Secrets and lies, p.18
Secrets and Lies, page 18
‘Hey, did Sam tell you she had another call from Zeba the other day? Seems she’s coming too and wants to know our dates. You’d have thought she’d have more exciting things to do than visit an old school principal’
Bubbles did not notice Anita’s moment of silence before she replied in a sober voice, ‘Yes, Sam mentioned that Zeba was coming too.’
‘Strange, that. She must have been the one who hated Lily the most because of that whole Gomes affair,’ Bubbles said. ‘Even though Lily never did tell on her, did she?’
‘Perhaps Zeba hated Lily all the more for not telling on her actually. But that was Lily’s way, wasn’t it? Slow torture. How she must have loved it when she found out about Zeba. I mean, knocking off a teacher to get the exam paper, for fuck’s sake.’ Anita sounded as livid as though it had all happened yesterday, Bubbles thought.
‘Isn’t it curious, though,’ Bubbles pointed out, ‘that none of us really tried to stop Zeba from getting into that mess with Mr Gomes…well, we sort of tried, but not as hard as we should have done, I think.’
‘You’re right. Despite being right little prudes at the time.’
‘Maybe we were just too frightened ourselves. I mean, if Lamboo had found out, Zeba would’ve been expelled from school on the eve of the exams, and Gomes…well, he would have gone to jail for having sex with a student. It’s a jailable offence in India too, isn’t it?’
‘Heavens, yes! I think you’ll find that sex with a minor is an offence in most countries, Bubs. Oh God, how it’s all flooded back these past few weeks…’ Anita paused for a second before adding quietly, ‘Although, in the hate-Lily stakes, I don’t know whether Zeba came out tops, or whether it was me, Bubs.’
‘Well, in Zeba’s case it wasn’t just the Gomes thing…remember the annual play?’ Bubbles couldn’t resist a sudden giggle.
‘Oh Christ, of course, Saint Joan! Of all the bloody things Zeba could have got her knickers in a twist over, it was Shaw’s Saint Joan! What a laugh. From the sublime to the ridiculous, Saint Joan to Bollywood Queen!’
‘Well, at the time she wanted to be a stage actor. She was always going on about trying to get a scholarship to RADA. I don’t think being a Bollywood superstar was Zeba’s plan then.’
‘Strange how she managed to behave like a diva even back then, though. Almost like she was practising the role before occupying her throne in Bollywood. Saint Fucking Joan!’
‘I thought Zeba’s hatred for Lily was total after the auditions, but then it just doubled after the Gomes thing, didn’t it?’
‘I have sometimes wondered whether that was really the only basis for Zeba’s friendship with us that year. Y’know, our shared hatred of Lily’
‘C’mon, Anita, how can you say that? We’d all been friends since we were tiny, even Zeba!’
‘Actually, you’re right, Bubs. Old school friends do seem to make the strangest couplings when you look back. I guess you just don’t think of judging people you’ve known since kindergarten. We were close enough, all of us, and then Lily’s arrival pretty much bonded us like glue.’
Bubbles knew they were both thinking of the same thing as she said in a soft voice, ‘The truth is we all hated Lily, Anita. Even poor Sam, who always tried so hard to like everyone…but how could one blame her, poor thing?’
‘How indeed,’ Anita muttered in response. ‘The last time Sam came back from Delhi she was saying that her mum was still completely heartbroken over Haroon.’
Bubbles was suddenly silent, realising that Anita had never completely understood the depth of her own feelings for Haroon. Especially as she had been married and whisked off to London before she had even had the chance to say anything. But that was exactly the point, Bubbles thought to herself, only half-listening to Anita now. It was because the young and foolish Bubbles Malhotra had never had the gumption to fight for the things she wanted that she had spent the rest of her life, as Mrs Bubbles Raheja, thinking about what might have been had she only been more determined.
Typically unaware of her listener’s feelings, Anita was ploughing on and Bubbles didn’t try to stop her. After all, it had been years since they had talked of all this. ‘Do you remember, Bubs,’ Anita was saying, ‘how desperately Sam wanted to believe it was something else that led Haroon to do what he did?’
Bubbles had found her voice and managed to keep it steady. ‘Maybe it would have been less unbearable if it had been something else, Anita.’
