A Scandalous Secret (10 page)

Neha sat up, unsure of how many hours had passed since she had stumbled from the bathroom and onto the bed. Her mouth was parched and the darkness felt suffocating, as though it was reaching into her throat trying to choke her. She reached out for the switches beside the headboard and blinked her smarting eyes as the room flooded with light. She needed to distract herself otherwise her thoughts were going to drive her crazy. Perhaps she ought to call room service and get something to eat as her stomach was rumbling terribly. But, despite her hunger, the thought of food made her feel sick. Neha looked around her for something, anything that she could read. She had not bothered to bring along her laptop this time, having learnt from previous visits that there was patchy internet access at Ananda, and, in her state of distraction, she had even forgotten to bring her usual tranche of books. But she spotted a newspaper rack in the corner and got up to look for some lightweight magazine section that would tell her about diets and skincare, or how to tell if your partner was cheating on you.

Neha riffled through the usual collection of Indian newspapers and pulled out the
International Herald Tribune
. She took the paper to the sofa and spread it out
on the table in front of her as she sat down. For a few seconds, the newsprint was a complete blur, letters and symbols all merging into one another before her swollen eyes. The picture on the front page was in full colour, however, showing the British Prime Minister and his wife holding their newborn baby outside Downing Street. David Cameron was beaming into the camera but his wife was smiling softly as she looked down at her lace-wrapped child. Her hands were a mother's hands, gentle and strong, held in the shape of a cradle.

Neha had observed all such details in new mothers before; the glowing skin and secret smile, that serene Madonna-like look … as though it was in this precise moment that women achieved the acme of their existence. Even Jasmeet, usually brisk and bordering on belligerent, even she had turned all soft and maternal when her girls were newborn. Neha had tried to assist with their care when the girls were small, Jasmeet never being able to hang on to good
ayahs
for very long, and the two children called her
Maasi
: mother's sister. They weren't the only ones. Over the years, most of Neha's female friends and relatives had given birth and Neha had unerringly run the same routine – buying bootees and blankets as gifts, or miniature gold chains and pendants embossed with baby Krishna's image for those more closely related. She would carry those gifts beautifully wrapped and often add a little something for the new mother or any older children too. She would then enter bedrooms that smelt sweetly of milk and talcum powder and bend over cradles before steeling herself to ask permission to pick up and hold the child. How appealing and yet how heartbreaking, those tiny angelic beings. Neha would stroke peach-like cheeks with longing and feel minuscule fingers wrap themselves around her own, mistakenly assuming ownership. Yes, she
had done all that without cracking and always, always successfully masking her pain.

It was time now to do that all over again. For Sharat's sake this time. Neha sat very still, looking out at the night and trying to gather her thoughts. She knew she ought not to be cowardly and abandon Sharat until
he
told her he did not want her any more. Which he was very likely to do when he found out about Sonya. But that would have to be his decision, not hers. After all, he had been so unfailingly gentle and kind in the face of their not having children. And if she could survive giving up her baby when she was no more than a child herself, surely there was nothing she was not strong enough to face now.

Sonya looked down at the massive city that her plane was circling over, almost unable to believe she was finally arriving in India. The earth looked dry and dusty, despite the inflight magazine's information about monsoons in August and September. Her heart was beating like a tin drum, both from excitement and anxiety. It was crazy to think she was finally here, the land she had thought of so much these past few months, trying to figure out her links to it. More frighteningly, she was on the brink of confronting the woman who had given birth to her, and then heartlessly given her away. It should be a relief to finally solve the biggest questions to have dogged her life so far but, at this point in time, Sonya could only feel a kind of numbness.

The stewardess was announcing something about landing in Delhi's new international airport and finally, with a screeching of engines and wheels, they had arrived. The airport terminal was surprisingly smart and looked much larger than Heathrow. The man at the immigration desk was polite and efficient and the baggage came through on the carousel without too much delay. Sonya's first impressions of India were very favourable indeed.

However, all resemblances to cosy, first-world Britain came to an abrupt end when the girls had gone past customs and looked outside the immense glass windows that lined the arrivals area. Sonya felt overwhelmed by the surging crowd she could see, dark-faced people wearing desperate expressions as though they had been standing in the searing sun all morning holding a placard bearing the name of someone who was refusing to arrive. She clutched at Estella's hand, seeing a similar look of alarm on her friend's face as the two of them prepared for this first episode of their Indian adventure.

The heat hit them like a blast as they left the air-conditioned airport building and made for the prepaid taxi queue that their
Lonely Planet
guide had helpfully told them about. They had so far impressed themselves, dealing confidently with the Delhi police who handled the taxi service and, before that, an Indian version of the Bureau de Change. But, now that they were actually on foreign soil, both girls felt a frisson of fear and uncertainty pass through them. Neither of them had travelled without at least one parent or teacher before, and never as far as this. And Delhi was only their first stop in a brief but complicated itinerary. They were to spend a week here, possibly squeezing in a couple of days to Agra and the Taj, followed by Goa and a beach resort near Cochin before they flew back to London.

