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‘Oh, Christ, sorry to be so late, love,’ she said, lightly kissing Ben’s cheek and sinking into the seat facing him. ‘How long have you been here?’
‘What excuse do we have today, huh?’ Ben asked, raising his left arm and waving his watch at her, his voice uncharacteristically peevish.
‘Oh, don’t ask! No cabs to be had for love nor money on a night like this. And the meeting at Gideon’s just dragged on and on. Antonia, the PR girl from the publisher’s was there too, and wanted to discuss the digital media campaign for the new book. You’ll never believe this but they’re talking about a seven-city tour across Europe, which, of course, would be lovely, except…’ Riva realised that Ben was no longer listening, his attention focused quite deliberately on the wine list.
Riva lapsed into silence, glad to have been stopped in her tracks while lying so shamelessly to her husband. It really did make her feel quite hateful. Not that all of her utterances were lies exactly, as Riva had indeed had several conversations with both Gideon and Antonia in the course of the day, but it was certainly not true that she had been in a meeting with them this evening. It suddenly crossed Riva’s mind that Ben may have read something online about Aman Khan being in London to promote his new film. She flushed at the thought – it would not take much for him to put two and two together and guess that she had gone to see him at BAFTA. Nervously, she reached out for Ben’s glass of water and watched him over the rim as she sipped. His face looked more drawn than usual today, his grey-blue eyes bloodshot, and Riva wondered if he had spent all day staring at his computer screen. She sighed and sat back in her chair, feeling an inexplicable surge of sadness overcome her. Riva had always striven not to rub Ben’s nose in the success of her publishing career, conscious of the fact that Ben had been the one with real writing ambitions back in college. Of course, he had greeted Riva’s unexpected book deal with excitement and good grace at first, perhaps anticipating with typical confidence that his own chance would surely follow before long. He had even joked of how they might one day become the ‘golden couple in publishing’, both of them enjoying flourishing literary careers. But, as the years passed with submission after submission of his being turned down, Ben had not been able to help becoming just a tiny bit bitter. Riva had done her best to assist in whatever way she could, but she cringed when she recalled the weary look that would come over her publishers’ faces whenever a husband with writing ambitions was mentioned. The most brutal blow had come when Gideon, Riva’s own literary agent, had returned Ben’s manuscript with a terse and uncomplimentary letter of rejection. Ben had found it astonishing that the man had not even done him the courtesy of a phone call and angrily reminded Riva that it was her sizeable royalties that were keeping Gideon ensconced in his fancy Covent Garden offices. In Riva’s opinion this wasn’t true at all – Gideon had many other successful writers on his list – but Ben had not wanted to hear that, and accused her of taking sides with her agent. They had ended up rowing that day and Riva had subsequently stopped advocating on Ben’s behalf. Recently he had complained again about the stand she had taken, claiming to be writing much better material now that he no longer had his job at the bank distracting him from concentrating on the book, but Riva had held firm, quite sure that he should try his chances like all other aspiring writers did, rather than expecting favours merely because he was married to a published author.
‘What do you want to drink?’ Ben passed Riva the menu, interrupting her train of thought. ‘There’s a rather nice Bordeaux listed…’
‘You choose, Ben. Although I think I’ll have a mint tea first, to warm my poor icy fingers,’ Riva replied. Once, a chance remark like that would have had Ben promptly reaching out for her hands to massage warmth into them. But Riva rubbed her own palms together now, feeling saddened again by the distance that had crept into their marriage somewhere along the way. Where did these cold gusts fly in from, she wondered, blowing aside all life in a marriage and leaving only the carcass of something that was once so warm and loving?
Riva folded her pashmina and pushed it into her bag before running her fingers through her hair and sitting up in her chair. She was determined to enjoy her evening out with her husband and hoped – both for her sake and Ben’s – that she had managed to cover up her silly secret outing to BAFTA. It suddenly seemed so terribly sad to have snuck off to gawp at a film star she had once vaguely known – one who, in all likelihood, would probably look right through her if he saw her today! But it was even sadder, Riva thought, that she should have to hide such a thing from the man she was married to. It was daft and mean and Riva resolved she would never do such a thing ever again.
Ben, sitting across the table from Riva, scanned the extensive menu without seeing it. He had spent the past hour assiduously reading its contents in minute detail while waiting for Riva to turn up and knew exactly what he was going to order. What was preoccupying his mind was not Riva’s lateness. Nor was it anything to do with her carefully elaborate explanations of her whereabouts this evening. He and Riva never questioned each other about whom they had met in the course of the day; theirs simply wasn’t that kind of a watchful, possessive relationship. Tonight, however, Ben simply could not erase from his mind the conversation he had overheard between Riva and her dislikeable little sister, Kaaya, the previous night. It had left an acrid taste in his mouth and Ben wondered now if he ought to tell Riva about how hurt he was feeling. It would, of course, ruin their meal out and Ben knew that would only make him feel more wretched. It was true what they said about eavesdroppers never hearing good things about themselves – although he had not been eavesdropping, but had merely stumbled upon an accidentally overheard conversation. It must have been close to ten o’clock by the time he had come in from the pub. He had entered through the kitchen door and the sisters, sitting in the living room, had not heard him come in. He was just about to stroll into the hallway to say hello when he heard Kaaya’s loud voice ring out in her horrible brassy manner.