‘You could be right, Bubs…but, hey, I don’t think we should talk about this or there’ll be no sleep for either of us tonight.’
Bubbles nodded vehemently with silent relief. She hadn’t been sleeping at all well these past few weeks and really wanted this conversation with Anita to end now.
‘Listen, thanks for the tickets,’ Anita continued, ‘and thank Binkie from me too. When all’s said and done, I think I’d rather be in Delhi with all of you than not. Let’s face the music together, huh?’
‘You’re right, Anita, we’ll face it together. Listen, you go and feed yourself now. And sleep well’.
After hanging up, Bubbles lay back on the silk cushions of her chaise longue for a long time, looking up at the elegant Regency-style ceilings but seeing instead the cheap pink plaster of her childhood bedroom. She remembered weeping for days after those ghastly events, looking at that pink ceiling as though one day the answers would be miraculously written there for her to see. Even after Lily’s death, fifteen long years ago, she had not been able to cleanse her system of the guilt and the blame. Bubbles had tried explaining it to one of her therapists once: how she could just about accept that Lily had come along and stolen Haroon (after all, even she had to admit that Haroon was never really hers to steal). But then Lily had gone on to break his heart. That was the bit Bubbles had not been able to forgive both Lily and herself for. For how differently things might have turned out had she had the conviction to fight harder for Haroon’s affections. But Bubbles had never fought for anything all her life, never demanded, never stomped her foot and seized what other people took without a second thought. Why oh why had she not tried harder than she had?
She covered her eyes with her forearm as she felt the first tears roll down the sides of her face and gather in her ears. What a fool she had been as a girl, not even recognising her first surge of feelings towards Lily as being jealousy. Too innocent to understand emotions she had never experienced before. Up until that point, Bubbles had thought that it was only characters in movies who indulged in emotions as strong as jealousy and hate, when they competed for love or money and it became a matter of life or death or ‘rozi-roti’, as her father said. She had thought that it was only in books and movies that people plotted to do awful things. But seventeen-year-old girls could love and hate, Bubbles had found to her own horror that winter, with the same ferocity. Enough to want to kill, even.
Chapter Fifteen
DELHI, 1993
While Bubbles was swept up in preparations for her engagement, Sam was keeping her promise to Haroon by diligently planning a trip to an ice-cream parlour with some of the girls from her class including, most importantly, Lily. Haroon’s cunning plan was to stroll in about halfway through, pretending confusion over Sam’s pickup time. Then he would be persuaded to join the girls in having a sundae and Sam would discreetly vacate the seat next to Lily so he could work his charm on her. ‘Easy,’ he had said, and Sam had to agree that it sounded beautifully simple. Sam had little doubt that her popular brother would succeed in charming the pants off even stand-offish Lily D’Souza.
One problem was that no one else from class would come if they knew that Sam was inviting Lily. So, discretion being the better part of valour, Sam asked her when no one else was around.
‘Me? With you all? To an ice-cream parlour?’ Lily queried, clearly surprised.
‘Well, you enjoyed it when you came to my birthday party before the hols, didn’t you?’
‘I don’t think your friends like me very much,’ Lily said, her voice still suspicious.
‘Oh, that’s not true at all!’ Sam lied recklessly. ‘They’re still sort of getting to know you, Lily, that’s all. Friendship takes time, y’know, and maybe it would help if you met us outside the school. One sort of bonds better that way, if you see what I mean…’
‘Well, we certainly haven’t bonded so far!’ Lily laughed nastily adding, ‘just yesterday that Natasha nearly bit my head off when I used her protractor by mistake. She’d never have done that if it was any of you. Not that I care particularly. Just making a point.’
‘Nats? Oh ignore that. Nats just has that sort of American brashness, she means no harm. She likes you, really. She was saying so the other day, in fact, that she feels she doesn’t know you very well and must stop thinking of you as the “new girl”…’ Sam blushed, aware she was now over-egging the pudding, but, to her surprise, Lily suddenly nodded.
‘Okay, I’ll come,’ she said, and Sam tried not to whoop with delight at the ease with which she had kept her promise to Haroon.
‘Great. Saturday afternoon—say, four-ish—at Nirula’s in Connaught Place,’ she said using her best poker face.
