Secrets and lies, p.17
Secrets and Lies, page 17
And so it was arranged—with the grateful acquiescence of the Malhotras—for Bubbles to spend the following month visiting Natasha and her mother at their classy Maharani Bagh house straight after school. A trip with Mrs Walia (erstwhile first lady at various Indian High Commissions across the world) to the very clever Mario’s at the Mughal Hilton resulted in bounces and highlights that Bubbles had always thought her greasy tresses incapable of. A subsequent visit to Delhi’s best dermatologist had resulted in promises that her skin would be ‘clear and creamy’ by the engagement. That done, Mrs Walia revealed some mysterious western ways with table-settings and cutlery and crockery to Bubbles, who thought some of the stuff about milk-before-tea in cups (not to mention what one did with pinkie fingers) very odd indeed. Mrs Walia drew the line at kitchen work, of course, being quite sure that a London-based business family (who could afford to send their son to Eton, goodness gracious) would surely have at least one cook.
It was only at night, when Bubbles was alone in her room, that she felt the excitement of others slowly abate. In those rare quiet moments she would pick up her bedside picture of Haroon, standing laughing with the sunshine glinting on his hair, and shed a few private tears. She imagined what it would have been like to marry the boy she loved, becoming part of his warm and affectionate family. But that was not to be. For there was a strange bespectacled stranger awaiting her in London, and she had lost Haroon forever to Lily.
Chapter Fourteen
LONDON, 2008
It was not usually like Bubbles Raheja to take charge of her friends, but by October the plans for Delhi had been firmed up and the tickets booked. It had been no trouble at all for her, as she had merely asked James about the possibility of getting three seats on Raheja International’s new airline when he visited the house one morning to collect some papers from Binkie’s study. Within two hours of his departure, a motorcycle courier had delivered the tickets in a manila envelope.
The new butler, recently poached from Clarence House, brought them in just as the family were sitting down to lunch. Everyone looked a little surprised when he walked around the large mahogany table to hand the envelope to Bubbles on his small silver tray. Perhaps, being new, he did not know that she never received anything, certainly not in those smooth manila envelopes that carried the official Raheja crest.
‘For me?’ she asked, as startled as everyone else.
‘Yes Ma’am,’ he muttered in his cut-glass accent, bowing respectfully as he held out his tray.
Bubbles took the envelope and used the accompanying paper knife to slit it open, conscious of her mother-in-law’s eyes boring into the letter as the butler obsequiously accepted the returned knife and slid away silently.
‘What is the office sending you?’ Mrs Raheja asked, the inflexion indicating her extreme displeasure at Raheja International’s temerity in making direct contact with the lowly daughter-in-law of the family.
Bubbles grinned in delight as she upturned the contents of the envelope onto the tablecloth and three tickets fell out. She couldn’t resist a small squeal of pleasure. ‘Oh Binkie, you were right after all, what a sweetie your James is! I just mentioned it so casually and look—three tickets to Delhi!’
Binkie nodded indulgently but his mother squawked, ‘Delhi?!’
‘Oh Mama,’ Bubbles said, turning to her mother-in-law and trying unsuccessfully to sound contrite. ‘Sorry, I didn’t mention it before because…well, because I didn’t know I was going until just now! Oh Binks, do thank James from me! Or was it you who told him?’
‘Well, he did call to check a few minutes ago,’ Binkie replied with a casual shrug, popping a blini into his mouth. ‘Don’t worry about it—first-class traffic hasn’t quite picked up on that sector yet.’
‘Who are the other two tickets for? Are Ruby-Bobby also going? You know that they are not keen on Delhi…’ Mrs Raheja sounded confused, obviously still assessing whether she should be cross or not.
‘Well, the pair of them will be on that Galapagos trip that Binkie’s organising for their Christmas hols, so I thought I’d go to Delhi…erm, with Sam and Anita. I’d mentioned my plans to go with the girls, hadn’t I, Binkie?’
Bubbles looked at her husband for reassurance and Binkie nodded again, this time with a little less certainty, shooting a slightly apprehensive look at his mother.
‘But what is happening in Delhi so specially?’ It looked like Mrs Raheja wasn’t ready to give up.
