Secrets and Lies
Secrets and Lies
Jaishree Misra
The Secret History meets Daddy’s Girls as four old schoolfriends reunite after fifteen years in this sizzling blockbuster.You can't run away from your past…Anita, Zeba, Bubbles and Sam have a friendship that spans 20 years - a friendship born out of their years at a private girls’ school in Delhi in the early Nineties. Beautiful, intelligent and secretive, they were the top clique; the girls that everyone wanted to impress - until the arrival of a newcomer to the school. 15-year-old Lily D'Souza is beautiful, gifted and acerbic and instantly threatens their superiority.Now, Anita, Sam and Bubbles live in London. Bubbles is the pampered but bored wife of a billionaire, Anita is a top journalist working for the BBC, whilst Sam tries hard to be a trophy wife for her corporate lawyer husband. Zeba remained in India, and now lives a life of unimaginable luxury as the world's reigning Bollywood queen.Called back to India for a reunion by their beloved school principal Mrs Lamb, the women must confront a secret that has haunted their adult lives. Lily's body was found on the night of their school prom and, for twenty years, the open verdict has shielded the fact that they may have had a hand in her death.But as they reunite in Delhi to find out the truth about what really happened that night, will their friendship stand the strain? Or are some things better left unsaid…?
JAISHREE MISRA
Secrets and Lies
Copyright (#u6f123e10-61fe-513d-9b8c-334c40763cd0)
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
AVON
A division of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
First published in Great Britain by
HarperCollinsPublishers 2009
Copyright © Jaishree Misra 2009
Jaishree Misra asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
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Source ISBN: 9781847561688
Ebook Edition © 2009 ISBN: 9780007331642
Version: 2018-06-18
This book is dedicated to all my girlfriends, but most
especially Qubra, who never minded that I regularly
swiped her lunch back at school…
With rue my heart is laden For golden friends I had, For many a rose-lipt maiden And many a lightfoot lad. By brooks too broad for leaping The lightfoot lads are laid; The rose-lipt girls are sleeping In fields where roses fade.
A.E. Housman
Contents
Title Page (#u6d94d893-487f-5810-8965-ca13e472da29)
Copyright (#udb3b7d5c-39f3-55b1-9da2-0d3ef9671925)
Prologue (#u1ff02072-9d1e-574c-8ac3-381e55577a81)
Chapter One (#u7a139143-9a5d-54fc-bafb-a67d3e9f04ab)
Chapter Two (#u69246991-304c-59e4-834a-791e92f9e20d)
Chapter Three (#ud543ba77-9251-5566-9713-de745ae7f5ac)
Chapter Four (#u7904e05f-69dc-517b-96c3-54119906be7b)
Chapter Five (#u7a1ca08e-dca3-523d-86c5-ab0ccb969a32)
Chapter Six (#udf96b16c-1773-54f0-bb58-6e0cd0716bd8)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eighteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nineteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-One (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Two (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Three (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty (#litres_trial_promo)
Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)
Acknowledgments (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
Prologue (#u6f123e10-61fe-513d-9b8c-334c40763cd0)
DELHI, 2008
Victoria Lamb sealed the last of her letters and placed it on top of the small pile. Then, steadying herself on the arms of her wooden swivel chair, she eased herself up from the writing bureau where she had been sitting since dawn and walked across to the French windows. Flexing her stiff hand, Victoria parted the old curtains at their faded central strip and blinked as Delhi’s sharp summer sunshine flooded in. The rose garden, denuded of flowers, lay thorny and colourless, dust stubbornly clinging to everything: the leaves, the trees, Lily’s stone grave at the bottom of the garden. Beyond the hedge and through the smog haze, the mansard roof of the school building with its squat clock tower was just visible. Emptied of its student population, the old Edwardian building had lain silent for the last six weeks, with only the occasional flitting figure of a nun disturbing the dark peace of the convent’s corridors.
Tomorrow the new term would start in its usual clamorous manner, beginning with the distant rumble of school buses approaching the gates. A pleasant enough sound, but one that unfailingly lapsed into belligerence as the bus drivers competed with the private cars that brought the more affluent pupils to school. That was when the ear-shattering revving and grinding of engines invariably began. The bus drivers were mindful of Miss Lamb’s strict ‘No Horns’ policy but, despite the occasional sternly worded home-circular, there was little she had been able to do about the strident car horns, the expression of self-importance that flowed from Delhi’s wealthy to their chauffeurs.
Far more forgiveable were the children’s shrieks that would assail Victoria’s ears at precisely half past seven, when the first of the school buses would disgorge its passengers just as she was sitting down to her breakfast of one poached egg and a slice of unbuttered toast. But the girls knew well enough to keep their voices hushed once they were inside the school building, or when they saw Miss Lamb passing through the grounds from the cottage at the edge of the school. That was indeed the best time of the day for Victoria—and had been for many years—the moment at which she cut across the quadrangle, saying hello and sometimes stopping to speak to a passing student, while the aroma of coffee wafted in the air alongside muffled laughter from the staff room. Victoria felt a small rush of gratification at the thought that she would be experiencing that familiar glow at roughly this time tomorrow. And then she reminded herself that tomorrow was to be the very last time she would be at St Jude’s to see the start of term.
Victoria sighed, not for the first time in the day, before turning away from the window. How could she pretend it would not be hard to leave all this? Fifty years at Jude’s; it had become her life! Her smile was rueful as she walked slowly around the living room of her little cottage, making mental notes about what she would need to give away or pack. Not that she would miss everything about the life of a school principal, of course. The job had been robbed of some of its joys along the way, not least because St Jude’s—with its very old reputation of turning out stylish and well-spoken young ladies—had in recent years become the choice of noveau-riche Delhi business families who merely wanted their daughters to speak English properly, thereby acquiring a sheen of sophistication. The school population had certainly enjoyed a more healthy mix when Victoria had first arrived here, college professors and government servants then seeming more able to afford the fees for their children than these days. But competition from those exclusive day-schools springing up in South Delhi had led to St Jude’s management deciding to install air-conditioning in its gym and library ten years ago, and now a gleaming indoor swimming pool was being built on the site of the old chapel. Victoria had tried to argue that the soaring fees would invariably lead to falling academic standards, but the only concession management would make was to increase the number of scholarship students from one a year to two. Her point had been amply proven over the years, but it brought no satisfaction to Victoria whenever she saw how the quality of Jude’s alumni had fallen. Running a finishing school was not what Victoria had had in mind for herself at all!
Back at her bureau, Victoria riffled through her small stack of letters, studying the names and addresses. She had tracked them down more easily than she had initially thought possible. Her girls. Somehow she continued to think of them as her special girls, despite the thousands that had since passed through the school. They had, in fact, been dubbed ‘Miss Lamb’s crème de la crème’ the year the school had performed The Prime of Miss jean Brodie as a play. She corrected herself: ‘Lamboo’s crème de la crème’, for that was what the girls had always called her. Never to her face, good God, no! Far be it for her to allow that kind of familiarity. Besides, her popularity notwithstanding, the students respected her too much to take those sorts of liberties. She had never particularly minded being called Lamboo. It wasn’t malicious, merely an affectionate twist to the Hindi word that aptly described her tall and willowy figure. Victoria Lamb had, in fact, discovered her nickname from one of her first batches at St Jude’s, once they had passed out of the school and returned en masse to pay their respects one day. Yes, one way or another, they always came back. Even if only to seek admission for their own daughters.
Victoria tapped the envelopes on the wooden surface, her face turning pensive as she remembered her batch of ’93 and the dreadful events of that year. She had another night to decide whether to post these letters or not as the school peon would turn up on his bicycle at nine o’clock to take her mail to the post office. Agonising over this decision for days, she had tried imagining how the letters would be received by those four girls who had so deliberately never returned to the school.
Victoria still saw them in their grey-crested blazers and knee socks, even though they would be in their early thirties now, women of the world, married…some with children, she knew, and husbands and jobs. Every so often, a snippet of news about one of them would arrive, either via one of their old classmates, or in the pages of those glossy gossip magazines she leafed through while sitting in the dentist’s waiting room.
Victoria understood perfectly why they had never come back, of course. The reason lay in that lonely grave at the bottom of her garden. Why, she herself had nearly left St Jude’s after Lily’s death, unable for weeks to step into the rose garden without remembering that terrible December night—and the sight of Lily as she lay on the damp earth speckled with freshly fallen petals. The picture had been imprinted on Victoria’s memory forever: Lily’s sequined dress pooling around her body like water and her face, her beautiful face, not yet drained of colour, turned up to the sky as though admiring the stars.
It was Lily’s unblinking eyes that had first given it away.
That, and the blood seeping over the side of her head.
Chapter One (#u6f123e10-61fe-513d-9b8c-334c40763cd0)
LONDON, 2008
The letters arrived at their destinations almost fifteen years after the death of Lily D’Souza.
The first to receive hers was Bubbles Raheja, as she sat curled up on a divan in the morning room of her palatial Belgravia home. She was in a state of unusual tranquillity that morning, as none of the family were at home and, consequently, she was painting her toenails a cheery post-box red when the maid brought in the mail. Generally it was Sooki, the silent but ever-smiling Thai pedicurist at the discreet little salon tucked away in a Mayfair side street, who tended to her nails, but, sometimes, doing little tasks like this for herself gave Bubbles an odd sort of pleasure that she struggled to explain. On one level it transported her instantly back to her teenage years in Delhi when she and her sisters would squabble over the last congealing dregs of Toffee Pearl, sometimes having to mix it with Cinnamon Brown and a few drops of nail-polish remover to get it to spreading consistency. But, these days, Bubbles manicured her own nails as a form of rebellion; the only kind of rebellion Bubbles ever mounted against her husband and in-laws: quiet and private and completely inconspicuous. She knew how deeply Binkie would loathe the sight of his wife sitting in as public a space as the living room performing such an ungainly task for all the house staff to behold, but that was exactly what made it so agreeable. Of course, her timid insurgence was a bit wasted, given that Binkie wasn’t around to witness it—but then Bubbles had long grown used to making do.
She smiled at the maid and ordered a cup of elaichi tea before gesturing for the pack of mail to be left on the inlaid marble foot-stool at her elbow. Then she returned to the unfamiliar job at hand, frowning as she concentrated on getting the second coat just right. It was only ten minutes later, when the maid carried the tea-tray in and tried to make room on the small stool crowded with bottles of varnish and thinner and balls of cotton wool, that the pack of unread mail fell to the floor and Bubbles spotted the plain white envelope. The sender’s address typed onto a label in the lower left-hand corner instantly caught her attention. How could it not? The nail-polish brush was hastily discarded as Bubbles reached down to pick up Miss Lamb’s letter. She did not notice until much later that a drop of varnish had fallen onto one of the cream silk cushions, forming a permanent testament to her guilt—a round red blotch that rather fittingly resembled a small splash of blood.
A little later that same morning, Samira Hussein also looked disbelievingly at the envelope in her hand. It had her Kensington address and postcode absolutely right, which in itself was surprising. Was it her imagination or had her fingers actually started trembling as she read the contents twice over? She looked at her reflection in the hall mirror and was startled by her own stricken expression. The cloying, sickening smell of the Gallica roses in their cut-glass vase suddenly filled her nostrils. She cast a baleful look at their perfect velvet folds. Sam never normally bought roses—there was good reason for that—but this bouquet had been given to her by Akbar’s boss who had been invited to dinner last night, and the maid must have thought she was being useful by replacing the more customary gladioli with them. Sam picked up the telephone. If there ever was a time to break the old pact of silence, it was this. She did a quick count on her fingers even though she already knew—fifteen years this winter. She waited, desperately willing Bubbles to answer the phone, but by the seventh ring Sam knew it was useless.
‘This is the Orange voicemail service. The number you are trying to reach is currently switched off. Please leave a message after the tone’.
Why did they always use such annoyingly nasal voices for automated messages, she thought illogically, and where on earth was Bubbles; she had usually risen by midday. Sam looked at her watch and guessed that her friend was either in the sauna or having a massage, or aromatherapy, or whatever she was on these days. Bubbles hardly ever turned her mobile phone off, the damn thing usually an ever-present appendage to her left hand or ear, but now Sam had no option but to call Anita. She was normally most reluctant to bother anyone who had an actual career on a weekday morning, but this was important.
‘Sam,’ she heard Anita’s habitually brisk voice a mere second after the phone rang, ‘can it wait, darling? It’s coming up to the hour and the bulletin…’
‘I know, I know, I wouldn’t have, but I just wanted to know if you’ve had the letter too.’
‘Letter?’
‘I’ve just had a letter from Lamboo.’
She heard the silence before Anita spoke, her voice incredulous.
‘Lamboo? After all these years! Whatever for?’
‘Oh God, I’m so sorry, Anita, I know I shouldn’t have rung when you have to be on air in…what is it, ten minutes? Shall I call back later?’
‘Yes…no…Sam, wait! Just quickly, what sort of letter is it?’
‘It’s an invitation to some kind of reunion at the school, I think. Doesn’t say very much…’
Anita let out a long breath. ‘Fuuuck,’ she whispered.
‘I know. I haven’t stopped shaking since opening it,’ Sam replied.
‘Look, shall I come around this evening? Or, if you can, would you pick me up from work? Five-ish? We’ll get a drink around here somewhere.’
‘Okay, I’ll get Bubbles too. Speak later…and don’t think about it if you can help it.’
She heard Anita emit a short laugh before hanging up. Sam marvelled when, ten minutes later, she heard her friend’s clipped and measured accent deliver the lunchtime news on her kitchen radio as though it were just another day.
At exactly three minutes past the hour, Anita Roy pulled down the faders on her newsroom console and clicked the button that would transfer listeners to the continuity announcer. Luckily she knew the routine so well that she no longer had to concentrate on what she was doing. She pushed her headphones off and they lay against her neck, crackling with the tinny faraway voice of the girl who did the programme trails as Anita sank her head into her hands. Fifteen years on and the memories still lacerated her on certain days. Not, oddly, when she’d had a bad day and was tired and tense, but the very reverse. It was invariably whenever something tremendous happened: a promotion, a new man, even the day she got the keys to her first flat. It was exactly in those brilliant, luminous moments, when life seemed filled with the sweetest prospects, that Lily unfailingly returned. Not just a passing memory of her, but the sight—as clear as anything—of her pale face and the way she had looked at her that night in the rose garden, moments before she had died.
MUMBAI, 2008
Miss Lamb’s letter to Zeba Khan had been delivered to the film star’s Juhu address the previous week, but it would be another few days before Zeba herself would see it. The letter had nearly got lost, nestled as it was alongside many others in the customary gunny bag. The local post office, accustomed to receiving fan mail addressed sometimes just to ‘Zeba, Bombay’, had taken to using a pair of large sacks to deliver her mail. That day’s load had been an exceptionally heavy one and Zeba Khan’s secretary, Gupta, had already spent an extra hour trying to clear it. He resisted the temptation to throw the last rubber-banded clutch into the bin so that he could finally leave to catch his train to Ghatkopar. It was his main task every day to wade through his employer’s fan mail, answering each one with a standard letter of appreciation, a photograph of the film star showing just a hint of her famed cleavage and a carefully forged signature. Gupta sometimes wondered about that signature of his, the carefully crafted Z, the flourish as the A ended in a small cross, musing over its many grateful recipients. One persistent correspondent had even written back to say that he kissed the signature every morning before leaving for work as a porter at Victoria Terminus, convinced that it gave him strength.
Gupta picked up the last letter, eyeing the cheap envelope and handwritten address, resisting once again the urge to hurl it into the trash can unopened. Madam received all sorts of invitation cards: premieres, parties, even weddings and baby-naming ceremonies, as though her fans really thought she was as sweet as her roles made her out to be, and very eager to drop by their family function if she happened to be passing. He knew, of course, better than anyone else, that Madam rarely stirred out of bed for anything less than five lakh rupees these days. He sighed deeply as he slit open the envelope. She had maintained an uncanny knack of finding out if he had shirked any of his tasks and, having no wish to receive one of her verbal lashings, he surveyed the letter before deciding how to respond. This was an unusual one, not the kind of thing Gupta had ever had to deal with before. Certainly not a request that could be fobbed off with a signed photograph showing some cleavage. He held the letter briefly in his hand, reading it again more carefully The address and postmark looked authentic, and this Miss Lamb apparently knew Zeba Madam well. He could not assume that Madam would not want to reply to the letter herself, or perhaps despatch a box of her trademark spray of orchids to its sender, for that was what she sometimes did when she wanted to turn someone down without making it too blatant they were being turned down.
It had become obvious to Gupta over the years that Madam was not in touch with anyone from her Delhi childhood, not even her family, so this was rather intriguing. And she was, in fact, due to be there in December for the annual Film Awards, for which they already knew she was receiving the Best Actress prize. This might be the kind of distraction from her routine that she would enjoy, it would perhaps even present some good PR and photo-shoot opportunities. Gupta remembered having once, in his early and more enthusiastic days, suggested to Zeba Madam that her fans would probably love to know more about the kind of school she had attended and people she had studied with, that being the kind of insignificant information that usually thrilled her silly admirers no end. But she had flown at him in a sudden rage, dismissing his idea as being ‘stupid’ and ‘thoughtless’. Gupta had never again strayed into what was clearly sensitive territory.
He looked at the letter again, deciding to leave it casually on Madam’s bedside table. She would not miss it lying there when she returned later tonight from Zurich, where she had gone to shoot a song sequence.
Chapter Two (#u6f123e10-61fe-513d-9b8c-334c40763cd0)
LONDON, 2008
Despite the tumult of painful memories that had been sparked by the arrival of Miss Lamb’s letter, Sam managed to get through the rest of her day maintaining her normal placid demeanour. It was nearly two when she finally managed to speak to Bubbles, but her friend was uncharacteristically reticent about explaining why she hadn’t taken her calls. Bubbles too had received Miss Lamb’s letter, and Sam could tell, from what sounded like a blocked nose, that Bubbles had been crying. Not wanting to discuss it on the phone, Sam merely told Bubbles the time and place that had been agreed with Anita before hanging up.
Luckily it was time to collect Heer from school, and Sam left her house with relief, pulling on a cashmere cardigan as protection against the stubborn chilliness in the air. She looked up at the watery sun as she closed the gate behind her, trying to take pleasure in its rare appearance. What a dismal summer it had been so far, even the daffs that had struggled to emerge in the back garden a month ago had turned brown and soggy and collapsed within days. It was as if life itself was fighting to cope against all odds.
Sam turned as she heard a familiar voice hail her and saw her neighbour emerge from her driveway.
‘Hey, Franci,’ she said pleasantly, although she couldn’t help taking in the sight of Francesca’s trim legs beneath her summer dress with a rush of envy. Francesca had clearly worn such a short dress on a cold day only to show off her tan. She was maniacal about her fitness regime and had certainly earned every inch of her fabulous figure, but it was enviable to Sam, whose battle to curb her burgeoning weight was now taking on epic proportions.
Francesca took Sam’s arm in her usual friendly fashion and they walked down their leafy road together, meeting up with another pair of mums who were also school-bound.
‘Oh goodness, I’ve got to show you something,’ Francesca said as the group reached the school. She fished out her iPhone from a small Purdey shoulder bag. ‘Piccies from our half-term hols,’ she explained, giggling as she clicked through a few photographs. Francesca turned her phone around to show the one she had picked for Sam and the others to see. They peered at a picture of Francesca’s husband, Tom, normally an immaculately clad banker, wearing a pair of baggy swim-shorts and beaming inanely as he struck a ridiculous muscleman stance with a surfboard on a Mustique beach. The women fell about laughing but Francesca said, ‘That’s not the half of it. There’s a real corker here somewhere. Ah, this one.’ The next picture was of Tom standing in the kitchen of their villa, still bare-chested and this time holding a large gleaming cucumber up against the crotch of his swim-shorts. The droll expression on his face made everyone scream with merriment and Sam forced herself to join in, feeling something catch at her heart. How greedily she always gathered up particulars of the kind of relationship Francesca took so much for granted and that would never be hers to have. It wasn’t that Akbar was a bad husband, but they certainly seemed to have a lot less fun than couples like Francesca and Tom did. Sam could not, in fact, recall Akbar ever having done something absurd purely to make her laugh, and had put it down a long time ago to her own taut demeanour; to the fear that lurked deep inside her, always half-expecting things to go wrong if she enjoyed herself too much.
Fortunately the school bell was now ringing and everyone was distracted by the emerging children. Sam didn’t think she could bear looking at more of Francesca’s happy holiday pictures.
They walked back home together, nevertheless, chatting companionably and carrying their load of colourful jackets and bags, the children tumbling ahead of them.
‘Coffee?’ Francesca asked as they reached her gate.
Worrying at the prospect of having to look at more photographs of Francesca’s boisterous family having fun, Sam made a hasty excuse which, thankfully, wasn’t entirely untrue. ‘I’d have loved to, Franci, but I’m going into town a little later to meet a couple of old school friends for a drink.’
‘Those two mates of yours from your school in Delhi?’ Francesca asked, adding, ‘I remember them from Heer’s birthday party, they were the only women there who came without children!’
Sam laughed. ‘That’s them all right. Couldn’t keep them away if I tried! Anita doesn’t have her own kids yet so Heer’s a sort of surrogate daughter for her whenever she gets maternal or broody. Which doesn’t happen very often. And Bubbles’ two are now far too grown-up for kiddie birthday parties!’
‘I’ll tell you what I do remember about your mate Bubbles—the fabulous croc-skin clutch she was carrying. Just gorgeous! Bea Valdez, she said it was. It’s not like me, but I just couldn’t help asking.’
‘Oh, Bubs would never mind anyone asking her anything. Sometimes I wonder how she retains her niceness considering the kind of stratosphere her family moves in,’ Sam replied.
‘Golly, yes, you did say once that they were pally with the likes of Lakshmi Mittal and Tamara Mellon.’
Sam smiled. ‘Lakshmi Mittal’s a family friend of theirs, I think. But Bubbles’ only connection with Tamara Mellon is that their daughters go to the same school. Oh, and that she buys every other Jimmy Choo shoe ever produced!’
‘Seriously?’
‘Absolutely seriously. She must have at least fifty pairs at any one time, dear old Bubbles. I mean, the sales girl at the Chelsea store personally calls her whenever a new design comes in, for heaven’s sake! Oh, and you should see her shoe closet—to die for!’
‘Ohhh,’ Francesca breathed dreamily, opening her gate. ‘Some people do have such dream lives, don’t they?’
Sam recognised the irony of the situation. Here was Francesca—whom Sam had always envied slightly—madly envying Bubbles, who was, all things considered, really just the archetypal poor little rich girl, the fat pimply teenager she once was still lurking just beneath the surface. But Sam would not dream of gossiping with Francesca about Bubbles and so, as Heer was now pulling her away, eager to get home, Sam waved her neighbour a hasty goodbye.
Punching in the numbers to open her electronic gate, Sam allowed her daughter through first, following her down the steps that led to the kitchen door. She unloaded Heer’s schoolbag, jacket and ballet slippers onto the kitchen table before grabbing her daughter, whose hands were already raiding the biscuit jar, giving her a big kiss before she wriggled away. ‘I bought those for me from Konditor and Cook today! Well, no more than one, Heer, if you want to be the world’s best ballerina. And early dinner tonight, okay?’ she called out after the small figure that was already bounding up the stairs to her room brandishing a large wedge of chocolate-chip shortbread in one hand.
Sam exchanged a smile with her maid, who was brewing up some fragrant masala tea. ‘Oh, a cup for me too, Masooma,’ she said, pulling off her trainers. ‘And then we can do the month’s accounts, yes?’ Not that the accounts needed doing as they weren’t into July yet, but Sam knew she had to stay busy and keep herself distracted until she was with Anita and Bubbles. Miss Lamb’s letter had been carefully put away in the bottom of her lingerie drawer where Akbar would never find it. She could never discuss it with him. Only Anita and Bubbles would understand her pain and guilt.
By evening there was a light drizzle falling. Sam pulled up at a parking meter as near to Anita’s Aldwych office as she could manage. The space was tight and it took a couple of shunts before the bulk of her Audi was comfortably contained in its slot. Odd how expertly she could do that, without Akbar’s presence in the car making parallel parking fraught with all kinds of perils. After turning the wipers off, she sat for a few minutes watching raindrops make their journey down the windscreen, some unhesitant and quite certain of their destination, others—like her, she couldn’t help thinking—tentatively stopping and starting before finally rolling reluctantly towards the bonnet. When the rain had eased a bit, Sam emerged from the car, pulling her handbag and pashmina from the back seat. Then she zapped the central-locking system, which responded with its familiar reassuring beep. Akbar usually did that while striding purposefully away from the car, without even glancing over his shoulder, but Sam preferred to be sure the locks were down and flashing their little red lights before she could walk away.
Shivering, she wrapped her stole around her bare shoulders and assessed the gaps in the traffic before darting across the road. Even a passing summer shower could instantly turn London back to a wintry grey, the city seeming to return with relief to being its favourite avatar. She looked at her watch as she quickened her steps for Bush House. She’d told Anita four o’clock and already it was a quarter past. Her super-efficient journalist friend often despaired over Sam’s rather scatty time-keeping abilities, recently joking: ‘Imagine if I were to open up the news bulletin with…It’s—oh crikey, so sorry everyone—just a couple of minutes past ten. But does it matter, for heavens sake, just a few minutes this way or that?’ Anita had mimicked Sam’s lazy drawl as she said that last sentence, eliciting a good-natured smile from Sam, who would have been the first to admit she had airily carried over the concept of ‘Indian time’ into her life here in England, unlike Anita. Constantly amazed by Anita’s brusque professionalism, Sam often found it hard to imagine that they’d managed to stay friends since they were seven.
She went through the tall doors of the BBC that were invariably surrounded by dripping scaffolding, and waved when she spotted Anita standing at the top of the stairs joshing with an elderly security guard. Anita would chat to anyone, and had once claimed that casual conversations were the sources of her best stories.
They hugged as Anita reached the bottom of the stairs. ‘Are you okay?’ she asked Sam, who nodded. ‘Sorry I couldn’t speak when you called…’
‘Don’t worry, but I couldn’t get hold of Bubbles either and really needed to hear one of your voices.’
‘Is she coming?’
‘Of course, she said she’ll meet us at Heebah at five.’
‘Make that six then,’ Anita said wryly, pulling up the hood of her gilet as they stepped outside the building.
‘She won’t be late today. She just has to drop her mum-in-law somewhere before getting the car and driver to herself.’
Sam ignored Anita’s eye-roll. Anita was the only one of them who still travelled on the tube—which was fine until she started making a virtue of it. Occasionally, if she went on for long enough about carbon footprints and off-setting emissions, Sam would feel guilty enough to walk across the park or hop on a 98 bus to get into town. But that wasn’t really an option on a day as rainy as this, and for Bubbles to even dream of travelling anywhere but by car was ridiculous, given her millions. Well, her pa-in-law’s gazillions, to be more accurate.
Sam took her friend’s arm as they walked over the zebra crossing, hastening their footsteps for the politely waiting traffic. The drizzle was turning heavier and the café was still half a block away. As usual, she’d forgotten to carry a brolly and pulled her stole over her head. She was ruining another good pashmina, but Akbar had told her to get her hair done in honour of his boss’s visit yesterday and that hadn’t cost very much less.
A few minutes later they ducked with relief under the awning of the hookah café, squeezing their way past brass tables that had been placed on the pavement for smokers. Since the introduction of the smoking ban, Sam had taken to feeling sorry for all those smokers who had been relegated to muddy pavements as they bubbled into brass hookahs and stared moodily out at the rain. Sam had spent years going uncomplainingly to places like Heebah for the sake of her two best friends as, going by the law of averages, it had seemed altogether fairer that they should go to smoking rather than non-smoking establishments. She had tried not to think of it as a sacrifice anyway, having long ago got into the habit of taking shallow breaths when she was around her friends. Anita had been smoking since they were fifteen, claiming then that it helped her concentrate on cramming for their exams, although Bubbles had taken to it only after her marriage, citing her reason as stress induced by, alternately, her mother-in-law, father-in-law, children and husband.
The women were ushered to the table that Sam had sensibly thought to book earlier in the day, and settled onto a pair of commodious white leather banquettes. Sam noticed that all the Persian hookahs and filigreed marble ashtrays had gone, replaced by artful bowls filled with colourful glass beads. Anita ordered their drinks: a full-bodied Shiraz for Sam and a vodka tonic for herself. After their waiter had left, she said, ‘Well, let’s see Lamboo’s letter then’, and as she shrugged off her damp gilet she saw that Sam was already holding it out in her direction.
Bubbles looked fretfully out of the car window—they had left Belgravia at least half an hour ago, taken fifteen minutes to get to the art buyer’s office on Curzon Street, where her mother-in-law had disembarked, and were still only just approaching Grosvenor Square. The traffic snarl-up around the American Embassy wasn’t helped by the ghastly concrete road blocks that seemed to have become a permanent feature of the square. She could see a metal passageway with a makeshift placard saying ‘Visas’ that was occupying half the road and snaked all the way around the block. The passageway was empty of people, the embassy probably having shut at five, although a hulking guard with a jutting chin stood holding an impressive piece of weaponry while gazing at the passing traffic. He caught Bubbles’ eye briefly through the car window as she drifted past, but there wasn’t the usual flicker of interest on his impassive features. He had obviously not registered the fancy car and liveried chauffeur in the way most people did, sneaking unashamedly curious peeks at the occupants of the rear seat to catch a glimpse through smoked glass of such blessed beings that could afford to ride in a Maybach. They were hardly likely to know that she, Bubbles, rode in it only when accompanying her imperious mother-in-law like some kind of handmaiden. Nor would they know that there were things money and Maybachs couldn’t achieve, such as being able to get through the London traffic faster on a day like this. There was no point getting tetchy with the poor driver, as her mother-in-law had done a few minutes ago. He was doing his best with the bulky car that had purred again to a standstill. To distract herself, Bubbles delved into the magazine rack behind the seat and found copies of Tatler and American Vanity Fair. She leafed through the first and then the second, trying to absorb the gossip and the fashion tips. But her concentration was terrible today. She hadn’t been able to think straight since the arrival of Lamboo’s letter this morning, unable even to speak to Sam when she had seen her name flash repeatedly on the screen of her phone. Slapping the magazines down on the seat, Bubbles opened her bag and took out the envelope for the umpteenth time. She gently ran her fingers over its rough paper, in some inexplicable way relishing the painful tug she felt in her heart. Just when her psychotherapist had confirmed that she was finally learning to put futile memories away, this! Someone—it must have been Anita—had once said that people remembered happy things like their childhood days and first love and first taste of ice-cream in a cone only when they were unhappy. If that was so, then it was clear to Bubbles that she was condemned to be surrounded by her memories despite the best psychotherapy Harley Street had to offer. And how they had rushed back this morning, faces and voices emerging thick and fast from some kind of wintry mist, even the tiniest details etched with sudden frightening clarity before her eyes. Bubbles shoved the letter back into her Mulberry tote, nervously rubbing her other hand over the cold hardness of its metal studs, warming them against her palm as she looked out at the rain.
It had rained in Delhi too that morning long ago, complete with lightning flashes and thunderclaps, which was not so unusual for late December. The downpour had made the roses in Miss Lamb’s garden drop their petals all over the winter earth, like red spatters of blood. Or so Bubbles had thought, until she had actually seen what blood looked like after it had fallen on wet earth—virtually invisible to the eye. She shuddered. ‘Where are we now, Mottram?’ she asked in a high voice, for want of anything else to say.
‘Old Burlington Street, Madam,’ the chauffeur replied. ‘I’m trying all the back roads to get out of this mess. Not long now, hopefully.’
Bubbles recognised the shops of Regent Street as the car turned a corner and she saw shoppers burdened with raincoats and bags, crossing the road and waiting at bus stops, looking as though they carried the weight of the world on their shoulders. She wondered sometimes at the sorrows that might afflict other people, occasionally feeling pangs of guilt at her own rather pampered existence. The cafés were all brightly lit and buzzing with people taking shelter from the rain. She could see a couple kissing in the large window of Starbucks, a mug of shared coffee steaming in between them.
The car crawled over the lights at Piccadilly Circus. They weren’t far from Heebah now, thankfully. Suddenly Bubbles longed to see her two old schoolmates more than anyone else in the world. Anita could be such a pain sometimes, carping on about left-wing stuff and recently making her feel personally culpable when her in-laws’ company bought up an airline. As though those were things she had any control over at all. She’d tried sarcasm (‘I’m not exactly Binkie’s dad’s business advisor, y’know’) but nothing could stop Anita once she had mounted her soapbox. Sam was different, good old Sam. Unfailingly tactful and diplomatic, always playing peacemaker. In truth, though, Bubbles loved them both, even Anita, whose energy and intellect she could draw upon when required, which was frequently. Sometimes she wondered whether it was the combined presence in London of her two oldest friends that had kept her sane all these years. In that respect, at least, she had been lucky.
