Secrets and lies, p.31
Secrets and Lies, page 31
‘Maybe we were just jealous…and our jealousy sort of rubbed off on each other?’ Sam volunteered.
‘Come on! We’ve never been jealous of each other—and don’t tell me we don’t have reason to be. I could be jealous of Zeba for her figure or Bubbles for her money or—’
‘But that could be because we’ve known each other since we were kids, Anita!’ Sam cut in. ‘We grew up together, we’re used to each other. But Lily was the newcomer, the interloper in our world…and she was better than us at most things too, we have to admit it…’ Sam stopped, unable to speak any more for her quivering mouth, recalling a long-ago conversation with her brother in a Simla churchyard.
Anita cut in before Sam could start crying. ‘I know one shouldn’t speak ill of the dead and all that, but perhaps we’re forgetting just how horrid Lily was, Sam. She was just so nasty all the time. I don’t think we should be caning ourselves now for having been unable to like her.’
‘There must have been a reason for her anger,’ Sam insisted. ‘I mean, she’d lived for a while with nuns in a convent somewhere and she once mentioned in passing not being allowed to see her father. Maybe he was in prison or something. So there were things, you see. It just didn’t sound like she had the same kind of life as us.’
‘Maybe Lily was brought up by nuns because she was poor. They do take girls from impoverished Christian families into the convent sometimes to provide food and education, don’t they? Maybe that’s why Lily didn’t like us—because she was poor and thought we all had money,’ Bubbles suggested.
‘More than just money, I think. She did sometimes look sort of…y’know, upset when the last bell rang and people mentioned things like their mums picking them up from school. And she always clammed up if anyone asked her about her past. I did try asking her once because I was feeling sorry for her, but…’ Once again Sam stopped short of mentioning Lily’s claim to being Miss Lamb’s granddaughter. There was no need to pass on what was probably a lie, especially now that Lily was dead. A scandal would be terribly unfair on poor Miss Lamb, who was already coping with so much.
They all sat remembering Lily for another few minutes, trying to fit her into other moulds than the one she had occupied in their minds for the past few months. Finally Bubbles piped up, the wobble in her voice matching everyone’s mood. ‘So weird and so…so horrible that Lily died in much the same way that we had planned to kill her that night…you know, the skipping rope and all…’ she said.
Zeba quickly volunteered a theory. ‘You know, if it was murder, it could have been Gomes,’ she said hopefully. ‘I saw him leave the gym before Lily was found…’
‘Oh come on, he was in the toilets!’ Sam cried. ‘Bubbles and I saw Gomes going into the school building as we were coming out of the rose garden.’
‘Yeah, I clearly remember seeing him too,’ Bubbles said. ‘He was ahead of us when we went to the toilets in the main building. We were in search of tissues, weren’t we, Sam?’
‘But Gomes is definitely a possibility,’ Anita insisted, ‘given the information Lily had on him.’
‘Well, he sure as hell got himself covered in Lily’s blood as soon as he could after the event, didn’t he?’ said Zeba.
‘Yes, he could have deliberately gone to check her pulse. Well, that would have been the logical thing to do if he wanted to ensure that his fingerprints would be all over the skipping rope,’ Anita said, aware that she was scraping the barrel now, suddenly terrified of hearing what Sam might say.
Zeba wasn’t giving up either. ‘And he was wearing black too,’ she pointed out.
‘So were we all,’ Sam said, ‘for Haroon’s sake, as you know.’
‘And so were half the other people there. Everyone wears black at night anyway,’ Bubbles agreed. ‘Natasha’s mother said so,’ she added by way of explanation as Zeba gave her a withering look.
‘Well, we could quite easily have been seen as the perpetrators,’ Anita said, wrapping her arms around herself and shivering. ‘I mean, there we were plotting to kill Lily the night before, so it would have been the logical thing to have been accused of it when it did take place. All I can say is, thank goodness Lamboo called the investigation off.’
Zeba shuddered. ‘You’re right—just think how easily we would have crumbled if we’d been questioned. It wouldn’t have been difficult for the police to be convinced it was us.’
‘After all, Sam and I had only just come back into the gym before Lily was found,’ Bubbles said, ‘they could easily have thought it was us who killed her.’