Bubbles sighed quietly. She would have to follow Anita’s careful instructions now. ‘Well, I have not visited my parents since last winter and my father has been asking to see me,’ she said as firmly as she could.
While Mrs Raheja glowered silently, holding her soup spoon aloft as though it were a sword, Mr Raheja, sunk amid the papers at the other end of the table, spoke up in loud Punjabi. ‘Let the girl go and see her parents if she wants to.’ He spoke slowly and significantly, his words seeming to make his wife almost visibly subside like a punctured balloon. Bubbles contemplated blowing a kiss at her father-in-law from where she sat and quelled a sudden attack of giggles, careful not to let her mother-in-law feel vanquished. Mrs Raheja opened her mouth to reply—she wasn’t normally one to let a war remain unwaged—but her husband gave her a meaningful look over his paper that caused her to give in sulkily. She clattered her spoon into her spinach soup and slurped belligerently instead.
It was an old game. Bubbles had figured out a very long time ago that the mere mention of her father often had Binkie’s parents hastily back off. Bubbles had never quite worked out what it was but reckoned that her father held some information on her in-laws from their early days in the textile industry that the Rahejas still remained nervous about. Bubbles even suspected that her canny old father might have used that very information to twist Dinesh Raheja’s arm into getting his only son married to her fifteen years ago, which would explain the disparity in their social standing and their reluctant but eventual acceptance of her. Even at the time of her marriage, the Rahejas were already a wealthy family—far wealthier than hers—but they had certainly not reached the stratosphere they now occupied, making it to The Times’ Asian Rich List ten years after she had married Binkie, and last year even slipping almost unnoticed onto the list of the UK’s 100 wealthiest people, right up there, much to Bubbles’ amazement, alongside the Duke of Westminster and the Queen!
She wanted to grab her mobile and call her friends straightaway with news of the tickets but she stayed at the table, decorously sipping on her soup and pretending not to notice her mother-in-law’s sullen glances. To give herself something to do, Bubbles helped herself to a freshly baked wholemeal roll and deliberately cracked it open to butter it, even though she had not touched butter for years. Putting a piece of the buttered roll in her mouth, Bubbles savoured the unusual taste on her tongue. Perhaps it was due to their Rich-List ducal connections or her son’s predilections picked up from boarding school, but Mrs Raheja insisted on western food at least once a week, much to her husband’s dismay. He looked mournfully at a large portion of goat’s cheese and trompette galette that was being served onto his plate, followed by a portion of sautéed girolles with oyster mushrooms and rocket leaves, shiny with truffle oil and dotted with pine nuts.
‘I don’t want this kish-vish, ghaas-poos,’ he growled sulkily.
‘It’s not a quiche, Papa, it’s a galette,’ Binkie said.
‘And salad is good for you, Papa, you mustn’t call it “ghaas-poos”,’ Bubbles giggled. ‘You really need to eat more greens, you know.’ She tapped her own washboard stomach. ‘Good for your system.’
‘What is so unhealthy about Punjabi food, hanh?’ Mr Raheja retorted. ‘Good maa-di-daal and sarson-ka-saag, for example. My naani, who ate nothing but that, lived till ninety-two. She would race me in the compound at Ludhiana when I was ten and still beat me. And all her own teeth at ninety-two also!’ He obediently swallowed a mouthful of the tart and winced. Suddenly shoving his plate away, he bellowed at no one in particular, ‘What bakwaas is this! Bring me a paratha! Aloo! And some daal or saag. I cannot eat this rubbish, I tell you. Is this what I have worked so hard for?’
As everyone fussed around her father-in-law, Bubbles wolfed down her tart, barely tasting it. She was desperate to call Sam and Anita and give them news of the tickets. Not that either of them needed monetary favours from her, but it just felt wonderful being able to do little things for her two best friends. And Sam could certainly do with some cheering up, given the way Akbar had been behaving recently.