After the chauffeur had pulled up alongside the maroon and gold awning of Heebah, Bubbles stepped out gingerly, careful not to get her new Manolos wet. A couple of men gave the car, and then her, appreciative glances as she wended her way past the pavement tables into the restaurant, pushing her heavy mane of auburn hair back from her face. Her linen trouser-suit was probably crumpled, but she could tell from Heebah’s fawning mâitre d’ that she still looked expensive. She had never figured out how people uncannily smelt affluence emanating from her person, but they invariably did, even when she hadn’t bothered to dress up.
She made her way across the room as she spotted her two friends. They were deep in conversation and saw her only when she was ushered into her seat. After she had ordered a champagne cocktail for herself, she turned to them. There was none of the usual preamble about clothes and hair and weight today. Instead, she nodded at the letter that lay on the table between Sam and Anita and said sombrely, ‘What the hell do you think Lamboo’s doing?’
‘I was just saying that it’s amazing how she managed to track us all down,’ Anita observed, adding, ‘well, that’s assuming she has sent letters to everyone. I haven’t had mine yet.’
‘It must be waiting for you at your flat. She wouldn’t leave you out. Wonder whether she’s written to everyone, you know, the whole batch of ’93?’
‘Something tells me it’s just us, actually’
‘She must have met someone who knew our addresses,’ Bubbles suggested. ‘Or maybe the internet makes all this easy now. My Ruby was talking about some Facebook website thing where her school friends meet and chat or something…’ Bubbles stopped rambling. The last thing any of them wanted was to be chatting to their other school friends, their little circle having snapped firmly shut the minute they had left school.
‘It wouldn’t have been that difficult to trace us,’ Sam was replying in her usual pragmatic manner. ‘Why, Lamboo might just have called one or the other of our parents in Delhi. I think we’re worrying too much. Maybe it’s just as her letter says: she’s retiring from Jude’s and wants to see us before she “disappears into the deep hush of a convent”.’
‘Mmm, I don’t know…typically poetic, but something tells me it’s more than that,’ Anita said dubiously. ‘It’s clear she’s holding something back…like here, where she says, “I have so much more to tell you girls before I go, but perhaps it is best to wait until you are all gathered here together as before”’. Anita tapped the letter with her forefinger. ‘How the fuck does that not indicate she really wants to say something else, huh? Would she really summon us 4000 miles just to say goodbye?’
It was Bubbles who first said the unsayable, uttering the name not mentioned between them in all these years. ‘Do you think they might have found some new leads in Lily’s case?’ she asked in a small voice.
‘Nonsense. After fifteen years?’ Anita scoffed, although she sounded more nervous than incredulous. ‘I can’t see the Delhi police being that efficient somehow.’
‘It’s possible she just suddenly got a bit maudlin or emotional or some such. After all, the date she’s suggested will be exactly fifteen years since Lily died,’ Sam offered before trailing off.
‘Lamboo emotional? Don’t think so somehow. It just isn’t part of the Brit psyche, stiff upper lip and all that.’
‘Oh God, it just doesn’t make sense,’ Bubbles said, picking up her champagne flute from the table and taking a long swallow. Sometimes the very act of thinking made her head hurt.
‘D’you know,’ Sam said, wrapping her shawl around her shoulders, ‘I met Aradhna Singh at a lunch party the other day. She was just back from her school reunion at St Jude’s. Makes a point of it to go every year, apparently. And she was saying that ours is the only batch that has never had one. A reunion, I mean…’
Anita thumped her glass down on the wooden table with some vehemence. ‘Well, that must’ve been a happy thought for Aradhna,’ she said.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, don’t you recall how miffed she always was at us being the top dogs at school? Their batch, coming straight after ours, would never have matched up, I reckon.’
‘Her “crème de la crème”, Lamboo called us. Remember?’ Sam said softly.
‘Don’t think that meant anything particularly. She just picked the term up from the Brodie play we were doing that year.’
‘Oh that’s not true, Anita,’ Sam protested. ‘Lamboo just doted on us. She really did believe we would go on to do special things.’
‘Well, how the mighty have fallen then,’ said Anita.
‘Oh don’t say that,’ Bubbles cut in, trying to offer comfort. ‘At least you’re doing useful things and meeting interesting political types. Y’know, like Boris Johnson and all…’ She trailed off, knowing how unconvincing that sounded, before making another attempt. ‘I remembered that expression—crème de la crème—just the other day actually, when Binkie got an invite to the Gorbachev concert which said that London’s “crème de la crème” was being invited. Somehow it felt much more special when Lamboo used to say it…’
‘We were special to her…’ Sam insisted.
Anita leaned forward to pick up the menu. ‘Well, only until her precious crème de la crème took so violently against Lily D’Souza. That could never have been lost on someone as canny as old Lamboo, even though—to be fair—she never once did let on. But I was always sure it was the reason why she never had us back for a reunion. I mean…’ she paused, keeping her eyes on the menu, ‘surely it would have been anathema for someone as morally upright as Lamboo to jolly around with us after Lily’s death…’ Anita’s voice dropped as she kept her eyes down, unable to make eye contact with her two companions as she continued in a mumble, ‘…especially seeing how plainly we benefited from it.’
Anita had aimed the comment at herself, but in the silence that followed it slowly dawned on her that Sam and Bubbles might have misunderstood such a clumsy expression of remorse. Discomfited, she looked at her friends and saw appalled expressions on both their faces. Realising suddenly how wounding her words must have been, she leaned forward and clutched Sam’s knee, her expression now mortified. ‘Heyyy, Sam, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to sound so sharp, nor be so terribly thoughtless. I’ve just been feeling so tetchy all day’
‘God, me too. Even my father-in-law noticed,’ Bubbles said, taking another long sip of her drink, the flute trembling slightly between her fingers.
Sam was looking into her own wine glass, now stained pink from the Shiraz. ‘I can’t deny…’ she whispered, her face suddenly full of lines and shadows. She took a deep breath before continuing, ‘You know, even today I can’t think of that year without my heart squeezing itself so hard in my chest, it’s as if I can’t breathe for a few minutes. I know we never speak of it but…Lily’s death on the night of our Social. I honestly don’t know how we ever…’ She turned back to Anita, but her friend could see that Sam’s dilated pupils were unable to focus on her own. A glass of wine was usually all it took to make Sam a little drunk, but this, Anita knew, was something else altogether. Poor Sam was clearly trying to gather herself together, her voice trembling as she continued speaking in a low voice, now seeming unable to stop her thoughts. ‘You know, it was only much, much later that it really sank in. The enormity of what we had done. I know I just wasn’t myself that winter…death seemed almost to be stalking me like some evil beast…but still…I shouldn’t try to find excuses for myself…’ Sam stopped abruptly and shivered. The women sat in silence for a few minutes before Sam squeezed Anita’s hand, which was still in hers, indicating forgiveness for her earlier remark.
‘Such a terrible time. I still dream of it sometimes. Not just think of it, but dream of it. There’s a difference, you know. My Emotional Freedom therapist once said so,’ Bubbles put in.
Normally, Bubbles’ array of therapists was meat and drink to Anita’s sarcastic sense of humour, but today she didn’t have the heart to rise to the bait. The friends fell quiet again and Anita looked away. Her stomach churned with guilt as she saw Sam press a tissue over her eyes and put an arm around Bubbles, who had also started to weep.
MUMBAI, 2008
Night had fallen in its usual glittering manner over the pulsing city of Mumbai when Zeba Khan lay back in the claw-footed bathtub of her sumptuous designer bathroom. She took deep breaths of the Yves Rocher bath oil recently purchased from Zurich, sighing with relief and pleasure as her tiredness melted slowly into the tepid water. She had asked for all the Jo Malone scented candles to be lit, and now she half-opened her tawny brown eyes, seeing the flames flicker quietly, turning the cream Italian marble of the walls and floor to molten gold. It had been a long, long day. Despite her superstar status these past ten years, she knew better than to mess with up-and-coming directors like Rohit Mirchandani and had stayed the course, out in the midday sun with the rest of the crew, despite being desperately jet-lagged from her European trip. As the son of a legendary director, Rohit had no doubt enjoyed a head-start in the industry, but his last two films had both been massive hits and Zeba had heard about a new one due to start filming this winter. She had done her damnedest today to find out if the casting had been done but couldn’t get anything out of the canny young man, who was obviously enjoying the power he could suddenly wield over her.
Zeba felt a few tendrils of hair escape the luxuriant pile on the top of her head, and reached out for the silver seashell that housed an array of clips. She sighed as she slid a few more bobby pins into her hair and sank back into the water. Rohit had always secretly loathed her, having grown up with the knowledge of her decade-long liaison with his father and, as a result, immersed in his mother’s bitterness. It was to Rohit’s credit, though, that he had never advertised his abhorrence, careful to stay not just on his father’s right side but Zeba’s as well. It wouldn’t do for an up-and-coming director to upset Bollywood’s top actress. And so they continued to play this ridiculous cat-and-mouse game with each other, dodging and side-stepping but never confrontational, and always, always most carefully and deliberately civil to each other when they were on film sets. Was it any wonder she felt so exhausted today?
Zeba leaned back again, massaging her temples. Rohit was one of a whole new breed of directors that were changing the landscape of Bollywood unrecognisably these days. Now they were all American-educated and slick and media savvy. And, consequently, far less inclined to be worshipful of her own star status. The older boys had been so much easier to read and seduce, but they were all fading into obscurity in their hillside mansions, seemingly content to feebly hand the directorial reins over to the next generation while they totted up figures in ledgers and kept a tight hold on their purse strings. Half of the new crop of directors were gay too, and that didn’t help one bit.
Zeba knew the time had come to tread carefully. She was thirty-two this year, it was most unusual for a heroine in Bollywood to have stayed at the top for so long. At first people said that her popularity was because she looked equally sexy in both Indian and western clothes, but as she had got older and her attractiveness to audiences had not diminished, she was gradually acquiring the makings of a legend. Despite an astute unspoken self-awareness regarding her own meagre acting talent, Zeba could not help hoping she would become as iconic as Nargis or Madhubala someday. After all, like those two actresses, she was equally beloved to audiences whether playing mother, sister, lover or even prostitute. It was almost touching how her fans just couldn’t seem to get enough of her, and the only reason why producers and script-writers had kept running to her door these past ten years, trying to keep up with the demand and putting a steady supply of roles her way. Indeed, her popularity in India was of such a scale that she could quite safely turn up her nose at Hollywood, a place that—as journalists sometimes liked reminding her—had never shown any interest in her. Oddly, it was India’s great unwashed that particularly adored her—the market vendor, the paan-wallah, the coolie—doggedly spurning the new stick-thin, size-zero girls flooding the industry from modelling agencies in favour of her own more traditional curves. It was they—those sun-darkened, wizened figures that thronged the city’s streets and sometimes tapped piteously on the smoked-glass window of her Mercedes—who had made her what she was. She had never forgotten that—hence her recent idea of founding a charity for street children.
Zeba sighed, reaching out for the loofah. She scrubbed her elbows, thinking of what hard work it was constantly thinking up new ways to climb that very shaky pedestal marked ‘legend’. Firstly, there were a hundred others clawing at her ankles, trying to pull her down, upstart teenagers with bigger bust-lines and tighter butts and, of course, new top directors to be their godfathers. Sometimes in Bollywood the latter was the only attribute required to become a legend. Which, if she was to be honest, had worked out rather well for her. Old Shiv Mirchandani had, after all, been completely loyal to her all these years, both professionally and in a personal capacity, and despite being aware of her other occasional dalliances. He had even said something sentimental the other day about growing old together which had quite terrified her, given the ravages of age he already wore so cheerily on his cheese-grater face.
Zeba raised a long, shapely leg from the bath water and eyed it contemplatively as it shone wet and gleaming in the candlelight. Perhaps she should call for Najma to scrub and exfoliate her heels. Feet and hands were what first gave away a woman’s age, her Ammi had always said. Additionally, Zeba had spent all afternoon in an excruciatingly uncomfortable pair of stiletto heels, playing the role of a corporate boss in Dubai. But she had to be up again early tomorrow morning and was on the point of dropping off right here in the bath. She sat up in the water, her ample breasts glistening as they floated among the shiny bubbles. Perhaps she would treat herself to one of Sylvio’s famed pedicures at the Taj instead, after tomorrow’s shoot. They were wonderful there and always used their private suite at the back of the salon to assure her complete privacy. Zeba reached out for the bell by the bathtub to summon Najma who would help wipe her down and fetch a fresh silk nightie. She hoped that the hot bath and her familiar bed would dismiss jet-lag and aid a good night’s sleep.
After Zeba had been carefully patted dry by her maid and massaged with Crème de la Mer, another recent acquisition from Zurich, she padded her way through her dimly lit, cavernous bedroom. Someone—Gupta probably—had left a little stack of papers for her to go through under the bedside lamp. She picked up the rubber-banded bundle after she had climbed into her white leather water-bed and pulled a silk razai over her legs. Freeing the pack from their band, Zeba scowled, her sweeping eyebrows meeting in a furrow above her nose. The first letter was from a cousin, asking for a loan—that would have to be a ‘no’—it wasn’t as if she hadn’t helped him before and he would merely surface again after another few months with some new tale of hardship. She had much better things she could think of doing with her hard-earned money than passing it on to blood-sucking relatives. Her newly founded charity, for one.
Discarding the letter onto the floor by the side of her bed, where it would be picked up and binned by the sweeper in the morning, she reminded herself to stop frowning so much and swiftly cleared her brow. Luckily, the next letter offered much pleasanter fare—a request from Vanity Fair to be cover girl on their inaugural Indian publication—a definite ‘yes’. The next was an invitation to a private party being thrown by liquor baron Ramsy Fernando on his Madh Island home—hmmm, probably a ‘yes’. At least there wouldn’t be much of the film crowd there, Ramsy was too much of a brown-sahib snob for all that. But…what was this? The unseemly scowl returned to Zeba’s beautiful face.
Zeba scanned the words quickly:…soon going to retire as principal of the school…needed to meet her girls…a reunion…a reunion?! Was this someone’s idea of a bloody joke? Zeba turned the letter over as though searching for clues. Gupta must have got rid of the envelope…there was nothing else but a suggested date in December and a small scratchy signature at the bottom. She ran her eyes again over the spidery writing that was both familiar and yet uncharacteristically weak, becoming virtually illegible in the last few lines. Goodness, it was crazy to think of St Jude’s old Princy still alive and kicking and rattling around in that cottage next door to the school. The woman was probably in her mid-seventies now. It was no surprise, of course, that the convent had not retired her yet; school principals like Miss Lamb were hard to come by these days—the archetypal English spinster, willing to dedicate her whole life to the school. Victoria Lamb. What was it they used to call her back then?…Lamboo! Lamboo, for her long, noodle-like appearance. But then girls were cruel creatures under those coy exteriors.
And that niece of Lamboo’s…Lily. ‘Doan’t be silly, Lily’, they had tittered behind her back on her first day at the school, quoting the villain in that ridiculous film. But they found out soon enough that Lily wasn’t silly at all. Not in the slightest. But that she was very, very manipulative and go-getting indeed. In fact she was clearly trying to become the star from Day One—not the best course of action in a girls’ school that was already full of stars like Zeba. This had always puzzled Zeba: that clever little Lily had not been clever enough to see how many enemies she had made in her short time at the school. She should have considered treading more carefully, but on the other hand she had seemed genuinely not to care about earning anyone’s approval. It was almost enviable, that kind of self-satisfaction.
Zeba put the mail away on her bedside table and smoothed her fingers gently over the middle of her forehead. She had recently noticed the deep furrows that her mother had between her eyes, a permanent record of the stresses she had suffered in bringing up three rambunctious children under the watchful eye of an autocratic husband. So far the skin on Zeba’s face had remained taut and unlined, but she did have to watch out for bad genes—letters from the past that set off dark thoughts weren’t likely to help. She slipped off her silk camisole and tucked her legs under the sheet, wiggling her toes and taking a few deep breaths.
Lily D’Souza, good God, what a chest-thumping blast from the past. Even though she hardly ever stopped to remember her old classmate, Zeba did have to admit that, over the years, she—the great film star Zeba Khan—had in fact taken a useful leaf out of Lily’s book when it came to developing a supreme nonchalance to one’s detractors. Enemies were an undeniable part of working in an industry like Bollywood; perhaps they were an undeniable part of life itself, particularly when one was beautiful and accomplished. So what was the point of treading around so carefully that you never got anywhere? Still, even though one never made any real friends in a place like this, it was at least worth knowing who your enemies were. Zeba pulled the sheet over her shoulders, feeling a sudden chill.
The world probably saw her as supremely controlled but, suddenly, Zeba could feel something inside her quail and shrink as an almost visceral memory tumbled back unbidden, reminding her of how deeply she had hated Lily, virtually from the very first moment the girl had set foot in the classroom. Zeba let her head sink into her pillow, trying to relax her shoulders. She felt a small shiver, born from either guilt or satisfaction as she realised that she was now all the things that Lily had probably imagined she would one day be—an acclaimed star, the adored darling of India’s teeming audiences. Heroine to millions of people willing to queue for hours outside those crummy tin-pot cinema halls in slum areas on the night of a Zeba Khan blockbuster release. Now that was the real thing, an ambition worth fighting for. Quite unlike a stupid, inconsequential little school play. But that was what all teenagers were like, surely, narcissistically allowing the silliest things to take on the kind of significance that was impossible to comprehend in later life. Zeba scrabbled around in her bedside drawer and, finding a phial of Valium, swallowed two tablets with a little water from the crystal flagon that was always kept on her bedside table.
Two hours later, Zeba awoke from a ragged sleep, sweating profusely. Either the air-conditioning had broken down or she was having one of those ghastly night-sweats one heard about. She lay on her bed, listening to the roar of the sea outside and the lapping inside her own water-bed. Even on quiet nights, the combined watery sounds drowned all else. It was strange how people were willing to pay so much extra for properties lining the Arabian Sea, never thinking that its crashing waves provided such great cover for the city’s stalkers and burglars. The alarm system Gupta had tried installing a few years ago had caused all sorts of problems, tripping and going off every time the voltage fluctuated even slightly, leaving Zeba to rely on the time-tested method of security guards. She employed a whole army of them, but remained unsure of how much she could really trust such dangerous looking men who undressed her so unashamedly with their eyes.
Something cracked loudly in the garden outside, making Zeba jump. She lay frozen for a few minutes and contemplated ringing her panic button for the servants. They were probably all sleeping the sleep of the dead (or the drunk, more likely) on a hot pre-monsoonal night such as this, the useless dolts. What did they think she paid them over the odds for? She turned over and tried to close her eyes but the clamouring in her head was too much. Perhaps she hadn’t taken enough Valium, although she had promised her doctor she would try to cut down. Tonight it was the fault of Lamboo’s bloody letter. What was Gupta thinking, leaving it on her bedside like that? Almost willing these nightmares on her. Would she even contemplate going to something so ridiculous—a school reunion, for heaven’s sake! Reunions were meant for ordinary people, not stars; for bored wives to enviously eye up each other’s husbands and empty-headed mums to compare notes about their little darlings’ teeth and teachers. Zeba knew she would have absolutely nothing to say to any of her old classmates now—although, tossing her sweating body around again, she suddenly recalled having bumped into Samira Hussain (now Samira Something-else, of course) at Heathrow a few years ago. They had exchanged phone numbers and said all the glib things old classmates did when they met, about how marvellous the old days had been and how they really must stay in touch. Neither of them had mentioned that traumatic final year at school, of course, and they had parted knowing that both of them had grown too far apart in their respective lifestyles and sensibilities to maintain all but the briefest of contact.
Sam had, with typical dependability, attempted the occasional phone call after that meeting, and Zeba had tried her best to reciprocate, but they had lately drifted once again into sending each other only an occasional card or email, many of which Zeba, rather guiltily, got Gupta to deal with anyway. Even back in school, Sam had been the antithesis of Zeba, one of those annoying good girls who never got into scrapes of any sort and whom all the teachers adored. But at least she had not been the tattling sort, Zeba recalled, and so an unlikely bond had formed between them as they had travelled together from kindergarten to high school. However, from the short conversation inside the first-class lounge at Heathrow, it had seemed to Zeba that Sam had grown dull and vapid with age. Perhaps it was just the mumsiness that some women took on so earnestly with the acquisition of husbands and children, but Zeba could tell that even the little they’d had in common as schoolmates had now shrunk to virtually nothing. Sam had provided news of some of their other classmates, though: Anita, predictably still single, working with the BBC in London and, oh God, who didn’t know that Bubbles was married to the son of international textile tycoon Dinesh Raheja. Zeba had once seen Bubbles in the pages of Verve magazine, attending a flash corporate party at the Grand Maratha and clinging to the arm of a thin, nattily-dressed man. ‘Binkie and Bubbles Raheja, golden couple from London, gracing Bombay’s shores’ the accompanying caption gushed, going on to divulge that Mr Raheja’s suit was Armani while Mrs Raheja was in Zac Posen, a Boucheron piece around her neck. Zeba had pored over the picture, examining Bubbles’ clothes and shoes, or whatever she could make of them in the grainy photograph. She sure looked good, Zeba couldn’t help noting with a twinge, although she had not been able to put her finger on whether her envy was over the rich husband and private jet that had been mentioned in the small accompanying article, or the ease with which wealth had come to the woman. Bubbles Raheja had almost certainly not had to do a day’s work in her life, and probably didn’t even know the meaning of the word ‘schedule’. But who’d have thought that the spotty fat kid at school was the one who’d end up snaring a millionaire. She wasn’t even from a big business family herself—a chain of sari shops was all her parents had, as Zeba had seen when Bubbles had got married and the whole class had attended her wedding. There was nothing interesting to say either about how she’d done it: snag the millionaire, move to London and transform herself from plump and pimply teenager into an international jetsetter. It was all, in the end, just a matter of luck and timing; Zeba knew that better than most.
Well, if that lot were going to attend Lamboo’s planned reunion, it might actually not be a bad idea to go along, Zeba thought suddenly, surprising herself. She climbed out of her bed, now wide awake, and padded barefoot across her collection of antique Persian rugs to the large bay windows that ringed her room. Drawing the heavy tussar curtains aside, she looked out at the Arabian Sea, calm and black and lapping gently against the white sands at the bottom of her vast garden. Sometimes fans of hers managed to get to the beach and loiter, hoping to catch a glimpse of her until chased away by one of the guards. But tonight there were surely neither fans nor burglars prowling around those neat shrubs and flowerbeds lying peacefully in the moonlight below her bedroom window. Through the trees Zeba could see light in the guard’s gate-house shining dimly and she pulled the curtains shut, feeling a bit better. She smiled suddenly. It might actually be fun to spend an evening with old classmates exclaiming over how well she’d done for herself. Minus a husband too!
Her gaze fell on the stack of film magazines that Gupta had placed on her replica Louis XIV desk. Every page that carried a photograph or news piece about her would be obediently marked with a Post-It note, and Zeba could see the usual profusion of yellow bits of paper sticking out from the pages even in the faint glow of the night-light. She turned on the table lamp and sat before the pile of magazines, drawing them towards her with satisfaction. Leafing her way to the first marked page in Cineblitz, she thought of how her old schoolmates must pore over her pictures in the society pages of magazines and newspapers, admiring the rocks she wore on her hands and her chain of male escorts, with as much envy as she had felt when she’d read about Bubbles’ private Learjet.
Zeba opened the drawer of her dressing table, searching for her old BlackBerry. She remembered having keyed Sam’s details in there. Even if she couldn’t find it, Gupta would probably be able to fish it out for her in the morning from one of his dusty old diaries. Zeba squinted at the small green screen. There it was: Samira Hussain, and a London phone number. She reached out for her telephone.
LONDON, 2008
While Zeba sat sleepless on that hot Mumbai night, telephone held to her ear, night was falling on the other side of the world, turning London’s rainy skies to a cold slate-grey. The three girlfriends had been drinking steadily for the past two hours and Bubbles was by now quite drunk. As was usual, the third Kir Royale had plummeted her into the most abject depths of despair, and she was now weeping in such earnest that she had even managed to scare off their fervent Lithuanian waiter to the far end of the restaurant.
The letter had started it off, of course, bringing back memories with a force so powerful that each of the three women had, at different times in the evening, looked into their glasses of alcohol and felt a little sick. They had obviously never forgotten anything, even though their old pact had forbidden speaking of it. Bubbles had, predictably, allowed the collective reminiscing to plunge her back into dwelling on her more immediate territory of grievances against Binkie and his parents. Anita, slumped on her pouffe, was only half-listening as she knocked back the vodka tonics in an attempt to recover from her 5 a.m. start. Luckily, she could rely on Sam to pay attention to Bubbles, and saw through her drunken haze that their ever-reliable friend was nodding sympathetically and occasionally passing Bubbles scented tissues from her handbag.
Bubbles’ life had never seemed that dreadful to Anita. Her dear friend had a dire mother-in-law, without a doubt, and the father-in-law, Dinesh Raheja, was a horrendously unethical capitalist who couldn’t give a toss about the environment: the kind of person Anita normally reserved her deepest bile for. However, Anita had found it hard to dislike Dinesh Raheja from the day he’d uncomplainingly turned up at short notice for a BBC interview at her request, for which, as a rookie news-room journalist, she’d received a rare pat on the back from her editor. The funny thing was that it had not been at all difficult to get the old man to come to Bush House. Like many self-made men, Dinesh Raheja wore his success rather like a matador would use his cape, probably petrified that everyone would forget how hard-won it had been. So despite his predilection for strutting, his inability to tone down the Punjabi accent he had carried over from India and his rough-edged manners made his millions seem somehow more deserving.
His son Binkie, married to Bubbles, was another matter altogether. Having made his first million while Binkie was still in high school, Dinesh Raheja had been proud to send his only child to England when he turned fourteen—to Harrow or Eton, Anita could never remember which. But, having had a relatively late start at the whole business of becoming staunchly Anglophile, Binkie had taken to it with alarming relish, changing his name by the time he got to university from the admittedly dull Rajesh to the positively preposterous Binkie, speaking in a strange faux-Wodehousian tongue, and buying himself a metallic mauve Bentley Continental GT as soon as he was old enough to drive. From what Anita could tell, he seemed to be worsening as he approached his forties, getting his battery of butlers and valets to perform the most ridiculous tasks, such as ironing the morning papers and trimming their edges so that the pages were perfectly aligned before he would deign to glance at the day’s news with his eight-minute egg (not seven or nine minutes, but exactly and precisely eight). His only concessions to Indian-ness lay in the kind of things that apparently made life hell for Bubbles. These boiled down to two main things: an utter and complete devotion on Binkie’s part to his dragon of a mother, and maintaining the promise she had extracted from him that, despite all their money, he would always and only stay in the same house as her. Some house it was too, in the heart of Belgravia and with miles of corridors and multiple floors, each square inch of which would be worth thousands of pounds according to Anita’s calculations. Raheja Mansion had in fact been formed by knocking together two palatial town-houses that had belonged to a pair of Kuwaiti brothers, which explained why the pool house looked like something out of the sets of Caligula, complete with Piedmont urns, artificial palms and bare-breasted marble nymphs with golden nipples. But, unsatisfied with such largesse, Mrs Raheja had even bought the lower ground floor flat next door to the main house and installed the kitchen in there so that there was no risk at all of Binkie’s delicate nostrils being assailed with the smell of curry. Then there were the houses in Paris and Cape Cod, the country pile in Bucks and the baronial manor in Scotland…but it was almost laughable that, despite such a profusion of global real estate, poor Bubbles had nowhere to call her own, nor any place where she could really get away from her mother-in-law.
‘It’s like I’m married to her rather than him, Sam!’ Bubbles was wailing again, taking another slug from her flute, whose edge was now encrusted with almost as much lipstick as was left on her mouth.
‘I know, I know, darling,’ Sam consoled, ‘but couldn’t you persuade Binkie to take you to the Paris flat when the schools close next month? The children will be going up to their summer camp in Switzerland as usual, won’t they?’
‘Bobby will be at camp in Montana, although Ruby’s still trying to make her mind up. But, you see, Ma’s already arranged for me to be in the Bahamas with her and Auntie Poppy and Poonam Maasi…I told you about that cruise for Papa’s sixty-fifth. She’s hired a 300-foot yacht and is taking her whole family, and obviously I have to be there.’
‘Oh yes, of course, you did say,’ Sam said, subsiding back into silence, remembering how they had dissolved in giggles at the thought of a bunch of Punjabi matriarchs sunning themselves in voluminous one-pieces when Bubbles had first mentioned it.
‘How about we go somewhere together after the summer then? Just us girls,’ Anita offered, rousing herself briefly. ‘We’ve only ever talked of it so far, and now that both your kids are old enough to be left with their nannies, it should be fine, shouldn’t it?’
Sam’s face wore a doubtful expression. ‘I don’t know…Akbar doesn’t much like the concept of girlie holidays…’
‘Oh, fuck Akbar,’ Anita replied crisply, ‘about time you told him where to stick those fine concepts of his.’
‘I’m not sure Binkie would like it either—you know how he seems to think my main role in life is to keep his mother company. Unless…’ Bubbles’ face was starting to clear. ‘The only place I can get away to without any of them in tow is my parents’ house.’
‘Delhi,’ Anita exclaimed, ‘now there’s a plan.’
‘No one can stop us from going to see our parents, I guess,’ Sam said slowly.
‘Be too bloody hot till November though.’
‘You weren’t thinking of December, were you? I mean…Lamboo’s invitation…?’
The three women looked at the letter, still lying on the table before them, and then at each other in the candlelight. Bubbles’ eyes suddenly looked like hollows in her head, and Sam, wrapped in her cream pashmina, was a sad and portly ghost. Anita shuddered, feeling uncharacteristically nervy. She was dying for a cigarette. ‘I’ve never been back there since we left school,’ she muttered.
‘Nor me,’ Sam said softly after a pause.
‘I’ve been past those gates, oh, I don’t know, at least a hundred times,’ Bubbles said. ‘Every time I go to Papa’s Connaught Place shop, in fact. And, you know, it’s like a bad habit, but I still cross my heart and mutter “Our Father” when I see the school church. But I’ve never once stepped through those gates since we left. I’m not sure I’ll be able to take it, actually’
‘Look,’ Anita cut in, sitting up and trying to sound more brisk, ‘I know there’s good reason for us never having gone back. But I’m not sure it’s really helped, y’know. Sometimes things just seem to get worse the longer you leave them.’
Her two friends were silent for a few seconds before Bubbles spoke up. ‘My therapist sometimes says I’ll only make real progress when those old issues are resolved…’
‘It’s more than that for me,’ Sam said. ‘More like…atonement.’
‘Well, if we don’t do it now, we never will,’ Anita said, taking Sam’s hands in hers. ‘I get some leave around Christmas, so shall we try to go together by, say, mid December? Let’s see what it is that Lamboo wants. We owe her that much. Time to try and lay some of those ghosts to rest.’
Chapter Three (#u6f123e10-61fe-513d-9b8c-334c40763cd0)
DELHI, 1993
‘Have you heard? We’re getting a new girl in class,’ Sam said, putting her satchel down on her chair to take out her lunchbox and flask of iced lime juice and position them carefully in the inner recess of her scuffed wooden desk.
Even Anita, slumped lifeless over Flaubert at the back of the classroom, looked up, shoving her glasses back up her nose as various classmates started instantly to quiz Sam.
‘Who?’
‘Where’s she from?’
‘I hope she’s not pretty, yaar.’
‘Or over-smart.’
In her usual calm manner, Sam ignored them all until she had hung her satchel on one of the hooks on the back wall and started arranging the exercise books on the teacher’s table into a neat pile. Finally, she said, shrugging, ‘Dunno, I haven’t met her yet. But Lamboo stopped me in the quadrangle to say that a new girl was joining our class to do her final year here. She wants us to be nice to her because she’s been recently orphaned, I think.’
There was another flurry of interest:
‘Orphaned! Bloody hell…’
‘Who’s an orphan?’
‘The new girl we’re getting, man, why don’t you listen!’
‘Christ that’s bad, poor thing.’
‘Where’s she coming from, Sam?’
‘One of the hill schools, Lamboo said—Mussourie, I think?’