Having paid what sounded like a vast amount of rupees to receive a taxi token, the girls looked around for the vehicle whose number they had been given. Everywhere was a sea of curious brown faces. There was no hostility but Sonya was struck by how frankly some men stared at them, their eyes boring into their faces and sometimes even wandering across their chests and legs. Finally, what
looked like a rusty old Morris Minor, half black and half yellow, rattled up towards them. The number was matched up with a lot of shouting and gesticulating on the part of the driver and the girls clambered in with their suitcases and back-packs.

‘Bloody hell, it's a furnace,' Estella said, with a giggle.

‘The guide book said late September can sometimes be very hot and muggy. So weird, given that September generally spells the start to our winter. After all, we're in the same hemisphere.' Sonya fanned her face furiously with the
Easy Hindi Translation
book Mum had found for her in Bromley library. The book had been no use at all at the airport but she wouldn't tell her mother that. Sonya had attempted a couple of sentences of what sounded like total gobbledegook at the airport, and received blank looks for all her pains so, as far as she could see, the book was going to be returned to the library unread.

‘Well, Indian winters are hardly likely to be anything like the winters we know!' Estella said, clipping her short hair up to keep it away from her neck. Sonya saw that she was already quite red from the heat.

‘I dunno. It does get quite cold up here in the northern part of the country, I believe. I've been
studying
, unlike some others I could mention,' Sonya said, referring to Estella's typical insouciance which had been in marked contrast to her own assiduous research on all aspects of India. ‘It'll be all right on the night' had always been one of Estella's favourite sayings but, for Sonya, this was not a mere holiday but a mission. She had to be sure she was getting everything right because so much rested on the success of her trip.

‘Hey, have we told this Johnny where to go?' Estella
asked, looking out of the window in sudden concern. They had left the airport way behind and were now whizzing down a busy road. Sonya noticed with alarm the intensity with which the taxi driver was hitting the accelerator, leaning forward in his seat as though he could get his car to go faster by the force of sheer willpower. Luckily it was only an old rattletrap of a vehicle, but the man was nevertheless managing to weave through Delhi's traffic like a demented racing car driver.

‘Don't think we need to. The address is on that bit of paper we gave him,' Sonya gasped, clinging to a tattered leather loop that was hanging from the roof to prevent being flung about. There were no seat belts in the back seat although the driver had a makeshift one loosely wound around himself.

‘You sure we were meant to give that counterfoil to him? I thought the man in the booth said we were to hold on to it till we got to our hotel.'

‘I think you could be right. Shitty-poos!' Sonya shot a worried look at the tiny scrap of yellow paper that sat on the dashboard, well out of her reach. ‘I can't very well ask him for it now, can I?'

‘No, fuck, that'd be making it too obvious that we don't trust him.' Estella looked horrified at the thought of upsetting one of the first Indians she had met by making such racist assumptions.

‘Hmm, he doesn't seem too happy a chappie anyway, the way he's driving this thing. Like he got out of bed intent on killing someone today. I just don't want that someone to be us!'

‘If he can't kill by car, he may even decide to do it the easy way,' Estella giggled again, adding cheerfully, ‘Well, there's two of us and just one of him if he does attack.'

‘And he's only a weedy little specimen,' Sonya added, trying to sound more confident than she felt.

Not that she would ever admit it to Mum and Dad, or even Estella for that matter, but – while dear old Estella had snored her way across the skies above Europe and the Middle East – Sonya, finding it impossible to sleep, had found herself getting more and more nervous at the thought of what lay ahead in India. Perhaps she was even developing some form of paranoia – evidenced by her panicky reaction to a fellow passenger who had got out of his seat just before the plane was due to land. The man had pulled a guitar case out of the overhead locker and made for the front of the aircraft and Sonya's instinctive terrified response had been: ‘
Hijacker!
' Seconds later, she had been forced to confront her knee-jerk reaction to the brown-skinned man sporting facial hair. Her shame and embarrassment had been so great that she had not even mentioned the incident to Estella when she had surfaced from her slumber a few minutes after.

Equally stupidly, Sonya could not now help questioning herself of the wisdom of her endeavour here in Delhi. It was still not too late to put brakes on the whole thing. The letter had been sent and could not be retracted, of course. It had probably already succeeded in alarming the pants off Neha Chaturvedi. But, having achieved that, it was perfectly possible for Sonya to now do nothing more. It would serve the woman right to live in uncertainty for the rest of her days, wondering whether her abandoned daughter was going to turn up someday or not. Sonya could even have saved the bother of travelling all the way out to India and spared both Estella and herself the near-death experience they were going through now! She felt
extremely vulnerable, clinging to her seat as the taxi careened down the road, overtaking cars and trucks recklessly and in every which way. Besides, it was so hot and sticky, even her chest and tummy were sweating. She should have listened to Mum and gone with them to the Canaries again, as had been mooted before this trip came to be. But her doubt didn't quite cancel out her determination – she needed to have some answers before she embarked on the next chapter of her life. For some reason, she felt it imperative to know where she had come from before she set off for university to seek out her own identity.