Bubbles excused herself from the table, and saw that Binkie was also escaping back to the office, swiftly exiting the noisy dining room. His father was increasingly leaving the day-today running of the business to him and had even been taking afternoon siestas these days, something that was previously unheard of. Bubbles, following Binkie out, waved joyfully to him from the hall windows, but he seemed not to have noticed her as he got into his Bentley to be driven off. She saw the car indicate left as it turned out of the square and wondered briefly why her husband was going in the opposite direction to the office. Perhaps he was going to pick James up from somewhere. She shrugged, turning away. For a long time now she had stopped questioning Binkie about his movements because it never got her beyond a few noncommittal replies anyway. ‘Hers was not to wonder why’ had become a sort of motto to Bubbles. Just occasionally, she panicked a little bit at the thought that perhaps Binkie was not up to the task of maintaining his father’s empire for long enough to keep their children in the style to which they were now accustomed. All that talk on TV about the credit crunch was a bit worrying too. One really did have to give it to the old man, Bubbles reflected, having built such a huge business without a flash foreign MBA, or an Indian degree even. ‘Generations will rest on my efforts,’ her father-in-law sometimes proclaimed proudly, which was probably just as well given how little of his business chutzpah Binkie seemed to have inherited.
Bubbles, walking back to her room, decided that the reason she found it hard to be equally confident of Binkie’s business abilities was on the basis of how poorly he kept track of the unlimited credit and debit cards that she and the children had use of. For all his attempted controlling, he had no clue as to who was buying what and for whom. And the family’s accounts at Harrods and Liberty were completely beyond him, of course. She entered the sanctuary of her bedroom, mulling over how easy it was for her to order just about anything she wanted, often without even having to pull out a credit card. Like three first-class tickets to Delhi, with a mere snap of her manicured fingers.
It wasn’t, therefore, without a touch of shame that Bubbles found herself inexplicably wishing for something more. She looked at her toned figure in the three-way mirror that occupied her walk-in dressing room. The new personal trainer’s regime was doing her a world of good, making her fashionably lean and also bringing out some interesting shadows in her face. Additionally, every single item of apparel on her person had cost at least a few hundred pounds; even the diamanté Alice band sparkling on the top of her head was Chanel. Bubbles knew she ought to be grateful for the endless luxury of time and money that she had to lavish on herself. So why then did she find herself, every so often, wishing for inexpensive but completely unachievable things? Such as—not power exactly, but confidence. The kind of confidence that Anita, for instance, had in such abundance, a result of the authority she enjoyed to be herself and do what she wanted, without seeking permission or needing approval or, as Anita would have put it, ‘caring a fucking monkey’s uncle’ for anyone or anything.
Bubbles looked at her watch. Sam would be picking Heer up from school at this time so she would call Anita first. It was her afternoon off so she would be at home.
‘Hi there—it’s me. Good news, I have the tickets.’
‘Gratis?’
‘What?’
‘Free?’
‘Of course, free, what did you expect?’
‘Gosh, I should really be eating my words for having given you such a hard time when Papa Raheja bought his little airline!’ Anita laughed.
‘You’re a complete monster sometimes, Anita,’ Bubbles replied affectionately, ‘but I think I’ll forgive you.’
‘I have to say I’m really grateful to you, Bubs. You can imagine the gaping hole my little sojourn in Barbados has left in my bank account.’
‘Hey, I haven’t cut in on anything…er, romantic, have I?’ Bubbles asked. Anita hadn’t had a boyfriend for months before Hugh had come along and Bubbles had consequently grown used to calling her rather inconsiderately at all times of night or day, depending on her work schedule.
‘Nah. Hugh’s working today so no afternoon delight, if that’s what you mean. No nookie tonight either by the looks of it, as he’s doing an extra shift at the World Service to make up for Barbados,’ Anita replied.
‘Sounds like it was worth every minute, though?’ Bubbles asked, trying not to sound envious. Anita had come back from a week in Barbados earlier this month to tell her two dumbfounded friends about the travails of midnight sex on a beach (‘Sand up the cooter ain’t exactly the best lubricant, darlings,’ she had warned, forgetting that there was not the remotest possibility of either Sam or Bubbles getting anything up their respective cooters for the foreseeable future.)
‘So what are you up to this evening then?’ Bubbles asked. Both she and Sam derived a strange vicarious pleasure from hearing tales of Anita’s chaotic life.