‘Admit it, you’re just too, too soft on Ben, Riva, constantly tiptoeing emotionally around him and thinking up various imaginative excuses for what is plainly typically selfish male behaviour.’
As Ben froze at the kitchen door, he had been relieved to hear Riva respond tetchily. ‘Look, it’s not as if he’s never worked, Kaaya. Don’t you go forgetting, honey, that Ben not only supported me for the time it took to complete my creative writing course at East Anglia, he bailed you out too with that loan for your PR diploma. Besides, he was a rock to us all when Papa died.’
But Kaaya – in Ben’s opinion, a self-seeking opportunist who mysteriously had every single man in her immediate circle seemingly wrapped around her little finger – was typically ungrateful. He could imagine her waving a dismissive manicured hand in the air as she spoke.
‘I paid back Ben’s loan years ago, in case you’ve forgotten! Yeah, sure, he even helped Papa once financially. But Ben was a different man then. Not the grumpy old git he is now. People change and you’re mad to keep clinging to some lost notion of what he once was. Chuck him out, sis,’ she advised coolly, as though Ben were no more than a carton of something going slightly whiffy in the fridge. It had taken superhuman self-control to keep from striding into the living room to let the pair know he had overheard their conversation. But Ben had stopped himself. Not to save Kaaya the embarrassment but, quite simply, to hear Riva’s response. Surely, surely she would spring to his defence.
Instead, he had heard Riva laugh. Perhaps it had been with astonishment or wryness, rather than amusement – it was hard to tell without seeing the expression on her face. But Ben had been so incensed by the sound of Riva’s laughter at Kaaya’s suggestion of ‘chucking him out’ that he had turned on his heel and walked out of the house, leaving the kitchen door swinging open on its hinges for the two women to puzzle over later. He had subsequently stayed at the pub until closing time, getting more and more drunk and wallowing in sadness and self-pity, trying desperately to convince himself that Riva would surely have defended him after his departure.
The worst part of it all was that, at some level, Ben knew Kaaya was right – what was Riva doing with a man like him anyway? It wasn’t like it had been when they’d all been young and full of promise back in their university days. After all, any one of them – Riva, Susan, Joe, Aman – could have turned out successful back then. It was all a matter of luck and chance. Despite one’s best efforts, life had a totally arbitrary way of dishing out favours, Ben knew that now. The pity of it was that back at uni, it was he, Ben, who had seemed most likely to be going places, the only one in the gang to be hand-picked by a bank when the milk rounds had started in their final year. It would be no exaggeration to claim that he had once been the most popular student on campus, not just a top student but also an ace debater and captain of the cricket team. Would anyone even remember now that he had been the first among them all to have landed a job, one that everyone was so certain would lead to a glittering career as a banker?
Twelve years down the line, however, events had taken a direction that no one would have predicted back then: Riva was a successful, award-winning novelist; Joe a consultant psychiatrist at one of London’s biggest teaching hospitals; Susan, the special needs co-ordinator at a primary school praised for its innovative teaching methods; and, most gallingly, Aman Khan of all people was now a fucking film star, earning megabucks in Bollywood, gracing magazine covers and being worshipped by droves of women in the farthest corners of the world. To Ben, Aman Khan’s resounding success had been the biggest surprise of them all. Kaaya’s came a close second – vacuous, self-absorbed Kaaya who had done amazingly well for herself as a Hollywood film publicist. Who in their right mind would have ever imagined that brain-dead Kaaya would one day turn into a better have-it-all feminist than her much brighter and nicer sister? Whenever Ben reflected on life’s vagaries (something he had a lot more time for since the bank had laid him off two years ago), he could see it all quite clearly: Riva Walia, one-time president of Leeds University’s student union and founder of Bitten Apple, the campus feminist rag, had merely got unlucky and was now trapped in a lacklustre marriage that was like a drug habit, impossible to break. And there, in her swanky Holland Park apartment across town, was Kaaya Walia – once considered the pretty airhead sibling – having her cake and eating it (and by God, was she eating it) with an office overlooking Soho Square, a designer apartment in Holland Park, two flash sports cars in the double garage, a wealthy investment banker husband and, as if all that wasn’t enough, an endless string of admiring men on the side. Ben had seen them, hanging adoringly around Kaaya at the fancy parties she threw – a besotted young colleague here, a well-heeled client there, men went mad for her. As they would have done for Riva too, had she been a different sort of woman. Riva was equally, if not more, attractive than her sister, but was not given to the sultry come-ons that Kaaya was so adept at. Riva was hard-working, sweet-tempered and persevering but, when all was said and done, it was Kaaya who was materially more successful. How unfair was that?
It made Ben feel wretched to think how easily his golden prospects had gone dark and sour, and how he had dragged Riva down with him. It was incredible to think that he, Ben Owen, should be out of a job. Incredible but true. Perhaps Kaaya had been right last night: he was holding Riva back and she was too kind to admit it herself. He ought to do the right thing by her and leave. Vanish into the ether. Perhaps allow her to pick up with Aman Khan where they had last left off. Which had been at the end of that first year at university when he, Ben, had thought he was king of the world, simply because he had got the girl, while poor luckless Aman Khan had left uni with neither a girl or even a degree. And now, there was Aman Khan gracing posters overlooking Leicester Square, gloating at the tiny luckless mortals that passed beneath!