In the end, everything that could go wrong did.
First of all, Bubbles—whom Sam had deliberately not invited out of consideration for her aborted crush on Haroon—was bitterly upset to hear of the outing through a chance remark from Zeba as they left school that afternoon. Sam, unable to tell Bubbles that she was helping Haroon get to know Lily, tried to save the situation unsuccessfully on the telephone. ‘I wasn’t leaving you out, Bubs!’ she pleaded, ‘I just thought you’d be busy with the engagement stuff and wouldn’t want to come!’
‘What engagement stuff? How can you think that, Sam?’ Bubbles wailed. ‘Mummy-Papa are doing everything. I have nothing to do, you know that. I know why you are doing this. Just because I’m engaged now, you all think I’m already out of here and don’t want to know me any more…oh…oh…’ And with that, Bubbles burst into tears before hanging up.
The second thing to go wrong was when Haroon, in his eagerness to reach Nirula’s from his college, arrived so early he got there even before Sam had. Sam’s bus, stuck in a traffic jam, had crawled its way to Connaught Place, and by the time she had loped into the ice-cream parlour, out of breath from having run all the way from the bus stop on Outer Circle, she found her brother already deep in conversation with Zeba and Natasha, both of whom were too polite to express surprise at being presented so unexpectedly with Haroon’s company rather than Sam’s. Luckily no one seemed to mind very much as Haroon had already chivalrously bought the first round of ice-creams.
There was one more thing that could go wrong, and so, of course, it did. And that was that Lily arrived early too, getting there before Sam had had a chance to explain her presence to her two friends.
‘Oh God, look who’s here—it’s Lily D’Souza!’ Nats said, looking in wide-eyed wonder at the girl coming through the swing doors at the far end of the ice-cream parlour. She looked disbelievingly at Sam as it dawned on her. ‘You called her too?’
Zeba echoed the sentiments less leniently. ‘How could you, Sam!’ she hissed, looking at Sam as though she had just committed a minor felony. She had just been getting up to join Haroon at the counter to help him carry the second round of ice-creams to the table, but sat down again with a thump. ‘Oh well, she can get her own ice-cream,’ she said picking up her bowl to scrape its empty bottom so that she could pretend to see Lily only when she was right upon them. Finally, when she couldn’t feign lateral blindness any more, she looked up and smiled coldly at Lily, mumbling a lukewarm hello.
Sam pulled up a stool, trying to make Lily welcome in the face of Zeba and Natasha’s chilliness. After all, she’d invited the girl here, she hadn’t just turned up on her own! And where the hell was Haroon? she wondered. He was taking his bloody time! Perhaps, unable to cope with the sight of Lily in the same room, he had passed out on top of the ice-cream counter—that was all Sam needed to deal with now!
Haroon had indeed spotted Lily the minute she had walked into Nirula’s. But Zeba’s order was a complicated one and he now shifted from foot to foot impatiently as the man behind the counter took what seemed like forever, scooping and measuring and shaking a syrup bottle interminably before squeezing its pink goo over the ice-cream mound. Haroon groaned inwardly as the man then started chopping strawberries for the garnish, leaving them on the chopping board as he went through the entire boxed contents of the fridge before emerging with a single mint leaf. Finally, finally it was done and he looked anxiously across at Sam’s group of friends as he made his way back to them, trying to prevent Zeba’s massive platter of Very Berry Strawberry from sliding around on the plastic tray.
‘Oh, hel-lo, Lily!’ Haroon said, hamming up the surprise element terribly it seemed to Sam. He could stop pretending now, she thought to herself, seeing that it was so bloody obvious to everyone that all this had been no more than an elaborate drama.
‘Hello,’ Lily replied without too much warmth. Perhaps she too could clearly see through the clumsy Hussain ploy. Sam felt about two feet tall.
‘What will you have, Lily?’ she asked, seeing that the other two were certainly not minded to be hospitable and were already tucking into the ice-creams Haroon had bought.
‘Don’t worry, I’ll get it,’ Lily said, starting to get up.
‘No, no, I will, you stay sitting,’ Haroon said eagerly. ‘Just tell me what you’d like.’
‘A scoop of Jamoca Almond please,’ she replied.