‘Oh, nothing tonight, thankfully. It’s been just manic this past week. We went to the movies on Tuesday to see the new Cronenberg, as Hugh and I both had the afternoon off, then Ronnie Scott’s with a bunch from work on Wednesday night and dinner with friends last night in Chinatown—you remember Chrissie and John, you met them at mine once…’
‘Oh yes, I remember them. Mostly because that was the first time I’d heard of tree surgeons!’ Bubbles sighed. ‘Feels like I only ever meet interesting people through you, Anita.’
‘How on earth can you say that? You, who gets to dine with Elton John and David fucking Furnish!’
‘Yeah, but only because Binkie dragged me to a fund-raising dinner at Elton John’s that he’d paid thousands for! Yours, Anita, are the only parties I go to where I meet real people. Oh, and don’t hear the word “Prada” uttered once.’
Anita laughed. ‘Funny, though, that it’s still you and Sam I’d turn to if I really needed anything important, not my tree surgeon mates.’
‘Well, they weren’t around when you were seven, were they? That must count for something.’
‘Too right, there’s no point in being pretentious with someone who’s seen you lose your teeth and whose teenage zits you’ve helped burst, eh?’ Anita yawned loudly. ‘What are you up to later today then, Bubs?’
‘Oh, nothing much actually. Papa and Binkie are busy with meetings every evening this week and Mama has her cards set over later today. I’ll be helping with the tea.’
‘What do you need to help with? What are her army of cooks and maids doing, for fuck’s sake?’
Bubbles smiled—good old Anita, always outraged on someone else’s behalf. ‘It’s no big deal, I don’t have much else to do,’ she said, before changing the subject. ‘Have you eaten?’
‘I’m treating myself to a proper lunch today actually, having been up since four bloody a.m. Picked up a Waitrose meal on the way home. Not that you would know what that is, of course.’
‘Of course I know what Waitrose is, how dare you!’ Bubbles exclaimed. ‘In fact, there’s one recently opened round the corner here in Belgravia, you know. I go past it every day on my morning jog to Hyde Park. But if you think that’s proper food, it’s no wonder you’re putting on weight, Anita! My dietician was telling me how much sugar they put in those ready-made meals.’
Anita laughed, yawning. ‘Even worse, there’s half a bottle of left-over Sauvignon Blanc beckoning from the fridge! I’m afraid a day that’s lurched between realpolitik in Pakistan and this fucking endless American election deserves more than a few dry oatcakes.’
Bubbles imagined Anita all by herself in her messy little flat bursting with books and plants. No one to report to and no one whose permission she needed for anything. She felt a strange twinge of—what was it?—not envy, surely? Bubbles felt faintly ashamed as she looked around her own palatial bedroom, quite probably half the floor area of Anita’s whole flat, seeing its ivory pile carpet and the pair of mauve silk Rococo chaises longues that Binkie had had specially ordered at Linley’s this summer. They were meant to match the enormous curtained four-poster bed acquired last year that, despite being the size of a small tennis court, hadn’t yet seen much…well, nookie, as Anita had put it.
‘Hello?’
‘Yes, I’m still here,’ Bubbles replied.
‘Are you all right, sweetie? You sound a bit down…’
Bubbles could hear the wary tone in Anita’s voice and recognised that, although she had asked a genuine question, she really did not want to know. Anita had never been as good a listener as Sam and, even when they were all much younger, Bubbles had tried never to burden her with too many of her woes. Her old friend and desk-mate was just incapable of understanding certain things, her brain being intended for other, more complex issues, or so Bubbles had concluded long ago.
‘No, just a bit bored with my life, that’s all, Anita. But, as you so often remind me, it’s mostly my own fault, isn’t it. Well, I’d better let you get on with your lunch,’ Bubbles said, sitting up on the silk chaise longue and sinking her toes into the soft pile carpet. ‘Let’s get together one of these days, you, me and Sam, and make the final plans for Delhi. We don’t have that much time, you know. Two months.’
‘Oh fuck. Apart from being with you two and seeing my mum, I’ve never not looked forward to a holiday as much as this, you know, Bubbles.’