Chapter Five (#ulink_12ca58a0-dcf8-5d66-8a5b-6aa3e47aa44e)
Kaaya delved into her handbag for her BlackBerry, wondering how illicit love had been managed in the era before mobile telephony. Perhaps spouses just caught each other out more frequently in those bad old days, when lovers had no choice but to use home phones after work hours. Kaaya, of course, called on Joe’s home phone only if it was Susan she needed to speak to. Which wasn’t often, as Susan was really her sister Riva’s friend more than hers. Nevertheless, there had been the occasional call – to invite Susan and Joe to dinner or, more recently, to help organise Riva’s surprise birthday party. Kaaya would be the first to admit that there had been a curious thrill in speaking to Susan, knowing that Joe was probably listening in at the other end of their conversation, longing to grab the phone and shower kisses into it.
She glanced at the time on her phone. This was the best time to catch him, just as he would be finishing his daily workout. He was in fact probably just settling down before one of the computer terminals at his snazzy wi-fi enabled gym, from where he used his new secret email account to write her long and sentimental emails. Kaaya preferred telephone conversations to emails, writing being much more Riva’s thing than hers. Besides, tapping on a keyboard was murder on her delicately French-manicured nails.
She inspected their perfect pearly sheen now as she stretched out on her chaise longue, listening to the distant buzz of Joe’s phone. On her face was the smile that Riva used to describe as ‘Kaaya’s cat-smile’ when they were children. But Kaaya’s smile faded as the ringing tone continued and she realised that the answering service was going to kick in. Kaaya was accustomed to having men grab hurriedly at their phones to answer it without delay when her name flashed up on their screens. Still, she reckoned she could give Joe the benefit of the doubt this once. He had, after all, proven to be a most attentive lover this past month. Unsurprisingly, actually, given that she was his first (and, quite likely, would be his only) extramarital dalliance in the ten years he had been married to Susan. He had, in fact, all the gauche charm of the first-time adulterer, as eager as a puppy with his affections. Kaaya was familiar with the sort, and she found she enjoyed their attentions rather more than those of the more blasé seasoned cheats. The only problem with a lover as ardent as Joe was that there was every danger he would get too serious and start talking divorce and remarriage. And that was definitely territory Kaaya was not interested in. She already had a husband, for heaven’s sake, and a rather high calibre one too! No, Joe was merely a timely emotional prop to help her through this rather bleak time.
Kaaya’s thoughts stopped drifting when Joe’s phone stopped ringing. ‘This is the Vodaphone messaging service. Please leave a message after the tone.’
Kaaya kept it brief. ‘Hi, it’s me. Call when you can.’ She did not need to specify who she was and that she was alone. Joe already knew that Rohan was in Japan for a week and had vowed to see her every day in his absence. Or rather, every night after work. Except Tuesday, he had said, as it was his old classmate’s birthday. Kaaya glanced at the digital calendar on the wall. Of course – Tuesday, that’s where he was. The bloody birthday party!
Kaaya clapped her phone down on the coffee table, trying to quell her rising irritation, and used the tip of her forefinger to pick up a fleck of dust that was shining silver on the glass surface. It wasn’t like Manuela, her fanatically hard-working housekeeper, to miss even the tiniest smear or speck. Kaaya glanced around the room, forcing herself to take pleasure in its perfect designer chic – the Italian sofa in soft cream suede, the sweeping chrome down-lighters, the bunches of fresh yellow rosebuds arranged on the mantelpiece in small square glass vases. It was the perfect setting for an elegant woman like her. After all, Anton, Kaaya’s Parisian jeweller, had once explained how even the highest quality gold was just metal without the embellishment of a perfect stone. But what a waste to be looking as fabulous as she did tonight when there was no one around to appreciate it.
Kaaya got up, sighing as she walked into her bedroom. She peeled off her Chanel jacket and hurled it onto the floor. Manuela would put it on its upholstered hanger and return it to its rightful place in the walk-in wardrobe when she came in tomorrow morning. Divesting herself of the rest of her office clothes, Kaaya riffled through her vast collection of home outfits, wearing only her mauve lace lingerie and a towering pair of purple patent leather Jimmy Choos. Without too much ado, she chose one of her many Joseph silk kaftans and threw it onto the clothes horse. Then she slipped off her bra and panties and surveyed her curvy but gym-toned naked figure with momentary satisfaction before finally pulling the kaftan over her head. Kicking off her five-inch stilettos, Kaaya slipped her feet into a pair of gold chamois slippers and padded her way back across the pile carpet to fetch herself a drink from the cabinet. As she walked, she could feel the soft fabric of her kaftan brush rather pleasurably against her bare nipples. Oh, what a bloody waste to be feeling so sexy on a night when her lover was unavailable. If Kaaya had been a little more adventurous, there were numerous others she could have summoned with a click of her fingers – suave old Rodney Theobald from the art gallery, for instance, or Henry from the accounts department at work, the latter no doubt ready and willing for a quick bonk at five minutes’ notice! Henry had held a candle for her ever since she had joined Lumous PR a year ago and, last Christmas, he thought he had hit the jackpot when she snogged him in the broom closet and allowed him to slip one hot hand under her bra. But he – single, adoring, available – was far too easy for Kaaya. She generally preferred a chase to be more exciting, even when it was a new client she was wooing at work. Which was why affairs with seemingly happily married men were the bigger challenge. But they certainly came with some irritating constraints. Damn Joe and his friend’s birthday party! Kaaya considered calling him anyway, to make him sweat just a tiny bit under the scrutiny of his wife and friends…That would serve him right for leaving her in the lurch on a night like this, she thought, picking up her phone again.