‘Hey look, it says “Defence Services Enclave” on that blue board there,' Estella said, twenty minutes later when they stopped at a traffic light. She pointed out of the window to the far side of the road. ‘Wasn't that what we were asked to look out for?'

‘Sure is, well spotted!' Sonya said, relief flooding through her at the confirmation that they were not being kidnapped. Her friend Priyal had regaled her back in Orpington with tales of cousins to whom horrific things had happened in India but Sonya had taken the precaution of corresponding with the Indian family who ran the B&B they were due to stay in and their teenaged son had emailed a very useful set of directions to get to the place.

She jumped at a tapping on the window pane next to her and looked straight out at a beggar woman who was standing inches away, clutching a scrawny baby in one arm and stretching out her other hand beseechingly. A pair of flies was buzzing around the child's face, occasionally settling on an open sore next to its mouth. Sonya suppressed a shudder and threw a confused look at
Estella, who had also gone a little pale at the sight of such abject poverty. ‘Should we give her something, Stel?' Sonya asked. ‘I really want to give her some food or money, you know.'

‘I'm not sure, Son. I think I remember one of the guidebooks saying that giving money to beggars was illegal. And we've got no food on us, except for chewing gum and mints.'

‘But who would know if we did give her some money? There's no one checking, is there?'

‘I guess … what should we give her? I haven't got my head around the currency here yet …'

Sonya scrabbled around in her backpack, looking for her purse but, before she could find it, the driver had started up the taxi again and was doing a crazy U-turn at the traffic lights in order to head back for the sign-posted gate. Sonya looked back at the beggar woman, feeling wretched at having failed to give her anything, but she saw through the manic traffic that she appeared not even to have noticed, now tapping on the window of another car standing at the lights. Even though Sonya had fully anticipated seeing beggars here in India, her first encounter had made her feel rather crummy and, with a sudden sharp consciousness of how fortunate she was, Sonya felt terrible at having joked so lightly that the taxi driver might have been trying to kidnap them. This was, all said and done, a poor country and she had no right to be making fun of people so much more unfortunate than her.

‘Our B&B should be no more than ten minutes from this gate,' she said, peering out at the dusty trees that lined the road they had taken. Dust was swirling around in the hot air, sticking to everything, especially the windows of the car.

‘Homestay was the term used on the website, wasn't it? So perhaps that's what they call B&Bs here,' Estella replied, looking at the numbers on the gates they were passing. The taxi man had finally slowed down, allowing them to search for the house.

‘Ah, here it is – stop, stop!' Sonya said to the driver, tapping his shoulder as she spotted the name ‘Mahajan' in big brass letters on the gatepost. The car screeched to a halt in a cloud of dust and the two girls disembarked with some relief.

‘I think he's expecting a tip,' Sonya said as the taxi driver gave them their prepaid receipt and muttered something in Hindi.

‘Don't think we're meant to give him any more,' Estella replied. ‘Aren't those the rules of these prepaid thingies?'

‘There may be some kind of tipping system. Shit, I was planning to ask back at the airport but this damned
Easy Hindi Translation
thing was distracting me. I'm sure I read something in
Lonely Planet
about tips. Should I check?'

‘Oh, let's just give him something. No skin off our noses,' the ever-pragmatic Estella said swiftly.

Sonya, who had all their Indian money, started to fish around in her backpack again. ‘I don't mind giving him a tip, except that my wallet's bulging a bit with all those rupees we bought at the Bureau de Change and I'm not sure it'd be wise to wave thousands of rupees around while giving him just ten rupees or whatever,' she said, keeping her hand within the safety of the backpack.

‘Perhaps we should have sorted it out at the airport,' Estella said, looking nervously as Sonya's small purse emerged. It was fat with notes.

‘How much do you think?'

‘Golly, I haven't a clue!'

‘What's it say on here … have a look …'

‘Hmmm, let's see now, that's a hundred rupee note, right?'

‘Lemme see … yes, I think it is. Unless they write things in pence here, or – what is it again? – paisa, right? But, assuming this is a hundred rupees, this is … what … divide that by seventy … about one pound fifty, isn't it?'

‘That should do, shouldn't it?'

‘I guess,' Sonya said doubtfully, handing the note with some trepidation across to the driver while looking searchingly at his face. Both girls were startled by the brilliance of the smile they received in return as the man took the money and slipped it into his shirt pocket. He bowed before getting back into his car.

‘So now we know a hundred rupees is a generous tip!' Sonya laughed as the taxi sped off with no further ado.

They opened the gate to the house and walked up a drive that was flanked by bright orange flowerpots. Soon, a figure appeared at the door and a large sari-clad woman of about fifty came hurtling down the path. ‘Welcome, welcome to my humble house! I am Kusum Mahajan,' the woman said, oozing warmth with a huge smile on her face. ‘Can I help you with carrying anything? Rajoooo!!
Idhar aa
!'