‘I hope she’s nice. Some of these hill-school types think no end of themselves.’
‘Yeah, almost as though they’re little English missies…they wear stockings and hats and things. Imagine!’
‘Those hats are called “boaters”,’ Anita offered. ‘Actually it’s the hill stations that are the real relics of our colonial past.’ She looked around and saw that, as usual, her classmates were all ignoring her to concentrate on the crass and the mundane.
‘Whatever,’ Zeba growled from the bench next to Anita’s, ‘she had better not try lording it over us.’
‘Yeah, I really hope she’s nice.’
‘Of course she’ll be nice,’ Sam said, adding, ‘well, more importantly, we have to be nice to her. Must be awful to have lost both parents.’
‘Both together?’
‘Must have been a car accident or something.’
The conversation was brought to a halt by the clanging of the office peon’s iron rod on the brass bell in the quadrangle outside. The class shuffled to their feet as Mrs Menon, their teacher, sailed in, orange and black sari pallav fluttering after her.
‘Good morning, Mrs Menon,’ the class intoned.
‘Morning, morning…good weekend?’ The teacher smiled briefly before sitting down to unlock the desk drawer and pull out the class register. A few indistinct mumbles greeted her query but she had obviously not been expecting any replies as she looked up with a blank expression to take the roll call in a brisk voice.
‘Anita Roy?’
‘Present, Miss.’
‘Arpana Singh?’
‘Present, Miss.’
‘Ashwathy Pillai?’
‘Present, Miss.’
‘Bubbles Malhotra?’
Mrs Menon looked up and scanned the class over her reading glasses before repeating, ‘Bubbles Malhotra? Not here?’
A voice piped up from the back. ‘I think she’s coming, Miss. Must be late…’
‘She wasn’t on our bus this morning,’ someone volunteered.
‘Well, she’s always missing the bus. Last week we had to wait while she came running down the road with her two servants following her, one carrying her bag, the other her water-bottle,’ someone else said to general titters.
‘Enough, enough, let’s move on. Maybe she’ll come later.’ Mrs Menon returned to her ledger. ‘Damini Mehta?’
‘Present, Miss.’
As predicted, there was soon a kerfuffle at the door as Bubbles Malhotra stumbled in, red-faced and sweaty from her exertions. ‘Sor-ry, Mi-ss,’ she puffed, ‘missed the bu-s, Miss…’
‘Really, Bubbles, you must try harder than this to be punctual. This must be the third time already this month that you’ve been late.’
Bubbles performed a small apologetic shimmy, still standing uncertainly in the doorway while trying to catch her breath. Her indecision only seemed to annoy Mrs Menon further, who snapped, ‘Okay, come in, come in, what are you waiting there for now?’
Anita rolled her eyes as Bubbles flopped onto the bench next to her. Bubbles was in a right old state, her tie askew, socks sagging over grubby trainers and a pair of new zits ballooning on her chin. Anita listened to Bubbles wheezing for a few minutes as she recovered from having run up two flights of stairs to the senior school before rather unkindly scribbling ‘Lose Weight!’ on a note that she pushed across the table towards her. She and Bubbles had been bench-mates for a few years now, both choosing to inhabit the last row for completely different reasons—Bubbles so she could hide behind girls cleverer than her, and Anita so she could read novels during the maths and science lessons. They had eventually managed to overcome an initial mutual suspicion of each other to become unlikely friends, mostly because it massaged Anita’s ego no end to have Bubbles so desperately need her crib-sheets to keep from flunking every exam.
An hour later, Mrs Menon was droning on, drawing geometric shapes on the blackboard that made scant sense to most of the sixteen-year-olds seated before her, when they were interrupted by a knock at the door. All heads were raised as the principal walked in, a girl wearing a patterned smock and sandals following a few paces behind.
‘I am so sorry to interrupt the lesson, Mrs Menon, but I wondered if I might take my session early. I’d like to introduce a new girl to the class.’
‘Yes, of course, of course, Miss Lamb,’ Mrs Menon said, hastily putting her chalk stub down and backing away. ‘I was just finishing anyway. Please, please do come in.’
Anita had often wondered at the nervousness Miss Lamb seemed to evoke in most of their teachers, speculating on whether it was merely because she was principal or whether her being British had something to do with it too. Old Lamboo had always seemed to Anita to be like someone who had fallen out of an E.M. Forster novel, her foreignness accentuated in a curious way by her not having left India when most of her countrymen and women had. The first time Anita had the opportunity to use a carefully learned big word had, in fact, been with reference to Miss Lamb, when—soon after winning the St Jude’s scholarship as a seven-year-old—she had informed her amused father that the new school principal was ‘quintessentially British’.
Anita now watched while Miss Lamb waited politely for a harassed Mrs Menon to collect her books and bags. The new girl stood behind Miss Lamb, wearing an impassive expression on her face. She was tall, like Lamb herself, and athletic and astonishingly pretty, Anita thought, sneaking a glance at Zeba and her best friend, Natasha, sitting in the third row, who had always fancied themselves as the school beauties. It satisfied her to see that they were gazing at the newcomer in open-mouthed wonder too. This girl was much lovelier than either of them, her skin tanned to the kind of gold that was rarely achieved by white skin, quite unlike Miss Lamb’s florid summertime pink. Anita saw too that the girl’s eyes were a strange blue-grey colour, their only flaw being that they were set a little too close together in a heart-shaped face that ended in a pointed chin. She didn’t look pure British, more likely Anglo-Indian, as someone had surmised earlier. Their eyes met for an instant and Anita was shocked at the sudden frisson she felt run through her, which was followed by instant revulsion. She knew a lot of girls at school often developed crushes on other girls but, even as a junior, she had prided herself on never having been at either end of such ridiculous infatuations, saved from them—she would have been the first to admit—by being scrawny and bespectacled and not sporty at all.
Mrs Menon departed in a flurry of apologies and chalk dust and Miss Lamb now stepped forward, clearing her throat in the way she did when she wanted their total attention. This was not a problem today as the class sat rapt before her, silenced by their curiosity. The last new girl this particular batch had received was Natasha Walia, whose father had been posted back to India after a long stint abroad in the diplomatic service—and that had been a good six years ago.
‘This, my dear girls,’ Miss Lamb said to them, ‘is Lily D’Souza. Lily is new, not just to our school, but indeed to Delhi, having just moved here from Sacred Heart convent school in Mussourie. I know some of you are quite familiar with Mussourie, travelling up there for your summer holidays, so I do not need to tell you what a big change this is for Lily, who has never been to Delhi before.’
Anita noticed that the girl next to Miss Lamb remained unsmiling, plucking absently at the canvas strap of the bag she was carrying slung across her torso as though it were a guitar.
‘My dear girls,’ Miss Lamb continued, ‘I know I don’t need to tell you to make Lily comfortable and welcome. Now, where can we find room for Lily to sit?’ Miss Lamb scanned the room and nodded approvingly as she saw the dependable Samira move up on her bench in the front row to make room. As the principal gestured, Lily walked hesitantly towards the rows of girls, unslinging her bag and holding it ahead of her. Anita observed Sam smiling warmly, even using her tissue to clean Lily’s side of the desk, but she could now no longer see the face of the new girl, only a ponytail of straight brown hair that hung down her back all the way to her waist. The girl sat down, shoving her bag between herself and Sam, and, as the bell went, Miss Lamb opened her tattered copy of Macbeth to begin her lesson.
Anita’s concentration was poor in the hour that followed, even though Lamb’s classes were always the high point of her school day. Today the principal was wittering on about the nature of ambition and did not seem to be quite herself either, gripped by a preoccupied air that was infecting the whole class with a kind of listlessness.
When the bell finally rang for the lunch-break, Miss Lamb looked as relieved as everyone else, setting the group an essay on the banquet scene as homework, before leaving for the dining hall. Anita got up and stretched with a loud groan. She scanned the room. Sam seemed to have taken the new girl under her wing already, opening up her foil pack of cheese sandwiches and offering her one.
Anita and Bubbles joined the small group that had already gathered around Lily and Sam’s desk.
‘Are you related to Miss Lamb?’ Natasha was asking the new girl.
Anita saw Lily hesitate for a minute before a set of invisible shutters descended over her face. She pursed her lips, suddenly acquiring a mean expression as she said with more vehemence, ‘No, we’re not related. I’m nothing at all to that horrid old bat.’
There was a collective horrified intake of breath. No one ever spoke about Miss Lamb in that tone of voice. Even the nickname of Lamboo, used by generations of St Jude’s schoolgirls, was only ever employed affectionately.
Sam hastily changed the subject. ‘Oh, Bubs, one of your pimples has just burst,’ she said.
Attention turned to Bubbles, who clamped a piece of tissue, spotted with blood, back to her chin. ‘Oh God,’ she mumbled through her clamped jaw, ‘I had just two pieces of cashew burfi last night, y’know, and see the reaction!’
‘Let’s have a look,’ Zeba said, ‘I may have some Clearasil in my bag.’
Bubbles gingerly removed her hand, eliciting a chorus of moans.
‘Christ, that’s a prize one,’ Natasha said.
‘And look, there’s a new one sprouting right next to it.’
‘Clearasil won’t work, those need Dettol.’
‘Or DDT even!’
Sam’s ruse had successfully drawn everyone’s attention away from the new girl and Anita noticed that even Lily was now smiling, although she couldn’t tell if Lily’s subsequent attempt at humour was malicious. ‘Etna and Krakatoa, that’s what those two are,’ she said.
‘Who?’ Bubbles enquired, nonplussed, but Lily shook her head, smiling to herself.
Anita stepped in to rescue her friend. ‘Okay, everyone, stop treating Bubs like a prize exhibit. We’re off to the dining hall now, if anyone wants to join us for some five-star world cuisine.’
Victoria Lamb decided not to join the throng in the dining hall, as was her usual custom. Instead, she walked down the southern corridor and past the music room, where the sound of a trombone was blaring tunelessly over the lunchtime hubbub. She had this morning given Lily money to buy a hot lunch in the canteen but would herself return to her cottage, which lay on the far side of the rambling school grounds. Lakhan would rustle up a sandwich for her, which she would eat quietly in her study overlooking the rose garden. She deserved a little peace and quiet after the traumatic events of the past few days, not made any easier by Lily’s difficult behaviour.
Victoria unlatched the small wicket gate that led to the rose garden and walked to her cottage, dipping her head to avoid damaging the flowers of the madhumalati that were dangling crimson over the door. She turned on the cooler, still thinking of Lily’s obstreperous conduct since her arrival. The rusty old machine sent a welcome blast of cool air through the cottage and Victoria exhaled in relief, relishing the respite, not just from the heat but also from the past few days of argument and tears. Who could blame the poor child, though? What Lily had undergone lay beyond the bounds of most people’s imaginations, certainly her own, and what the girl most needed now was stability and quiet, unquestioning acceptance. Love and other such things would gradually follow in their own time. Victoria certainly hadn’t thought it prudent to tell Samira more than what was absolutely necessary this morning, of course. Heaven knew what the girls would make of the whole thing, if they found out. Or, for that matter, their parents! An exclusive and well-reputed school such as Jude’s really couldn’t afford a scandal of any sort.
Victoria popped her head into the kitchen, startling old Lakhan who was pottering at the stove, probably brewing his fifteenth cup of tea.
‘Mere liye bhi ek cup chai, Lakhan,’ she said, ‘Aur sandwich. Kya hai fridge mein? Tomato? Ham?’ She paused, waiting while her Nepali cook rummaged around inside the cavernous old fridge, emerging finally with a rather shrivelled cucumber. ‘Accha, cucumber sandwich theekh hai,’ she said resignedly.
Victoria Lamb walked into the cool of her darkened study and, rather than turning on the light, opened the drawn curtains slightly. Harsh sunshine poured in through the crack and for a moment she closed her eyes tightly shut. Slowly opening them a few seconds later, she blinked uncomfortably, letting her vision get used to the glare. Her eyes wandered over her shorn rose bushes and empty flowerbeds. May in Delhi was a bleak time in many ways. Not the best season to have Lily brought here but there hadn’t really been a choice. Still, in another few weeks it would be the summer holidays. She ought to think of going somewhere with the poor girl—a short vacation. Not to the hills, of course, that would be most injudicious. But anywhere else would be far too hot. Perhaps staying in Delhi would be best; giving Lily time to find her feet and get used to each other and the city. Victoria sat upright on her armchair, unable to physically relax when there was so much on her mind. She absently polished the glasses that hung around her neck. How unusual it would be this summer to have someone around during the long holidays, when everyone else, staff and students, went off with their families to all sorts of jolly destinations. The school building and playing grounds were almost ghostly when emptied of their noisy population. Victoria Lamb looked up at the distant gulmohar tree, the crest of which was aflame with red flowers. Suddenly she felt a little blessed. The dear Lord had strange ways, but it was as though He had understood that, with the passage of the years, she too would need someone to help fill the lonely evenings. And so Lily had been sent to her so unexpectedly, someone to love again, so late in life. Of course, the poor child was savagely angry and resentful, especially at the secrecy that would be required for the time being. The row last night had been quite unbearable, but it was best not to reveal the past—Lily would simply have to understand that.
At the end of her first day at St Jude’s, Lily stood at the first-floor window of her empty classroom, looking at the droves of girls heading down the drive for the cars and school buses that would take them all to their homes. She imagined them being received by their mums at the door and the smell of food that would be emanating from their kitchens. Whenever Lily conjured up images of family life in her head, she saw them like those television advertisements for rice or talcum powder that both fascinated and repelled her, and sometimes broke her heart. Weren’t those the kind of families most people had: mums in pretty saris and aprons serving up steaming bowls of rice, dads driving up to neat little houses in their shiny cars, coming in from work holding briefcases, while children with plump, scrubbed faces sat laughing around dining tables? That was what all those girls streaming out of the school gates had. And they didn’t even consider it as being out of the ordinary. ‘Everyone but you, Lily D’Souza,’ she muttered under her breath, feeling that by-now familiar twist of anger and bitterness in her stomach. All she had was School Principal Victoria bloody Lamb—and there was no way she could think of that scrawny old bat as being even remotely related to her. Certainly not now, when it was too late; much, much too late.
Lily twisted the handkerchief in her hand till she could feel its embroidered edge snap and tear. She turned from the window and blew her nose loudly as angry hot tears fell from her eyes and rolled off her chin. Leaning on the windowsill, Lily wiped her face roughly, wondering how long she could skulk around in the school building before being either turfed out or locked in. She surveyed the empty classroom, the rows of scuffed and ink-stained wooden desks and chairs left all awry, bits of paper littering the floor. To calm the horrible wobbly feeling inside her and have something to do, she walked between the rows, noisily straightening the desks till they formed neat lines, then proceeding to clatter chairs under them until everything was tidy and orderly, the way it was meant to be. She looked at the names and graffiti that had been carved into some of the desks, seeing initials of girls, some coupled with what were probably initials of boys surrounded by heart shapes. Such things were the normal concerns of most girls, she thought as she picked various exercise books and pens off the floor and placed them on a desk. Surveying her handiwork, she wondered if she ought to go to the next classroom and do the same thing there as well. There was something faintly comforting about bringing order where she could. Besides, there was no way she was going back to the cottage where she would have to put up with all that solicitous fake familial behaviour again. Just a week and already it was choking her to death. She wished she could run away from St Jude’s and this horrid noisy city and go back to her beloved Mussourie. It was the best season to be there, when wildflowers came bursting out of the grassy banks and the pine tree outside her window would be heavy with cones…
Lily started to cry again. One thing she knew for sure was that she would never, ever forgive Victoria Lamb for what she had done.
Chapter Four (#u6f123e10-61fe-513d-9b8c-334c40763cd0)
LONDON, 2008
Sam drove nervously through what was now very heavy rain. She’d volunteered to drop Anita off at her flat in Borough as they left Heebah’s and, perhaps because of the downpour, Anita hadn’t demurred. They were both unusually quiet on the drive south, each sunk in her own thoughts, Anita occasionally providing directions to get to Blackfriars Bridge.
As they drove over the bridge, Sam glanced at her friend’s profile, trying to think of something to say to lighten the atmosphere.
‘Oh, I’ve been meaning to tell you. I saw a really good film the other day. You and Hugh will really like it,’ she said.
‘Really?’ Anita roused herself. ‘Which one?’
Sam racked her brains. This was the trouble, she had got to a stage where she couldn’t even remember the things she liked. At thirty-two!
‘Oh God, it had whatshisname in it…’ she said, lifting one hand off the wheel to click her fingers frustratedly
‘You don’t mean whatshisname!?’ Anita laughed. ‘Oh, I just adore him! Left at the lights, Sam.’
‘Yeah, I know where we are now, thanks,’ Sam said ruefully, swinging to the left and pulling in at the door to Anita’s loft apartment, ‘although it probably won’t be long before I’ll be forgetting more than just the names of films and actors!’ She turned to her friend and added apologetically, ‘Oh, what’s wrong with me. The name will come to me the minute I’ve driven away from here. How annoying!’
‘Never mind, darling. Coming up to my flat for a glass of wine?’
Sam shook her head, smiling. ‘I need to get home before Heer turns in, sweetie. Is Hugh coming tonight?’
‘He’s on the night shift all week, but I’m going over for dinner this weekend. He’s cooking!’
‘We didn’t mention him at all tonight,’ Sam noted apologetically, turning off the ignition and looking directly at Anita.
‘Hardly surprising, given what was on all our minds.’
‘I hope it’s going well?’
‘With Hugh, you mean? Yeah, I guess. He does seem awfully nice, but then I’ve only known him a couple of weeks. Sounds awful, but I keep waiting for him to put a foot wrong. So far he hasn’t, I must say, but I do worry that it might just be by careful intent!’
Sam considered this for a moment before replying, ‘Well, even if it is by careful intent, isn’t it rather nice that he cares enough to do that?’
Anita’s grunt only sounded half-convinced so Sam continued her counsel. ‘Listen, don’t keep watching and waiting for something to go wrong. Just relax and enjoy getting to know him.’ Sam stopped, vaguely aware that it was a bit rich for her to advise anyone on matters of the heart.
Anita nodded. ‘You’re right, Sam. I’m too much of a cynical old cow for my own good sometimes. Listen, call if you need to talk, okay? Any time. You know that.’
Sam reached out over the gear-stick to kiss her friend’s cheek before she got out of the car. ‘You too. Call me whenever you can.’
She started up the engine again but waited until Anita was through her door before reversing and heading back for Borough High Street. She jumped as a motorbike courier flashed by, inches away from the side mirror, and cursed under her breath. That second glass of wine had been a bad idea, taken only because Bubbles had insisted that the police would never be prowling on a night as wet as this. How stupid of her to have taken advice from someone who never drove! The last thing she needed after such an emotional meeting with her two friends was a brush with a policeman waving a large breathalyser. If that did happen, she was sure she would collapse right into his arms in a flood of tears.
Sam nervously edged her Audi into the stream of traffic heading for Waterloo Bridge, earning an angry toot. Well, she hoped this was the way to Waterloo Bridge; even the road signs were virtually invisible in the rain. Sam cursed again. Akbar had told her weeks ago to get a sat-nav device fitted in her car, but, as usual, she’d forgotten. She didn’t usually travel south of the river as Anita was the only person she knew who lived there and she was generally happy to meet in town. Sam had made every attempt to refrain from postcode snobbery, but no matter how hard she tried to be comfortable south of the river, she invariably felt a little lost and threatened the minute she got past the South Bank Centre. Even at the start of the twenty-first century, these grubby narrow streets managed to look faintly Dickensian to her.
As she neared a large green sign, Sam peered upwards trying to read it—ah, Westminster Bridge, that would do nicely. She started to breathe easier as she drove under the blue railway bridge that she recognised as being the old Eurostar line. Now she knew where she was and pressed her foot on the accelerator with more confidence, heading for the bridge. Glancing out of the window, she saw that the river was a sludgy brown, the rain having chased all tourist traffic away from the choppy dark water. The Houses of Parliament looked as secretive and mysterious as ever, their narrow Gothic windows sending thin golden slits of light piercing through curtains of rain.
Perhaps it had not been a great idea, Sam thought, meeting the two people who shared those dark memories that had been triggered by the arrival of Lamboo’s letter. Instead, she ought to have gone somewhere bright and busy like Harvey Nicks, distracting herself as she so often did with a platter of moules frites at the rooftop café, and enjoying the anonymity of the summer crowds. Even if she had stayed at home and played Heer’s favourite tennis game on the Wii console, she might have ended the evening feeling less wretched. Luckily, Akbar had left this morning on a business trip, accompanying his boss to Frankfurt and Berlin for three days. She had come to rely on little breaks like this ever since Akbar’s firm had merged with the German practice, and she was grateful that she wouldn’t have to endure his sarcasm tonight: ‘What’s agitating the acidic Anita these days then?’ or ‘Ah, the bimboesque Bubbles Raheja—now if she had one more brain cell she’d be plant life.’ Sometimes the sarcasm was preferable to the more direct hits, though: ‘What’s with the glum face? Some of us have been hard at work and have earned the right to be morose, you know.’
Sam would never in a hundred years be able to explain to Akbar about Miss Lamb’s letter and the despair it had brought upon her. She’d mentioned Lily’s death to him once in the early days but he hadn’t seemed to take it seriously, and she had assumed that things like that were probably commonplace for someone in the legal profession. She hadn’t wanted to dwell on it anyway—not at a time when she had just got married and her life suddenly seemed to be blooming again. Later she had told herself it was just as well she’d never revealed any of the details to Akbar. Without a doubt, he’d have subsequently used the knowledge to make her feel even more remorseful than before. She could almost hear his sneers, especially seeing that he’d always harboured a special resentment towards her school friendships: ‘What sort of a Social ends with a kid being found dead?’ ‘So that’s what your gang was like at school, sure explains a lot!’ He never noticed that he was usually the only person enjoying his remarks, so busy sniggering at his own wit that he invariably failed to look around and see the stricken expression on her face or, worse, the embarrassment of whoever was in their company observing Sam’s mortification.
Sam slowly relaxed her fingers on the steering wheel as she passed the bright chaos of Knightsbridge and the traffic eased a bit. Hyde Park was covered in wet darkness, its black and gold wrought-iron gates closed for the night. She drove along with Classic FM playing softly on the car radio, trying to remember when Akbar had changed from being the charming, suave man she had fallen in love with to the remote stranger she was now married to. She couldn’t understand why his main source of entertainment seemed to lie in belittling other people, especially her.
Sam recognised Elgar’s ‘Nimrod’ as it swelled through the speakers and felt a familiar prickle behind her eyelids as it slowed and turned soft and poignant towards the end. Elgar invariably caused sad memories to unspool and undulate through her head, but today even the soothing tones of the radio presenter was making her want to weep. It came to her as it always did in her lowest moments: it wasn’t Akbar, it was her. It was she who had changed her husband, embittered him in some way by letting her own misery seep into their life together. She had never quite measured up to Akbar’s brilliance anyway, even in the early years of their marriage, doing a part-time job in a library briefly before giving it up, embarrassed by the growing disparity in their salaries and the sheer inanity of carrying on working when he was earning such mega-bucks and needed her to be a support to him. Then, sitting around at home all day or meeting other non-working wives for lunches at Nobu and Zuma and attending the weekend parties thrown by the Kensington banker-lawyer set, she had slowly started to put back on all the weight she had lost at college, almost without noticing it.
It was almost certainly her growing size that had first put Akbar off her, and perhaps it was that which had started off the sarcasm too. Maybe Akbar had thought that jokes were a less hurtful way of letting her know that he did not like being married to a fat woman. But early on she hadn’t taken the hint when he disparaged other overweight people, even those he didn’t know, declaring in that superior way of his that they were all indubitably either ‘weak’ or ‘lazy’. But their sex life had started to dwindle at some indefinable point and then there had been his gift of an exercise bicycle on her thirtieth birthday.
Sam turned down her road and drove past her neighbours’ familiar handsome town-houses, some advertising plush interiors through uncurtained windows. She wondered at that sometimes; she herself always drew the curtains before the lights were turned on—not that she didn’t have expensive contemporary art on her walls or designer custom-made sofas to show off, but there was something comforting in silently declaring that not everything had to be publicised and made known.
Fishing out the electronic buzzer from the glove compartment, she watched the tall metal gates to her house swing slowly open. The maid had drawn the curtains of all the upper windows and only the kitchen was visible from the garden as she pulled into the drive. She could see Heer’s small black head bobbing around inside and felt her heart melt as she turned the ignition off. At least she had her daughter’s love—although who knew for how long. Heer was growing up to be the spitting image of Akbar, and might inherit—dear God—his sense of humour too one day.
Sam gathered her things from the back seat of the car and ducked under the dripping honeysuckle. Heer let out a reassuringly delighted shriek as she walked through the kitchen door. ‘Mamma, Mamma, look what Masooma and me have been making for you!’
Sam smiled as she peered at the pale brown sludge in the bowl. ‘Masooma and I, beti. But what on earth is it?’
‘Chocolate mousse!’
‘Oh dear, perhaps it needs a bit more chocolate then. What have you put in it?’
‘Two bars of Dairy Milk and some cocoa, an egg whipped up and…here, try some.’
‘Actually, Mamma’s eaten, sweetheart,’ Sam said hastily as Heer held out a spoonful, feeling bad at the disappointed moue her daughter’s mouth instantly formed. Even though she had only nibbled on some pita sticks and olives at Heebah, she did in fact feel rather ill and couldn’t face the thought of food. She turned to the maid and spoke in Urdu. ‘No dinner for me tonight, Masooma. Has Heer eaten?’
‘Yes, memsahib. I gave Heerbaby dinner at six. Daal meat with rice and salad, as memsahib said.’
Sam nodded. ‘Thank you, Masooma. Heer, darling, I’m going to get changed…’
‘Oh memsahib, there was a phone call from India. It was Zeba Khan madam. She wants you to call back. I have written phone number down here.’ Masooma could hardly contain her excitement. ‘Memsahib, it is Zeba Khan, film star, your old friend you told me, no? I know her voice so well I immediately recognised.’
Sam nodded blankly as her heart sank. So Zeba would have received Lamboo’s letter too. There had been no contact from her in months, and the only reason for a call out of the blue would be that letter. Sam felt quite sure she could not stand talking about the letter and reunion any more. Despite Anita’s conviction that they would all benefit from ‘laying old ghosts to rest’, as she put it, Sam now felt exhausted at the very thought. Reunions were for people who wanted to stay in touch, and she had done that with Bubbles and Anita because they had both been in London as long as she had, and because they were, after all, the closest thing she had to family here. Since that chance meeting at Heathrow, there had been the occasional email from Zeba who, for all her starry airs, had evidently never forgotten that she had to thank Sam for never revealing her affair with Mr Gomes, despite being class monitor and Lamboo’s favourite. But that had been the sum total of her old school friendships. And given everything that had happened, that was probably the best way to keep it.
Sam changed into a tracksuit and lay down for a few minutes, recalling all manner of things from her schooldays. Then, suddenly, she swung her legs off the bed, sitting up abruptly as she decided to pick up the phone and return Zeba’s call. Perhaps she would know more about exactly what Miss Lamb had in mind for them all.
The ringing tone on Zeba’s mobile was distant before she heard the click and Zeba’s famously husky voice, thick with sleep, mumble an indistinct ‘Hello’.
‘Oh goodness, how stupid of me, I’d completely forgotten about the time difference, Zeba, it must be past midnight there—sorry! Were you asleep? I only just got in and just wasn’t thinking…it’s Sam here.’
To Sam’s surprise, Zeba sounded relieved rather than annoyed. ‘Oh, that’s okay, Sam, no problem. I’m so glad you called. Wasn’t really sleeping as I’m totally jet-lagged.’
‘Been travelling?’ Sam asked, unsure whether to mention the letter until Zeba brought the subject up.
‘More than I’d like,’ Zeba replied. ‘You got Lamboo’s letter too?’ she asked in her habitual abrupt style. Luckily, there was no beating about the bush with Zeba. Sam recalled there never had been.
‘Yes, this morning, Zeba. What is she up to, do you know?’
‘I have absolutely no idea. But I must say I get a very bad feeling about it. As though it’s a…a plot’. Zeba tried to joke. ‘A plot in a really bad Hindi movie.’ But neither she nor Sam could bring themselves to laugh.
‘I’ve been feeling pretty spooked myself, to be honest,’ Sam replied.
‘What about Anita and Bubbles? Have they had letters too? Have you seen them?’
‘We just spent the evening together, to talk about it in fact. Anita wants to go. In fact, she wants us all to go. Brave it out, she says.’
‘She has a point. I’ll go if you guys are coming.’
Sam, trying not to sound too surprised, responded with a nervous laugh, ‘Safety in numbers, huh?’
‘Well, something like that…I hope you guys don’t think it too weird for me to join you out of the blue, but we had grown very close that year, remember? Us four, that is.’
‘Of course it’s not weird, Zeba, we’ve been classmates since we were tiny,’ Sam said, trying not to sound doubtful but quite uncertain of whether someone like Anita would care to have Zeba suddenly back in their inner circle.
‘Well, in that final year we were drawn together mostly by our common hatred of Lily.’
‘Oh, Zeba!’ Sam remonstrated mildly.
‘But it’s true, Sam, we might as well admit it. What on earth did I ever have in common with someone like Anita? Or Bubbles even?’
‘We may have grown apart now, Zeba, but back then we were all pretty much the same, weren’t we?’
‘Just a bunch of Delhi school kids, I suppose…’ Zeba’s voice suddenly sounded less crisp. After a small pause, she spoke again. ‘When do you think you’ll come to India, Sam?’
‘Mid December, when the schools here close, I expect. I’ll bring Heer, but I don’t know what Bubbles will do with her Bobby and Ruby. They’ll probably prefer going on one of their exotic holidays.’
‘I notice Lamboo’s suggesting the third weekend in December for this reunion, just like the Socials used to be.’
‘And the anniversary of Lily’s death,’ Sam pointed out.
‘Exactly what I was thinking. It’s so weird, Sam! As if she knew all along what we did that night and is now intent on reminding us of it.’
‘That wouldn’t be like old Lamboo. She wouldn’t hurt us, that I’m sure of. It could be some kind of memorial thing for Lily.’
‘After all these years? I don’t think so somehow.’ Zeba’s voice rose as a new thought occurred to her. ‘Do you think they might have found some new evidence, and they’re doing a kind of reconstruction thing?’
Sam couldn’t help a small laugh at that. ‘What, like they do on TV? Hoping someone will crack?’
‘Don’t laugh—what if someone does crack, as you put it, or remember something and it all comes out? Ugh, so macabre.’
Sam considered the possibility. It wasn’t entirely nonsensical and Zeba had a public reputation to consider. This was the kind of story those film rags would fall upon with relish, poor Zeba. Poor all of them—nobody needed something like this when life was already so complicated. ‘Murder will out,’ she said softly, remembering Miss Lamb explaining the nature of guilt in one of her Macbeth lessons.
‘Don’t! You’re really scaring me now,’ Zeba implored. ‘But, really, if you think about it, Sam, we’ll all be gathered together in almost exactly the same circumstances. It’s a well-known ploy used by the police the world over. Agatha Christie always did it.’
‘But why now? All these years on?’
‘Maybe she wants to see justice done before she dies, see the guilty brought to book once and for all’.
Sam, unable to keep up her casual tone any more, started to weep at that, lunging for her bedside tissues and pressing a wad against her mouth. Sam had always been one of Miss Lamb’s favourites, never achieving the top marks Anita achieved in Lamboo’s subjects of English and History, but unfailingly making class monitor year on year, simply because the principal had trusted her so implicitly. Now, with stinging recognition, she realised how grievously she had betrayed old Lamboo’s trust in those last few weeks at school. Worse, she had not even attempted any sort of reparation, never once returning to visit either the school or its old principal.
‘Sam?…Sam? You okay?’ Zeba’s voice echoed distantly down the line.
Sam gathered herself together. It wasn’t just Miss Lamb and Lily. There had been so much to deal with that terrible winter, but perhaps Zeba had—in the midst of her present glitzy life—forgotten the dreadful events of that year. What Sam needed now, quite desperately, was to end this conversation. ‘Yes, I’m fine, Zeba. Look, I gotta go now. I’ve been out all evening and need to put Heer to bed. I’ll call you tomorrow…’
‘Oh God, I’ve upset you now, haven’t I? You aren’t crying, are you? Sam?’
‘No, no, I’m fine, Zeba,’ Sam mumbled, managing to keep her voice steady. ‘Look, stay in touch. I’ve told Anita and Bubs that we need to keep each other’s spirits up.’