Sam, whose head had been bowed for a while, finally raised it to look at her friends. ‘But it was I who killed Lily…’ Her whisper pierced the still air for a second before she continued. ‘Sure, I didn’t wrap a skipping rope around her neck and throttle her, as planned. We all know she took her own life…’ Sam spoke softly but her voice broke as she added in a barely audible whisper, ‘but it was I who drove her to it.’
Anita, overcome by a mixture of relief and guilt, spoke up, first. ‘No, no, Sam, if Lily was driven to take her own life then it wasn’t you at all, it was me.’
‘And me,’ Zeba said.
‘What do you mean it was you?’ Sam asked. ‘You weren’t even there when I screamed at Lily. Only Bubs was. And I have to thank her for dragging me off to the toilets before I did any worse.’
‘You two saw Lily?’ Anita asked, surprised.
‘Yes, in the rose garden…just after you and Zeba went off to the Chemistry lab.’
‘Then it must have been soon after you met her that we came upon her too, on our way back from the lab. She was in the garden, sitting under the mulberry tree. She looked quite upset but we didn’t realise…’ Anita trailed off. She looked confused but the pieces were slowly starting to fit.
‘We wouldn’t have said anything to her if we knew that Sam already had, would we, Anita?’ Zeba asked. Her face by now ashen too.
‘Why didn’t you mention this at the time?’ Sam asked Anita.
‘When could we have? We’d split up and had only just come back into the gym before her body was found…’
The four girls looked at each other in horror before Sam whispered, ‘Does that mean we all spoke harshly to Lily before she…’
The awful silence was shattered by a sudden cacophony emanating from the garden below Bubbles’ room. Guests were cheering and the brass band was exuberantly striking up their version of tequila with a great clashing of cymbals and blaring of bugles. Footsteps came thundering up the stairs and a pack of children tumbled in. ‘They are here, they are here, the baraat is here! The bridegroom is on a horse painted all gold!’ they yelled excitedly, causing the girls to get up in consternation, straightening their blouses and pulling on their sandals. Sam, seeing the frightened expression on Bubbles’ face, moved closer to her on the bed and took her hand.
‘Don’t worry, I’m right here with you, Bubs. Your mum’s asked Anita and Zeba to lead the welcome party with flower trays but I told her I would stay with you,’ she said, gesturing to the other two to leave so they would not miss the jaimala ceremony to greet the bridegroom and his relatives. In a while they would all be back, along with Bubbles’ mother and sisters, to escort the bride to the mandap where the final rituals would be carried out; the final transformation of Bubbles Malhotra into Mrs Raheja Junior of Belgravia, London.
Sam and Bubbles sat in silence as the noise of the crowd slowly abated and the band’s music turned reedy and sentimental in readiness for the arrival of the bride. The only light in their room came from the fairy lights draping the trees in the Malhotra garden, but neither girl wanted to get up to turn switches on, quite unwilling to let go of their terrified grasp on each other’s hands. They clung to each other in the half-darkness, praying for each other and to be forgiven this most terrible thing they had done.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
DELHI, 2008
As their car pulled up outside the school, Bubbles clutched Sam’s arm. ‘This is awful. I really, really don’t know why we’re here,’ she said, looking up at the old church building that fronted the school as though it might suddenly open its big wooden doors and swallow her whole.
‘Don’t be silly, we’ve only come here to meet Lamboo and say goodbye before she leaves.’ Sam spoke firmly as they got out of the car, although her heart was thudding in her chest too. The old Edwardian church building loomed over them, majestic as ever, the figures in its stained-glass windows eerily coming to life as they caught the last rays of the pale winter sun.
‘Isn’t it weird,’ Anita whispered. ‘Put a bunch of women in front of their school and they’re instantly transformed back into little girls again.’
‘It’s the church doing it to me, I think,’ Bubbles replied, feeling far more like gauche, goofy Bubbles Malhotra of yore than Mrs Raheja of Belgravia.
Anita wrapped her coat around herself and shivered. The wrought-iron gates of St Jude’s were shut and barred at this evening hour. The chowkidar’s guard-house too lay unlit in the gathering dusk, with no sign of the burly moustachioed man who had stood by the gates at school-leaving time, waving flocks of giggling girls on. Anita had always found the presence of the chowkidar a reassuring reminder of all the things a school was meant to be—safe, peaceful, stimulating—but today, absurdly, her fervid imagination was making her think of Cerberus at the entrance to Hades.