She stopped short, deciding to call Riva first. The juicy tidbit of news she had for her sister could not wait any more. The din of a noisy restaurant was apparent in the background as Riva’s voice came down the line. She was shouting to be heard over the clamour. ‘Hello? Hello? Kaaya, that you?’
‘You sound like you’re in the middle of a railway station,’ Kaaya said, enjoying, as always, being rude about the kind of downmarket places her parsimonious sister tended to hang out in.
‘It’s a restaurant, actually, Kaaya dearest.’
‘Really? I don’t exactly detect the hush of discreet waiters and thick white linen in the background…or the tinkle of crystal, for that matter,’ Kaaya said, her voice dripping with sarcasm.
‘What? Can’t hear…hang on, I think I need to walk towards the door,’ Riva said.
‘I said, it – sounds – too – noisy – to – be – a – restaurant. Oh, never mind.’ Kaaya sighed but Riva had heard her this time.
‘Well, I’m hardly one for shelling out six months’ worth of royalties on a minuscule platter of nouvelle cuisine, just because it’s got some jumped-up cheffy name attached to it, am I?’ she retorted, refusing to rise to her sister’s snobbishness.
‘Now, I can think of various responses to that, Riva darling, but I’ll spare you while you’re dining, lest you choke on your sausage and mash. Who’re you with anyway? Not that sad specimen you call a husband, by any chance? In which case, you must be dining at the finest greasy spoon. Or – I know – a greasy chopstick basement in cheapest Chinatown. Yes?’
Riva laughed. ‘Cheapest Arab Town, actually. Wassup, anyway?’
‘Okay, won’t keep you. Just that I have news for you. You’ll never guess whom I met this arvo.’
‘Who?’
‘A college mate of yours…said he remembered you…Care to wager a guess? Oh, I can’t bear this so I’m just going to tell you. It was Aman Khan, King of Bollywood, no less!’
There was a pause before Riva spoke again, her voice calm. ‘Aman Khan? Where on earth did you meet him?’
‘At my office, believe it or not. He came with a director – some oily bloke called Shah – to talk about getting a publicist for a forthcoming crossover film of his. Indrani down in reception recognised him from her regular diet of Bollywood. She was all aflutter, near fainting point, I can tell you. And I do have to say he’s really quite a looker in the flesh. You never said he was so dishy or I’d have taken more trouble keeping up with his films!’
‘How did my name come up?’ Riva asked.
‘Oh, we got chatting and I told him that my big sister was his classmate at Leeds Uni.’
‘I wish you hadn’t. He’s hardly likely to remember me, is he?’
‘That was the peculiar thing, Riva: he did! He suddenly got all animated too, telling me about how you cornered him on his first day on the campus to stick a placard in his hand. Typical of the shop-stewardy sort of thing you would do, come to think of it!’
‘How curious he remembers that!’
‘Or was the placard just a chat-up ruse on your part? Clever, if it was. He still remembers it anyway…’
‘Of course it wasn’t a chat-up line! There was some kind of protest on in uni when he joined, if I recall.’
‘Well, I told him you were still a bit of a trade unionist and rabble-rouser. Putting pamphlets through people’s doors and doing your soapbox thing down at Speaker’s Corner every Sunday morning.’
‘Kaaya, you didn’t!’
‘Sure did.’
‘Oh Kaaya!’
‘Course I didn’t!’ Kaaya cut through Riva’s wail. ‘What do you take me for? He wasn’t there to talk about you anyway so we swiftly moved on to other things.’ Her voice became smug. ‘Think I may have netted a big fish today, sis.’
‘Well done, you,’ Riva said quietly, not sure if Kaaya meant that she had netted a new client in Aman – or a new admirer. The latter was not an unlikely scenario, given the earthy sex appeal Kaaya oozed in such abundance. Surely Aman Khan, like most men, would not be impervious to Kaaya’s beauty? Riva wondered why the thought should make her suddenly feel so despondent.
But Kaaya was now ending the conversation in her usual abrupt manner. ‘Better let you get on with din-dins, then,’ she said, before adding a cheeky postscript. ‘Love to you but none to that crabby hubby of yours. Oh, and mind you don’t choke on a bit of cartilage, eating all that cheap meat.’
Chapter Six (#ulink_fd7f9ef7-7f94-51e9-9fdf-cee45018c666)
Aman walked up the metal stairs to board his flight for Dubai. He was impressed by the sheer bulk of the massive Airbus A380, remembering a letter he had recently received, signed by Sheikh Al Maktoum himself, which contained all sorts of lavish promises to revolutionise the whole concept of luxury air travel. But even Aman Khan, for whom luxury was now a byword for existence, found himself impressed with the private suite the air hostess was now ushering him into. He looked around with pleasure, feeling comfortably cocooned, as the air hostess hung up his Armani coat in a small closet. Since becoming a star, he had learnt the value of privacy, but air travel had remained the one arena in which no amount of money could buy this precious commodity. He had toyed many times with the idea of a private jet, but had not taken it any further because of his fear of small aircraft. Sitting down in a capacious seat, Aman resolved to get his secretary to write to Sheikh Al Maktoum and thank him for coming up with the idea of private cabins on board flights. He kicked off his Loake loafers and settled himself down. After the rigours of the publicity hoopla for his latest film release in London, the air hostess’s standard patter about his seat converting to a flat bed was unobtrusive and reassuring. Adopting his usual method of tackling long-distance air travel, Aman asked for lime juice with soda and angostura bitters.