‘Too right,’ Zeba agreed. ‘Yes, I’ll stay in touch too. You’d better go and sort Heer out now. Call me when you can. And try not to think about this if possible, Sam. We’ve all got our lives to live.’
MUMBAI, 2008
The following morning, Zeba managed to drag herself out of bed and get to work on time, despite having caught only five hours of sleep. Getting out of her car, she straightened her back and walked into the studio, knowing she was already getting full marks from the assembled crew for not making them hang about all morning like some of the other stars did. There were some things about her father’s strict upbringing that she did have to be grateful for.
She looked around the Filmistan sets in amazement. This was good even for Shiv Mirchandani, whose hand was clear in the attention to detail. The fake marketplace had everything: the ration shop, the post office, the vegetable vendor with his trolley full of shiny aubergines and damp bunches of spinach. Zeba suddenly realised that she had not actually seen the inside of a real market for years, merely expecting the fridges and fruit bowls in her Juhu house to be well-stocked at all times. She’d even forgotten who in her domestic retinue had been delegated to oversee all that! But, from her childhood memories of accompanying Ammi to INA market every Sunday, the set designer had got this exactly right.
What a pity that it had all been put together only to be blown apart. Today’s shoot was the bomb-blast scene, which she wasn’t looking forward to at all. The mess and noise, the acrid smoke and smells—horrible. Then she’d have to be rushed to make-up for them to put the grime and blood on her face and clothes for the rescue scene. Zeba stopped short, remembering that her co-star on this film was Neel Biswas, a man with the most horrendous bad breath. She shuddered, imagining submitting to halitosis fumes as she lay in a swoon ready to be gathered up in her distraught lover’s arms.
Zeba sensed someone sitting down gingerly on the seat next to her and turned to see a grinning young girl—probably one of the extras. She felt her hackles rise. She really did not want to be bothered with useless chit-chat when she was sleep-deprived and trying to gather her thoughts for her scene. She had learned method acting the hard way, living as she did in a world where no one else even knew what the term meant. Perhaps she should cock an eyebrow at her maid or assistant to signal to them that they ought to be keeping fans at bay. There was a time and a place for adulation. But Zeba could spot nobody familiar in her immediate vicinity and reluctantly turned back. She’d be cool and distant—Zeba knew from experience that would send the girl scurrying off. No harm in being polite, though—you never knew when the press would descend in disguise, and those Starworld journalists were always looking to find something on her that would bring all her hard-won success crashing down.
‘Yes?’ she said with a plastic smile that she knew was not quite reaching her eyes.
‘Madam Zebaji, I am your biggest fan,’ the girl breathed.
Zeba nodded. She couldn’t help softening at the sound of those words, but she’d heard them so often that they had long ceased to really thrill. ‘Hmm, how nice to know that,’ she said, trying to sound pleasant but with scant success.
‘Madam, if you don’t mind…I am writing a book about our Bollywood industry and want to ask you…’
Zeba had been offered that excuse so many times that it wearied her. Did these people really think that writing books about the film world was easy? How silly they were to imagine that actors would ever stop acting for long enough to reveal their real selves to anyone? It was all an act, she wanted to shout at them sometimes, even the casual chats and confessional-style interviews. How on earth could anyone imagine otherwise? And who was this chit of a girl to offer the world her wisdom on Bollywood anyway? When people like herself, Zeba Khan, had slaved for years to make their way up its labyrinthine, treacherous corridors. Zeba’s beautiful face closed up. ‘Why don’t you make an appointment with my secretary for an interview. He will…’
‘I will most certainly, Madam. But I saw you sitting here, and if I can just ask you one or two things now. Just some basic questions…’
Zeba darted another look around her before nodding reluctantly—where was bloody Gupta, or her PA, or Najma even. Her status allowed her to have as big a retinue as she wished on set, but what a strange way they all had of vanishing when you most needed them. ‘Well, you know, I have just one or two minutes before going on the set…’
‘Don’t worry, Madam, I will not take up much of your time. Just one question…’
Zeba took a deep breath. This was one of those brazen ones who would not be shaken off. Some of these people had no shame, really, no sense of privacy. There were laws to protect the rich and the famous in other countries, but here in India, no bloody chance! Zeba put on her polite but resigned expression and nodded again.
‘Okay Thank you, thank you,’ the girl gushed, pulling out a bright yellow notepad. ‘Madam, Zebaji—may I call you Zebaji? Okay, Zebaji, please tell me when you first took up acting? I mean, when did you first think to yourself, “I am going to be a superstar”. A Bollywood thespian. Maybe Hollywood even!’
Zeba parted Bollywood’s most famous luscious lips to dish out the usual reply…ever since I was a child…my parents, recognising my unusual talent, used to…la di la di la la la…Her patter had been perfected over the years. And the old Hollywood question too—she was sick to the teeth of it! As if all her hard-won success in India amounted to nothing if she failed to get the nod from Hollywood. Which Hollywood star could claim to have a fan-following that stretched to a billion people, for God’s sake! Weren’t journalists supposed to be intelligent people? But, just as Zeba was formulating her reply into polite language, she spotted Gupta hurrying across to her.
‘Madamji, you are being called onto the set. Immediately please!’ he said, taking his cue from Zeba’s glowering expression.
Zeba threw a falsely apologetic look at the girl, who looked like a child that had suddenly had her lollipop snatched away from her. ‘I am so sorry,’ she said, getting up and smiling sweetly before turning to Gupta and saying, ‘Gupta-sahib, please take this author’s details and arrange a time with her for a proper interview. She is writing a book and we must help her. Okay?’
Gupta nodded, his face a mask. Madamji’s acting was so good that he sometimes had to check later with her whether she really meant what she said in front of other people. Zeba had already turned away from the girl, thinking it best not to wait for a reply. Security in this place was not what it used to be, Zeba thought crossly as she hurried back to her rooms, carefully picking her way over the network of cables and wires that lay strewn across the floor of the studio. In the era of the big stars, journalists knew their place and never wrote badly of the celebrities, no matter what they got up to—bigamous marriages, name changes, even changing religions to suit their convenience. Nobody questioned anything. They were like Gods in those days, lording it over ordinary mortals from the big screen. Now everyone thought film stars could be their friends, thanks to their TV sets that took them right into people’s living rooms. But why journalists considered it their job to expose film stars and find something—anything—to destroy them, Zeba had never been able to work out. Didn’t they have politicians to chase any more?
She closed the door behind her in relief, throwing herself down on the bed. Suddenly remembering the hours it had taken her hairdresser to get her seventies-style beehive hairdo just right, she hastily sat up again. Casting a quick look at the mirrored wardrobe, she breathed a sigh of relief. No damage done, thankfully. Zeba angled her face to examine herself in the mirror. Her skin glowed alabaster white, just turning a pale rose over her cheekbones. Her neck was smooth and curved downwards quite marvellously to shapely shoulders. She looked into tawny brown eyes that, she had on excellent authority, were capable of making hardened underworld dons swoon. Then she fluttered her lashes, trying to see what it was that other people saw, smiling, lips together, then lips carefully parted, revealing a sparkle of fine even teeth inherited from her father.
The journalist wanted to know when she had taken up acting. Well, Zeba knew exactly when she had: aged two, when she had first become conscious of her ability to make people coo over her merely by pouting coquettishly and swinging her little hips. But she wasn’t exactly going to divulge all that, was she? Nor that there was one particular day when she had realised that she would kill—yes, kill—to be the star. An image of Lily D’Souza clad in a white robe, declaiming for all she was worth on the school stage, flashed into her mind. Zeba could even remember the words…‘Oh God, that madest this beautiful earth, when will it be ready to receive thy saints? How long, oh lord, how long?’ She remembered the electricity of that moment: the pain that seemed to drip off Lily’s beautiful face, the silence pervading the school hall, and, most of all, the awed expression on the old drama teacher’s face as he gazed up at Lily with the kind of expression none of Zeba’s own histrionic efforts at school had ever elicited. Oh yes, if a knife had been handy at that moment, Zeba would have happily leapt onto the stage, killing St Joan right there in the middle of her bloody audition. She could imagine the reaction if she ever told a journalist all that. Wouldn’t they just love it? The story of how Zeba Khan, aged seventeen, had fought for her role in the school annual production with a new girl, Lily D’Souza. Beautiful, brilliant Lily D’Souza, who was later found dead in the school’s rose garden. Oh how the press pack would love it, dementedly carrying the story on all their networks, reporters standing outside her house, breathlessly exclaiming over the unsolved case in which top star Zeba Khan was clearly involved! She remembered the time a careless remark she had passed about a local politician had made the morning news, thereafter being repeated all day on an endless loop in red ticker-tape at the bottom of the TV screen. They were starved for stories, these 24-hour news channels, and fell upon the smallest scrap of celebrity news as though it were manna from heaven! This story would not be a scrap of news, though. It certainly would not be difficult for a reporter to find interviewees—old schoolmates jealous of her success, teachers she had been rude to, any number of people who would no doubt delight in giving chapter and verse on how stuck-up Zeba Khan had been at school. There was a lot of stuff from those days that was well worth keeping hidden, after all.
In the mirror, Zeba saw fear and guilt darken her face at the memory of Lily and reminded herself angrily that nobody had liked the new girl. ‘Thinks too much of herself,’ someone had said, and, ‘What does she think, that she can just walk in and take over from us?’ But, even after it had been well established that Lily was the most conceited little bitch they had ever met, Zeba had been astonished to hear that Lily had had the nerve to put her name down for the lead role in the play that year. It wasn’t just that Zeba always, always played the lead—everyone knew that—but Lily was new, an outsider, for heaven’s sake! A new girl didn’t ever show such impudence if she knew what was good for her. It was no less than arrogance to think she could waltz in and steal things that had always belonged to others. Besides, it was Zeba’s final year at the school and the part of Joan of Arc had been virtually written for her. Why, old Moss, the drama teacher, had even adapted parts of the script to suit her accent as he had heard that scouts from both film school and the National School of Drama were going to be in attendance. Zeba had toiled all year for the role, neglecting her schoolwork to practise for hours before her bathroom mirror till each line had been perfected like a carefully chiselled jewel. Did everyone think she would quietly stand by and let some cocky brat from the sticks just waltz in and rob her of all that? All that effort, all that work, her ticket to film school and her dreams of stardom? Well, the bottom line was that it was not Lily D’Souza who shone in the limelight at the annual production that year. It was Zeba. It was Zeba Khan, as it always had been and was always meant to be. And, despite the circumstances surrounding that fact, Zeba could still—even after all these years—take some satisfaction from it.
Chapter Five (#u6f123e10-61fe-513d-9b8c-334c40763cd0)
DELHI, 1993
By the time Lily D’Souza had been at St Jude’s for two weeks, there were not many classmates left still trying to befriend her. She had, on her very first day, managed to upset half the population of the class by declaring that Delhi was a crass city because of its Punjabi business population, not stopping to consider that half the girls in Class XII were the daughters of Punjabi businessmen. Then, granted exemption from studying Hindi on the basis of having come from another state, she airily dismissed what was the mother-tongue of most of her classmates as ‘the language of politics and corruption’.
Even the normally peaceable Sam and uncomplicated Bubbles had retreated hurt, burnt by Lily’s acid tongue on too many occasions to persevere any more with amiable overtures. No one wanted to befriend the new girl, for that was what Lily was still persistently called.
‘It’s because she’s so horrible that we can’t stop calling her “new girl,” I think,’ Bubbles remarked as their group sat under the gulmohar tree sharing their lunches one day.
Startled by her bench-mate’s unlikely astuteness, Anita agreed. ‘Absolutely It’s not like I haven’t tried seeing it from Lily’s point of view. I mean, it’s never easy to break into an established group. But we’ve done everything to make her feel welcome, haven’t we? Well, at least Sam has.’
‘And me!’ Natasha chipped in. ‘I even offered her my Mont Blanc pen set, you know, when her crappy ball-point ran out in Biology the other day. But would she take it? Like heck! Just too nose-in-the-air, that’s what.’
‘Essentially, Lily’s done nothing to try to belong,’ said Anita firmly.
‘It’s like she’s in another world, floating way above us. Just because she’s pretty’. Zeba spat out the word.
Only Sam was still faintly doubtful. ‘Maybe we should give her more time…I mean, we don’t know yet exactly why she was brought here, but it’s almost certainly because something bad has happened in her past.’
‘But then she should tell us about it. We can only sympathise if we know.’ This was Nimmi speaking, a cheery sort of girl whom Sam knew was usually quite reasonable.
‘Definitely We’re all so open with each other, aren’t we?’ Natasha was starting to sound quite indignant now.
‘Maybe she will be too, once she’s settled down and starts coming out of herself,’ Sam replied.
Natasha spluttered on a mouthful of ham and cheese. ‘Coming out of herself! You’re not suggesting shyness is her problem, Sam? Have you seen the way she looks around the classroom? Looking without seeing, that’s what she does. As though we’re all too far beneath her to be noticed. You’re the only one she’ll deign to talk to, Sam, and even that is only when she needs something.’
‘Yeah, and have you seen how she only ever sits in the front row? Because that way she doesn’t need to look at anyone else,’ Zeba grumbled.
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ Sam murmured, ‘maybe we’re reading too much into all this. The front bench is just the place she was given. I sit in the front row too.’
‘But you’re different, you’re class monitor,’ Bubbles said, adding, ‘you’ve always sat in the front row. And you keep looking back at us at least.’
‘Yeah, only to say “ssshhh…quiet” and suchlike!’ Sam replied.
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, Sam—even you should be able to see that Lily’s just a stuck-up, arrogant little bitch,’ Zeba demurred, nibbling delicately at the edge of a shammi kebab.
‘Perhaps she thinks she’s above us because she’s the Princy’s relative and lives in her cottage,’ Bubbles offered.
‘But she said on her first day that she wasn’t related to Lamboo, remember?’ Nimmi queried.
‘Well, that’s clearly a lie, isn’t it? Why would Lamboo take her into her house if they weren’t related, huh? And didn’t Lamboo describe Lily as her relative to you, Sam?’ Zeba asked.
‘She did, actually, I’m sure I didn’t mishear that. Something about her being Lily’s nearest relative after the loss of her parents,’ Sam said, getting up and dusting sandwich crumbs off her navy pleated skirt. She scanned the playground, empty except for their own little group occupying the only shady area under the trees. Delhi in June was as hot as hell and she could see dust lifting off the basketball courts and hanging in the still air. Luckily these were the last two weeks of term before the summer holidays and she would soon be off to the hills with her family. Much as she loved Delhi, she hated the coming season of sandstorms. Already there were days when her throat and nasal passages felt clogged with dust, and she feared greatly for both her father and brother, both asthma sufferers. She cast a look at her watch.
‘C’mon, girls, we don’t want to be late for Gomes. There’s just five minutes left until the bell, and I need to fill my water flask from the cooler on the way to the lab.’
‘Oh it’s only our Gomesey,’ Zeba said lazily, stretching her lissom legs out from under her and tying her long brown tresses into a loose knot at the nape of her neck. ‘He never gets cross. I’ll take care of that.’
Everyone tittered uneasily but Sam’s forehead creased into a small anxious frown again. She had been waiting to have a serious conversation with Zeba about her relationship with their Chemistry teacher. ‘I’ve been meaning to say, Zebs…’ Sam adjusted her tone, trying to sound less sanctimonious. ‘You really must stop this absurd thing before it goes too far. I feel so terribly scared of what might happen, you know.’
But Zeba merely smiled cheekily up at her, amusement making her pretty brown eyes twinkle and dance. ‘Listen, Sami, this “thing,” as you describe it, has been going on for a couple of months now and nothing has happened, has it? Has it?’
‘What do you mean, “nothing”—you mean, like, you haven’t had full-blown sex, yeah?’ Natasha clarified.
Bubbles squealed at the sound of the word ‘sex’, clapping her hands over her ears and giggling uncontrollably. Zeba threw her a disparaging look as Sam tried gamely to continue her counsel. ‘Even if it’s not…sex,’ she cleared her throat, ‘you have been doing…all kinds of things you just shouldn’t with a teacher, Zeba.’
‘Only waist up, Sam, nothing waist down,’ Natasha said in a reassuring tone, adding, ‘and he only went past her bra just the other day.’
Bubbles squealed again but Zeba regally ignored her this time, nodding in appreciation of Natasha’s defence. ‘Anyway, it was Gomes who made the first move, not me,’ she said.
‘Yeah, like that makes a real difference,’ Anita said sardonically.
Natasha put in another mild entreaty on behalf of Zeba in her phlegmatic American drawl. ‘Hey, listen, we all know of Zeba’s irrepressible desire to flirt. Can’t we just let it be?’
‘And what can I do anyway if he keeps flirting with me?’ Zeba asked, emboldened by Natasha’s defence and trying now to sound wounded.
‘Well, if you’re such a victim you could try reporting him, couldn’t you?’ Anita enquired caustically.
Sam cut in hastily, ‘I don’t know about that. We’ll have to think things through before taking such a course of action. Reporting a teacher is a big deal. Gomes will go and lose his job and there’ll be an enquiry and heaven knows what else. Can’t you just try to put an end to it yourself, Zeba? Just tell him he’s too old for you or something.’
‘But right now it’s just so amusing, Sam,’ Zeba giggled. ‘Last week he was leaning over me, to use the pipette, y’know, and, when his hand slipped it landed on my thigh…’
‘If I were you, I’d have screamed my lungs out at that point,’ Anita said sharply.
Zeba looked pityingly at her as though assessing the unlikely prospect of anyone, Gomes or otherwise, making a pass at someone who wore glasses and pigtails.
‘You let him grab your thigh?! Really, Zeba, how can you be such an idiot!’ a horrified Sam exclaimed, ignoring the sound of the bell clanging in the distance, which announced the end of the break.
‘When you’re Zeba, being an idiot is the easy bit, Sam,’ Anita put in drily.
Sam could not bring herself to smile, despite Bubbles and Natasha going off into gales of giggles at that. ‘Just don’t encourage him, Zebs, please!’ she implored.
Zeba got up along with the others, now looking slightly more shame-faced than before. ‘It’s actually not so easy to put Gomes off, you know, Sam…’ she said as they dusted down their uniforms.
‘Why not?’ Anita demanded, picking up her satchel. ‘Give me one good reason.’
‘You see…well, okay, I’ll tell you because I eventually would have anyway. But, listen to this—Gomes says he might be able to get the Chemistry paper for me before the Board Exams. A friend of his is the person who’s going to be setting it. Just think of it…’ Zeba looked around at the group, half pleading and half excited.
There was a sudden silence as everyone stopped walking to look at her open-mouthed.
‘He what?!’ Anita screeched.
‘Oh Zeba, how could you…’ Sam breathed.
‘Listen, I was going to share the paper with you guys, so don’t look at me like that!’ Zeba said.
‘Oh God, Zeba, like that would make it all better. Oh, I just don’t know what to say,’ Sam wailed.
‘Listen, without it I’ll just flunk. And there’ll be no getting to the film institute without a school leaving cert. Then my parents will ground me and there’ll be no outings and no fun, and life just won’t be worth living,’ Zeba said, her voice rising dramatically.
‘We’ll talk about this later—okay? God, there’s the second bell! Now I won’t even have time to go to the loo,’ Sam wailed over her shoulder as she hurried away from the group of friends. Leaving them to wend their way across to the Chemistry lab, she ran towards the water-coolers, nodding absently as she passed a gaggle of seventh graders on their way out of choir practice. They had temporarily suspended their trilling to say hello to her but Sam’s thoughts were miles away as she hastened past them with a serious look on her face. Normally she made it a point to talk to her many fans among the juniors, but today she had not even noticed that she had left them gazing disappointed at her retreating back.
How horribly muddling all this was, Sam considered while filling her water flask. As head girl she really ought to do something about this ghastly mess, but what? Perhaps she ought to let Gomes know somehow that the girls all knew what was going on and that his dirty secret could not be contained any more. Anyone could stumble upon Gomes and Zeba in the lab, which was where—as far as Sam knew—most of their trysts took place.
She ran down the corridor and reached the lab just as her group of friends were walking through the door. By now Sam was perspiring profusely, both from the heat and out of fear. Fortunately the Chemistry lab was the coolest and darkest room in the school, shaded by ancient trees. Set back from the Edwardian building that housed all the classrooms, it had once been the outside kitchen of the old convent that had since acquired a brand-spanking-new stainless-steel canteen indoors. Converting a kitchen to a lab must have been easy, Sam had observed when she had first set foot in this building. The shelves of colourful spices had been replaced by bottled chemicals and the sink now bled the pink juice of potassium permanganate crystals rather than the blood from meat. The faintly unpleasant smell of hydrogen sulphide hung over everything now, though that apparently hadn’t been much of a deterrent to either Gomes or Zeba.
Sam tried not to feel nauseated when she saw their Chemistry teacher simpering openly at Zeba while the group took their places on the stools surrounding his desk. Gomes was a tall, slim man with a mop of oily black hair, and would not have been bad looking were it not for an underhand kind of manner that Sam had often found quite sly. Even the way he walked around made it look as though he were sliding around the lab rather than walking. The incorrigible Zeba looked nonchalant as she perched herself on a stool right under the teacher’s nose amid all the clattering and shuffling. She placed one foot on the stool next to her, a position that caused her skirt to slide a few inches up her long legs. Gomes whipped out a handkerchief and wiped his forehead with it, his small black eyes flicking momentarily towards the shadow between Zeba’s thighs before he struggled to look away. Sam took up her station at the counter as Gomes came around lighting the Bunsen burners, keeping a wary eye on Zeba who was whispering with Bubbles and saying something so hysterical that it was making both girls shake with laughter. As Gomes approached the pair, he dropped the matchbox, scattering matches all over the floor. This made the girls crease up some more and then, while he was scrabbling around on his knees, Zeba stood up behind him to make a thrusting gesture with her hips, wearing a droll expression on her face. Sam flashed a warning look at Zeba as the whole class started to titter and Gomes staggered back to his feet, red in the face. The laughter didn’t seem to bother him, though, and he merely looked adoringly at Zeba as she readjusted her facial expression to one of faux respect, leaning forward on the counter so that he could see right down the V of her open-necked blouse to where her cleavage nestled temptingly. Sam shot a look around the classroom and saw that while most of the girls remained oblivious to the drama of Zeba and Gomes, busying themselves with today’s silver-making experiment, Lily D’Souza had her eyes carefully fixed on the pair. Sam saw those pale blue-grey eyes narrow in recognition before Lily looked as though she were calculating something in her head. Sam shivered and looked pleadingly at Zeba, who was still behaving as though she’d inhaled a whole canister of nitrous oxide. Oh, she was going to get such a telling-off when the school day finished.
Zeba was, however, her usual insouciant self when Sam cornered her after their lab session.
‘You should have seen the way Lily was looking at you when you were flirting with Gomes,’ Sam hissed, squeezing Zeba’s elbow hard as they walked to the gate to emphasise her point.
‘First of all, Sam, it’s not me flirting with Gomes but the other way around, okay? And secondly, I’m not scared of Lily. What can she do to me, hanh?’ Zeba replied brazenly.
‘What can she do? She can tell Lamboo, that’s what! And then we’re all in big trouble.’
‘She’ll never tell Lamboo, yaar,’ Zeba dismissed airily.
‘Oh, and what makes you so confident?’
‘Well, because they never talk to each other at all—we all know that. Whatever goes on in the Princy’s cottage after school, happy chit-chat between Lamboo and Lily doesn’t seem to be part of it.’
Sam recognised the truth of what Zeba said. The principal and Lily certainly did not seem to get on very well. On some days they barely made eye-contact with each other when Miss Lamb was taking their English lesson, or so Sam had observed. So it was a relatively safe deduction that Lamboo was the last person Lily would go snitching to. But that didn’t take away from the fact that Zeba was still dancing with death, playing with fire—no hyperbole would suffice to express Sam’s terror.
But to Zeba she merely said, ‘You could be right about Lily not telling Lamboo. I do hope for your own sake you are. But someone else could sneak…’
‘Who? No one in our class would tattle, you know that.’
‘Hmmm,’ Sam conceded reluctantly. ‘Look, we’ll talk about this later, Zeba, and I’ll help you figure out a way to get rid of Gomes. But I gotta go now. I have Haroon coming to pick me up today.’
The conversation was dropped as Bubbles joined them in the exodus to the school gates. ‘What are you two talking about?’ she asked.
‘Nothing much,’ Zeba said. ‘Well, I’m off to my bus. Bye—and stop fretting, Samira Hussain! I’ll look after myself. I promise!’
‘What’s she talking about?’ Bubbles asked.
‘Oh, just that damn Gomes thing. I really, really want her to put an end to it before it all goes horribly wrong.’
‘Do you think—just maybe—sex and all…’
‘Oh Bubs, how can you be so naïve?’ Sam said, throwing her head back in despair. ‘There’s only one person Zeba will ever love and that’s herself. Thing is, she’s so beautiful she’ll always have men chasing after her, and I guess she’ll just use that to get what she wants.’
‘Maybe Gomes loves her?’ Bubbles offered, undaunted. ‘After all, he’s risking his job and all that too.’
Sam finally smiled in sheer exasperation. ‘What is it with all these theories of love, Bubbles Malhotra? And, pray, are you being kind enough to walk with me to the gates only because a certain Mr Haroon Hussain is expected? I know I foolishly mentioned in your presence during lunch break that my brother was coming to pick me up.’
Bubbles blushed and Sam squeezed her arm, laughing, ‘You’re just hopeless at hiding your feelings, you know!’
Bubbles had met Haroon at least a hundred times, having been a regular visitor to Sam’s house since the age of six. But her comfortable old relationship with Sam’s big brother had recently undergone a curious shift that she had magnificently failed to conceal. Sam wasn’t sure yet how serious it was, but it would have been impossible to miss Bubbles’ newly developed curiosity about Haroon’s life, or the ineptitude with which she conspired to be in his presence, only to become all gauche and awkward when she was.
Sam spotted her brother’s head in the crowd and waved. She made her way through the car park, which was crowded with parked cars and school buses, Bubbles still glued to her side. She couldn’t bring herself to ask Bubbles why she wasn’t searching for her car. That would be too rude, and poor Bubbles had already lapsed into tongue-tied silence at the distant sight of Haroon anyway. As Haroon spotted the girls, he raised a lanky arm and grinned lopsidedly The other thing Sam hadn’t figured out yet was if Haroon reciprocated Bubbles’ feelings. He certainly liked her, but then he had always treated Sam’s friends nicely. Not that Sam would mind at all if her brother did start going out with her best friend. Bubbles was pretty much already a part of her family.
‘Hey there, gorgeous girls,’ Haroon said as they neared.
‘You only said that because Bubbles is here,’ Sam complained, throwing her bag into the back seat of the car. ‘On my own, I’d never ever get a compliment.’
‘That’s not true!’ Haroon protested. ‘Is it true? Bubbles, you tell us. Am I not always showering my sister with compliments? I order you to arbitrate!’
Bubbles smiled shyly from under her lashes, her voice little more than a whisper. ‘I don’t think it’s true at all. Haroon’s always saying nice things about you, Sam!’
‘Yeah, right, turncoat!’ Sam said.
‘Good girl, high-five,’ Haroon yelled, slapping palms with Bubbles. ‘Need a lift?’ he asked, reaching out for her bag.
‘No, no, it’s okay,’ Bubbles replied.
‘Really, it’d be no trouble at all. Hop into the car,’ Haroon insisted, not noticing his sister’s exasperated eye-roll.
‘Come on, Bubs, do you or don’t you want us to take you home?’ Sam asked.
Hearing the irritation in her friend’s voice, Bubbles started backing away. ‘No, no, my car must be here somewhere. I just came to see off Sam and to say hello to you, Haroon…’
‘You sure, Bubbles? A lift wouldn’t be a problem. You’re right on our way…’ Haroon wasn’t letting go and now Bubbles was looking ever more confused.
‘Yes, she’s sure, Haroon! Didn’t you hear her say that her car’s here?’ Sam yelled, climbing into the passenger seat. ‘C’mon, let’s get going now, I’m starving! Okay, bye, Bubbles!’
‘That wasn’t very nice,’ Haroon said to his sister as they finally pulled away, Bubbles waving forlornly at them from the car park and barely noticing that she was blocking the path of a bus.
‘God, if you must romance each other, at least have the decency not to carry on under my nose,’ Sam snapped.
‘Romance? What—me and Bubbles? You can’t be serious!’
‘Well, I think she is. And I think she thinks you feel the same.’ Sam was seriously annoyed but squawked in fright as her brother, who was gazing astounded at her, nearly ran into the back of a taxi.
‘You mean you hadn’t noticed about Bubs?’ she asked after Haroon and the taxi-driver he was overtaking had stopped gesticulating rudely at each other.
‘No! Since when?’ Haroon asked, adding an agonised, ‘Why?’
‘Beats me,’ Sam replied impolitely, before accusing Haroon, ‘Must have been something you said. You must have led her on in some way.’
‘Me? Lead Bubbles on? For God’s sake…I’ve known the kid since she was a snot-faced six-year-old!’
‘Oh, poor Bubs! So you don’t fancy her,’ Sam said. ‘She’s never had her heart broken before. And it’ll all be your fault! I hope you’re happy with what you’ve gone and done now, Haroon Hussain.’
‘But I haven’t done anything. Look, just tell her tomorrow that she’s got it all wrong, okay?’ Haroon wheedled. ‘Please?’
‘Why should I be burdened with breaking her heart? You’re the one breaking it. You tell her!’
‘Have a heart, Sam. I can’t say anything to her if she hasn’t said anything to me, can I?’
There was some logic to that, Sam had to agree. ‘Well, okay, I’ll try to say something to her,’ she said finally. ‘Not tomorrow, necessarily, but whenever I get the chance. And I don’t know when that will be, so don’t keep pestering me in the meantime, okay?’
‘Thanks, sis,’ Haroon said with relief, ‘I owe you one.’
Sam sighed, looking out of the window as they approached India Gate and the roads became quieter. The lawns flanking the road were brown from the summer sun and ice-cream vendors were plying a brisk trade along their edges. ‘Trouble is, Bubbles isn’t very good at picking up non-verbal cues. I’ll have to virtually hit her over the head with this information. Then she’ll probably start crying and—aaaaarrrrggghhh—why did the idiot have to go and fall for you, of all people, Haroon!’
‘Well, some people just can’t help their magnetic good looks and overwhelming charm, I guess,’ Haroon said, twinkling and then hollering ‘Owww’ as he earned a sisterly slap on his thigh.
Chapter Six (#u6f123e10-61fe-513d-9b8c-334c40763cd0)
LONDON, 2008
Bubbles sniffed her forearm appreciatively. Bergamot oil would help unwind her tense mind, the therapist at the Mandarin Oriental had assured her. The diminutive Chinese woman had been unfailingly sympathetic and gentle but, while being ministered to, Bubbles had not been able to help speculating that this woman was thinking, as all her therapists no doubt did: ‘What the hell do you, you beautiful, lazy, pampered wife of a millionaire, have to be stressed about?’ The staff at the Mandarin Oriental spa had emitted a collective sigh when Bubbles mentioned her recent cruise in the Bahamas, but little did they know how stressful it had been for her to play dutiful daughter-in-law throughout her two weeks trapped on the Minerva, not just to Binkie’s mother this time but to all her cousins and best friends too! There was no point trying to explain. These people would never understand anything,
The Bahamas cruise had been particularly difficult for Bubbles, because added to the usual stresses had been the effect of Lamboo’s recent letter. It wasn’t merely that the letter had been a shocking reminder of Lily and Haroon and all the terrible events of that winter. Bubbles had not been at all prepared for the manner in which Lamboo’s words would transport her back to her school years in Delhi and make her think of all the things she could have done to change her fortunes. She had spent much time on board the yacht thinking of the place she was in now, married on sufferance into a family to whom she was at best a convenience, rather than a loved and respected member. Of course, Bubbles could never say anything like that to anyone because she knew that no one in their right mind would ever look at her and think, ‘Oh, poor
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Jaishree Misra
The Secret History meets Daddy’s Girls as four old schoolfriends reunite after fifteen years in this sizzling blockbuster.You can't run away from your past…Anita, Zeba, Bubbles and Sam have a friendship that spans 20 years - a friendship born out of their years at a private girls’ school in Delhi in the early Nineties. Beautiful, intelligent and secretive, they were the top clique; the girls that everyone wanted to impress - until the arrival of a newcomer to the school. 15-year-old Lily D'Souza is beautiful, gifted and acerbic and instantly threatens their superiority.Now, Anita, Sam and Bubbles live in London. Bubbles is the pampered but bored wife of a billionaire, Anita is a top journalist working for the BBC, whilst Sam tries hard to be a trophy wife for her corporate lawyer husband. Zeba remained in India, and now lives a life of unimaginable luxury as the world's reigning Bollywood queen.Called back to India for a reunion by their beloved school principal Mrs Lamb, the women must confront a secret that has haunted their adult lives. Lily's body was found on the night of their school prom and, for twenty years, the open verdict has shielded the fact that they may have had a hand in her death.But as they reunite in Delhi to find out the truth about what really happened that night, will their friendship stand the strain? Or are some things better left unsaid…?
