Secrets and Lies. Jaishree Misra

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СКАЧАТЬ 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: СКАЧАТЬ