‘No, nothing to eat, thanks,’ he insisted, ignoring the anxious expression on the woman’s face. The food earlier in the evening at the Mayfair house of the Bindra brothers had been the usual rich Punjabi fare and was still sitting heavy in his stomach. The Bindras were the biggest distributors of South Asian films across Europe and a visit to their home had become compulsory on his London trips; which wouldn’t have been too trying, were it not for the fact that Mrs Bindra always assumed he must miss Indian food terribly when he was travelling abroad. And she sure went to town on all those ghee-laden gravies, when all he really wanted was some soup and toast.
After the air hostess had left, closing the door to the suite softly behind her, Aman strapped himself into his chair, feeling his spirits lift as the behemoth he was ensconced in started to trundle down the runway, picking up speed before it pulled upwards into the eastern sky. Very civilized, he thought, fiddling with the technology around him after his drink had been served. Aman picked up the in-flight magazine and leafed through to the entertainment section. He had over a thousand films on demand – and only seven hours to watch them in! He decided to order a second drink before turning the privacy button on, which, as the air hostess had explained, meant that he would be left alone to watch as many films as he liked until ten minutes before landing. ‘Except in the very unlikely case of an emergency, of course, Mr Khan,’ she had said, smiling. He had smiled back, not voicing aloud the passing thought that, in his current bleak state of mind, the idea of an emergency was not such a worrying proposition.
He looked out of the minuscule window at the empty vastness beyond, dark and purple at its edges…Who would ever imagine that an unsatisfactory marriage could bleed so much of the happiness out of life?
Still, he had many other things to be grateful for. Aman picked up the remote control to search for one of those…Ah, here it was, the Bollywood selection, including eight films in which he played the lead! He scrolled downwards to the earliest of them – Krodh – and clicked on it. He watched his younger self appear in a few fragmented black and white shots under the opening credits. Only the tie he was wearing was imbued with colour, glowing an arty fluorescent red. Very James Bond, he thought, breaking into a sudden grin. He sat back as the film started and watched himself appear on the screen alongside Amitabh Bachchan. As a twenty-something sidekick, in comparison to the great Bachchan, the towering real hero of Krodh, the young Aman Khan was just a boyish young runt! Perhaps it was true what the rags said…Aman had grown better looking over the years, although it wasn’t due to plastic surgery, as some of the magazines had imputed.
Aman leant his head back on the leather upholstery, remembering his excitement at being offered that first big break. It was a year after Aman had returned from England, having decided to give up on university there. And the break couldn’t have come at a better time, when his life appeared to have ground to a complete halt with a failed attempt at a university education and a broken heart. Even now, it wasn’t hard to recapture the gut-wrenching disappointments of that summer.
Aman took a deep breath, searching his memory…Had he imagined Riva’s face in the crowd as he had left BAFTA earlier this evening? He’d always thought of her as a Londoner, an idea he’d picked up from a small newspaper piece he had read in India when she had won that prize a couple of years ago. He had never heard of the Orange Prize before but, from the tone of the piece, it appeared to be something fairly major in the world of books. It had come as no surprise to Aman that Riva had gone on to become an acclaimed author. She had always been so intelligent, even as a teenager, and had diligently read every single book on their reading list in that first year, sometimes helping Aman by giving him compact précis of the more difficult ones. She’d been unfailingly sweet to him during all that time, and Aman had been sure she had been as much in love with him as he had been with her. But in the end Riva had succumbed to Ben’s persistent attentions and Aman had stupidly allowed her to drift away. Looking back now, Aman knew he ought to be kinder to himself. It hadn’t been stupidity that had led to his losing Riva but a lack of confidence; today, of course, he would have dealt with things quite differently. Then Riva had seemed so superior to him, so clever and so smart. It was no surprise she’d chosen the English guy over him really…
Aman looked unseeingly at the pictures flickering on the screen before him. He’d never forgotten that distant past, even though he had firmly walked away from it and not stopped to look back. But this afternoon, he had thought about Riva a lot, his memories sparked by that chance meeting with her sister at the PR firm. The sister had confirmed that Riva did indeed live in London. And – this was the bit that still stuck slightly in his craw – that she had finally gone on to marry Ben. At least, the sister had mentioned the name Ben; it had to be the same guy. It sounded exactly like the kind of golden life Aman would have expected Riva to be enjoying by now. So what would she have been doing lurking among a crowd of his fans at the BAFTA entrance today?
Aman shrugged. As before, he must have imagined seeing Riva in the crowd. It was silly but quite often he imagined he had spotted Riva when travelling in England, seeing her standing on railway platforms or across crowded shop floors. Aman pulled out the small clutch of business cards that was still in his pocket. ‘Kaaya Walia’ was the name printed in a large curly font, flamboyant gold on ivory. Aman had never met Riva’s sister before, and during their meeting this afternoon she had mentioned still being in school when Riva had joined university. She was a good-looking woman, though not a lot like Riva, being harder and far more sophisticated than the teenage Riva of Aman’s memories. But then, Riva might by now have changed a great deal herself.