‘Oh, look, that must be Zeba,’ Sam said, her eyes on an approaching car. ‘She asked me to look out for a Jag.’
A silver Jaguar rolled to a halt in the car park and Zeba emerged from the back seat, wearing a beautiful beige sari and with a shahtoosh shawl slung over one shoulder. To Sam, she looked far lovelier than she did on screen. Her hair, which had tumbled in unruly brown waves in their schooldays, was now groomed to perfection, lying shiny and smooth, rippling all the way to her waist.
‘Oh, you look absolutely gorgeous, Zebs,’ Sam said warmly, kissing both her cheeks and holding her by the shoulders to take in her old classmate’s clothes and hair and stunning figure. ‘But that’s stating the obvious to India’s top movie star, I suppose!’
Zeba looked momentarily surprised at what was clearly an honest compliment and responded by saying, ‘You don’t look so bad yourselves, all three of you. So it’s true what they say about thirty being the new twenty, and there I was so conceitedly thinking it was just me!’ She kissed the other two women as she said this, her cheeky schoolgirl smile still much the same as before.
Sam wagged her forefinger and said good-naturedly, ‘Bubbles and Anita may look twenty. Me, I don’t think so.’
‘You only have a small problem around here,’ Zeba said, patting Sam’s tummy affectionately. ‘But come stay with me a month and I’ll get rid of it for you.’
‘Seriously?’ Sam looked impressed. ‘Don’t tempt me, Zeba, I might just take you up on that,’ she laughed.
‘I mean it, you’d always be welcome to come and stay. Do you ever come to Mumbai?’ Zeba asked, looking at the other two.
‘I’ve been a couple of times but only for a few hours here and there. If I’d thought of taking your number from Sam, I’d have called you for a chat, Zeb,’ Bubbles replied.
‘And I was treated to five hours at Chhatrapati Shivaji Airport once, trying to get across to Cal. Not an experience I’d want to repeat,’ Anita said.
‘You guys see a lot of each other in London, don’t you?’ Zeba asked. To Sam’s surprise, her voice sounded a little wistful.
Bubbles replied vehemently, ‘Yes, and thank God for that. If I don’t speak to either Sam or Anita every day, I feel completely lost. But we try to meet three or four times a month at least.’
‘Hey, we should go in now. Lamboo’s probably still the stickler for punctuality that she was back then,’ Anita reminded them.
An unfamiliar chowkidar emerged from the warmth of his guard-house when they knocked on its glass pane. He let them through the gates with no questions asked, obviously having been given instructions to expect them. Sam took in a deep, wobbly breath as they walked down the drive. The distraction provided by Zeba trying to catch up on a whole host of information was useful, and for another few minutes they talked briefly about their children, husbands, jobs and other surface details. The shared past that had brought them back here today—one they still found difficult to confront—remained unspoken.
They walked past the side door of the church where Bubbles, by habit, did a small superstitious bob as though going in for an exam. Sam remembered the night she had shivered under its yellow tubelight, dreading having to face Lily at the Social. The memory was so vivid, she could almost feel the cold of that terrible night now leaching through the woollen fibres of her stout Burberry coat. Sam surveyed the old trees flanking the driveway: fifteen years hadn’t changed them very much, nor the other outward trappings, such as the green sign that pointed the way to the school reception. Only the bougainvillea arch at the end of the drive had, with the passage of the years, become thick and woody, almost tree-like. The women walked under it, ducking their heads to avoid the low-hanging boughs, finally finding themselves facing the old school building, its red brick glowing in the evening light.
‘Her letter said we were to go straight to her cottage round the back,’ Sam said.
‘I do hope there’s others from our class coming,’ Bubbles said in an attempt to be optimistic.
Anita shook her head. ‘You know, I’m quite certain it’s just us.’
‘Look, I’m sure there’s nothing to worry about,’ Sam said, still trying to sound a lot more positive than she felt.
‘Lamboo would never call us here to upset us,’ Zeba reassured them. ‘Our batch was really special to her, although I remember she especially adored you, Sam.’