JAISHREE MISRA
Secrets and Lies
Copyright (#u6f123e10-61fe-513d-9b8c-334c40763cd0)
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
AVON
A division of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
First published in Great Britain by
HarperCollinsPublishers 2009
Copyright © Jaishree Misra 2009
Jaishree Misra asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks
HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication
Source ISBN: 9781847561688
Ebook Edition © 2009 ISBN: 9780007331642
Version: 2018-06-18
This book is dedicated to all my girlfriends, but most
especially Qubra, who never minded that I regularly
swiped her lunch back at school…
With rue my heart is laden For golden friends I had, For many a rose-lipt maiden And many a lightfoot lad. By brooks too broad for leaping The lightfoot lads are laid; The rose-lipt girls are sleeping In fields where roses fade.
A.E. Housman
Contents
Title Page (#u6d94d893-487f-5810-8965-ca13e472da29)
Copyright (#udb3b7d5c-39f3-55b1-9da2-0d3ef9671925)
Prologue (#u1ff02072-9d1e-574c-8ac3-381e55577a81)
Chapter One (#u7a139143-9a5d-54fc-bafb-a67d3e9f04ab)
Chapter Two (#u69246991-304c-59e4-834a-791e92f9e20d)
Chapter Three (#ud543ba77-9251-5566-9713-de745ae7f5ac)
Chapter Four (#u7904e05f-69dc-517b-96c3-54119906be7b)
Chapter Five (#u7a1ca08e-dca3-523d-86c5-ab0ccb969a32)
Chapter Six (#udf96b16c-1773-54f0-bb58-6e0cd0716bd8)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eighteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nineteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-One (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Two (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Three (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty (#litres_trial_promo)
Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)
Acknowledgments (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
Prologue (#u6f123e10-61fe-513d-9b8c-334c40763cd0)
DELHI, 2008
Victoria Lamb sealed the last of her letters and placed it on top of the small pile. Then, steadying herself on the arms of her wooden swivel chair, she eased herself up from the writing bureau where she had been sitting since dawn and walked across to the French windows. Flexing her stiff hand, Victoria parted the old curtains at their faded central strip and blinked as Delhi’s sharp summer sunshine flooded in. The rose garden, denuded of flowers, lay thorny and colourless, dust stubbornly clinging to everything: the leaves, the trees, Lily’s stone grave at the bottom of the garden. Beyond the hedge and through the smog haze, the mansard roof of the school building with its squat clock tower was just visible. Emptied of its student population, the old Edwardian building had lain silent for the last six weeks, with only the occasional flitting figure of a nun disturbing the dark peace of the convent’s corridors.
Tomorrow the new term would start in its usual clamorous manner, beginning with the distant rumble of school buses approaching the gates. A pleasant enough sound, but one that unfailingly lapsed into belligerence as the bus drivers competed with the private cars that brought the more affluent pupils to school. That was when the ear-shattering revving and grinding of engines invariably began. The bus drivers were mindful of Miss Lamb’s strict ‘No Horns’ policy but, despite the occasional sternly worded home-circular, there was little she had been able to do about the strident car horns, the expression of self-importance that flowed from Delhi’s wealthy to their chauffeurs.
Far more forgiveable were the children’s shrieks that would assail Victoria’s ears at precisely half past seven, when the first of the school buses would disgorge its passengers just as she was sitting down to her breakfast of one poached egg and a slice of unbuttered toast. But the girls knew well enough to keep their voices hushed once they were inside the school building, or when they saw Miss Lamb passing through the grounds from the cottage at the edge of the school. That was indeed the best time of the day for Victoria—and had been for many years—the moment at which she cut across the quadrangle, saying hello and sometimes stopping to speak to a passing student, while the aroma of coffee wafted in the air alongside muffled laughter from the staff room. Victoria felt a small rush of gratification at the thought that she would be experiencing that familiar glow at roughly this time tomorrow. And then she reminded herself that tomorrow was to be the very last time she would be at St Jude’s to see the start of term.
Victoria sighed, not for the first time in the day, before turning away from the window. How could she pretend it would not be hard to leave all this? Fifty years at Jude’s; it had become her life! Her smile was rueful as she walked slowly around the living room of her little cottage, making mental notes about what she would need to give away or pack. Not that she would miss everything about the life of a school principal, of course. The job had been robbed of some of its joys along the way, not least because St Jude’s—with its very old reputation of turning out stylish and well-spoken young ladies—had in recent years become the choice of noveau-riche Delhi business families who merely wanted their daughters to speak English properly, thereby acquiring a sheen of sophistication. The school population had certainly enjoyed a more healthy mix when Victoria had first arrived here, college professors and government servants then seeming more able to afford the fees for their children than these days. But competition from those exclusive day-schools springing up in South Delhi had led to St Jude’s management deciding to install air-conditioning in its gym and library ten years ago, and now a gleaming indoor swimming pool was being built on the site of the old chapel. Victoria had tried to argue that the soaring fees would invariably lead to falling academic standards, but the only concession management would make was to increase the number of scholarship students from one a year to two. Her point had been amply proven over the years, but it brought no satisfaction to Victoria whenever she saw how the quality of Jude’s alumni had fallen. Running a finishing school was not what Victoria had had in mind for herself at all!
Back at her bureau, Victoria riffled through her small stack of letters, studying the names and addresses. She had tracked them down more easily than she had initially thought possible. Her girls. Somehow she continued to think of them as her special girls, despite the thousands that had since passed through the school. They had, in fact, been dubbed ‘Miss Lamb’s crème de la crème’ the year the school had performed The Prime of Miss jean Brodie as a play. She corrected herself: ‘Lamboo’s crème de la crème’, for that was what the girls had always called her. Never to her face, good God, no! Far be it for her to allow that kind of familiarity. Besides, her popularity notwithstanding, the students respected her too much to take those sorts of liberties. She had never particularly minded being called Lamboo. It wasn’t malicious, merely an affectionate twist to the Hindi word that aptly described her tall and willowy figure. Victoria Lamb had, in fact, discovered her nickname from one of her first batches at St Jude’s, once they had passed out of the school and returned en masse to pay their respects one day. Yes, one way or another, they always came back. Even if only to seek admission for their own daughters.
Victoria tapped the envelopes on the wooden surface, her face turning pensive as she remembered her batch of ’93 and the dreadful events of that year. She had another night to decide whether to post these letters or not as the school peon would turn up on his bicycle at nine o’clock to take her mail to the post office. Agonising over this decision for days, she had tried imagining how the letters would be received by those four girls who had so deliberately never returned to the school.
Victoria still saw them in their grey-crested blazers and knee socks, even though they would be in their early thirties now, women of the world, married…some with children, she knew, and husbands and jobs. Every so often, a snippet of news about one of them would arrive, either via one of their old classmates, or in the pages of those glossy gossip magazines she leafed through while sitting in the dentist’s waiting room.
Victoria understood perfectly why they had never come back, of course. The reason lay in that lonely grave at the bottom of her garden. Why, she herself had nearly left St Jude’s after Lily’s death, unable for weeks to step into the rose garden without remembering that terrible December night—and the sight of Lily as she lay on the damp earth speckled with freshly fallen petals. The picture had been imprinted on Victoria’s memory forever: Lily’s sequined dress pooling around her body like water and her face, her beautiful face, not yet drained of colour, turned up to the sky as though admiring the stars.
It was Lily’s unblinking eyes that had first given it away.
That, and the blood seeping over the side of her head.
Chapter One (#u6f123e10-61fe-513d-9b8c-334c40763cd0)
LONDON, 2008
The letters arrived at their destinations almost fifteen years after the death of Lily D’Souza.
The first to receive hers was Bubbles Raheja, as she sat curled up on a divan in the morning room of her palatial Belgravia home. She was in a state of unusual tranquillity that morning, as none of the family were at home and, consequently, she was painting her toenails a cheery post-box red when the maid brought in the mail. Generally it was Sooki, the silent but ever-smiling Thai pedicurist at the discreet little salon tucked away in a Mayfair side street, who tended to her nails, but, sometimes, doing little tasks like this for herself gave Bubbles an odd sort of pleasure that she struggled to explain. On one level it transported her instantly back to her teenage years in Delhi when she and her sisters would squabble over the last congealing dregs of Toffee Pearl, sometimes having to mix it with Cinnamon Brown and a few drops of nail-polish remover to get it to spreading consistency. But, these days, Bubbles manicured her own nails as a form of rebellion; the only kind of rebellion Bubbles ever mounted against her husband and in-laws: quiet and private and completely inconspicuous. She knew how deeply Binkie would loathe the sight of his wife sitting in as public a space as the living room performing such an ungainly task for all the house staff to behold, but that was exactly what made it so agreeable. Of course, her timid insurgence was a bit wasted, given that Binkie wasn’t around to witness it—but then Bubbles had long grown used to making do.
She smiled at the maid and ordered a cup of elaichi tea before gesturing for the pack of mail to be left on the inlaid marble foot-stool at her elbow. Then she returned to the unfamiliar job at hand, frowning as she concentrated on getting the second coat just right. It was only ten minutes later, when the maid carried the tea-tray in and tried to make room on the small stool crowded with bottles of varnish and thinner and balls of cotton wool, that the pack of unread mail fell to the floor and Bubbles spotted the plain white envelope. The sender’s address typed onto a label in the lower left-hand corner instantly caught her attention. How could it not? The nail-polish brush was hastily discarded as Bubbles reached down to pick up Miss Lamb’s letter. She did not notice until much later that a drop of varnish had fallen onto one of the cream silk cushions, forming a permanent testament to her guilt—a round red blotch that rather fittingly resembled a small splash of blood.
A little later that same morning, Samira Hussein also looked disbelievingly at the envelope in her hand. It had her Kensington address and postcode absolutely right, which in itself was surprising. Was it her imagination or had her fingers actually started trembling as she read the contents twice over? She looked at her reflection in the hall mirror and was startled by her own stricken expression. The cloying, sickening smell of the Gallica roses in their cut-glass vase suddenly filled her nostrils. She cast a baleful look at their perfect velvet folds. Sam never normally bought roses—there was good reason for that—but this bouquet had been given to her by Akbar’s boss who had been invited to dinner last night, and the maid must have thought she was being useful by replacing the more customary gladioli with them. Sam picked up the telephone. If there ever was a time to break the old pact of silence, it was this. She did a quick count on her fingers even though she already knew—fifteen years this winter. She waited, desperately willing Bubbles to answer the phone, but by the seventh ring Sam knew it was useless.
‘This is the Orange voicemail service. The number you are trying to reach is currently switched off. Please leave a message after the tone’.
Why did they always use such annoyingly nasal voices for automated messages, she thought illogically, and where on earth was Bubbles; she had usually risen by midday. Sam looked at her watch and guessed that her friend was either in the sauna or having a massage, or aromatherapy, or whatever she was on these days. Bubbles hardly ever turned her mobile phone off, the damn thing usually an ever-present appendage to her left hand or ear, but now Sam had no option but to call Anita. She was normally most reluctant to bother anyone who had an actual career on a weekday morning, but this was important.
‘Sam,’ she heard Anita’s habitually brisk voice a mere second after the phone rang, ‘can it wait, darling? It’s coming up to the hour and the bulletin…’
‘I know, I know, I wouldn’t have, but I just wanted to know if you’ve had the letter too.’
‘Letter?’
‘I’ve just had a letter from Lamboo.’
She heard the silence before Anita spoke, her voice incredulous.
‘Lamboo? After all these years! Whatever for?’
‘Oh God, I’m so sorry, Anita, I know I shouldn’t have rung when you have to be on air in…what is it, ten minutes? Shall I call back later?’
‘Yes…no…Sam, wait! Just quickly, what sort of letter is it?’
‘It’s an invitation to some kind of reunion at the school, I think. Doesn’t say very much…’
Anita let out a long breath. ‘Fuuuck,’ she whispered.
‘I know. I haven’t stopped shaking since opening it,’ Sam replied.
‘Look, shall I come around this evening? Or, if you can, would you pick me up from work? Five-ish? We’ll get a drink around here somewhere.’
‘Okay, I’ll get Bubbles too. Speak later…and don’t think about it if you can help it.’
She heard Anita emit a short laugh before hanging up. Sam marvelled when, ten minutes later, she heard her friend’s clipped and measured accent deliver the lunchtime news on her kitchen radio as though it were just another day.
At exactly three minutes past the hour, Anita Roy pulled down the faders on her newsroom console and clicked the button that would transfer listeners to the continuity announcer. Luckily she knew the routine so well that she no longer had to concentrate on what she was doing. She pushed her headphones off and they lay against her neck, crackling with the tinny faraway voice of the girl who did the programme trails as Anita sank her head into her hands. Fifteen years on and the memories still lacerated her on certain days. Not, oddly, when she’d had a bad day and was tired and tense, but the very reverse. It was invariably whenever something tremendous happened: a promotion, a new man, even the day she got the keys to her first flat. It was exactly in those brilliant, luminous moments, when life seemed filled with the sweetest prospects, that Lily unfailingly returned. Not just a passing memory of her, but the sight—as clear as anything—of her pale face and the way she had looked at her that night in the rose garden, moments before she had died.
MUMBAI, 2008
Miss Lamb’s letter to Zeba Khan had been delivered to the film star’s Juhu address the previous week, but it would be another few days before Zeba herself would see it. The letter had nearly got lost, nestled as it was alongside many others in the customary gunny bag. The local post office, accustomed to receiving fan mail addressed sometimes just to ‘Zeba, Bombay’, had taken to using a pair of large sacks to deliver her mail. That day’s load had been an exceptionally heavy one and Zeba Khan’s secretary, Gupta, had already spent an extra hour trying to clear it. He resisted the temptation to throw the last rubber-banded clutch into the bin so that he could finally leave to catch his train to Ghatkopar. It was his main task every day to wade through his employer’s fan mail, answering each one with a standard letter of appreciation, a photograph of the film star showing just a hint of her famed cleavage and a carefully forged signature. Gupta sometimes wondered about that signature of his, the carefully crafted Z, the flourish as the A ended in a small cross, musing over its many grateful recipients. One persistent correspondent had even written back to say that he kissed the signature every morning before leaving for work as a porter at Victoria Terminus, convinced that it gave him strength.
Gupta picked up the last letter, eyeing the cheap envelope and handwritten address, resisting once again the urge to hurl it into the trash can unopened. Madam received all sorts of invitation cards: premieres, parties, even weddings and baby-naming ceremonies, as though her fans really thought she was as sweet as her roles made her out to be, and very eager to drop by their family function if she happened to be passing. He knew, of course, better than anyone else, that Madam rarely stirred out of bed for anything less than five lakh rupees these days. He sighed deeply as he slit open the envelope. She had maintained an uncanny knack of finding out if he had shirked any of his tasks and, having no wish to receive one of her verbal lashings, he surveyed the letter before deciding how to respond. This was an unusual one, not the kind of thing Gupta had ever had to deal with before. Certainly not a request that could be fobbed off with a signed photograph showing some cleavage. He held the letter briefly in his hand, reading it again more carefully The address and postmark looked authentic, and this Miss Lamb apparently knew Zeba Madam well. He could not assume that Madam would not want to reply to the letter herself, or perhaps despatch a box of her trademark spray of orchids to its sender, for that was what she sometimes did when she wanted to turn someone down without making it too blatant they were being turned down.
It had become obvious to Gupta over the years that Madam was not in touch with anyone from her Delhi childhood, not even her family, so this was rather intriguing. And she was, in fact, due to be there in December for the annual Film Awards, for which they already knew she was receiving the Best Actress prize. This might be the kind of distraction from her routine that she would enjoy, it would perhaps even present some good PR and photo-shoot opportunities. Gupta remembered having once, in his early and more enthusiastic days, suggested to Zeba Madam that her fans would probably love to know more about the kind of school she had attended and people she had studied with, that being the kind of insignificant information that usually thrilled her silly admirers no end. But she had flown at him in a sudden rage, dismissing his idea as being ‘stupid’ and ‘thoughtless’. Gupta had never again strayed into what was clearly sensitive territory.
He looked at the letter again, deciding to leave it casually on Madam’s bedside table. She would not miss it lying there when she returned later tonight from Zurich, where she had gone to shoot a song sequence.
Chapter Two (#u6f123e10-61fe-513d-9b8c-334c40763cd0)
LONDON, 2008
Despite the tumult of painful memories that had been sparked by the arrival of Miss Lamb’s letter, Sam managed to get through the rest of her day maintaining her normal placid demeanour. It was nearly two when she finally managed to speak to Bubbles, but her friend was uncharacteristically reticent about explaining why she hadn’t taken her calls. Bubbles too had received Miss Lamb’s letter, and Sam could tell, from what sounded like a blocked nose, that Bubbles had been crying. Not wanting to discuss it on the phone, Sam merely told Bubbles the time and place that had been agreed with Anita before hanging up.
Luckily it was time to collect Heer from school, and Sam left her house with relief, pulling on a cashmere cardigan as protection against the stubborn chilliness in the air. She looked up at the watery sun as she closed the gate behind her, trying to take pleasure in its rare appearance. What a dismal summer it had been so far, even the daffs that had struggled to emerge in the back garden a month ago had turned brown and soggy and collapsed within days. It was as if life itself was fighting to cope against all odds.
Sam turned as she heard a familiar voice hail her and saw her neighbour emerge from her driveway.
‘Hey, Franci,’ she said pleasantly, although she couldn’t help taking in the sight of Francesca’s trim legs beneath her summer dress with a rush of envy. Francesca had clearly worn such a short dress on a cold day only to show off her tan. She was maniacal about her fitness regime and had certainly earned every inch of her fabulous figure, but it was enviable to Sam, whose battle to curb her burgeoning weight was now taking on epic proportions.
Francesca took Sam’s arm in her usual friendly fashion and they walked down their leafy road together, meeting up with another pair of mums who were also school-bound.
‘Oh goodness, I’ve got to show you something,’ Francesca said as the group reached the school. She fished out her iPhone from a small Purdey shoulder bag. ‘Piccies from our half-term hols,’ she explained, giggling as she clicked through a few photographs. Francesca turned her phone around to show the one she had picked for Sam and the others to see. They peered at a picture of Francesca’s husband, Tom, normally an immaculately clad banker, wearing a pair of baggy swim-shorts and beaming inanely as he struck a ridiculous muscleman stance with a surfboard on a Mustique beach. The women fell about laughing but Francesca said, ‘That’s not the half of it. There’s a real corker here somewhere. Ah, this one.’ The next picture was of Tom standing in the kitchen of their villa, still bare-chested and this time holding a large gleaming cucumber up against the crotch of his swim-shorts. The droll expression on his face made everyone scream with merriment and Sam forced herself to join in, feeling something catch at her heart. How greedily she always gathered up particulars of the kind of relationship Francesca took so much for granted and that would never be hers to have. It wasn’t that Akbar was a bad husband, but they certainly seemed to have a lot less fun than couples like Francesca and Tom did. Sam could not, in fact, recall Akbar ever having done something absurd purely to make her laugh, and had put it down a long time ago to her own taut demeanour; to the fear that lurked deep inside her, always half-expecting things to go wrong if she enjoyed herself too much.
Fortunately the school bell was now ringing and everyone was distracted by the emerging children. Sam didn’t think she could bear looking at more of Francesca’s happy holiday pictures.
They walked back home together, nevertheless, chatting companionably and carrying their load of colourful jackets and bags, the children tumbling ahead of them.
‘Coffee?’ Francesca asked as they reached her gate.
Worrying at the prospect of having to look at more photographs of Francesca’s boisterous family having fun, Sam made a hasty excuse which, thankfully, wasn’t entirely untrue. ‘I’d have loved to, Franci, but I’m going into town a little later to meet a couple of old school friends for a drink.’
‘Those two mates of yours from your school in Delhi?’ Francesca asked, adding, ‘I remember them from Heer’s birthday party, they were the only women there who came without children!’
Sam laughed. ‘That’s them all right. Couldn’t keep them away if I tried! Anita doesn’t have her own kids yet so Heer’s a sort of surrogate daughter for her whenever she gets maternal or broody. Which doesn’t happen very often. And Bubbles’ two are now far too grown-up for kiddie birthday parties!’
‘I’ll tell you what I do remember about your mate Bubbles—the fabulous croc-skin clutch she was carrying. Just gorgeous! Bea Valdez, she said it was. It’s not like me, but I just couldn’t help asking.’
‘Oh, Bubs would never mind anyone asking her anything. Sometimes I wonder how she retains her niceness considering the kind of stratosphere her family moves in,’ Sam replied.
‘Golly, yes, you did say once that they were pally with the likes of Lakshmi Mittal and Tamara Mellon.’
Sam smiled. ‘Lakshmi Mittal’s a family friend of theirs, I think. But Bubbles’ only connection with Tamara Mellon is that their daughters go to the same school. Oh, and that she buys every other Jimmy Choo shoe ever produced!’
‘Seriously?’
‘Absolutely seriously. She must have at least fifty pairs at any one time, dear old Bubbles. I mean, the sales girl at the Chelsea store personally calls her whenever a new design comes in, for heaven’s sake! Oh, and you should see her shoe closet—to die for!’
‘Ohhh,’ Francesca breathed dreamily, opening her gate. ‘Some people do have such dream lives, don’t they?’
Sam recognised the irony of the situation. Here was Francesca—whom Sam had always envied slightly—madly envying Bubbles, who was, all things considered, really just the archetypal poor little rich girl, the fat pimply teenager she once was still lurking just beneath the surface. But Sam would not dream of gossiping with Francesca about Bubbles and so, as Heer was now pulling her away, eager to get home, Sam waved her neighbour a hasty goodbye.
Punching in the numbers to open her electronic gate, Sam allowed her daughter through first, following her down the steps that led to the kitchen door. She unloaded Heer’s schoolbag, jacket and ballet slippers onto the kitchen table before grabbing her daughter, whose hands were already raiding the biscuit jar, giving her a big kiss before she wriggled away. ‘I bought those for me from Konditor and Cook today! Well, no more than one, Heer, if you want to be the world’s best ballerina. And early dinner tonight, okay?’ she called out after the small figure that was already bounding up the stairs to her room brandishing a large wedge of chocolate-chip shortbread in one hand.
Sam exchanged a smile with her maid, who was brewing up some fragrant masala tea. ‘Oh, a cup for me too, Masooma,’ she said, pulling off her trainers. ‘And then we can do the month’s accounts, yes?’ Not that the accounts needed doing as they weren’t into July yet, but Sam knew she had to stay busy and keep herself distracted until she was with Anita and Bubbles. Miss Lamb’s letter had been carefully put away in the bottom of her lingerie drawer where Akbar would never find it. She could never discuss it with him. Only Anita and Bubbles would understand her pain and guilt.
By evening there was a light drizzle falling. Sam pulled up at a parking meter as near to Anita’s Aldwych office as she could manage. The space was tight and it took a couple of shunts before the bulk of her Audi was comfortably contained in its slot. Odd how expertly she could do that, without Akbar’s presence in the car making parallel parking fraught with all kinds of perils. After turning the wipers off, she sat for a few minutes watching raindrops make their journey down the windscreen, some unhesitant and quite certain of their destination, others—like her, she couldn’t help thinking—tentatively stopping and starting before finally rolling reluctantly towards the bonnet. When the rain had eased a bit, Sam emerged from the car, pulling her handbag and pashmina from the back seat. Then she zapped the central-locking system, which responded with its familiar reassuring beep. Akbar usually did that while striding purposefully away from the car, without even glancing over his shoulder, but Sam preferred to be sure the locks were down and flashing their little red lights before she could walk away.
Shivering, she wrapped her stole around her bare shoulders and assessed the gaps in the traffic before darting across the road. Even a passing summer shower could instantly turn London back to a wintry grey, the city seeming to return with relief to being its favourite avatar. She looked at her watch as she quickened her steps for Bush House. She’d told Anita four o’clock and already it was a quarter past. Her super-efficient journalist friend often despaired over Sam’s rather scatty time-keeping abilities, recently joking: ‘Imagine if I were to open up the news bulletin with…It’s—oh crikey, so sorry everyone—just a couple of minutes past ten. But does it matter, for heavens sake, just a few minutes this way or that?’ Anita had mimicked Sam’s lazy drawl as she said that last sentence, eliciting a good-natured smile from Sam, who would have been the first to admit she had airily carried over the concept of ‘Indian time’ into her life here in England, unlike Anita. Constantly amazed by Anita’s brusque professionalism, Sam often found it hard to imagine that they’d managed to stay friends since they were seven.
She went through the tall doors of the BBC that were invariably surrounded by dripping scaffolding, and waved when she spotted Anita standing at the top of the stairs joshing with an elderly security guard. Anita would chat to anyone, and had once claimed that casual conversations were the sources of her best stories.
They hugged as Anita reached the bottom of the stairs. ‘Are you okay?’ she asked Sam, who nodded. ‘Sorry I couldn’t speak when you called…’
‘Don’t worry, but I couldn’t get hold of Bubbles either and really needed to hear one of your voices.’
‘Is she coming?’
‘Of course, she said she’ll meet us at Heebah at five.’
‘Make that six then,’ Anita said wryly, pulling up the hood of her gilet as they stepped outside the building.
‘She won’t be late today. She just has to drop her mum-in-law somewhere before getting the car and driver to herself.’
Sam ignored Anita’s eye-roll. Anita was the only one of them who still travelled on the tube—which was fine until she started making a virtue of it. Occasionally, if she went on for long enough about carbon footprints and off-setting emissions, Sam would feel guilty enough to walk across the park or hop on a 98 bus to get into town. But that wasn’t really an option on a day as rainy as this, and for Bubbles to even dream of travelling anywhere but by car was ridiculous, given her millions. Well, her pa-in-law’s gazillions, to be more accurate.
Sam took her friend’s arm as they walked over the zebra crossing, hastening their footsteps for the politely waiting traffic. The drizzle was turning heavier and the café was still half a block away. As usual, she’d forgotten to carry a brolly and pulled her stole over her head. She was ruining another good pashmina, but Akbar had told her to get her hair done in honour of his boss’s visit yesterday and that hadn’t cost very much less.
A few minutes later they ducked with relief under the awning of the hookah café, squeezing their way past brass tables that had been placed on the pavement for smokers. Since the introduction of the smoking ban, Sam had taken to feeling sorry for all those smokers who had been relegated to muddy pavements as they bubbled into brass hookahs and stared moodily out at the rain. Sam had spent years going uncomplainingly to places like Heebah for the sake of her two best friends as, going by the law of averages, it had seemed altogether fairer that they should go to smoking rather than non-smoking establishments. She had tried not to think of it as a sacrifice anyway, having long ago got into the habit of taking shallow breaths when she was around her friends. Anita had been smoking since they were fifteen, claiming then that it helped her concentrate on cramming for their exams, although Bubbles had taken to it only after her marriage, citing her reason as stress induced by, alternately, her mother-in-law, father-in-law, children and husband.
The women were ushered to the table that Sam had sensibly thought to book earlier in the day, and settled onto a pair of commodious white leather banquettes. Sam noticed that all the Persian hookahs and filigreed marble ashtrays had gone, replaced by artful bowls filled with colourful glass beads. Anita ordered their drinks: a full-bodied Shiraz for Sam and a vodka tonic for herself. After their waiter had left, she said, ‘Well, let’s see Lamboo’s letter then’, and as she shrugged off her damp gilet she saw that Sam was already holding it out in her direction.
Bubbles looked fretfully out of the car window—they had left Belgravia at least half an hour ago, taken fifteen minutes to get to the art buyer’s office on Curzon Street, where her mother-in-law had disembarked, and were still only just approaching Grosvenor Square. The traffic snarl-up around the American Embassy wasn’t helped by the ghastly concrete road blocks that seemed to have become a permanent feature of the square. She could see a metal passageway with a makeshift placard saying ‘Visas’ that was occupying half the road and snaked all the way around the block. The passageway was empty of people, the embassy probably having shut at five, although a hulking guard with a jutting chin stood holding an impressive piece of weaponry while gazing at the passing traffic. He caught Bubbles’ eye briefly through the car window as she drifted past, but there wasn’t the usual flicker of interest on his impassive features. He had obviously not registered the fancy car and liveried chauffeur in the way most people did, sneaking unashamedly curious peeks at the occupants of the rear seat to catch a glimpse through smoked glass of such blessed beings that could afford to ride in a Maybach. They were hardly likely to know that she, Bubbles, rode in it only when accompanying her imperious mother-in-law like some kind of handmaiden. Nor would they know that there were things money and Maybachs couldn’t achieve, such as being able to get through the London traffic faster on a day like this. There was no point getting tetchy with the poor driver, as her mother-in-law had done a few minutes ago. He was doing his best with the bulky car that had purred again to a standstill. To distract herself, Bubbles delved into the magazine rack behind the seat and found copies of Tatler and American Vanity Fair. She leafed through the first and then the second, trying to absorb the gossip and the fashion tips. But her concentration was terrible today. She hadn’t been able to think straight since the arrival of Lamboo’s letter this morning, unable even to speak to Sam when she had seen her name flash repeatedly on the screen of her phone. Slapping the magazines down on the seat, Bubbles opened her bag and took out the envelope for the umpteenth time. She gently ran her fingers over its rough paper, in some inexplicable way relishing the painful tug she felt in her heart. Just when her psychotherapist had confirmed that she was finally learning to put futile memories away, this! Someone—it must have been Anita—had once said that people remembered happy things like their childhood days and first love and first taste of ice-cream in a cone only when they were unhappy. If that was so, then it was clear to Bubbles that she was condemned to be surrounded by her memories despite the best psychotherapy Harley Street had to offer. And how they had rushed back this morning, faces and voices emerging thick and fast from some kind of wintry mist, even the tiniest details etched with sudden frightening clarity before her eyes. Bubbles shoved the letter back into her Mulberry tote, nervously rubbing her other hand over the cold hardness of its metal studs, warming them against her palm as she looked out at the rain.
It had rained in Delhi too that morning long ago, complete with lightning flashes and thunderclaps, which was not so unusual for late December. The downpour had made the roses in Miss Lamb’s garden drop their petals all over the winter earth, like red spatters of blood. Or so Bubbles had thought, until she had actually seen what blood looked like after it had fallen on wet earth—virtually invisible to the eye. She shuddered. ‘Where are we now, Mottram?’ she asked in a high voice, for want of anything else to say.
‘Old Burlington Street, Madam,’ the chauffeur replied. ‘I’m trying all the back roads to get out of this mess. Not long now, hopefully.’
Bubbles recognised the shops of Regent Street as the car turned a corner and she saw shoppers burdened with raincoats and bags, crossing the road and waiting at bus stops, looking as though they carried the weight of the world on their shoulders. She wondered sometimes at the sorrows that might afflict other people, occasionally feeling pangs of guilt at her own rather pampered existence. The cafés were all brightly lit and buzzing with people taking shelter from the rain. She could see a couple kissing in the large window of Starbucks, a mug of shared coffee steaming in between them.
The car crawled over the lights at Piccadilly Circus. They weren’t far from Heebah now, thankfully. Suddenly Bubbles longed to see her two old schoolmates more than anyone else in the world. Anita could be such a pain sometimes, carping on about left-wing stuff and recently making her feel personally culpable when her in-laws’ company bought up an airline. As though those were things she had any control over at all. She’d tried sarcasm (‘I’m not exactly Binkie’s dad’s business advisor, y’know’) but nothing could stop Anita once she had mounted her soapbox. Sam was different, good old Sam. Unfailingly tactful and diplomatic, always playing peacemaker. In truth, though, Bubbles loved them both, even Anita, whose energy and intellect she could draw upon when required, which was frequently. Sometimes she wondered whether it was the combined presence in London of her two oldest friends that had kept her sane all these years. In that respect, at least, she had been lucky.