Aman picked up his drink again, reflecting on how Riva’s success – unlike his own – was completely unsurprising. Even as a first-year student, she’d shown signs of making it big some day, being so bright and focused and determined. And yet she was one of the most gentle girls he had ever met. People like her deserved their success. Unlike him, who had merely got lucky. His own mother sometimes joked that fame had dropped into his lap when he had been half-asleep and lounging on the sofa one lucky day.
Aman took a long swallow of his lime soda, wondering, not without embarrassment, if Riva ever watched any of his films. Perhaps she and Ben laughed at the thought that the shy and rather silly young suitor she had humoured (and Ben had had to fight off) back at college was now a film star. Famous enough to be featured on the cover of Time magazine recently. He looked out of the window and, in its black emptiness, saw his own face looking back. The Time article had described him as ‘handsome’ and ‘aloof’ but what Aman saw when he looked at his own reflection was the rather diffident and uncertain man he had always been. Stardom hadn’t changed him that much. It certainly hadn’t made him any happier.
Aman smiled now, wondering whether he could blame his ‘aloofness’ on his early heartbreak over Riva. If he were honest, he had never completely gotten over her. The easiest explanation was that Riva had been the first girl he had fallen for and maybe it was true what they said about the first cut being the deepest. Or perhaps it was something to do with the fact that she had dumped him – in contrast to all his subsequent relationships where he had been the one to end things. Aman became pensive again. The most likely explanation for the warmth with which he remembered Riva was that his marriage to Salma had turned out to be such a calamity. It was wrong but, every time Salma behaved in a difficult fashion, Aman was unable to stop himself imagining what it would have been like to have married someone as kind-hearted and lovely as Riva instead.
Their becoming classmates had been something of a happy accident. That English degree had been a disastrous choice of subject for Aman but it was all that had been on offer for a green school-leaver from India with unimpressive grades. The course apparently demanded A’s and B’s but his Uncle Naz had been breezily confident about getting him admission, assuring his anxious parents back in Bombay that British universities were now desperate to get full fee-paying international students to join up. ‘Better than having the boy hang around a city like Bombay, getting bored and getting into trouble,’ Naz Chachu had cheerily assured his parents on the crackly long-distance line from Leeds. Aman’s parents had agreed without too much hesitation. Bombay colleges had all closed their admissions, even their second lists. And, after all, Naz himself had once been the family black sheep, whom life in England had straightened out in a way no one would have imagined when he had first left India with a few hundred rupees in his pocket. Just ten years down the line, Naz Chachu not only owned a string of petrol stations, he was branching out into motorway cafés and – three years ago – had shown further good sense in marrying a girl from a moneyed family. In a move that signified his total and complete redemption, he was offering to take the next generation’s black sheep into his home in Leeds to sort him out.
But Aman had arrived in Leeds in the midst of a grey autumn, and he could recall that the only thing that had prevented him from jumping onto the first flight back home was the sight of a pretty young Indian girl in a red miniskirt who had accosted him on his very first day at the university outside the Chancellor’s office to insist that he join the Union’s protest. ‘But what are you protesting against?’ he had queried half-heartedly, not keen at all to spend his very first day at college being thrown out of it. Not after the trouble and expense poor Naz Chachu had gone through.
‘The hike in the tuition fees that overseas students are required to pay! It’s downright shameful,’ the girl had replied, her face frowning and pink with annoyance. And Aman had been too shy to confess that, despite being an overseas student himself, it was an issue he knew absolutely nothing about. Besides, the girl was far too attractive to be disagreed with, and so he had meekly allowed himself to be press-ganged into joining the small band of predominantly brown-faced students, all of whom were carrying placards and shouting a great deal. She had disappeared into the crowd with a pert flash of her skirt after that but, fortunately, soon popped up again, handing Aman a dustbin lid and a wooden ladle with instructions to ‘Make as much noise as you possibly can, okay? Yell, if you must. That’s the only language they understand.’
Even though he did not know whom she was referring to as ‘they’, Aman had obediently made as much of a din as he could, shouting and clanging for all he was worth, all the while keeping an eye on the red miniskirt as it flashed around the quadrangle. Its pretty owner appeared to be quite definitely in charge of events as they unfolded. Aman recalled how, finally, about an hour later, a great cheer had broken out among the protestors as the Bursar emerged from his office. He wore a harassed expression on his face as he beckoned to the miniskirted girl. When she disappeared into his office along with a couple of others, the remaining protestors seemed to lose both interest and momentum and Aman heard the word ‘pub’ mentioned as, one by one, people started to put their placards down and drift away. Only Aman continued to stand there, shivering in his too-thin jacket as the sun set over the roofs of the college buildings and the evening drew in.
When she emerged from the Bursar’s office an hour later, the girl looked startled to see him still standing under the tree, holding the dustbin lid and ladle she had given him.
‘Goodness, you’re not still protesting, are you?’
‘Well, I’m not shouting any more but I had to return these to you,’ Aman said, handing her the dustbin lid and ladle as though they were prize possessions. She took them from Aman, looking around at the empty quadrangle with a huge frown.
‘Don’t tell me they left you here by yourself to decamp to the pub? What utter bastards!’ she declared, looking in concern at Aman’s thin, shivering frame. He nodded dumbly and was astonished when she proceeded to take his arm. The discomfort of the cold autumn evening was instantly forgotten as she beamed up at him and squeezed his arm. ‘Well, our victory makes it all worthwhile, eh? We won! The Bursar’s going to take the matter up with the uni’s governing council so it’s only a partial victory at this stage. But well worth a celebration.’ She took her hand from his arm and added, a little more shyly, ‘Hey, thanks for joining in. Can I buy you a drink for your pains? Least I can do. I’m Riva, by the way.’