‘Haven’t done much to deserve that these past fifteen years,’ Sam replied.
‘But does anyone know exactly why she’s called us here? It can’t be just that she wants to see us, can it…?’ Zeba asked.
‘Maybe she’s ill and dying and wants to meet all her old pupils one last time?’ Bubbles offered.
‘Oh shit, I do hope it isn’t something like that.’
‘I heard she’d retired ages ago but they let her keep the cottage as she still helps around the school. Still directing the annual play, someone said, would you believe it!’
‘But now she’s finally leaving Jude’s. Disappearing into a convent, her letter said…’
They stopped talking as they walked around the building and the principal’s cottage came into view. It looked exactly the same as before, a twist of flowering madhumalati hanging over its front door, white lace curtains fluttering at the windows. Before it, the rose garden lay in its usual winter splendour, dotted with enormous evening blooms in a riot of colours.
Sam’s stomach lurched, as it always did, at the overpowering smell of roses. Through the turmoil in her head she spotted a gravestone in a corner of the garden and guessed it might be Lily’s—but then the door to the cottage opened and Miss Lamb was standing in the doorway, a huge smile on her wrinkled face, her hands stretched out in welcome to her girls.
Miss Lamb hugged the women one by one as they trooped in, and when she came to Sam it felt as if she clung to her a little longer than the others. Holding her by the shoulders for a couple of moments, the old principal looked searchingly into Sam’s features and laughed softly. ‘I’d have known that face anywhere, with those two pretty moles gracing that little chin. My dearest Samira, how very splendid to see you again…’
Sam, too overcome to say very much, kissed Victoria Lamb on either side of her face before letting her move on to Anita behind her. Sam had been into Lamboo’s neat little cottage a few times in her childhood and looked around its front parlour, crowded today with cardboard boxes stacked against one wall. Flanking the blackened, disused fireplace were the principal’s once crammed bookshelves, now emptied of books but filled with hundreds of cards and pictures, all of smiling girls’ faces, of varied ages, complexions and hues. At first glance, Sam could not see any familiar faces among them, not even Lily. She turned to look at the old principal, who was deep in conversation with Anita now. Lamboo looked well enough, but smaller, somehow. Perhaps she was simply not holding herself as ramrod straight as before.
Miss Lamb’s old manservant emerged from the kitchen with glasses of wine and water arrayed on a tray. Sam greeted him affectionately; he must have been an oldish man even back then but now he was positively ancient, his Nepalese features creased into a face that looked like a crumpled ball of paper.
‘Lakhanji, don’t tell me you are also leaving the school with principal-sahib?’ Sam asked in Hindi, accepting a glass of water.
‘I also retire. Sunday is my last day at St Jude’s,’ the old man replied, beaming.
‘Yes, Lakhan’s looking forward to finally going home to Nepal, with a very deserving pension in hand,’ Miss Lamb said. ‘Thirty years of cooking for a batty old Englishwoman has, luckily, not robbed him completely of his sanity. Or his cooking skills!’ She waved her arm around her half-emptied living room. ‘My dear girls, do find yourselves somewhere comfortable. This weekend the sofas get taken away, so you would have had to sit on these cardboard boxes if you’d come this time tomorrow.’
‘What happens to the cottage, Miss Lamb?’ Zeba asked. ‘Will they keep it as it is?’
‘Ah yes, this old place stays, thankfully. After I leave this weekend, they plan to renovate it so they can move the library in here. It was my last plea to them, as the single room inside the junior school really isn’t big enough. Certainly not now that they have to take in my entire collection of books as well!’
The four women had seated themselves by now, Bubbles tucking herself safely between Anita and Sam on the sofa. An expectant silence suddenly fell over the room as Miss Lamb took the armchair near the door and now squarely faced her old students. She took off her glasses and wiped them on a lace handkerchief, squinting slightly as she said, ‘I know you’re baffled by why you’re here.’ Smiling, she put the glasses back on. ‘I could say I called you here only because I wanted to see you before kicking the bucket…’ a small ripple of uncertain laughter went around the room ‘…and that wouldn’t be entirely untrue. You see, I knew you four would probably never come back to the school unless I expressly called you here. Every single girl from your batch came back at some point…all except you.’