Haroon left with the order, returning a second later. ‘On the other hand, you could come with me and choose your flavour at the counter, Lily,’ he said weakly. ‘They have a lot of new ones in…’
The doting expression on her brother’s face made Sam curl her toes inside her sneakers. He was such an embarrassment! She hoped inwardly that Lily would leave the table for a few minutes so that she could explain matters to her friends, but the girl shook her head at Haroon and repeated politely, ‘No, Jamoca Almond’s fine, thanks.’
Sam looked at the hubbub at the counter, which was crowded with office workers and schoolchildren, calculating that Haroon would be at least another ten minutes. That would be ten minutes of her having to keep a monologue going to cover up the awkward silence that had fallen over their table at the unexpected arrival of Lily. Both Zeba and Natasha were behaving as though they’d never had such delicious ice-creams in their life, scooping and licking and savouring so as not to have to make conversation. Despite Nirula’s powerful air-conditioning system, Sam could feel the sweaty semi-circles sitting stubbornly under her arms.
‘Hey, you should have called the rest of the class too, Sam, why just stop with us three,’ Zeba said, looking at half a strawberry balancing delicately on her spoon. Sam glanced at her, trying to assess if the remark had been sarcastic, but Zeba wore a perfectly innocent look on her face as she popped the fruit into her mouth and started chewing it.
‘Anita had to be somewhere with her parents and couldn’t come,’ Sam replied.
‘Well, Bubbles was really upset when I mentioned we were meeting here. I hadn’t realised it was a secret,’ Zeba said.
‘Don’t be silly, it’s not a secret at all,’ Sam replied, all hot and flustered. She turned to Lily, trying to change the subject. ‘Did you go anywhere for the hols, Lily?’
Lily shook her head, taking a sip of water from her bottle.
‘So you stayed on the school premises all through the summer?’ Natasha asked in a horrified voice. Finally, someone other than her was engaging with Lily, Sam saw with relief.
Lily nodded again, but before she could say anything they were rescued by Haroon’s arrival with her single scoop. ‘Thank you,’ she said, as Haroon pulled up a stool and Sam made room between herself and Lily.
‘Hey, did I tell you guys I’m off to London to attend a wedding during the Christmas hols?’ Natasha said.
‘Wow, London!’ Haroon exclaimed. ‘I plan to go there one day.’
‘Oh I’ve been many times, got cousins there,’ Natasha replied. ‘It’s quite boring actually, rains all the bloody time. London has lots of dusty old museums and nothing else really. And so grimy! Just like Washington. I prefer Los Angeles any day. Californian sunshine and sand and surf, the best combo one can ask for,’ she added, tossing her shiny hair like a Hollywood temptress. A knowledgeable, well-travelled, well-heeled temptress that could entice anyone but Haroon, Sam thought. She watched her brother, seated at the table with two of St Jude’s most acclaimed beauties, but with eyes for no one else but Lily D’Souza. How could Lily fail to notice his stupid puppyish adoration? Sam eyed the generally disdainful look on Lily’s face nervously and thought of how Lily would now hold her in even lower esteem, seeing that all her scheming had become so obvious. Sam slumped on her bar stool, hunching her shoulders miserably and spooning her sundae into her mouth without tasting it. There was no point even trying to keep the conversation going. Zeba and Natasha were determined to continue chatting with each other without giving Lily an opening. Haroon was so star-struck he’d lost his stupid larynx at the crucial moment. Bubbles was upset with her and would probably never speak to her again. Sam did not normally use profanity, even in her deepest thoughts, but today she could not help asking herself what the fuck she’d thought she was doing.
Lily, leaving Nirula’s an hour later, was more or less asking herself the same question. She should have known better when Sam had invited her out so unexpectedly. But, foolishly, she had actually imagined that Samira Hussain, the school’s most popular girl, had taken a genuine liking to her. ‘What a fine ass you’ve made of yourself again, Lily D’Souza,’ she muttered to herself. Stopping at a shop window and seeing her reflection in the glass Lily remembered that she, more than anyone else, ought to understand the business of reading people’s motives. Especially when they were being overly nice. She had worked out long ago that people were nice only when they wanted something from you, and quickly turned nasty once they’d got it.