After the chauffeur had pulled up alongside the maroon and gold awning of Heebah, Bubbles stepped out gingerly, careful not to get her new Manolos wet. A couple of men gave the car, and then her, appreciative glances as she wended her way past the pavement tables into the restaurant, pushing her heavy mane of auburn hair back from her face. Her linen trouser-suit was probably crumpled, but she could tell from Heebah’s fawning mâitre d’ that she still looked expensive. She had never figured out how people uncannily smelt affluence emanating from her person, but they invariably did, even when she hadn’t bothered to dress up.
She made her way across the room as she spotted her two friends. They were deep in conversation and saw her only when she was ushered into her seat. After she had ordered a champagne cocktail for herself, she turned to them. There was none of the usual preamble about clothes and hair and weight today. Instead, she nodded at the letter that lay on the table between Sam and Anita and said sombrely, ‘What the hell do you think Lamboo’s doing?’
‘I was just saying that it’s amazing how she managed to track us all down,’ Anita observed, adding, ‘well, that’s assuming she has sent letters to everyone. I haven’t had mine yet.’
‘It must be waiting for you at your flat. She wouldn’t leave you out. Wonder whether she’s written to everyone, you know, the whole batch of ’93?’
‘Something tells me it’s just us, actually’
‘She must have met someone who knew our addresses,’ Bubbles suggested. ‘Or maybe the internet makes all this easy now. My Ruby was talking about some Facebook website thing where her school friends meet and chat or something…’ Bubbles stopped rambling. The last thing any of them wanted was to be chatting to their other school friends, their little circle having snapped firmly shut the minute they had left school.
‘It wouldn’t have been that difficult to trace us,’ Sam was replying in her usual pragmatic manner. ‘Why, Lamboo might just have called one or the other of our parents in Delhi. I think we’re worrying too much. Maybe it’s just as her letter says: she’s retiring from Jude’s and wants to see us before she “disappears into the deep hush of a convent”.’
‘Mmm, I don’t know…typically poetic, but something tells me it’s more than that,’ Anita said dubiously. ‘It’s clear she’s holding something back…like here, where she says, “I have so much more to tell you girls before I go, but perhaps it is best to wait until you are all gathered here together as before”’. Anita tapped the letter with her forefinger. ‘How the fuck does that not indicate she really wants to say something else, huh? Would she really summon us 4000 miles just to say goodbye?’
It was Bubbles who first said the unsayable, uttering the name not mentioned between them in all these years. ‘Do you think they might have found some new leads in Lily’s case?’ she asked in a small voice.
‘Nonsense. After fifteen years?’ Anita scoffed, although she sounded more nervous than incredulous. ‘I can’t see the Delhi police being that efficient somehow.’
‘It’s possible she just suddenly got a bit maudlin or emotional or some such. After all, the date she’s suggested will be exactly fifteen years since Lily died,’ Sam offered before trailing off.
‘Lamboo emotional? Don’t think so somehow. It just isn’t part of the Brit psyche, stiff upper lip and all that.’
‘Oh God, it just doesn’t make sense,’ Bubbles said, picking up her champagne flute from the table and taking a long swallow. Sometimes the very act of thinking made her head hurt.
‘D’you know,’ Sam said, wrapping her shawl around her shoulders, ‘I met Aradhna Singh at a lunch party the other day. She was just back from her school reunion at St Jude’s. Makes a point of it to go every year, apparently. And she was saying that ours is the only batch that has never had one. A reunion, I mean…’
Anita thumped her glass down on the wooden table with some vehemence. ‘Well, that must’ve been a happy thought for Aradhna,’ she said.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, don’t you recall how miffed she always was at us being the top dogs at school? Their batch, coming straight after ours, would never have matched up, I reckon.’
‘Her “crème de la crème”, Lamboo called us. Remember?’ Sam said softly.
‘Don’t think that meant anything particularly. She just picked the term up from the Brodie play we were doing that year.’
‘Oh that’s not true, Anita,’ Sam protested. ‘Lamboo just doted on us. She really did believe we would go on to do special things.’
‘Well, how the mighty have fallen then,’ said Anita.
‘Oh don’t say that,’ Bubbles cut in, trying to offer comfort. ‘At least you’re doing useful things and meeting interesting political types. Y’know, like Boris Johnson and all…’ She trailed off, knowing how unconvincing that sounded, before making another attempt. ‘I remembered that expression—crème de la crème—just the other day actually, when Binkie got an invite to the Gorbachev concert which said that London’s “crème de la crème” was being invited. Somehow it felt much more special when Lamboo used to say it…’
‘We were special to her…’ Sam insisted.
Anita leaned forward to pick up the menu. ‘Well, only until her precious crème de la crème took so violently against Lily D’Souza. That could never have been lost on someone as canny as old Lamboo, even though—to be fair—she never once did let on. But I was always sure it was the reason why she never had us back for a reunion. I mean…’ she paused, keeping her eyes on the menu, ‘surely it would have been anathema for someone as morally upright as Lamboo to jolly around with us after Lily’s death…’ Anita’s voice dropped as she kept her eyes down, unable to make eye contact with her two companions as she continued in a mumble, ‘…especially seeing how plainly we benefited from it.’
Anita had aimed the comment at herself, but in the silence that followed it slowly dawned on her that Sam and Bubbles might have misunderstood such a clumsy expression of remorse. Discomfited, she looked at her friends and saw appalled expressions on both their faces. Realising suddenly how wounding her words must have been, she leaned forward and clutched Sam’s knee, her expression now mortified. ‘Heyyy, Sam, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to sound so sharp, nor be so terribly thoughtless. I’ve just been feeling so tetchy all day’
‘God, me too. Even my father-in-law noticed,’ Bubbles said, taking another long sip of her drink, the flute trembling slightly between her fingers.
Sam was looking into her own wine glass, now stained pink from the Shiraz. ‘I can’t deny…’ she whispered, her face suddenly full of lines and shadows. She took a deep breath before continuing, ‘You know, even today I can’t think of that year without my heart squeezing itself so hard in my chest, it’s as if I can’t breathe for a few minutes. I know we never speak of it but…Lily’s death on the night of our Social. I honestly don’t know how we ever…’ She turned back to Anita, but her friend could see that Sam’s dilated pupils were unable to focus on her own. A glass of wine was usually all it took to make Sam a little drunk, but this, Anita knew, was something else altogether. Poor Sam was clearly trying to gather herself together, her voice trembling as she continued speaking in a low voice, now seeming unable to stop her thoughts. ‘You know, it was only much, much later that it really sank in. The enormity of what we had done. I know I just wasn’t myself that winter…death seemed almost to be stalking me like some evil beast…but still…I shouldn’t try to find excuses for myself…’ Sam stopped abruptly and shivered. The women sat in silence for a few minutes before Sam squeezed Anita’s hand, which was still in hers, indicating forgiveness for her earlier remark.
‘Such a terrible time. I still dream of it sometimes. Not just think of it, but dream of it. There’s a difference, you know. My Emotional Freedom therapist once said so,’ Bubbles put in.
Normally, Bubbles’ array of therapists was meat and drink to Anita’s sarcastic sense of humour, but today she didn’t have the heart to rise to the bait. The friends fell quiet again and Anita looked away. Her stomach churned with guilt as she saw Sam press a tissue over her eyes and put an arm around Bubbles, who had also started to weep.
MUMBAI, 2008
Night had fallen in its usual glittering manner over the pulsing city of Mumbai when Zeba Khan lay back in the claw-footed bathtub of her sumptuous designer bathroom. She took deep breaths of the Yves Rocher bath oil recently purchased from Zurich, sighing with relief and pleasure as her tiredness melted slowly into the tepid water. She had asked for all the Jo Malone scented candles to be lit, and now she half-opened her tawny brown eyes, seeing the flames flicker quietly, turning the cream Italian marble of the walls and floor to molten gold. It had been a long, long day. Despite her superstar status these past ten years, she knew better than to mess with up-and-coming directors like Rohit Mirchandani and had stayed the course, out in the midday sun with the rest of the crew, despite being desperately jet-lagged from her European trip. As the son of a legendary director, Rohit had no doubt enjoyed a head-start in the industry, but his last two films had both been massive hits and Zeba had heard about a new one due to start filming this winter. She had done her damnedest today to find out if the casting had been done but couldn’t get anything out of the canny young man, who was obviously enjoying the power he could suddenly wield over her.
Zeba felt a few tendrils of hair escape the luxuriant pile on the top of her head, and reached out for the silver seashell that housed an array of clips. She sighed as she slid a few more bobby pins into her hair and sank back into the water. Rohit had always secretly loathed her, having grown up with the knowledge of her decade-long liaison with his father and, as a result, immersed in his mother’s bitterness. It was to Rohit’s credit, though, that he had never advertised his abhorrence, careful to stay not just on his father’s right side but Zeba’s as well. It wouldn’t do for an up-and-coming director to upset Bollywood’s top actress. And so they continued to play this ridiculous cat-and-mouse game with each other, dodging and side-stepping but never confrontational, and always, always most carefully and deliberately civil to each other when they were on film sets. Was it any wonder she felt so exhausted today?
Zeba leaned back again, massaging her temples. Rohit was one of a whole new breed of directors that were changing the landscape of Bollywood unrecognisably these days. Now they were all American-educated and slick and media savvy. And, consequently, far less inclined to be worshipful of her own star status. The older boys had been so much easier to read and seduce, but they were all fading into obscurity in their hillside mansions, seemingly content to feebly hand the directorial reins over to the next generation while they totted up figures in ledgers and kept a tight hold on their purse strings. Half of the new crop of directors were gay too, and that didn’t help one bit.
Zeba knew the time had come to tread carefully. She was thirty-two this year, it was most unusual for a heroine in Bollywood to have stayed at the top for so long. At first people said that her popularity was because she looked equally sexy in both Indian and western clothes, but as she had got older and her attractiveness to audiences had not diminished, she was gradually acquiring the makings of a legend. Despite an astute unspoken self-awareness regarding her own meagre acting talent, Zeba could not help hoping she would become as iconic as Nargis or Madhubala someday. After all, like those two actresses, she was equally beloved to audiences whether playing mother, sister, lover or even prostitute. It was almost touching how her fans just couldn’t seem to get enough of her, and the only reason why producers and script-writers had kept running to her door these past ten years, trying to keep up with the demand and putting a steady supply of roles her way. Indeed, her popularity in India was of such a scale that she could quite safely turn up her nose at Hollywood, a place that—as journalists sometimes liked reminding her—had never shown any interest in her. Oddly, it was India’s great unwashed that particularly adored her—the market vendor, the paan-wallah, the coolie—doggedly spurning the new stick-thin, size-zero girls flooding the industry from modelling agencies in favour of her own more traditional curves. It was they—those sun-darkened, wizened figures that thronged the city’s streets and sometimes tapped piteously on the smoked-glass window of her Mercedes—who had made her what she was. She had never forgotten that—hence her recent idea of founding a charity for street children.
Zeba sighed, reaching out for the loofah. She scrubbed her elbows, thinking of what hard work it was constantly thinking up new ways to climb that very shaky pedestal marked ‘legend’. Firstly, there were a hundred others clawing at her ankles, trying to pull her down, upstart teenagers with bigger bust-lines and tighter butts and, of course, new top directors to be their godfathers. Sometimes in Bollywood the latter was the only attribute required to become a legend. Which, if she was to be honest, had worked out rather well for her. Old Shiv Mirchandani had, after all, been completely loyal to her all these years, both professionally and in a personal capacity, and despite being aware of her other occasional dalliances. He had even said something sentimental the other day about growing old together which had quite terrified her, given the ravages of age he already wore so cheerily on his cheese-grater face.
Zeba raised a long, shapely leg from the bath water and eyed it contemplatively as it shone wet and gleaming in the candlelight. Perhaps she should call for Najma to scrub and exfoliate her heels. Feet and hands were what first gave away a woman’s age, her Ammi had always said. Additionally, Zeba had spent all afternoon in an excruciatingly uncomfortable pair of stiletto heels, playing the role of a corporate boss in Dubai. But she had to be up again early tomorrow morning and was on the point of dropping off right here in the bath. She sat up in the water, her ample breasts glistening as they floated among the shiny bubbles. Perhaps she would treat herself to one of Sylvio’s famed pedicures at the Taj instead, after tomorrow’s shoot. They were wonderful there and always used their private suite at the back of the salon to assure her complete privacy. Zeba reached out for the bell by the bathtub to summon Najma who would help wipe her down and fetch a fresh silk nightie. She hoped that the hot bath and her familiar bed would dismiss jet-lag and aid a good night’s sleep.
After Zeba had been carefully patted dry by her maid and massaged with Crème de la Mer, another recent acquisition from Zurich, she padded her way through her dimly lit, cavernous bedroom. Someone—Gupta probably—had left a little stack of papers for her to go through under the bedside lamp. She picked up the rubber-banded bundle after she had climbed into her white leather water-bed and pulled a silk razai over her legs. Freeing the pack from their band, Zeba scowled, her sweeping eyebrows meeting in a furrow above her nose. The first letter was from a cousin, asking for a loan—that would have to be a ‘no’—it wasn’t as if she hadn’t helped him before and he would merely surface again after another few months with some new tale of hardship. She had much better things she could think of doing with her hard-earned money than passing it on to blood-sucking relatives. Her newly founded charity, for one.
Discarding the letter onto the floor by the side of her bed, where it would be picked up and binned by the sweeper in the morning, she reminded herself to stop frowning so much and swiftly cleared her brow. Luckily, the next letter offered much pleasanter fare—a request from Vanity Fair to be cover girl on their inaugural Indian publication—a definite ‘yes’. The next was an invitation to a private party being thrown by liquor baron Ramsy Fernando on his Madh Island home—hmmm, probably a ‘yes’. At least there wouldn’t be much of the film crowd there, Ramsy was too much of a brown-sahib snob for all that. But…what was this? The unseemly scowl returned to Zeba’s beautiful face.
Zeba scanned the words quickly:…soon going to retire as principal of the school…needed to meet her girls…a reunion…a reunion?! Was this someone’s idea of a bloody joke? Zeba turned the letter over as though searching for clues. Gupta must have got rid of the envelope…there was nothing else but a suggested date in December and a small scratchy signature at the bottom. She ran her eyes again over the spidery writing that was both familiar and yet uncharacteristically weak, becoming virtually illegible in the last few lines. Goodness, it was crazy to think of St Jude’s old Princy still alive and kicking and rattling around in that cottage next door to the school. The woman was probably in her mid-seventies now. It was no surprise, of course, that the convent had not retired her yet; school principals like Miss Lamb were hard to come by these days—the archetypal English spinster, willing to dedicate her whole life to the school. Victoria Lamb. What was it they used to call her back then?…Lamboo! Lamboo, for her long, noodle-like appearance. But then girls were cruel creatures under those coy exteriors.
And that niece of Lamboo’s…Lily. ‘Doan’t be silly, Lily’, they had tittered behind her back on her first day at the school, quoting the villain in that ridiculous film. But they found out soon enough that Lily wasn’t silly at all. Not in the slightest. But that she was very, very manipulative and go-getting indeed. In fact she was clearly trying to become the star from Day One—not the best course of action in a girls’ school that was already full of stars like Zeba. This had always puzzled Zeba: that clever little Lily had not been clever enough to see how many enemies she had made in her short time at the school. She should have considered treading more carefully, but on the other hand she had seemed genuinely not to care about earning anyone’s approval. It was almost enviable, that kind of self-satisfaction.
Zeba put the mail away on her bedside table and smoothed her fingers gently over the middle of her forehead. She had recently noticed the deep furrows that her mother had between her eyes, a permanent record of the stresses she had suffered in bringing up three rambunctious children under the watchful eye of an autocratic husband. So far the skin on Zeba’s face had remained taut and unlined, but she did have to watch out for bad genes—letters from the past that set off dark thoughts weren’t likely to help. She slipped off her silk camisole and tucked her legs under the sheet, wiggling her toes and taking a few deep breaths.
Lily D’Souza, good God, what a chest-thumping blast from the past. Even though she hardly ever stopped to remember her old classmate, Zeba did have to admit that, over the years, she—the great film star Zeba Khan—had in fact taken a useful leaf out of Lily’s book when it came to developing a supreme nonchalance to one’s detractors. Enemies were an undeniable part of working in an industry like Bollywood; perhaps they were an undeniable part of life itself, particularly when one was beautiful and accomplished. So what was the point of treading around so carefully that you never got anywhere? Still, even though one never made any real friends in a place like this, it was at least worth knowing who your enemies were. Zeba pulled the sheet over her shoulders, feeling a sudden chill.
The world probably saw her as supremely controlled but, suddenly, Zeba could feel something inside her quail and shrink as an almost visceral memory tumbled back unbidden, reminding her of how deeply she had hated Lily, virtually from the very first moment the girl had set foot in the classroom. Zeba let her head sink into her pillow, trying to relax her shoulders. She felt a small shiver, born from either guilt or satisfaction as she realised that she was now all the things that Lily had probably imagined she would one day be—an acclaimed star, the adored darling of India’s teeming audiences. Heroine to millions of people willing to queue for hours outside those crummy tin-pot cinema halls in slum areas on the night of a Zeba Khan blockbuster release. Now that was the real thing, an ambition worth fighting for. Quite unlike a stupid, inconsequential little school play. But that was what all teenagers were like, surely, narcissistically allowing the silliest things to take on the kind of significance that was impossible to comprehend in later life. Zeba scrabbled around in her bedside drawer and, finding a phial of Valium, swallowed two tablets with a little water from the crystal flagon that was always kept on her bedside table.
Two hours later, Zeba awoke from a ragged sleep, sweating profusely. Either the air-conditioning had broken down or she was having one of those ghastly night-sweats one heard about. She lay on her bed, listening to the roar of the sea outside and the lapping inside her own water-bed. Even on quiet nights, the combined watery sounds drowned all else. It was strange how people were willing to pay so much extra for properties lining the Arabian Sea, never thinking that its crashing waves provided such great cover for the city’s stalkers and burglars. The alarm system Gupta had tried installing a few years ago had caused all sorts of problems, tripping and going off every time the voltage fluctuated even slightly, leaving Zeba to rely on the time-tested method of security guards. She employed a whole army of them, but remained unsure of how much she could really trust such dangerous looking men who undressed her so unashamedly with their eyes.
Something cracked loudly in the garden outside, making Zeba jump. She lay frozen for a few minutes and contemplated ringing her panic button for the servants. They were probably all sleeping the sleep of the dead (or the drunk, more likely) on a hot pre-monsoonal night such as this, the useless dolts. What did they think she paid them over the odds for? She turned over and tried to close her eyes but the clamouring in her head was too much. Perhaps she hadn’t taken enough Valium, although she had promised her doctor she would try to cut down. Tonight it was the fault of Lamboo’s bloody letter. What was Gupta thinking, leaving it on her bedside like that? Almost willing these nightmares on her. Would she even contemplate going to something so ridiculous—a school reunion, for heaven’s sake! Reunions were meant for ordinary people, not stars; for bored wives to enviously eye up each other’s husbands and empty-headed mums to compare notes about their little darlings’ teeth and teachers. Zeba knew she would have absolutely nothing to say to any of her old classmates now—although, tossing her sweating body around again, she suddenly recalled having bumped into Samira Hussain (now Samira Something-else, of course) at Heathrow a few years ago. They had exchanged phone numbers and said all the glib things old classmates did when they met, about how marvellous the old days had been and how they really must stay in touch. Neither of them had mentioned that traumatic final year at school, of course, and they had parted knowing that both of them had grown too far apart in their respective lifestyles and sensibilities to maintain all but the briefest of contact.
Sam had, with typical dependability, attempted the occasional phone call after that meeting, and Zeba had tried her best to reciprocate, but they had lately drifted once again into sending each other only an occasional card or email, many of which Zeba, rather guiltily, got Gupta to deal with anyway. Even back in school, Sam had been the antithesis of Zeba, one of those annoying good girls who never got into scrapes of any sort and whom all the teachers adored. But at least she had not been the tattling sort, Zeba recalled, and so an unlikely bond had formed between them as they had travelled together from kindergarten to high school. However, from the short conversation inside the first-class lounge at Heathrow, it had seemed to Zeba that Sam had grown dull and vapid with age. Perhaps it was just the mumsiness that some women took on so earnestly with the acquisition of husbands and children, but Zeba could tell that even the little they’d had in common as schoolmates had now shrunk to virtually nothing. Sam had provided news of some of their other classmates, though: Anita, predictably still single, working with the BBC in London and, oh God, who didn’t know that Bubbles was married to the son of international textile tycoon Dinesh Raheja. Zeba had once seen Bubbles in the pages of Verve magazine, attending a flash corporate party at the Grand Maratha and clinging to the arm of a thin, nattily-dressed man. ‘Binkie and Bubbles Raheja, golden couple from London, gracing Bombay’s shores’ the accompanying caption gushed, going on to divulge that Mr Raheja’s suit was Armani while Mrs Raheja was in Zac Posen, a Boucheron piece around her neck. Zeba had pored over the picture, examining Bubbles’ clothes and shoes, or whatever she could make of them in the grainy photograph. She sure looked good, Zeba couldn’t help noting with a twinge, although she had not been able to put her finger on whether her envy was over the rich husband and private jet that had been mentioned in the small accompanying article, or the ease with which wealth had come to the woman. Bubbles Raheja had almost certainly not had to do a day’s work in her life, and probably didn’t even know the meaning of the word ‘schedule’. But who’d have thought that the spotty fat kid at school was the one who’d end up snaring a millionaire. She wasn’t even from a big business family herself—a chain of sari shops was all her parents had, as Zeba had seen when Bubbles had got married and the whole class had attended her wedding. There was nothing interesting to say either about how she’d done it: snag the millionaire, move to London and transform herself from plump and pimply teenager into an international jetsetter. It was all, in the end, just a matter of luck and timing; Zeba knew that better than most.
Well, if that lot were going to attend Lamboo’s planned reunion, it might actually not be a bad idea to go along, Zeba thought suddenly, surprising herself. She climbed out of her bed, now wide awake, and padded barefoot across her collection of antique Persian rugs to the large bay windows that ringed her room. Drawing the heavy tussar curtains aside, she looked out at the Arabian Sea, calm and black and lapping gently against the white sands at the bottom of her vast garden. Sometimes fans of hers managed to get to the beach and loiter, hoping to catch a glimpse of her until chased away by one of the guards. But tonight there were surely neither fans nor burglars prowling around those neat shrubs and flowerbeds lying peacefully in the moonlight below her bedroom window. Through the trees Zeba could see light in the guard’s gate-house shining dimly and she pulled the curtains shut, feeling a bit better. She smiled suddenly. It might actually be fun to spend an evening with old classmates exclaiming over how well she’d done for herself. Minus a husband too!
Her gaze fell on the stack of film magazines that Gupta had placed on her replica Louis XIV desk. Every page that carried a photograph or news piece about her would be obediently marked with a Post-It note, and Zeba could see the usual profusion of yellow bits of paper sticking out from the pages even in the faint glow of the night-light. She turned on the table lamp and sat before the pile of magazines, drawing them towards her with satisfaction. Leafing her way to the first marked page in Cineblitz, she thought of how her old schoolmates must pore over her pictures in the society pages of magazines and newspapers, admiring the rocks she wore on her hands and her chain of male escorts, with as much envy as she had felt when she’d read about Bubbles’ private Learjet.
Zeba opened the drawer of her dressing table, searching for her old BlackBerry. She remembered having keyed Sam’s details in there. Even if she couldn’t find it, Gupta would probably be able to fish it out for her in the morning from one of his dusty old diaries. Zeba squinted at the small green screen. There it was: Samira Hussain, and a London phone number. She reached out for her telephone.
LONDON, 2008
While Zeba sat sleepless on that hot Mumbai night, telephone held to her ear, night was falling on the other side of the world, turning London’s rainy skies to a cold slate-grey. The three girlfriends had been drinking steadily for the past two hours and Bubbles was by now quite drunk. As was usual, the third Kir Royale had plummeted her into the most abject depths of despair, and she was now weeping in such earnest that she had even managed to scare off their fervent Lithuanian waiter to the far end of the restaurant.
The letter had started it off, of course, bringing back memories with a force so powerful that each of the three women had, at different times in the evening, looked into their glasses of alcohol and felt a little sick. They had obviously never forgotten anything, even though their old pact had forbidden speaking of it. Bubbles had, predictably, allowed the collective reminiscing to plunge her back into dwelling on her more immediate territory of grievances against Binkie and his parents. Anita, slumped on her pouffe, was only half-listening as she knocked back the vodka tonics in an attempt to recover from her 5 a.m. start. Luckily, she could rely on Sam to pay attention to Bubbles, and saw through her drunken haze that their ever-reliable friend was nodding sympathetically and occasionally passing Bubbles scented tissues from her handbag.
Bubbles’ life had never seemed that dreadful to Anita. Her dear friend had a dire mother-in-law, without a doubt, and the father-in-law, Dinesh Raheja, was a horrendously unethical capitalist who couldn’t give a toss about the environment: the kind of person Anita normally reserved her deepest bile for. However, Anita had found it hard to dislike Dinesh Raheja from the day he’d uncomplainingly turned up at short notice for a BBC interview at her request, for which, as a rookie news-room journalist, she’d received a rare pat on the back from her editor. The funny thing was that it had not been at all difficult to get the old man to come to Bush House. Like many self-made men, Dinesh Raheja wore his success rather like a matador would use his cape, probably petrified that everyone would forget how hard-won it had been. So despite his predilection for strutting, his inability to tone down the Punjabi accent he had carried over from India and his rough-edged manners made his millions seem somehow more deserving.
His son Binkie, married to Bubbles, was another matter altogether. Having made his first million while Binkie was still in high school, Dinesh Raheja had been proud to send his only child to England when he turned fourteen—to Harrow or Eton, Anita could never remember which. But, having had a relatively late start at the whole business of becoming staunchly Anglophile, Binkie had taken to it with alarming relish, changing his name by the time he got to university from the admittedly dull Rajesh to the positively preposterous Binkie, speaking in a strange faux-Wodehousian tongue, and buying himself a metallic mauve Bentley Continental GT as soon as he was old enough to drive. From what Anita could tell, he seemed to be worsening as he approached his forties, getting his battery of butlers and valets to perform the most ridiculous tasks, such as ironing the morning papers and trimming their edges so that the pages were perfectly aligned before he would deign to glance at the day’s news with his eight-minute egg (not seven or nine minutes, but exactly and precisely eight). His only concessions to Indian-ness lay in the kind of things that apparently made life hell for Bubbles. These boiled down to two main things: an utter and complete devotion on Binkie’s part to his dragon of a mother, and maintaining the promise she had extracted from him that, despite all their money, he would always and only stay in the same house as her. Some house it was too, in the heart of Belgravia and with miles of corridors and multiple floors, each square inch of which would be worth thousands of pounds according to Anita’s calculations. Raheja Mansion had in fact been formed by knocking together two palatial town-houses that had belonged to a pair of Kuwaiti brothers, which explained why the pool house looked like something out of the sets of Caligula, complete with Piedmont urns, artificial palms and bare-breasted marble nymphs with golden nipples. But, unsatisfied with such largesse, Mrs Raheja had even bought the lower ground floor flat next door to the main house and installed the kitchen in there so that there was no risk at all of Binkie’s delicate nostrils being assailed with the smell of curry. Then there were the houses in Paris and Cape Cod, the country pile in Bucks and the baronial manor in Scotland…but it was almost laughable that, despite such a profusion of global real estate, poor Bubbles had nowhere to call her own, nor any place where she could really get away from her mother-in-law.
‘It’s like I’m married to her rather than him, Sam!’ Bubbles was wailing again, taking another slug from her flute, whose edge was now encrusted with almost as much lipstick as was left on her mouth.
‘I know, I know, darling,’ Sam consoled, ‘but couldn’t you persuade Binkie to take you to the Paris flat when the schools close next month? The children will be going up to their summer camp in Switzerland as usual, won’t they?’
‘Bobby will be at camp in Montana, although Ruby’s still trying to make her mind up. But, you see, Ma’s already arranged for me to be in the Bahamas with her and Auntie Poppy and Poonam Maasi…I told you about that cruise for Papa’s sixty-fifth. She’s hired a 300-foot yacht and is taking her whole family, and obviously I have to be there.’
‘Oh yes, of course, you did say,’ Sam said, subsiding back into silence, remembering how they had dissolved in giggles at the thought of a bunch of Punjabi matriarchs sunning themselves in voluminous one-pieces when Bubbles had first mentioned it.
‘How about we go somewhere together after the summer then? Just us girls,’ Anita offered, rousing herself briefly. ‘We’ve only ever talked of it so far, and now that both your kids are old enough to be left with their nannies, it should be fine, shouldn’t it?’
Sam’s face wore a doubtful expression. ‘I don’t know…Akbar doesn’t much like the concept of girlie holidays…’
‘Oh, fuck Akbar,’ Anita replied crisply, ‘about time you told him where to stick those fine concepts of his.’
‘I’m not sure Binkie would like it either—you know how he seems to think my main role in life is to keep his mother company. Unless…’ Bubbles’ face was starting to clear. ‘The only place I can get away to without any of them in tow is my parents’ house.’
‘Delhi,’ Anita exclaimed, ‘now there’s a plan.’
‘No one can stop us from going to see our parents, I guess,’ Sam said slowly.
‘Be too bloody hot till November though.’
‘You weren’t thinking of December, were you? I mean…Lamboo’s invitation…?’
The three women looked at the letter, still lying on the table before them, and then at each other in the candlelight. Bubbles’ eyes suddenly looked like hollows in her head, and Sam, wrapped in her cream pashmina, was a sad and portly ghost. Anita shuddered, feeling uncharacteristically nervy. She was dying for a cigarette. ‘I’ve never been back there since we left school,’ she muttered.
‘Nor me,’ Sam said softly after a pause.
‘I’ve been past those gates, oh, I don’t know, at least a hundred times,’ Bubbles said. ‘Every time I go to Papa’s Connaught Place shop, in fact. And, you know, it’s like a bad habit, but I still cross my heart and mutter “Our Father” when I see the school church. But I’ve never once stepped through those gates since we left. I’m not sure I’ll be able to take it, actually’
‘Look,’ Anita cut in, sitting up and trying to sound more brisk, ‘I know there’s good reason for us never having gone back. But I’m not sure it’s really helped, y’know. Sometimes things just seem to get worse the longer you leave them.’
Her two friends were silent for a few seconds before Bubbles spoke up. ‘My therapist sometimes says I’ll only make real progress when those old issues are resolved…’
‘It’s more than that for me,’ Sam said. ‘More like…atonement.’
‘Well, if we don’t do it now, we never will,’ Anita said, taking Sam’s hands in hers. ‘I get some leave around Christmas, so shall we try to go together by, say, mid December? Let’s see what it is that Lamboo wants. We owe her that much. Time to try and lay some of those ghosts to rest.’
Chapter Three (#u6f123e10-61fe-513d-9b8c-334c40763cd0)
DELHI, 1993
‘Have you heard? We’re getting a new girl in class,’ Sam said, putting her satchel down on her chair to take out her lunchbox and flask of iced lime juice and position them carefully in the inner recess of her scuffed wooden desk.
Even Anita, slumped lifeless over Flaubert at the back of the classroom, looked up, shoving her glasses back up her nose as various classmates started instantly to quiz Sam.
‘Who?’
‘Where’s she from?’
‘I hope she’s not pretty, yaar.’
‘Or over-smart.’
In her usual calm manner, Sam ignored them all until she had hung her satchel on one of the hooks on the back wall and started arranging the exercise books on the teacher’s table into a neat pile. Finally, she said, shrugging, ‘Dunno, I haven’t met her yet. But Lamboo stopped me in the quadrangle to say that a new girl was joining our class to do her final year here. She wants us to be nice to her because she’s been recently orphaned, I think.’
There was another flurry of interest:
‘Orphaned! Bloody hell…’
‘Who’s an orphan?’
‘The new girl we’re getting, man, why don’t you listen!’
‘Christ that’s bad, poor thing.’
‘Where’s she coming from, Sam?’
‘One of the hill schools, Lamboo said—Mussourie, I think?’
‘I hope she’s nice. Some of these hill-school types think no end of themselves.’
‘Yeah, almost as though they’re little English missies…they wear stockings and hats and things. Imagine!’
‘Those hats are called “boaters”,’ Anita offered. ‘Actually it’s the hill stations that are the real relics of our colonial past.’ She looked around and saw that, as usual, her classmates were all ignoring her to concentrate on the crass and the mundane.
‘Whatever,’ Zeba growled from the bench next to Anita’s, ‘she had better not try lording it over us.’
‘Yeah, I really hope she’s nice.’
‘Of course she’ll be nice,’ Sam said, adding, ‘well, more importantly, we have to be nice to her. Must be awful to have lost both parents.’
