs, as well as the spiced rice.

"What now?" Ishaana asked, and Saffiya chuckled, mixing all of the ingredients together in a big pan that she set off to the side of the hob.

"It's done, really. Like I told you, super simple. And that can just go on the hob for a few minutes when Mum's back. And voila: supper's ready and Mum's happy."

Ishaana smiled. It wasn't hard, and Saffiya's enthusiasm was mildly infectious, pushing the corners of her mouth deeper into her cheeks until two dimples appeared in her cheeks and the light glittered in her eyes. This was family, she thought, and it was beginning to feel like her own.

It was ten past seven by the time Sunita eventually let herself into the house, shaking off the day as she peeled off her jacket and slipped out of her shoes, padding into the kitchen in her tights. Her expression lifted when the scent of the pulau reached her, the strong cumin and the sweet coriander overwhelming her senses.

"You cooked?" she asked the three girls, who sat around the kitchen table with their various books and magazines and phones, waiting for Sunita's return. Priya had laid the table and four plates were lined up by the hob to be served.

"Saffi did," Ishaana said, and her cousin scoffed.

"Ishy's idea," she said, deflecting the praise.

Sunita said nothing for a moment, though she looked to be on the verge of tears at the simple gesture of her daughter and her nieces coming together to welcome her home after a long day at work. Priya had lit incense sticks in the sitting room and candles on the kitchen table, a cluster of flames swaying on the wicks.

"It's just pulau," Saffiya said, "nothing major."

"Come here, girls," Sunita said, opening her arms to all three, and it was a moment before any of them jolted into action. A small, slight woman, she couldn't get her arms around all of them at once and she laughed into Ishaana's hair. "My amazing girls," she said. "Thank you, so much."

"It's nothing," Ishaana said, and when Sunita pulled away, she held her gaze for a couple of seconds.

"It's not nothing." Her voice was soft, her simple words hitting home harder than Ishaana had expected, and she pulled her aunt into another hug before she realised what her limbs were doing.

"I love you, Suni," she murmured, voicing the words she wasn't sure she had ever said. Sunita's arms tightened around her, holding her close as though she was her own child.

"I love you too, Ishy."

+ - + - +

i know it's not looking good for me right now with my plan to finish this before april, but i am still determined! i have now finished this semester of university and tomorrow i go home for four weeks, so i hope to have plenty of time to write ono. i hope you liked this!