A Scandalous Secret (9 page)

Sonya glowered at Tim from her cross-legged perch on the rusty old merry-go-round. ‘You don't understand at all, Tim,' she said. She knew she ought to stop herself from saying any more for she would only be sharp-tongued and hurtful, given her current frame of mind. But Tim's negativity about her Indian trip was now really starting to annoy. First he had moaned about how she was going to be away during their last couple of weeks together before departing for uni, and now he had just said it was plain silly to go off in search of an identity when she ought to be proud of the one she already had! Perhaps he had not meant it to sound the way it did but Sonya thought it sheer cheek on Tim's part to be so presumptuous. She could not stop herself from snapping back. ‘Well, it's all very well for you, isn't it?' By now she was so cross, there was no curbing her sharp tongue. ‘You, with your perfect 2.4 family and identity.'

Tim stopped swinging himself as he went instantly pink around the collar of his sweatshirt. He looked at Sonya with that kicked-puppy expression she loathed. It was uncharitable of her perhaps but she also couldn't help noticing the gaucheness with which his long legs were bent to accommodate his lanky frame on the child-sized
swing. ‘I don't know what you mean, Sonya,' he said, mounting a feeble defence. My parents are divorced, remember?'

‘Yeah, right,' Sonya said, determined to be one up on the suffering scale. ‘Like that comes anywhere near finding out that you were given away at birth.'

‘Well, I was thirteen when they divorced … hardly the best time for a lad to have to cope with warring parents.'

Sonya took a deep breath and shifted to a swing next to the one Tim was sitting on. It was easier not to be facing him while having such an awkward and – she had to admit – ludicrous conversation. She looked across the playing fields and tried to make her voice kinder. ‘Look, Tim, I'm not going to start drawing up a list of who-suffered-what. I don't doubt it was hard for you when your parents split up but you've had five years to get over it. However, what I'm going through is here and now. And, no, I'm not happy about making my poor parents miserable. And, yes, I am very scared of what I'll find at the other end. But it's something I've just got to do.'

‘I've never suggested you shouldn't, Sonya. But don't shut me out like this. For days now you've treated me like I'm a stranger.'

‘Don't exaggerate.'

‘I'm not! Stranger at best, enemy most other times.'

‘Fucking hell, now you
are
exaggerating!'

Tim looked down at his shoes while Sonya scowled at the football nets in the distance. She had anticipated a fractious dialogue, which was partially why she had asked to meet Tim at the children's park that lay at the edge of the old school playground, halfway between both their houses. Her house would have been about the worst place in which to have a row. It was best not to further vex her
mum with knowledge of an untimely split; who knew what she would read into that when she was already so convinced her daughter was upping and leaving forever? And Sonya really,
really
did not need her parents trying to patch things up between Tim and her on the eve of her departure for India.

The silence between them hung heavy. Not much happened in Orpington on a Sunday evening and this playground was generally a favourite haunt of what Richard called ‘the town's yoof'. However, no one else was around today on this September afternoon and Sonya guessed they were either thronging the town's pubs, given the warm evening it had become, or lining up outside the cinema as Estella was doing tonight. Cigarette butts and empty cans of drink littered the ground beneath their feet and the smell of barbecuing meat was blowing in from some nearby back garden. Sonya kicked at a crisp packet that was stubbornly blowing around her ankles, everything irritated her these days.

Sonya got up suddenly, causing the wooden swing to bang the backs of her knees. Blinking back the pain, she stopped herself from crying out. The last thing she wanted was fake, solicitous concern from Tim! What she wanted was a swift exit because another few minutes of Tim's company was doubtless going to make her scream. This was the moment to say it and Sonya forced the words out of her mouth, the sentences coming rushing out in a sudden torrent running one into another. ‘I'm sorry, Tim. It's been brewing for days but I just haven't had the chance to tell you … I don't think I want to be your girlfriend any more. Please don't think I haven't thought about it a lot. After all, we're such old mates. But it's just not working, is it? And I thought it
fairer to tell you before I go to India. Rather than have you waiting for me and maybe even running up a huge phone bill while I'm there. Anyway, we're off to far-apart unis so the chances of us being able to make this work are pretty remote anyway, aren't they?' Sonya finally looked at Tim, scared of what she would find. She really,
really
did not want to have to deal with another bout of tears. Not after Mum's histrionics and even Dad being unnaturally grouchy these days. But Tim wasn't crying, as she'd half anticipated. Instead, he was sitting silently, still swinging himself gently, almost as though he had not heard her at all.

