A Scandalous Secret. Jaishree Misra

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СКАЧАТЬ band. The planning had gone on for weeks and poor Mum had suffered terribly from varicose veins afterwards – the main reason why Sonya had insisted they didn’t go down the same route for her recent eighteenth which had consequently been a much quieter and more intimate affair. She’d spent the morning with Granny Shaw and later taken the train up to London with Mum and Dad to have dinner at their favourite Indian restaurant: Rasa on Charlotte Street, whose fish curries Dad described as ‘divine’ even as he went red in the face, his brow breaking out into a sweat because of the chillies that, despite all his protestations, he had never really grown accustomed to. Dinner had been followed by the new Alan Bennett play at the National Theatre and later, walking with arms linked, across Waterloo Bridge, all three of them had declared it one of Sonya’s best birthday celebrations ever.

      Sonya’s musings were interrupted by the ring of her mobile phone and the sight of Estella’s smiling face flashing on the screen. The customary half a dozen phone calls they exchanged every day had suddenly doubled because of the forthcoming party at Estella’s this weekend. It wasn’t quite a joint eighteenth birthday party as their birthdays were six months apart; the celebration was more about both of them getting into the colleges of their choice. The downer was that, with Sonya heading off to Oxford and Estella to Bristol, they were going to be physically separated for the first time in thirteen years. The trip around India was a last hurrah to all the years they had spent, if Sonya’s mum was to be believed, behaving like twins conjoined at the heart.

      Sonya pressed her thumb on the green talk button and put the phone to her ear. ‘Wassup?’ she queried, sitting up against her cushions and propping her feet up on the window frame.

      ‘I think I’m suffering from party nerves,’ Estella said, in a loud hammed-up moan. ‘Nothing normally wakes me this early. Must be the nerves.’

      ‘Nerves? What are you blethering on about, you don’t own any nerves, Stel! Even your mum says she’s never seen you lose your head over anything.’

      ‘Not true! There must be something I agitate over,’ Estella replied, not sounding very sure of her capacity to agitate.

      ‘Nope. Not a hint of a nerve. Or heart for that matter. Totally cold-hearted and unfazed, for instance by the fact that you and I are shortly due to be torn asunder for the first time in thirteen years.’

      ‘Oh that! No cause for distress, Sonya darling. Oxford and Bristol are hardly at opposite ends of the earth, are they? And we’ll both be back home for Christmas before you know it!’

      Sonya briefly considered feeling hurt by Estella’s seeming lack of concern but it was typical of her best friend to face life-changing moments without so much as batting an eyelid. But she had to admit, Estella’s customary breezy insouciance had been oddly comforting on occasion. It sure was difficult to get too stressed around someone who was so laid-back she was almost horizontal. ‘You’re right, I guess,’ Sonya replied. ‘But don’t pretend to have nerves just because it’s what you think you should be having on the eve of a party. Everything’s well under control from what I can see.’

      ‘It’s a bit weird, though, that everything’s been delegated and there’s no more to be done. Now I just want it to go well and for everyone to enjoy themselves.’

      ‘Of course they’ll enjoy themselves, silly. I have to admit, though, that the party’s hardly topmost in my mind, given the holiday in India coming so soon after. Perhaps we should have spaced them out by a week so we could have planned both things properly. I can’t seem to get too excited about India at the moment.’

      ‘You’re daft. I’m so excited I can hardly stand still! Don’t forget there wasn’t the time to space things out. Not with us having to get back to England in time for the start of uni.’

      ‘Yeah, shame really that the visas took so long or we could even have managed an extra week in India. Maybe I’ll start getting excited once this party’s out of the way.’

      ‘Fuck me sideways with a broomstick, Sonya!’ Estella squawked. ‘The party’s nothing compared to this India holiday. It’s once-in-a-lifetime kinda stuff!’

      ‘Well, it sure solved a lot of people’s questions about eighteenth birthday presents,’ Sonya laughed.

      ‘Personally, I think both our parents have got off rather lightly with buying just the air tickets, especially seeing what troupers the extended families have been,’ Estella joked.

      ‘Too right. Your Uncle Gianni insisting we go all the way down south to Kerala was just the best. Imagine insisting on getting my ticket too!’

      ‘My Uncle G’s the sweetest. Helps that he’s loaded, of course. By the way, I’m off tomorrow to buy the backpack that Auntie Maria’s given me money for.’

      ‘Listen, we should make a date soon to investigate that travel shop in Soho too,’ Sonya reminded.

      ‘Which? Oh the one Toby told us about that specializes in tropical stuff? But I thought your mum’s already kitted us out with tubes of insect repellent and various other forms of goo?’

      ‘No, no, not that kind of thing. This shop does clothing and equipment and stuff.’

      ‘You make it sound like we’re headed off into the jungle, ready to hack our way through tropical undergrowth! I hardly think Delhi and Kerala require special clothing, Sonya.’

      ‘Well, we have to get shots down at the GP’s surgery so it’s not exactly a trip down the road to Bromley, is it?’

      Estella laughed. ‘It certainly ain’t that. I can’t wait to be off. Just need to get this damned party out of the way first. Oh fuck, I just remembered, Mum asked me to call Alberto’s deli for some salami. Gotta go!’

      After her friend had hung up, Sonya continued to lie stretched in her bay window, sunning her propped-up legs. She had fitted perfectly into this space until she was about ten but now, at a lanky five foot eight, she had to fold herself up in all sorts of ingenious ways in order to tuck herself in. She picked up a cushion and clutched it against her chest, trying to quell another flutter of anticipation. This trip – till recently some kind of distant and unlikely endeavour – had suddenly become a lot more real. Before anyone knew it, she would be off, flying into the unknown … an unknown past, by any measure, a curious concept. Finding out about a whole new family …

      Sonya tried to infuse herself with determination and pulled herself back into a sitting position. She plumped up the pillows in the bay window, instructing herself to get on with the task at hand. But instead she stayed where she was, scrolling through the apps on her phone to inspect her calendar. It had been five days since she’d sent that letter and she hadn’t mentioned it to either Estella or her parents yet. Only Priyal knew and that was only because Sonya had needed a source of information on all matters related to India. Priyal had suggested that a letter to Delhi could take anything from five days to two weeks to arrive.

      What would Neha Chaturvedi’s response be when it did finally get to her, Sonya wondered. Not that she cared, or anything, but if she did, she’d have given an arm and a leg to be a fly on the wall when that letter got opened. She had written three different versions and had eventually gone for the hard-hitting one because no other tone had seemed quite appropriate; certainly not namby-pamby politeness! Besides, pussy-footing about and avoiding tackling important issues just wasn’t her style.

      Sonya rolled to one side and slipped a sheet of paper out from under the mattress in her bay window. She’d kept a photocopy of the letter she had sent as writing it had been such a momentous СКАЧАТЬ