Aman leant back on the headrest of his aircraft seat, remembering that long-ago time. No doubt anyone who knew him then would declare that he had changed unimaginably – and not necessarily for the better! Fame had converted his boyish shyness to ‘aloofness’ and his open, trusting nature to cynicism. Even the susceptibility he once had to the sort of kindness Riva had shown him was now transformed into the deepest suspicion of people’s motives. But, back then, he had been so easily touched by Riva’s friendship and the manner in which she had firmly taken him under her wing. That day outside the Bursar’s office, she had marched him into the smoky warmth of the Hare & Tortoise and introduced him to everyone as though he was her best friend. The others had been faintly curious but eventually accepting of him, despite his being a bit of a fish out of water: a teetotaller, fresh out of India and completely clueless about some of the jokes they tossed about so nonchalantly. Looking back, Aman realised that they had all been nice enough – all except for Ben. Aman had soon worked out that the fellow was already madly in love with Riva and consequently jealous of the attention she was showering him with. Ben wasn’t to know that she was only feeling sorry for the lost soul Aman had been back then! In fact, it was probably pity that had led to her first sleeping with him four months later too. But, mere weeks after that, she had gone off him again, and slipped back into her own circle of friends; people who were like her and with whom she would naturally feel more at home.
Aman chewed on a slice of lemon, trying to recall the names of all the others…Susan was Riva’s best friend, a gregarious redhead who had been to the same school as Riva and had joined Leeds Uni too, but in the History department. Her name had stuck in Aman’s head for some reason but, try as he might, Aman could not now remember the name of the medical student Susan had been going out with…a tall, gangly, serious type who talked a lot about joining Médecins Sans Frontières when he had completed his MBBS…Jack? John? No, it had gone…
With all those young faces now floating around in his head, Aman tried to settle into his aircraft bed. But, after half an hour of trying to fall asleep, he was still awake, wondering if, like Riva, Susan had gone on to marry her college sweetheart. They had seemed a well-suited pair, the chatty redhead and her medical student boyfriend who had such a grave and serious air about him. Aman had heard them talk about joining VSO together…Perhaps they had, and were now working side by side in some corner of the world, helping the poor and dispossessed. Some couples were like pieces of a jigsaw slotting in perfectly together, Aman thought as he finally fell into a troubled sleep.
Chapter Seven (#ulink_335afa40-dd2f-58f5-b1ce-5d51e5942afc)
The sudden clear knowledge of Joe’s infidelity came like a physical blow to Susan’s stomach. The unease had been growing for days but she had so far had nothing definite to put her finger on. One could not possibly make an accusation, or private judgement even, on the basis of such vague observations as a spouse’s far-off look, for heaven’s sake! Not if she did not want to be seen as completely paranoid.
There had been other things, though. Until last month, Joe’s BlackBerry had been an instrument carelessly strewn about the house, often beeping insistently while Joe raced about the house searching frantically for it, or nearly getting chucked into the recycler along with the Sunday papers. Now, however, Susan had observed the damn thing become a permanent accessory to her husband, looped around his neck on a cord, and glanced at frequently and surreptitiously. If Joe had been seventy, Susan would have understood the neck-cord thing but he was thirty-five, for God’s sake, and far from requiring memory aides! Before the suspicion had crept in, sitting like an unmoving lump between them, Susan had quite casually asked Joe about his sudden attachment to his mobile phone. He had looked confused for a moment – clearly not realising he’d made it so obvious – before speaking quickly, thinking on his feet. He was considering dispensing with wearing a watch, he said, and had Susan noticed that youngsters never wore watches any more? Their whole array of technological needs was now being met by their phones, apparently. Susan had at first accepted Joe’s explanation without question, even agreeing that most of her older students had in fact dispensed with wearing wristwatches.
What was more difficult to ignore was Joe’s more recent tendency to veer from overblown expressions of love to irrational snappishness, as though Susan had simultaneously become both her husband’s most loved person, and his most hated. There had even been that ghastly scene last month when they had been driving up the M4 to visit her parents in Stoke Poges. Joe had been silent for much of the journey, responding to Susan’s attempts at conversation with monosyllables or grunts. He had also been driving unusually fast and, when Susan had reminded him that they were in no particular rush to get there, he had slammed on the brakes and swung onto the hard shoulder in a quite terrifying manoeuvre, only narrowly missing a coach travelling on the inside lane. The angry blare of the coach’s horn was still ringing in their ears as Joe turned on Susan in a fury to yell, ‘Do you want to drive then?’ Startled by the unexpected aggression, Susan had silently swapped places with her husband and taken the wheel, unwilling to let Joe drive when he was in such an agitated state. Joe had calmed down just as rapidly, soon reaching out to cup his hand over Susan’s on the gearstick and mutter an apology. But, needless to say, the lunch at her parents’ home had been awkward.
Despite Susan’s rather affable and trusting demeanour, she was no fool, and had contemplated the possibility of Joe having an affair with a pragmatism that had impressed even her. Then she had hastily put the thought away, feeling disloyal for even considered it. Besides, the very idea was too exhausting in its potential for grief.
But now, tonight, proof was here staring her in the face.