‘Tim?' Sonya said tentatively. But, no, he was still silent. Well, what could be more exasperating than that – a dumbass boyfriend who didn't even know he was being dumped when it was slapping him right in the face? There was no point hanging around waiting for Tim to come up with some kind of sensible rejoinder. He could always call her when he did think of something to say!

Without another word and with the backs of her legs still stinging, Sonya turned and walked out of the playground. From across the road, she could see a number two bus approaching and so she started to run. Waving her arms desperately, she got it to halt and raced towards it, hoping desperately that Tim wasn't following her. Once she had clambered aboard and the electric doors had creaked shut, Sonya looked back at the playground and saw that, far from following her, Tim was still sitting where she'd left him, his shoulders slumped as he moved his legs listlessly back and forth like an automaton. Suddenly she felt oddly annoyed that he
hadn't
followed her; which was, of course, being what Mum called ‘plain cussed'.

Spotting an empty window seat, Sonya sat down with
a thump and looked back at the playground. Weirdly, she couldn't help feeling a bit sorry for Tim too, but as the bus started to move he did not as much as look up in her direction. Even from this distance and through the grimy bus window, she could see that he wore a defeated air. Had she really been that mean to him? Sonya forced herself not to melt and call Tim to apologize. It was all so complicated and her head felt so very messed up. All she knew was that she was off tomorrow to the kind of places and experiences that Tim would not in a million years be able to comprehend, and she was damned if she was going to have her relationship with him complicate her life any more than it already had.

When the floor was icy cold, and Neha's body had started to ache with stiffness, she finally dragged herself up. She was still naked, the water from her untowelled body having long dried, but she found a thick white bathrobe hanging behind the bathroom door and pulled it on. Hardly aware that she was stepping all over the strewn contents of her toilet kit, she slowly made her way to the bed. She collapsed onto the mattress, unaware of how long she had lain on the bathroom floor, weeping uncontrollably at not being able to find a blade. The storm over, she now felt spent, her body numb and her tears all dried up.

She lay silently on top of the blanket, looking at nothing and feeling nothing. Maybe she did not need to return to Delhi at all. Neha wondered blankly if she could just head off from Ananda – into the distant mountains perhaps, where nobody would know her, where she could start all over again … Or maybe she could just stay forever in this room, cocooned in the silent dark. Here she would not need to pretend happiness or contentment, those qualities everyone was convinced she fully possessed. Here she could cry if she wanted, or lie silently, or even rant and rave at the injustices of life. No one would hear her
at all, as the rooms were built to ensure complete quiet and privacy. She need never turn that doorknob that led to the world ever again …

The lights in the room had not been turned on since she had arrived and, down in the valley below, the lights of Rishikesh too had dimmed to virtual darkness. Neha did not know what time it was. She was all by herself in this dark void.

How foolish it had been to imagine that her past would not catch up on her. Or that there could be no punishment for a mother who had given up her child. Neha saw, for the hundredth time since receiving the letter, the moment she had done it … picked up the small mewling bundle that had lain on her lap to hand her over to the waiting social worker.

 

‘She'll go first to a foster home,' the social worker with the kindly face said. ‘The foster mum is a very experienced carer – a woman now in her sixties – and she will look after her until she's old enough to be handed over to the adoptive parents. Don't cry, my dear child, what you're doing is brave and unselfish. And just think of those desperate couples waiting for years to get a baby like her. How overjoyed one of them will soon be. And it'll all be due to you. Yes, you. Your baby will have a lovely life where you're sending her, believe me.'

 

Neha had believed her because she had no option. She had hung on to that assurance, examining it every which way in years to come, never sure whether it was genuinely true or said merely to comfort her. Now, soon, that question would be answered. When her grown daughter stood
before her and told her directly whether she had done the right thing by her or not. Except that Neha did not think she had the strength to bear the accusations that she knew would come.

Laura watched Sonya throw a handful of cotton bras into her suitcase. ‘It will be bloody warm,' Sonya smiled, adding cheekily, ‘I can see us being braless most of the time. Commando style even, if it gets too bad.'

Laura knew her daughter was only teasing and so she ignored her, even though the thought of Sonya wandering around India without any underwear on was deeply distressing. Laura herself had only travelled as far as the Canary Islands – visiting Tenerife with Richard after one of their miscarriages and Lanzarote more recently, when Sonya was about thirteen. Laura had noticed the topless sunbathers on Lanzarote's beaches but, of course, it would never have even crossed her mind to follow suit. She was far too conservative for that kind of exhibitionist nonsense. ‘Why on earth people want to behave in public as though they're in their own bathrooms beats me,' she had said to Richard.