‘Both together?’
‘Must have been a car accident or something.’
The conversation was brought to a halt by the clanging of the office peon’s iron rod on the brass bell in the quadrangle outside. The class shuffled to their feet as Mrs Menon, their teacher, sailed in, orange and black sari pallav fluttering after her.
‘Good morning, Mrs Menon,’ the class intoned.
‘Morning, morning…good weekend?’ The teacher smiled briefly before sitting down to unlock the desk drawer and pull out the class register. A few indistinct mumbles greeted her query but she had obviously not been expecting any replies as she looked up with a blank expression to take the roll call in a brisk voice.
‘Anita Roy?’
‘Present, Miss.’
‘Arpana Singh?’
‘Present, Miss.’
‘Ashwathy Pillai?’
‘Present, Miss.’
‘Bubbles Malhotra?’
Mrs Menon looked up and scanned the class over her reading glasses before repeating, ‘Bubbles Malhotra? Not here?’
A voice piped up from the back. ‘I think she’s coming, Miss. Must be late…’
‘She wasn’t on our bus this morning,’ someone volunteered.
‘Well, she’s always missing the bus. Last week we had to wait while she came running down the road with her two servants following her, one carrying her bag, the other her water-bottle,’ someone else said to general titters.
‘Enough, enough, let’s move on. Maybe she’ll come later.’ Mrs Menon returned to her ledger. ‘Damini Mehta?’
‘Present, Miss.’
As predicted, there was soon a kerfuffle at the door as Bubbles Malhotra stumbled in, red-faced and sweaty from her exertions. ‘Sor-ry, Mi-ss,’ she puffed, ‘missed the bu-s, Miss…’
‘Really, Bubbles, you must try harder than this to be punctual. This must be the third time already this month that you’ve been late.’
Bubbles performed a small apologetic shimmy, still standing uncertainly in the doorway while trying to catch her breath. Her indecision only seemed to annoy Mrs Menon further, who snapped, ‘Okay, come in, come in, what are you waiting there for now?’
Anita rolled her eyes as Bubbles flopped onto the bench next to her. Bubbles was in a right old state, her tie askew, socks sagging over grubby trainers and a pair of new zits ballooning on her chin. Anita listened to Bubbles wheezing for a few minutes as she recovered from having run up two flights of stairs to the senior school before rather unkindly scribbling ‘Lose Weight!’ on a note that she pushed across the table towards her. She and Bubbles had been bench-mates for a few years now, both choosing to inhabit the last row for completely different reasons—Bubbles so she could hide behind girls cleverer than her, and Anita so she could read novels during the maths and science lessons. They had eventually managed to overcome an initial mutual suspicion of each other to become unlikely friends, mostly because it massaged Anita’s ego no end to have Bubbles so desperately need her crib-sheets to keep from flunking every exam.
An hour later, Mrs Menon was droning on, drawing geometric shapes on the blackboard that made scant sense to most of the sixteen-year-olds seated before her, when they were interrupted by a knock at the door. All heads were raised as the principal walked in, a girl wearing a patterned smock and sandals following a few paces behind.
‘I am so sorry to interrupt the lesson, Mrs Menon, but I wondered if I might take my session early. I’d like to introduce a new girl to the class.’
‘Yes, of course, of course, Miss Lamb,’ Mrs Menon said, hastily putting her chalk stub down and backing away. ‘I was just finishing anyway. Please, please do come in.’
Anita had often wondered at the nervousness Miss Lamb seemed to evoke in most of their teachers, speculating on whether it was merely because she was principal or whether her being British had something to do with it too. Old Lamboo had always seemed to Anita to be like someone who had fallen out of an E.M. Forster novel, her foreignness accentuated in a curious way by her not having left India when most of her countrymen and women had. The first time Anita had the opportunity to use a carefully learned big word had, in fact, been with reference to Miss Lamb, when—soon after winning the St Jude’s scholarship as a seven-year-old—she had informed her amused father that the new school principal was ‘quintessentially British’.
Anita now watched while Miss Lamb waited politely for a harassed Mrs Menon to collect her books and bags. The new girl stood behind Miss Lamb, wearing an impassive expression on her face. She was tall, like Lamb herself, and athletic and astonishingly pretty, Anita thought, sneaking a glance at Zeba and her best friend, Natasha, sitting in the third row, who had always fancied themselves as the school beauties. It satisfied her to see that they were gazing at the newcomer in open-mouthed wonder too. This girl was much lovelier than either of them, her skin tanned to the kind of gold that was rarely achieved by white skin, quite unlike Miss Lamb’s florid summertime pink. Anita saw too that the girl’s eyes were a strange blue-grey colour, their only flaw being that they were set a little too close together in a heart-shaped face that ended in a pointed chin. She didn’t look pure British, more likely Anglo-Indian, as someone had surmised earlier. Their eyes met for an instant and Anita was shocked at the sudden frisson she felt run through her, which was followed by instant revulsion. She knew a lot of girls at school often developed crushes on other girls but, even as a junior, she had prided herself on never having been at either end of such ridiculous infatuations, saved from them—she would have been the first to admit—by being scrawny and bespectacled and not sporty at all.
Mrs Menon departed in a flurry of apologies and chalk dust and Miss Lamb now stepped forward, clearing her throat in the way she did when she wanted their total attention. This was not a problem today as the class sat rapt before her, silenced by their curiosity. The last new girl this particular batch had received was Natasha Walia, whose father had been posted back to India after a long stint abroad in the diplomatic service—and that had been a good six years ago.
‘This, my dear girls,’ Miss Lamb said to them, ‘is Lily D’Souza. Lily is new, not just to our school, but indeed to Delhi, having just moved here from Sacred Heart convent school in Mussourie. I know some of you are quite familiar with Mussourie, travelling up there for your summer holidays, so I do not need to tell you what a big change this is for Lily, who has never been to Delhi before.’
Anita noticed that the girl next to Miss Lamb remained unsmiling, plucking absently at the canvas strap of the bag she was carrying slung across her torso as though it were a guitar.
‘My dear girls,’ Miss Lamb continued, ‘I know I don’t need to tell you to make Lily comfortable and welcome. Now, where can we find room for Lily to sit?’ Miss Lamb scanned the room and nodded approvingly as she saw the dependable Samira move up on her bench in the front row to make room. As the principal gestured, Lily walked hesitantly towards the rows of girls, unslinging her bag and holding it ahead of her. Anita observed Sam smiling warmly, even using her tissue to clean Lily’s side of the desk, but she could now no longer see the face of the new girl, only a ponytail of straight brown hair that hung down her back all the way to her waist. The girl sat down, shoving her bag between herself and Sam, and, as the bell went, Miss Lamb opened her tattered copy of Macbeth to begin her lesson.
Anita’s concentration was poor in the hour that followed, even though Lamb’s classes were always the high point of her school day. Today the principal was wittering on about the nature of ambition and did not seem to be quite herself either, gripped by a preoccupied air that was infecting the whole class with a kind of listlessness.
When the bell finally rang for the lunch-break, Miss Lamb looked as relieved as everyone else, setting the group an essay on the banquet scene as homework, before leaving for the dining hall. Anita got up and stretched with a loud groan. She scanned the room. Sam seemed to have taken the new girl under her wing already, opening up her foil pack of cheese sandwiches and offering her one.
Anita and Bubbles joined the small group that had already gathered around Lily and Sam’s desk.
‘Are you related to Miss Lamb?’ Natasha was asking the new girl.
Anita saw Lily hesitate for a minute before a set of invisible shutters descended over her face. She pursed her lips, suddenly acquiring a mean expression as she said with more vehemence, ‘No, we’re not related. I’m nothing at all to that horrid old bat.’
There was a collective horrified intake of breath. No one ever spoke about Miss Lamb in that tone of voice. Even the nickname of Lamboo, used by generations of St Jude’s schoolgirls, was only ever employed affectionately.
Sam hastily changed the subject. ‘Oh, Bubs, one of your pimples has just burst,’ she said.
Attention turned to Bubbles, who clamped a piece of tissue, spotted with blood, back to her chin. ‘Oh God,’ she mumbled through her clamped jaw, ‘I had just two pieces of cashew burfi last night, y’know, and see the reaction!’
‘Let’s have a look,’ Zeba said, ‘I may have some Clearasil in my bag.’
Bubbles gingerly removed her hand, eliciting a chorus of moans.
‘Christ, that’s a prize one,’ Natasha said.
‘And look, there’s a new one sprouting right next to it.’
‘Clearasil won’t work, those need Dettol.’
‘Or DDT even!’
Sam’s ruse had successfully drawn everyone’s attention away from the new girl and Anita noticed that even Lily was now smiling, although she couldn’t tell if Lily’s subsequent attempt at humour was malicious. ‘Etna and Krakatoa, that’s what those two are,’ she said.
‘Who?’ Bubbles enquired, nonplussed, but Lily shook her head, smiling to herself.
Anita stepped in to rescue her friend. ‘Okay, everyone, stop treating Bubs like a prize exhibit. We’re off to the dining hall now, if anyone wants to join us for some five-star world cuisine.’
Victoria Lamb decided not to join the throng in the dining hall, as was her usual custom. Instead, she walked down the southern corridor and past the music room, where the sound of a trombone was blaring tunelessly over the lunchtime hubbub. She had this morning given Lily money to buy a hot lunch in the canteen but would herself return to her cottage, which lay on the far side of the rambling school grounds. Lakhan would rustle up a sandwich for her, which she would eat quietly in her study overlooking the rose garden. She deserved a little peace and quiet after the traumatic events of the past few days, not made any easier by Lily’s difficult behaviour.
Victoria unlatched the small wicket gate that led to the rose garden and walked to her cottage, dipping her head to avoid damaging the flowers of the madhumalati that were dangling crimson over the door. She turned on the cooler, still thinking of Lily’s obstreperous conduct since her arrival. The rusty old machine sent a welcome blast of cool air through the cottage and Victoria exhaled in relief, relishing the respite, not just from the heat but also from the past few days of argument and tears. Who could blame the poor child, though? What Lily had undergone lay beyond the bounds of most people’s imaginations, certainly her own, and what the girl most needed now was stability and quiet, unquestioning acceptance. Love and other such things would gradually follow in their own time. Victoria certainly hadn’t thought it prudent to tell Samira more than what was absolutely necessary this morning, of course. Heaven knew what the girls would make of the whole thing, if they found out. Or, for that matter, their parents! An exclusive and well-reputed school such as Jude’s really couldn’t afford a scandal of any sort.
Victoria popped her head into the kitchen, startling old Lakhan who was pottering at the stove, probably brewing his fifteenth cup of tea.
‘Mere liye bhi ek cup chai, Lakhan,’ she said, ‘Aur sandwich. Kya hai fridge mein? Tomato? Ham?’ She paused, waiting while her Nepali cook rummaged around inside the cavernous old fridge, emerging finally with a rather shrivelled cucumber. ‘Accha, cucumber sandwich theekh hai,’ she said resignedly.
Victoria Lamb walked into the cool of her darkened study and, rather than turning on the light, opened the drawn curtains slightly. Harsh sunshine poured in through the crack and for a moment she closed her eyes tightly shut. Slowly opening them a few seconds later, she blinked uncomfortably, letting her vision get used to the glare. Her eyes wandered over her shorn rose bushes and empty flowerbeds. May in Delhi was a bleak time in many ways. Not the best season to have Lily brought here but there hadn’t really been a choice. Still, in another few weeks it would be the summer holidays. She ought to think of going somewhere with the poor girl—a short vacation. Not to the hills, of course, that would be most injudicious. But anywhere else would be far too hot. Perhaps staying in Delhi would be best; giving Lily time to find her feet and get used to each other and the city. Victoria sat upright on her armchair, unable to physically relax when there was so much on her mind. She absently polished the glasses that hung around her neck. How unusual it would be this summer to have someone around during the long holidays, when everyone else, staff and students, went off with their families to all sorts of jolly destinations. The school building and playing grounds were almost ghostly when emptied of their noisy population. Victoria Lamb looked up at the distant gulmohar tree, the crest of which was aflame with red flowers. Suddenly she felt a little blessed. The dear Lord had strange ways, but it was as though He had understood that, with the passage of the years, she too would need someone to help fill the lonely evenings. And so Lily had been sent to her so unexpectedly, someone to love again, so late in life. Of course, the poor child was savagely angry and resentful, especially at the secrecy that would be required for the time being. The row last night had been quite unbearable, but it was best not to reveal the past—Lily would simply have to understand that.
At the end of her first day at St Jude’s, Lily stood at the first-floor window of her empty classroom, looking at the droves of girls heading down the drive for the cars and school buses that would take them all to their homes. She imagined them being received by their mums at the door and the smell of food that would be emanating from their kitchens. Whenever Lily conjured up images of family life in her head, she saw them like those television advertisements for rice or talcum powder that both fascinated and repelled her, and sometimes broke her heart. Weren’t those the kind of families most people had: mums in pretty saris and aprons serving up steaming bowls of rice, dads driving up to neat little houses in their shiny cars, coming in from work holding briefcases, while children with plump, scrubbed faces sat laughing around dining tables? That was what all those girls streaming out of the school gates had. And they didn’t even consider it as being out of the ordinary. ‘Everyone but you, Lily D’Souza,’ she muttered under her breath, feeling that by-now familiar twist of anger and bitterness in her stomach. All she had was School Principal Victoria bloody Lamb—and there was no way she could think of that scrawny old bat as being even remotely related to her. Certainly not now, when it was too late; much, much too late.
Lily twisted the handkerchief in her hand till she could feel its embroidered edge snap and tear. She turned from the window and blew her nose loudly as angry hot tears fell from her eyes and rolled off her chin. Leaning on the windowsill, Lily wiped her face roughly, wondering how long she could skulk around in the school building before being either turfed out or locked in. She surveyed the empty classroom, the rows of scuffed and ink-stained wooden desks and chairs left all awry, bits of paper littering the floor. To calm the horrible wobbly feeling inside her and have something to do, she walked between the rows, noisily straightening the desks till they formed neat lines, then proceeding to clatter chairs under them until everything was tidy and orderly, the way it was meant to be. She looked at the names and graffiti that had been carved into some of the desks, seeing initials of girls, some coupled with what were probably initials of boys surrounded by heart shapes. Such things were the normal concerns of most girls, she thought as she picked various exercise books and pens off the floor and placed them on a desk. Surveying her handiwork, she wondered if she ought to go to the next classroom and do the same thing there as well. There was something faintly comforting about bringing order where she could. Besides, there was no way she was going back to the cottage where she would have to put up with all that solicitous fake familial behaviour again. Just a week and already it was choking her to death. She wished she could run away from St Jude’s and this horrid noisy city and go back to her beloved Mussourie. It was the best season to be there, when wildflowers came bursting out of the grassy banks and the pine tree outside her window would be heavy with cones…
Lily started to cry again. One thing she knew for sure was that she would never, ever forgive Victoria Lamb for what she had done.
Chapter Four (#u6f123e10-61fe-513d-9b8c-334c40763cd0)
LONDON, 2008
Sam drove nervously through what was now very heavy rain. She’d volunteered to drop Anita off at her flat in Borough as they left Heebah’s and, perhaps because of the downpour, Anita hadn’t demurred. They were both unusually quiet on the drive south, each sunk in her own thoughts, Anita occasionally providing directions to get to Blackfriars Bridge.
As they drove over the bridge, Sam glanced at her friend’s profile, trying to think of something to say to lighten the atmosphere.
‘Oh, I’ve been meaning to tell you. I saw a really good film the other day. You and Hugh will really like it,’ she said.
‘Really?’ Anita roused herself. ‘Which one?’
Sam racked her brains. This was the trouble, she had got to a stage where she couldn’t even remember the things she liked. At thirty-two!
‘Oh God, it had whatshisname in it…’ she said, lifting one hand off the wheel to click her fingers frustratedly
‘You don’t mean whatshisname!?’ Anita laughed. ‘Oh, I just adore him! Left at the lights, Sam.’
‘Yeah, I know where we are now, thanks,’ Sam said ruefully, swinging to the left and pulling in at the door to Anita’s loft apartment, ‘although it probably won’t be long before I’ll be forgetting more than just the names of films and actors!’ She turned to her friend and added apologetically, ‘Oh, what’s wrong with me. The name will come to me the minute I’ve driven away from here. How annoying!’
‘Never mind, darling. Coming up to my flat for a glass of wine?’
Sam shook her head, smiling. ‘I need to get home before Heer turns in, sweetie. Is Hugh coming tonight?’
‘He’s on the night shift all week, but I’m going over for dinner this weekend. He’s cooking!’
‘We didn’t mention him at all tonight,’ Sam noted apologetically, turning off the ignition and looking directly at Anita.
‘Hardly surprising, given what was on all our minds.’
‘I hope it’s going well?’
‘With Hugh, you mean? Yeah, I guess. He does seem awfully nice, but then I’ve only known him a couple of weeks. Sounds awful, but I keep waiting for him to put a foot wrong. So far he hasn’t, I must say, but I do worry that it might just be by careful intent!’
Sam considered this for a moment before replying, ‘Well, even if it is by careful intent, isn’t it rather nice that he cares enough to do that?’
Anita’s grunt only sounded half-convinced so Sam continued her counsel. ‘Listen, don’t keep watching and waiting for something to go wrong. Just relax and enjoy getting to know him.’ Sam stopped, vaguely aware that it was a bit rich for her to advise anyone on matters of the heart.
Anita nodded. ‘You’re right, Sam. I’m too much of a cynical old cow for my own good sometimes. Listen, call if you need to talk, okay? Any time. You know that.’
Sam reached out over the gear-stick to kiss her friend’s cheek before she got out of the car. ‘You too. Call me whenever you can.’
She started up the engine again but waited until Anita was through her door before reversing and heading back for Borough High Street. She jumped as a motorbike courier flashed by, inches away from the side mirror, and cursed under her breath. That second glass of wine had been a bad idea, taken only because Bubbles had insisted that the police would never be prowling on a night as wet as this. How stupid of her to have taken advice from someone who never drove! The last thing she needed after such an emotional meeting with her two friends was a brush with a policeman waving a large breathalyser. If that did happen, she was sure she would collapse right into his arms in a flood of tears.
Sam nervously edged her Audi into the stream of traffic heading for Waterloo Bridge, earning an angry toot. Well, she hoped this was the way to Waterloo Bridge; even the road signs were virtually invisible in the rain. Sam cursed again. Akbar had told her weeks ago to get a sat-nav device fitted in her car, but, as usual, she’d forgotten. She didn’t usually travel south of the river as Anita was the only person she knew who lived there and she was generally happy to meet in town. Sam had made every attempt to refrain from postcode snobbery, but no matter how hard she tried to be comfortable south of the river, she invariably felt a little lost and threatened the minute she got past the South Bank Centre. Even at the start of the twenty-first century, these grubby narrow streets managed to look faintly Dickensian to her.
As she neared a large green sign, Sam peered upwards trying to read it—ah, Westminster Bridge, that would do nicely. She started to breathe easier as she drove under the blue railway bridge that she recognised as being the old Eurostar line. Now she knew where she was and pressed her foot on the accelerator with more confidence, heading for the bridge. Glancing out of the window, she saw that the river was a sludgy brown, the rain having chased all tourist traffic away from the choppy dark water. The Houses of Parliament looked as secretive and mysterious as ever, their narrow Gothic windows sending thin golden slits of light piercing through curtains of rain.
Perhaps it had not been a great idea, Sam thought, meeting the two people who shared those dark memories that had been triggered by the arrival of Lamboo’s letter. Instead, she ought to have gone somewhere bright and busy like Harvey Nicks, distracting herself as she so often did with a platter of moules frites at the rooftop café, and enjoying the anonymity of the summer crowds. Even if she had stayed at home and played Heer’s favourite tennis game on the Wii console, she might have ended the evening feeling less wretched. Luckily, Akbar had left this morning on a business trip, accompanying his boss to Frankfurt and Berlin for three days. She had come to rely on little breaks like this ever since Akbar’s firm had merged with the German practice, and she was grateful that she wouldn’t have to endure his sarcasm tonight: ‘What’s agitating the acidic Anita these days then?’ or ‘Ah, the bimboesque Bubbles Raheja—now if she had one more brain cell she’d be plant life.’ Sometimes the sarcasm was preferable to the more direct hits, though: ‘What’s with the glum face? Some of us have been hard at work and have earned the right to be morose, you know.’
Sam would never in a hundred years be able to explain to Akbar about Miss Lamb’s letter and the despair it had brought upon her. She’d mentioned Lily’s death to him once in the early days but he hadn’t seemed to take it seriously, and she had assumed that things like that were probably commonplace for someone in the legal profession. She hadn’t wanted to dwell on it anyway—not at a time when she had just got married and her life suddenly seemed to be blooming again. Later she had told herself it was just as well she’d never revealed any of the details to Akbar. Without a doubt, he’d have subsequently used the knowledge to make her feel even more remorseful than before. She could almost hear his sneers, especially seeing that he’d always harboured a special resentment towards her school friendships: ‘What sort of a Social ends with a kid being found dead?’ ‘So that’s what your gang was like at school, sure explains a lot!’ He never noticed that he was usually the only person enjoying his remarks, so busy sniggering at his own wit that he invariably failed to look around and see the stricken expression on her face or, worse, the embarrassment of whoever was in their company observing Sam’s mortification.
Sam slowly relaxed her fingers on the steering wheel as she passed the bright chaos of Knightsbridge and the traffic eased a bit. Hyde Park was covered in wet darkness, its black and gold wrought-iron gates closed for the night. She drove along with Classic FM playing softly on the car radio, trying to remember when Akbar had changed from being the charming, suave man she had fallen in love with to the remote stranger she was now married to. She couldn’t understand why his main source of entertainment seemed to lie in belittling other people, especially her.
Sam recognised Elgar’s ‘Nimrod’ as it swelled through the speakers and felt a familiar prickle behind her eyelids as it slowed and turned soft and poignant towards the end. Elgar invariably caused sad memories to unspool and undulate through her head, but today even the soothing tones of the radio presenter was making her want to weep. It came to her as it always did in her lowest moments: it wasn’t Akbar, it was her. It was she who had changed her husband, embittered him in some way by letting her own misery seep into their life together. She had never quite measured up to Akbar’s brilliance anyway, even in the early years of their marriage, doing a part-time job in a library briefly before giving it up, embarrassed by the growing disparity in their salaries and the sheer inanity of carrying on working when he was earning such mega-bucks and needed her to be a support to him. Then, sitting around at home all day or meeting other non-working wives for lunches at Nobu and Zuma and attending the weekend parties thrown by the Kensington banker-lawyer set, she had slowly started to put back on all the weight she had lost at college, almost without noticing it.
It was almost certainly her growing size that had first put Akbar off her, and perhaps it was that which had started off the sarcasm too. Maybe Akbar had thought that jokes were a less hurtful way of letting her know that he did not like being married to a fat woman. But early on she hadn’t taken the hint when he disparaged other overweight people, even those he didn’t know, declaring in that superior way of his that they were all indubitably either ‘weak’ or ‘lazy’. But their sex life had started to dwindle at some indefinable point and then there had been his gift of an exercise bicycle on her thirtieth birthday.
Sam turned down her road and drove past her neighbours’ familiar handsome town-houses, some advertising plush interiors through uncurtained windows. She wondered at that sometimes; she herself always drew the curtains before the lights were turned on—not that she didn’t have expensive contemporary art on her walls or designer custom-made sofas to show off, but there was something comforting in silently declaring that not everything had to be publicised and made known.
Fishing out the electronic buzzer from the glove compartment, she watched the tall metal gates to her house swing slowly open. The maid had drawn the curtains of all the upper windows and only the kitchen was visible from the garden as she pulled into the drive. She could see Heer’s small black head bobbing around inside and felt her heart melt as she turned the ignition off. At least she had her daughter’s love—although who knew for how long. Heer was growing up to be the spitting image of Akbar, and might inherit—dear God—his sense of humour too one day.
Sam gathered her things from the back seat of the car and ducked under the dripping honeysuckle. Heer let out a reassuringly delighted shriek as she walked through the kitchen door. ‘Mamma, Mamma, look what Masooma and me have been making for you!’
Sam smiled as she peered at the pale brown sludge in the bowl. ‘Masooma and I, beti. But what on earth is it?’
‘Chocolate mousse!’
‘Oh dear, perhaps it needs a bit more chocolate then. What have you put in it?’
‘Two bars of Dairy Milk and some cocoa, an egg whipped up and…here, try some.’
‘Actually, Mamma’s eaten, sweetheart,’ Sam said hastily as Heer held out a spoonful, feeling bad at the disappointed moue her daughter’s mouth instantly formed. Even though she had only nibbled on some pita sticks and olives at Heebah, she did in fact feel rather ill and couldn’t face the thought of food. She turned to the maid and spoke in Urdu. ‘No dinner for me tonight, Masooma. Has Heer eaten?’
‘Yes, memsahib. I gave Heerbaby dinner at six. Daal meat with rice and salad, as memsahib said.’
Sam nodded. ‘Thank you, Masooma. Heer, darling, I’m going to get changed…’
‘Oh memsahib, there was a phone call from India. It was Zeba Khan madam. She wants you to call back. I have written phone number down here.’ Masooma could hardly contain her excitement. ‘Memsahib, it is Zeba Khan, film star, your old friend you told me, no? I know her voice so well I immediately recognised.’
Sam nodded blankly as her heart sank. So Zeba would have received Lamboo’s letter too. There had been no contact from her in months, and the only reason for a call out of the blue would be that letter. Sam felt quite sure she could not stand talking about the letter and reunion any more. Despite Anita’s conviction that they would all benefit from ‘laying old ghosts to rest’, as she put it, Sam now felt exhausted at the very thought. Reunions were for people who wanted to stay in touch, and she had done that with Bubbles and Anita because they had both been in London as long as she had, and because they were, after all, the closest thing she had to family here. Since that chance meeting at Heathrow, there had been the occasional email from Zeba who, for all her starry airs, had evidently never forgotten that she had to thank Sam for never revealing her affair with Mr Gomes, despite being class monitor and Lamboo’s favourite. But that had been the sum total of her old school friendships. And given everything that had happened, that was probably the best way to keep it.
Sam changed into a tracksuit and lay down for a few minutes, recalling all manner of things from her schooldays. Then, suddenly, she swung her legs off the bed, sitting up abruptly as she decided to pick up the phone and return Zeba’s call. Perhaps she would know more about exactly what Miss Lamb had in mind for them all.
The ringing tone on Zeba’s mobile was distant before she heard the click and Zeba’s famously husky voice, thick with sleep, mumble an indistinct ‘Hello’.
‘Oh goodness, how stupid of me, I’d completely forgotten about the time difference, Zeba, it must be past midnight there—sorry! Were you asleep? I only just got in and just wasn’t thinking…it’s Sam here.’
To Sam’s surprise, Zeba sounded relieved rather than annoyed. ‘Oh, that’s okay, Sam, no problem. I’m so glad you called. Wasn’t really sleeping as I’m totally jet-lagged.’
‘Been travelling?’ Sam asked, unsure whether to mention the letter until Zeba brought the subject up.
‘More than I’d like,’ Zeba replied. ‘You got Lamboo’s letter too?’ she asked in her habitual abrupt style. Luckily, there was no beating about the bush with Zeba. Sam recalled there never had been.
‘Yes, this morning, Zeba. What is she up to, do you know?’
‘I have absolutely no idea. But I must say I get a very bad feeling about it. As though it’s a…a plot’. Zeba tried to joke. ‘A plot in a really bad Hindi movie.’ But neither she nor Sam could bring themselves to laugh.
‘I’ve been feeling pretty spooked myself, to be honest,’ Sam replied.
‘What about Anita and Bubbles? Have they had letters too? Have you seen them?’
‘We just spent the evening together, to talk about it in fact. Anita wants to go. In fact, she wants us all to go. Brave it out, she says.’
‘She has a point. I’ll go if you guys are coming.’
Sam, trying not to sound too surprised, responded with a nervous laugh, ‘Safety in numbers, huh?’
‘Well, something like that…I hope you guys don’t think it too weird for me to join you out of the blue, but we had grown very close that year, remember? Us four, that is.’
‘Of course it’s not weird, Zeba, we’ve been classmates since we were tiny,’ Sam said, trying not to sound doubtful but quite uncertain of whether someone like Anita would care to have Zeba suddenly back in their inner circle.
‘Well, in that final year we were drawn together mostly by our common hatred of Lily.’
‘Oh, Zeba!’ Sam remonstrated mildly.
‘But it’s true, Sam, we might as well admit it. What on earth did I ever have in common with someone like Anita? Or Bubbles even?’
‘We may have grown apart now, Zeba, but back then we were all pretty much the same, weren’t we?’
‘Just a bunch of Delhi school kids, I suppose…’ Zeba’s voice suddenly sounded less crisp. After a small pause, she spoke again. ‘When do you think you’ll come to India, Sam?’
‘Mid December, when the schools here close, I expect. I’ll bring Heer, but I don’t know what Bubbles will do with her Bobby and Ruby. They’ll probably prefer going on one of their exotic holidays.’
‘I notice Lamboo’s suggesting the third weekend in December for this reunion, just like the Socials used to be.’
‘And the anniversary of Lily’s death,’ Sam pointed out.
‘Exactly what I was thinking. It’s so weird, Sam! As if she knew all along what we did that night and is now intent on reminding us of it.’
‘That wouldn’t be like old Lamboo. She wouldn’t hurt us, that I’m sure of. It could be some kind of memorial thing for Lily.’
‘After all these years? I don’t think so somehow.’ Zeba’s voice rose as a new thought occurred to her. ‘Do you think they might have found some new evidence, and they’re doing a kind of reconstruction thing?’
Sam couldn’t help a small laugh at that. ‘What, like they do on TV? Hoping someone will crack?’
‘Don’t laugh—what if someone does crack, as you put it, or remember something and it all comes out? Ugh, so macabre.’
Sam considered the possibility. It wasn’t entirely nonsensical and Zeba had a public reputation to consider. This was the kind of story those film rags would fall upon with relish, poor Zeba. Poor all of them—nobody needed something like this when life was already so complicated. ‘Murder will out,’ she said softly, remembering Miss Lamb explaining the nature of guilt in one of her Macbeth lessons.
‘Don’t! You’re really scaring me now,’ Zeba implored. ‘But, really, if you think about it, Sam, we’ll all be gathered together in almost exactly the same circumstances. It’s a well-known ploy used by the police the world over. Agatha Christie always did it.’
‘But why now? All these years on?’
‘Maybe she wants to see justice done before she dies, see the guilty brought to book once and for all’.
Sam, unable to keep up her casual tone any more, started to weep at that, lunging for her bedside tissues and pressing a wad against her mouth. Sam had always been one of Miss Lamb’s favourites, never achieving the top marks Anita achieved in Lamboo’s subjects of English and History, but unfailingly making class monitor year on year, simply because the principal had trusted her so implicitly. Now, with stinging recognition, she realised how grievously she had betrayed old Lamboo’s trust in those last few weeks at school. Worse, she had not even attempted any sort of reparation, never once returning to visit either the school or its old principal.
‘Sam?…Sam? You okay?’ Zeba’s voice echoed distantly down the line.
Sam gathered herself together. It wasn’t just Miss Lamb and Lily. There had been so much to deal with that terrible winter, but perhaps Zeba had—in the midst of her present glitzy life—forgotten the dreadful events of that year. What Sam needed now, quite desperately, was to end this conversation. ‘Yes, I’m fine, Zeba. Look, I gotta go now. I’ve been out all evening and need to put Heer to bed. I’ll call you tomorrow…’
‘Oh God, I’ve upset you now, haven’t I? You aren’t crying, are you? Sam?’
‘No, no, I’m fine, Zeba,’ Sam mumbled, managing to keep her voice steady. ‘Look, stay in touch. I’ve told Anita and Bubs that we need to keep each other’s spirits up.’
‘Too right,’ Zeba agreed. ‘Yes, I’ll stay in touch too. You’d better go and sort Heer out now. Call me when you can. And try not to think about this if possible, Sam. We’ve all got our lives to live.’
MUMBAI, 2008
The following morning, Zeba managed to drag herself out of bed and get to work on time, despite having caught only five hours of sleep. Getting out of her car, she straightened her back and walked into the studio, knowing she was already getting full marks from the assembled crew for not making them hang about all morning like some of the other stars did. There were some things about her father’s strict upbringing that she did have to be grateful for.