On that holiday, fed up with eating burgers and fries for three days on the trot, Sonya had scornfully accused her mother of behaving like a ‘pleb', but Laura had not even understood what that meant and suspected that Sonya didn't either. It was one of those rare occasions on which Richard had got very cross with Sonya,
grounding her inside their holiday apartment for a whole day and refusing to speak to her until she had apologized to her mother. That, Laura remembered, was the first time she had openly stated her fears to Richard about Sonya having perhaps inherited traits that they had absolutely no control over. They had been sharing a bottle of Rioja on the balcony of their apartment while Sonya was sulking behind the closed door to her room. ‘Who knows, darling,' Richard had replied in his usual calm fashion, ‘after all, no one's ever come up with conclusive evidence in the whole nature versus nurture debate, have they? We'll just have to wait and see. And you have to admit that, by and large, she's a lovely lass …'

But it was a thought that had come to Laura more and more often as Sonya had grown. There were things about the child … curious little quirks and habits … the haughty way in which she held her head sometimes, or the sharp caustic cleverness with which she spoke, that had clearly come from somewhere else. There had been Christmases when, with both families gathered around, Laura had looked at Sonya and observed with sudden shock how unlike all of them she was. And this despite the fact that she had been a mere babe-in-arms when they had got her.

Sitting now in Sonya's bay window and folding the day's laundry, Laura watched Sonya unwind her long legs to get up off the floor and stride across to the wardrobe at the other end of the room. Wearing quantities of grey-blue kohl around her eyes and a whole collection of silver bracelets jangling on her arms, Sonya looked like some exotic creature who belonged in the pages of a glamour
magazine and not this twee little suburban semi-detached in which she had grown up.

Laura shook out a pair of leggings before folding them on her lap. She added them to the neat pile growing next to her and sighed. There was only so much moulding and shaping one could do given a headstrong creature like Sonya, she thought, her heart awash with despondency. Then, glancing at the laden bookshelves above Sonya's desk, Laura forced herself to feel more cheerful. Not all the differences between them were bad. After all, Sonya's admission to Oxford was a first in both their families and a cause for immense pride. Laura could count her relatives that had gone to university on the fingers of one hand, let alone any of them getting somewhere as grand as Oxford! What was worrying, however, was that what Laura had come to think of as Sonya's ‘otherness' was growing more marked as she got older and now, with this trip to India, Laura genuinely feared she might lose her altogether.

She got up from the bay window and picked up the stack of clothes. ‘Which of these tee-shirts did you want to take with you, darling?' she asked the top of her daughter's head.

Sonya looked up from where she was kneeling on the floor and said, ‘Oh ta, Mum. Hmm, think I'll take just the plain white and perhaps that grey Quicksilver one. Gotta stay cool, but white will be such a bother to keep clean while travelling.'

‘Well, I've thrown a small tube of Vanish in among your toiletries,' Laura said, ‘you could always do a bit of hand-washing in your hotel room.'

‘You think of everything, Mummy,' Sonya replied, leaping
up to throw her arms dramatically around her mother and swing her off her feet. ‘What on earth am I going to do without you, huh?'

Laura struggled, smiling. That was the other thing about Sonya, her exuberant brand of love that was so … so
un-English
, if Laura was to be honest with herself. There was no other way to describe it. It was nothing like Richard's quiet steadiness or her own brand of rather uncertain and diffident love. Sonya – beautiful and wilful and charming – was like a Bollywood diva. And this Laura knew without having seen a single Bollywood film in her life!

 

The following morning, Laura stood next to Richard at the bottom of their drive, watching Sonya load her suitcase into the boot of Clive Wentworth's battered old four-wheel drive. Both girls were chattering excitedly and Laura tried to keep the smile fixed on her face so as not to spoil their big moment. It was, after all, the very first time away from home for both of them, if one didn't count the handful of short school trips they had been on, none further away than Europe. ‘A practice run for uni and then the great wide world,' Sonya had said of this trip and she was right. In just over a month's time, she would be off anyway, leaving home with more than just a holiday suitcase and quite probably for good. Despite all the mental steeling, it was a heartbreaking thought to Laura.

Sonya was giving Richard one of her big bear hugs now and Laura braced her shoulders, instructing herself sternly not to cry. When Sonya leaned over to give her a hug and kiss, Laura amazed herself with her capacity to stay calm and cheerful. She now used her most upbeat voice to say,
‘You go have a blast, hon. But call us whenever you can, okay? We'll miss you …' Oddly enough, it was Sonya who had tears glistening in her eyes as she pulled away from her mother's hug and leapt into the back seat of the Wentworths' car to be driven away.