She looked around the Filmistan sets in amazement. This was good even for Shiv Mirchandani, whose hand was clear in the attention to detail. The fake marketplace had everything: the ration shop, the post office, the vegetable vendor with his trolley full of shiny aubergines and damp bunches of spinach. Zeba suddenly realised that she had not actually seen the inside of a real market for years, merely expecting the fridges and fruit bowls in her Juhu house to be well-stocked at all times. She’d even forgotten who in her domestic retinue had been delegated to oversee all that! But, from her childhood memories of accompanying Ammi to INA market every Sunday, the set designer had got this exactly right.
What a pity that it had all been put together only to be blown apart. Today’s shoot was the bomb-blast scene, which she wasn’t looking forward to at all. The mess and noise, the acrid smoke and smells—horrible. Then she’d have to be rushed to make-up for them to put the grime and blood on her face and clothes for the rescue scene. Zeba stopped short, remembering that her co-star on this film was Neel Biswas, a man with the most horrendous bad breath. She shuddered, imagining submitting to halitosis fumes as she lay in a swoon ready to be gathered up in her distraught lover’s arms.
Zeba sensed someone sitting down gingerly on the seat next to her and turned to see a grinning young girl—probably one of the extras. She felt her hackles rise. She really did not want to be bothered with useless chit-chat when she was sleep-deprived and trying to gather her thoughts for her scene. She had learned method acting the hard way, living as she did in a world where no one else even knew what the term meant. Perhaps she should cock an eyebrow at her maid or assistant to signal to them that they ought to be keeping fans at bay. There was a time and a place for adulation. But Zeba could spot nobody familiar in her immediate vicinity and reluctantly turned back. She’d be cool and distant—Zeba knew from experience that would send the girl scurrying off. No harm in being polite, though—you never knew when the press would descend in disguise, and those Starworld journalists were always looking to find something on her that would bring all her hard-won success crashing down.
‘Yes?’ she said with a plastic smile that she knew was not quite reaching her eyes.
‘Madam Zebaji, I am your biggest fan,’ the girl breathed.
Zeba nodded. She couldn’t help softening at the sound of those words, but she’d heard them so often that they had long ceased to really thrill. ‘Hmm, how nice to know that,’ she said, trying to sound pleasant but with scant success.
‘Madam, if you don’t mind…I am writing a book about our Bollywood industry and want to ask you…’
Zeba had been offered that excuse so many times that it wearied her. Did these people really think that writing books about the film world was easy? How silly they were to imagine that actors would ever stop acting for long enough to reveal their real selves to anyone? It was all an act, she wanted to shout at them sometimes, even the casual chats and confessional-style interviews. How on earth could anyone imagine otherwise? And who was this chit of a girl to offer the world her wisdom on Bollywood anyway? When people like herself, Zeba Khan, had slaved for years to make their way up its labyrinthine, treacherous corridors. Zeba’s beautiful face closed up. ‘Why don’t you make an appointment with my secretary for an interview. He will…’
‘I will most certainly, Madam. But I saw you sitting here, and if I can just ask you one or two things now. Just some basic questions…’
Zeba darted another look around her before nodding reluctantly—where was bloody Gupta, or her PA, or Najma even. Her status allowed her to have as big a retinue as she wished on set, but what a strange way they all had of vanishing when you most needed them. ‘Well, you know, I have just one or two minutes before going on the set…’
‘Don’t worry, Madam, I will not take up much of your time. Just one question…’
Zeba took a deep breath. This was one of those brazen ones who would not be shaken off. Some of these people had no shame, really, no sense of privacy. There were laws to protect the rich and the famous in other countries, but here in India, no bloody chance! Zeba put on her polite but resigned expression and nodded again.
‘Okay Thank you, thank you,’ the girl gushed, pulling out a bright yellow notepad. ‘Madam, Zebaji—may I call you Zebaji? Okay, Zebaji, please tell me when you first took up acting? I mean, when did you first think to yourself, “I am going to be a superstar”. A Bollywood thespian. Maybe Hollywood even!’
Zeba parted Bollywood’s most famous luscious lips to dish out the usual reply…ever since I was a child…my parents, recognising my unusual talent, used to…la di la di la la la…Her patter had been perfected over the years. And the old Hollywood question too—she was sick to the teeth of it! As if all her hard-won success in India amounted to nothing if she failed to get the nod from Hollywood. Which Hollywood star could claim to have a fan-following that stretched to a billion people, for God’s sake! Weren’t journalists supposed to be intelligent people? But, just as Zeba was formulating her reply into polite language, she spotted Gupta hurrying across to her.
‘Madamji, you are being called onto the set. Immediately please!’ he said, taking his cue from Zeba’s glowering expression.
Zeba threw a falsely apologetic look at the girl, who looked like a child that had suddenly had her lollipop snatched away from her. ‘I am so sorry,’ she said, getting up and smiling sweetly before turning to Gupta and saying, ‘Gupta-sahib, please take this author’s details and arrange a time with her for a proper interview. She is writing a book and we must help her. Okay?’
Gupta nodded, his face a mask. Madamji’s acting was so good that he sometimes had to check later with her whether she really meant what she said in front of other people. Zeba had already turned away from the girl, thinking it best not to wait for a reply. Security in this place was not what it used to be, Zeba thought crossly as she hurried back to her rooms, carefully picking her way over the network of cables and wires that lay strewn across the floor of the studio. In the era of the big stars, journalists knew their place and never wrote badly of the celebrities, no matter what they got up to—bigamous marriages, name changes, even changing religions to suit their convenience. Nobody questioned anything. They were like Gods in those days, lording it over ordinary mortals from the big screen. Now everyone thought film stars could be their friends, thanks to their TV sets that took them right into people’s living rooms. But why journalists considered it their job to expose film stars and find something—anything—to destroy them, Zeba had never been able to work out. Didn’t they have politicians to chase any more?
She closed the door behind her in relief, throwing herself down on the bed. Suddenly remembering the hours it had taken her hairdresser to get her seventies-style beehive hairdo just right, she hastily sat up again. Casting a quick look at the mirrored wardrobe, she breathed a sigh of relief. No damage done, thankfully. Zeba angled her face to examine herself in the mirror. Her skin glowed alabaster white, just turning a pale rose over her cheekbones. Her neck was smooth and curved downwards quite marvellously to shapely shoulders. She looked into tawny brown eyes that, she had on excellent authority, were capable of making hardened underworld dons swoon. Then she fluttered her lashes, trying to see what it was that other people saw, smiling, lips together, then lips carefully parted, revealing a sparkle of fine even teeth inherited from her father.
The journalist wanted to know when she had taken up acting. Well, Zeba knew exactly when she had: aged two, when she had first become conscious of her ability to make people coo over her merely by pouting coquettishly and swinging her little hips. But she wasn’t exactly going to divulge all that, was she? Nor that there was one particular day when she had realised that she would kill—yes, kill—to be the star. An image of Lily D’Souza clad in a white robe, declaiming for all she was worth on the school stage, flashed into her mind. Zeba could even remember the words…‘Oh God, that madest this beautiful earth, when will it be ready to receive thy saints? How long, oh lord, how long?’ She remembered the electricity of that moment: the pain that seemed to drip off Lily’s beautiful face, the silence pervading the school hall, and, most of all, the awed expression on the old drama teacher’s face as he gazed up at Lily with the kind of expression none of Zeba’s own histrionic efforts at school had ever elicited. Oh yes, if a knife had been handy at that moment, Zeba would have happily leapt onto the stage, killing St Joan right there in the middle of her bloody audition. She could imagine the reaction if she ever told a journalist all that. Wouldn’t they just love it? The story of how Zeba Khan, aged seventeen, had fought for her role in the school annual production with a new girl, Lily D’Souza. Beautiful, brilliant Lily D’Souza, who was later found dead in the school’s rose garden. Oh how the press pack would love it, dementedly carrying the story on all their networks, reporters standing outside her house, breathlessly exclaiming over the unsolved case in which top star Zeba Khan was clearly involved! She remembered the time a careless remark she had passed about a local politician had made the morning news, thereafter being repeated all day on an endless loop in red ticker-tape at the bottom of the TV screen. They were starved for stories, these 24-hour news channels, and fell upon the smallest scrap of celebrity news as though it were manna from heaven! This story would not be a scrap of news, though. It certainly would not be difficult for a reporter to find interviewees—old schoolmates jealous of her success, teachers she had been rude to, any number of people who would no doubt delight in giving chapter and verse on how stuck-up Zeba Khan had been at school. There was a lot of stuff from those days that was well worth keeping hidden, after all.
In the mirror, Zeba saw fear and guilt darken her face at the memory of Lily and reminded herself angrily that nobody had liked the new girl. ‘Thinks too much of herself,’ someone had said, and, ‘What does she think, that she can just walk in and take over from us?’ But, even after it had been well established that Lily was the most conceited little bitch they had ever met, Zeba had been astonished to hear that Lily had had the nerve to put her name down for the lead role in the play that year. It wasn’t just that Zeba always, always played the lead—everyone knew that—but Lily was new, an outsider, for heaven’s sake! A new girl didn’t ever show such impudence if she knew what was good for her. It was no less than arrogance to think she could waltz in and steal things that had always belonged to others. Besides, it was Zeba’s final year at the school and the part of Joan of Arc had been virtually written for her. Why, old Moss, the drama teacher, had even adapted parts of the script to suit her accent as he had heard that scouts from both film school and the National School of Drama were going to be in attendance. Zeba had toiled all year for the role, neglecting her schoolwork to practise for hours before her bathroom mirror till each line had been perfected like a carefully chiselled jewel. Did everyone think she would quietly stand by and let some cocky brat from the sticks just waltz in and rob her of all that? All that effort, all that work, her ticket to film school and her dreams of stardom? Well, the bottom line was that it was not Lily D’Souza who shone in the limelight at the annual production that year. It was Zeba. It was Zeba Khan, as it always had been and was always meant to be. And, despite the circumstances surrounding that fact, Zeba could still—even after all these years—take some satisfaction from it.
Chapter Five (#u6f123e10-61fe-513d-9b8c-334c40763cd0)
DELHI, 1993
By the time Lily D’Souza had been at St Jude’s for two weeks, there were not many classmates left still trying to befriend her. She had, on her very first day, managed to upset half the population of the class by declaring that Delhi was a crass city because of its Punjabi business population, not stopping to consider that half the girls in Class XII were the daughters of Punjabi businessmen. Then, granted exemption from studying Hindi on the basis of having come from another state, she airily dismissed what was the mother-tongue of most of her classmates as ‘the language of politics and corruption’.
Even the normally peaceable Sam and uncomplicated Bubbles had retreated hurt, burnt by Lily’s acid tongue on too many occasions to persevere any more with amiable overtures. No one wanted to befriend the new girl, for that was what Lily was still persistently called.
‘It’s because she’s so horrible that we can’t stop calling her “new girl,” I think,’ Bubbles remarked as their group sat under the gulmohar tree sharing their lunches one day.
Startled by her bench-mate’s unlikely astuteness, Anita agreed. ‘Absolutely It’s not like I haven’t tried seeing it from Lily’s point of view. I mean, it’s never easy to break into an established group. But we’ve done everything to make her feel welcome, haven’t we? Well, at least Sam has.’
‘And me!’ Natasha chipped in. ‘I even offered her my Mont Blanc pen set, you know, when her crappy ball-point ran out in Biology the other day. But would she take it? Like heck! Just too nose-in-the-air, that’s what.’
‘Essentially, Lily’s done nothing to try to belong,’ said Anita firmly.
‘It’s like she’s in another world, floating way above us. Just because she’s pretty’. Zeba spat out the word.
Only Sam was still faintly doubtful. ‘Maybe we should give her more time…I mean, we don’t know yet exactly why she was brought here, but it’s almost certainly because something bad has happened in her past.’
‘But then she should tell us about it. We can only sympathise if we know.’ This was Nimmi speaking, a cheery sort of girl whom Sam knew was usually quite reasonable.
‘Definitely We’re all so open with each other, aren’t we?’ Natasha was starting to sound quite indignant now.
‘Maybe she will be too, once she’s settled down and starts coming out of herself,’ Sam replied.
Natasha spluttered on a mouthful of ham and cheese. ‘Coming out of herself! You’re not suggesting shyness is her problem, Sam? Have you seen the way she looks around the classroom? Looking without seeing, that’s what she does. As though we’re all too far beneath her to be noticed. You’re the only one she’ll deign to talk to, Sam, and even that is only when she needs something.’
‘Yeah, and have you seen how she only ever sits in the front row? Because that way she doesn’t need to look at anyone else,’ Zeba grumbled.
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ Sam murmured, ‘maybe we’re reading too much into all this. The front bench is just the place she was given. I sit in the front row too.’
‘But you’re different, you’re class monitor,’ Bubbles said, adding, ‘you’ve always sat in the front row. And you keep looking back at us at least.’
‘Yeah, only to say “ssshhh…quiet” and suchlike!’ Sam replied.
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, Sam—even you should be able to see that Lily’s just a stuck-up, arrogant little bitch,’ Zeba demurred, nibbling delicately at the edge of a shammi kebab.
‘Perhaps she thinks she’s above us because she’s the Princy’s relative and lives in her cottage,’ Bubbles offered.
‘But she said on her first day that she wasn’t related to Lamboo, remember?’ Nimmi queried.
‘Well, that’s clearly a lie, isn’t it? Why would Lamboo take her into her house if they weren’t related, huh? And didn’t Lamboo describe Lily as her relative to you, Sam?’ Zeba asked.
‘She did, actually, I’m sure I didn’t mishear that. Something about her being Lily’s nearest relative after the loss of her parents,’ Sam said, getting up and dusting sandwich crumbs off her navy pleated skirt. She scanned the playground, empty except for their own little group occupying the only shady area under the trees. Delhi in June was as hot as hell and she could see dust lifting off the basketball courts and hanging in the still air. Luckily these were the last two weeks of term before the summer holidays and she would soon be off to the hills with her family. Much as she loved Delhi, she hated the coming season of sandstorms. Already there were days when her throat and nasal passages felt clogged with dust, and she feared greatly for both her father and brother, both asthma sufferers. She cast a look at her watch.
‘C’mon, girls, we don’t want to be late for Gomes. There’s just five minutes left until the bell, and I need to fill my water flask from the cooler on the way to the lab.’
‘Oh it’s only our Gomesey,’ Zeba said lazily, stretching her lissom legs out from under her and tying her long brown tresses into a loose knot at the nape of her neck. ‘He never gets cross. I’ll take care of that.’
Everyone tittered uneasily but Sam’s forehead creased into a small anxious frown again. She had been waiting to have a serious conversation with Zeba about her relationship with their Chemistry teacher. ‘I’ve been meaning to say, Zebs…’ Sam adjusted her tone, trying to sound less sanctimonious. ‘You really must stop this absurd thing before it goes too far. I feel so terribly scared of what might happen, you know.’
But Zeba merely smiled cheekily up at her, amusement making her pretty brown eyes twinkle and dance. ‘Listen, Sami, this “thing,” as you describe it, has been going on for a couple of months now and nothing has happened, has it? Has it?’
‘What do you mean, “nothing”—you mean, like, you haven’t had full-blown sex, yeah?’ Natasha clarified.
Bubbles squealed at the sound of the word ‘sex’, clapping her hands over her ears and giggling uncontrollably. Zeba threw her a disparaging look as Sam tried gamely to continue her counsel. ‘Even if it’s not…sex,’ she cleared her throat, ‘you have been doing…all kinds of things you just shouldn’t with a teacher, Zeba.’
‘Only waist up, Sam, nothing waist down,’ Natasha said in a reassuring tone, adding, ‘and he only went past her bra just the other day.’
Bubbles squealed again but Zeba regally ignored her this time, nodding in appreciation of Natasha’s defence. ‘Anyway, it was Gomes who made the first move, not me,’ she said.
‘Yeah, like that makes a real difference,’ Anita said sardonically.
Natasha put in another mild entreaty on behalf of Zeba in her phlegmatic American drawl. ‘Hey, listen, we all know of Zeba’s irrepressible desire to flirt. Can’t we just let it be?’
‘And what can I do anyway if he keeps flirting with me?’ Zeba asked, emboldened by Natasha’s defence and trying now to sound wounded.
‘Well, if you’re such a victim you could try reporting him, couldn’t you?’ Anita enquired caustically.
Sam cut in hastily, ‘I don’t know about that. We’ll have to think things through before taking such a course of action. Reporting a teacher is a big deal. Gomes will go and lose his job and there’ll be an enquiry and heaven knows what else. Can’t you just try to put an end to it yourself, Zeba? Just tell him he’s too old for you or something.’
‘But right now it’s just so amusing, Sam,’ Zeba giggled. ‘Last week he was leaning over me, to use the pipette, y’know, and, when his hand slipped it landed on my thigh…’
‘If I were you, I’d have screamed my lungs out at that point,’ Anita said sharply.
Zeba looked pityingly at her as though assessing the unlikely prospect of anyone, Gomes or otherwise, making a pass at someone who wore glasses and pigtails.
‘You let him grab your thigh?! Really, Zeba, how can you be such an idiot!’ a horrified Sam exclaimed, ignoring the sound of the bell clanging in the distance, which announced the end of the break.
‘When you’re Zeba, being an idiot is the easy bit, Sam,’ Anita put in drily.
Sam could not bring herself to smile, despite Bubbles and Natasha going off into gales of giggles at that. ‘Just don’t encourage him, Zebs, please!’ she implored.
Zeba got up along with the others, now looking slightly more shame-faced than before. ‘It’s actually not so easy to put Gomes off, you know, Sam…’ she said as they dusted down their uniforms.
‘Why not?’ Anita demanded, picking up her satchel. ‘Give me one good reason.’
‘You see…well, okay, I’ll tell you because I eventually would have anyway. But, listen to this—Gomes says he might be able to get the Chemistry paper for me before the Board Exams. A friend of his is the person who’s going to be setting it. Just think of it…’ Zeba looked around at the group, half pleading and half excited.
There was a sudden silence as everyone stopped walking to look at her open-mouthed.
‘He what?!’ Anita screeched.
‘Oh Zeba, how could you…’ Sam breathed.
‘Listen, I was going to share the paper with you guys, so don’t look at me like that!’ Zeba said.
‘Oh God, Zeba, like that would make it all better. Oh, I just don’t know what to say,’ Sam wailed.
‘Listen, without it I’ll just flunk. And there’ll be no getting to the film institute without a school leaving cert. Then my parents will ground me and there’ll be no outings and no fun, and life just won’t be worth living,’ Zeba said, her voice rising dramatically.
‘We’ll talk about this later—okay? God, there’s the second bell! Now I won’t even have time to go to the loo,’ Sam wailed over her shoulder as she hurried away from the group of friends. Leaving them to wend their way across to the Chemistry lab, she ran towards the water-coolers, nodding absently as she passed a gaggle of seventh graders on their way out of choir practice. They had temporarily suspended their trilling to say hello to her but Sam’s thoughts were miles away as she hastened past them with a serious look on her face. Normally she made it a point to talk to her many fans among the juniors, but today she had not even noticed that she had left them gazing disappointed at her retreating back.
How horribly muddling all this was, Sam considered while filling her water flask. As head girl she really ought to do something about this ghastly mess, but what? Perhaps she ought to let Gomes know somehow that the girls all knew what was going on and that his dirty secret could not be contained any more. Anyone could stumble upon Gomes and Zeba in the lab, which was where—as far as Sam knew—most of their trysts took place.
She ran down the corridor and reached the lab just as her group of friends were walking through the door. By now Sam was perspiring profusely, both from the heat and out of fear. Fortunately the Chemistry lab was the coolest and darkest room in the school, shaded by ancient trees. Set back from the Edwardian building that housed all the classrooms, it had once been the outside kitchen of the old convent that had since acquired a brand-spanking-new stainless-steel canteen indoors. Converting a kitchen to a lab must have been easy, Sam had observed when she had first set foot in this building. The shelves of colourful spices had been replaced by bottled chemicals and the sink now bled the pink juice of potassium permanganate crystals rather than the blood from meat. The faintly unpleasant smell of hydrogen sulphide hung over everything now, though that apparently hadn’t been much of a deterrent to either Gomes or Zeba.
Sam tried not to feel nauseated when she saw their Chemistry teacher simpering openly at Zeba while the group took their places on the stools surrounding his desk. Gomes was a tall, slim man with a mop of oily black hair, and would not have been bad looking were it not for an underhand kind of manner that Sam had often found quite sly. Even the way he walked around made it look as though he were sliding around the lab rather than walking. The incorrigible Zeba looked nonchalant as she perched herself on a stool right under the teacher’s nose amid all the clattering and shuffling. She placed one foot on the stool next to her, a position that caused her skirt to slide a few inches up her long legs. Gomes whipped out a handkerchief and wiped his forehead with it, his small black eyes flicking momentarily towards the shadow between Zeba’s thighs before he struggled to look away. Sam took up her station at the counter as Gomes came around lighting the Bunsen burners, keeping a wary eye on Zeba who was whispering with Bubbles and saying something so hysterical that it was making both girls shake with laughter. As Gomes approached the pair, he dropped the matchbox, scattering matches all over the floor. This made the girls crease up some more and then, while he was scrabbling around on his knees, Zeba stood up behind him to make a thrusting gesture with her hips, wearing a droll expression on her face. Sam flashed a warning look at Zeba as the whole class started to titter and Gomes staggered back to his feet, red in the face. The laughter didn’t seem to bother him, though, and he merely looked adoringly at Zeba as she readjusted her facial expression to one of faux respect, leaning forward on the counter so that he could see right down the V of her open-necked blouse to where her cleavage nestled temptingly. Sam shot a look around the classroom and saw that while most of the girls remained oblivious to the drama of Zeba and Gomes, busying themselves with today’s silver-making experiment, Lily D’Souza had her eyes carefully fixed on the pair. Sam saw those pale blue-grey eyes narrow in recognition before Lily looked as though she were calculating something in her head. Sam shivered and looked pleadingly at Zeba, who was still behaving as though she’d inhaled a whole canister of nitrous oxide. Oh, she was going to get such a telling-off when the school day finished.
Zeba was, however, her usual insouciant self when Sam cornered her after their lab session.
‘You should have seen the way Lily was looking at you when you were flirting with Gomes,’ Sam hissed, squeezing Zeba’s elbow hard as they walked to the gate to emphasise her point.
‘First of all, Sam, it’s not me flirting with Gomes but the other way around, okay? And secondly, I’m not scared of Lily. What can she do to me, hanh?’ Zeba replied brazenly.
‘What can she do? She can tell Lamboo, that’s what! And then we’re all in big trouble.’
‘She’ll never tell Lamboo, yaar,’ Zeba dismissed airily.
‘Oh, and what makes you so confident?’
‘Well, because they never talk to each other at all—we all know that. Whatever goes on in the Princy’s cottage after school, happy chit-chat between Lamboo and Lily doesn’t seem to be part of it.’
Sam recognised the truth of what Zeba said. The principal and Lily certainly did not seem to get on very well. On some days they barely made eye-contact with each other when Miss Lamb was taking their English lesson, or so Sam had observed. So it was a relatively safe deduction that Lamboo was the last person Lily would go snitching to. But that didn’t take away from the fact that Zeba was still dancing with death, playing with fire—no hyperbole would suffice to express Sam’s terror.
But to Zeba she merely said, ‘You could be right about Lily not telling Lamboo. I do hope for your own sake you are. But someone else could sneak…’
‘Who? No one in our class would tattle, you know that.’
‘Hmmm,’ Sam conceded reluctantly. ‘Look, we’ll talk about this later, Zeba, and I’ll help you figure out a way to get rid of Gomes. But I gotta go now. I have Haroon coming to pick me up today.’
The conversation was dropped as Bubbles joined them in the exodus to the school gates. ‘What are you two talking about?’ she asked.
‘Nothing much,’ Zeba said. ‘Well, I’m off to my bus. Bye—and stop fretting, Samira Hussain! I’ll look after myself. I promise!’
‘What’s she talking about?’ Bubbles asked.
‘Oh, just that damn Gomes thing. I really, really want her to put an end to it before it all goes horribly wrong.’
‘Do you think—just maybe—sex and all…’
‘Oh Bubs, how can you be so naïve?’ Sam said, throwing her head back in despair. ‘There’s only one person Zeba will ever love and that’s herself. Thing is, she’s so beautiful she’ll always have men chasing after her, and I guess she’ll just use that to get what she wants.’
‘Maybe Gomes loves her?’ Bubbles offered, undaunted. ‘After all, he’s risking his job and all that too.’
Sam finally smiled in sheer exasperation. ‘What is it with all these theories of love, Bubbles Malhotra? And, pray, are you being kind enough to walk with me to the gates only because a certain Mr Haroon Hussain is expected? I know I foolishly mentioned in your presence during lunch break that my brother was coming to pick me up.’
Bubbles blushed and Sam squeezed her arm, laughing, ‘You’re just hopeless at hiding your feelings, you know!’
Bubbles had met Haroon at least a hundred times, having been a regular visitor to Sam’s house since the age of six. But her comfortable old relationship with Sam’s big brother had recently undergone a curious shift that she had magnificently failed to conceal. Sam wasn’t sure yet how serious it was, but it would have been impossible to miss Bubbles’ newly developed curiosity about Haroon’s life, or the ineptitude with which she conspired to be in his presence, only to become all gauche and awkward when she was.
Sam spotted her brother’s head in the crowd and waved. She made her way through the car park, which was crowded with parked cars and school buses, Bubbles still glued to her side. She couldn’t bring herself to ask Bubbles why she wasn’t searching for her car. That would be too rude, and poor Bubbles had already lapsed into tongue-tied silence at the distant sight of Haroon anyway. As Haroon spotted the girls, he raised a lanky arm and grinned lopsidedly The other thing Sam hadn’t figured out yet was if Haroon reciprocated Bubbles’ feelings. He certainly liked her, but then he had always treated Sam’s friends nicely. Not that Sam would mind at all if her brother did start going out with her best friend. Bubbles was pretty much already a part of her family.
‘Hey there, gorgeous girls,’ Haroon said as they neared.
‘You only said that because Bubbles is here,’ Sam complained, throwing her bag into the back seat of the car. ‘On my own, I’d never ever get a compliment.’
‘That’s not true!’ Haroon protested. ‘Is it true? Bubbles, you tell us. Am I not always showering my sister with compliments? I order you to arbitrate!’
Bubbles smiled shyly from under her lashes, her voice little more than a whisper. ‘I don’t think it’s true at all. Haroon’s always saying nice things about you, Sam!’
‘Yeah, right, turncoat!’ Sam said.
‘Good girl, high-five,’ Haroon yelled, slapping palms with Bubbles. ‘Need a lift?’ he asked, reaching out for her bag.
‘No, no, it’s okay,’ Bubbles replied.
‘Really, it’d be no trouble at all. Hop into the car,’ Haroon insisted, not noticing his sister’s exasperated eye-roll.
‘Come on, Bubs, do you or don’t you want us to take you home?’ Sam asked.
Hearing the irritation in her friend’s voice, Bubbles started backing away. ‘No, no, my car must be here somewhere. I just came to see off Sam and to say hello to you, Haroon…’
‘You sure, Bubbles? A lift wouldn’t be a problem. You’re right on our way…’ Haroon wasn’t letting go and now Bubbles was looking ever more confused.
‘Yes, she’s sure, Haroon! Didn’t you hear her say that her car’s here?’ Sam yelled, climbing into the passenger seat. ‘C’mon, let’s get going now, I’m starving! Okay, bye, Bubbles!’
‘That wasn’t very nice,’ Haroon said to his sister as they finally pulled away, Bubbles waving forlornly at them from the car park and barely noticing that she was blocking the path of a bus.
‘God, if you must romance each other, at least have the decency not to carry on under my nose,’ Sam snapped.
‘Romance? What—me and Bubbles? You can’t be serious!’
‘Well, I think she is. And I think she thinks you feel the same.’ Sam was seriously annoyed but squawked in fright as her brother, who was gazing astounded at her, nearly ran into the back of a taxi.
‘You mean you hadn’t noticed about Bubs?’ she asked after Haroon and the taxi-driver he was overtaking had stopped gesticulating rudely at each other.
‘No! Since when?’ Haroon asked, adding an agonised, ‘Why?’
‘Beats me,’ Sam replied impolitely, before accusing Haroon, ‘Must have been something you said. You must have led her on in some way.’
‘Me? Lead Bubbles on? For God’s sake…I’ve known the kid since she was a snot-faced six-year-old!’
‘Oh, poor Bubs! So you don’t fancy her,’ Sam said. ‘She’s never had her heart broken before. And it’ll all be your fault! I hope you’re happy with what you’ve gone and done now, Haroon Hussain.’
‘But I haven’t done anything. Look, just tell her tomorrow that she’s got it all wrong, okay?’ Haroon wheedled. ‘Please?’
‘Why should I be burdened with breaking her heart? You’re the one breaking it. You tell her!’
‘Have a heart, Sam. I can’t say anything to her if she hasn’t said anything to me, can I?’
There was some logic to that, Sam had to agree. ‘Well, okay, I’ll try to say something to her,’ she said finally. ‘Not tomorrow, necessarily, but whenever I get the chance. And I don’t know when that will be, so don’t keep pestering me in the meantime, okay?’
‘Thanks, sis,’ Haroon said with relief, ‘I owe you one.’
Sam sighed, looking out of the window as they approached India Gate and the roads became quieter. The lawns flanking the road were brown from the summer sun and ice-cream vendors were plying a brisk trade along their edges. ‘Trouble is, Bubbles isn’t very good at picking up non-verbal cues. I’ll have to virtually hit her over the head with this information. Then she’ll probably start crying and—aaaaarrrrggghhh—why did the idiot have to go and fall for you, of all people, Haroon!’
‘Well, some people just can’t help their magnetic good looks and overwhelming charm, I guess,’ Haroon said, twinkling and then hollering ‘Owww’ as he earned a sisterly slap on his thigh.
Chapter Six (#u6f123e10-61fe-513d-9b8c-334c40763cd0)
LONDON, 2008
Bubbles sniffed her forearm appreciatively. Bergamot oil would help unwind her tense mind, the therapist at the Mandarin Oriental had assured her. The diminutive Chinese woman had been unfailingly sympathetic and gentle but, while being ministered to, Bubbles had not been able to help speculating that this woman was thinking, as all her therapists no doubt did: ‘What the hell do you, you beautiful, lazy, pampered wife of a millionaire, have to be stressed about?’ The staff at the Mandarin Oriental spa had emitted a collective sigh when Bubbles mentioned her recent cruise in the Bahamas, but little did they know how stressful it had been for her to play dutiful daughter-in-law throughout her two weeks trapped on the Minerva, not just to Binkie’s mother this time but to all her cousins and best friends too! There was no point trying to explain. These people would never understand anything,
The Bahamas cruise had been particularly difficult for Bubbles, because added to the usual stresses had been the effect of Lamboo’s recent letter. It wasn’t merely that the letter had been a shocking reminder of Lily and Haroon and all the terrible events of that winter. Bubbles had not been at all prepared for the manner in which Lamboo’s words would transport her back to her school years in Delhi and make her think of all the things she could have done to change her fortunes. She had spent much time on board the yacht thinking of the place she was in now, married on sufferance into a family to whom she was at best a convenience, rather than a loved and respected member. Of course, Bubbles could never say anything like that to anyone because she knew that no one in their right mind would ever look at her and think, ‘Oh, poor
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Jaishree Misra
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современная зарубежная литература
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: The Secret History meets Daddy’s Girls as four old schoolfriends reunite after fifteen years in this sizzling blockbuster.You can′t run away from your past…Anita, Zeba, Bubbles and Sam have a friendship that spans 20 years – a friendship born out of their years at a private girls’ school in Delhi in the early Nineties. Beautiful, intelligent and secretive, they were the top clique; the girls that everyone wanted to impress – until the arrival of a newcomer to the school. 15-year-old Lily D′Souza is beautiful, gifted and acerbic and instantly threatens their superiority.Now, Anita, Sam and Bubbles live in London. Bubbles is the pampered but bored wife of a billionaire, Anita is a top journalist working for the BBC, whilst Sam tries hard to be a trophy wife for her corporate lawyer husband. Zeba remained in India, and now lives a life of unimaginable luxury as the world′s reigning Bollywood queen.Called back to India for a reunion by their beloved school principal Mrs Lamb, the women must confront a secret that has haunted their adult lives. Lily′s body was found on the night of their school prom and, for twenty years, the open verdict has shielded the fact that they may have had a hand in her death.But as they reunite in Delhi to find out the truth about what really happened that night, will their friendship stand the strain? Or are some things better left unsaid…?