Curious how the tiniest of actions could escalate into an event so big, so devastating. Who would have thought that five minutes could change your life? All she had done that evening was to excuse herself to use the ladies’ at the restaurant. Wending her way through the other tables, she had seen Joe leave the gents’ just ahead of her; but he did not return to their table as she expected, instead walking out of the restaurant into its herb garden, all his attention on the keys of the BlackBerry he was jabbing. Still thinking nothing of it, she had followed him, planning to give him a mischievous private snog before they returned to their table of celebrating friends. It had been a noisy evening, with everyone congregating at the River Café after work, and Susan had barely managed to grab a few words with Joe before they had been caught up in the general merriment of gift-giving and catch-up chatter. A hug was now in order, especially seeing how unusually tired Joe had looked as he had walked into the restaurant, his tie askew, that distant expression on his face again.
She could just about hear Joe’s deep voice as she came up behind him, expecting him to turn at the crunching sound of her heels on the gravel path and smile at her. But his attention had seemed consumed by his call, his head bent, his voice low and caressing. Perhaps it was that which made Susan stop – the intimate tone of voice that she had always previously assumed was reserved for her. She came to a halt just before she reached out to touch him, her heart lurching sickeningly when she heard him say, ‘I have only a couple of minutes, darling, but I had to call you…Where are you?’
Oddly, there was a part of her that, instinctively recognising an intensely private moment, had wanted to slink away. Later, talking to Riva, Susan would even exclaim ruefully at that memory – laughing at her typically doltish instinct to be considerate to her husband, even at her own expense. But then that irrational moment had passed, and she reached out to touch Joe’s elbow. He had swung around and visibly flinched at the unexpected sight of her; almost as though she were not his wife at all but a crazed mugger carrying a knife. Their eyes had locked for a few confused seconds in the moonlight. Susan could see Joe struggling to remember what he had just said that might have been overheard. Comically, the silence between them was filled by the unmistakably female voice that continued to emerge from the mouthpiece of Joe’s phone, crackling from somewhere far away, unaware that it was not being responded to any more. Then Joe had cut the line dead, muttering a lame excuse to Susan about a patient needing emergency advice, before stuffing his phone back into the top pocket of his shirt. Susan had nodded, looking blankly at the small bulge that the phone formed against Joe’s chest, almost as though expecting it to involuntarily start speaking and offer a more credible explanation than the one she had been given.
Susan had accepted her husband’s blatant lie, quite simply because it was far less devastating than the truth. Then she had swiftly and silently walked back into the restaurant, Joe following her. They had weaved their way past all the other diners, making painfully slow progress back to their own table at the far end of the restaurant, and soon were swallowed up once more in the noisy warmth of their celebrating group of friends.
It was the fortieth birthday party of David, Joe’s oldest friend, now a paediatrician at Great Ormond Street Hospital and one of Susan’s best chums too. David’s plump face was by now quite pink from all the Shiraz he had been consuming. As Susan now slipped back into her chair, he enveloped her in a bear hug, slurring fondly, ‘Dear, darling Ginger…’ (David was the only person Susan ever allowed to call her Ginger) ‘…where have you been? I was quite lost without you, y’know…don’t be running off like that again…’
Susan, still trying to calm her racing heart, smiled at David, but, over his head, she could see Joe excusing himself from the table again, walking swiftly back in the direction of the toilet. Of course, he was going to call and apologise to the person he’d so rudely cut off – Susan knew that without a doubt. And, despite the smile for David that was still frozen on her face, she could feel her heart break into a million bits inside her chest.
Chapter Eight (#ulink_07ce0c5b-e535-58b6-b417-cc00a788a79e)
Joe woke on the morning after David’s party, unsure for a moment of where he was, blinking in confusion at the sun streaming in through the thin linen curtains. Then he groaned as he felt his stomach churn and a dull ache hit him between the eyebrows. He’d drunk way too much last night. But that had seemed the only option after that ghastly mishap with Susan and the phone call. He wasn’t sure how much she’d overheard of his conversation, especially as she’d seemed fine later, laughing and joking with David as usual.
He recalled feeling his knees physically buckle underneath him when Susan had materialised behind him in the garden of the River Café, while Kaaya’s voice had been caressing his ear. How strange was this thing called guilt – on the one hand, it had the power to make him feel as if a knife was slashing away at his insides and yet…yet, there were times when he was so completely inured to it, he could look straight into his wife’s face and lie, coolly and blatantly, without the slightest pang. Why, there had even been the day – at the birthday party Susan had recently thrown for Riva – when he had lost control and kissed Kaaya full on her lips, his hands running all over her lithe body as he pressed her against the fridge, all the while hearing Susan’s laughter in the next room. If it hadn’t been for the fact that he was himself a psychiatrist, he would have thought this behaviour a form of madness.
But that was what women like Kaaya did to men like him. She was just so beautiful and so captivating, he was like a ball of putty in her hands. Joe knew he wasn’t a weak man, never had been. Not with alcohol, not with women. It was something he prided himself on. But it was literally as though he had had no choice at all once Kaaya had set her sights on him. Of course, they had met many times over the years – he had even attended her wedding to Rohan, for Christ’s sake – and although he had long thought of her as the most gorgeous thing he had ever laid eyes on, he had never even considered flirting with her. Not least because he would never have dreamt of hurting Susan with that kind of behaviour. Now Joe realised, of course, that the only reason he had not fallen for Kaaya before was because he had thought her completely inaccessible; he had never once imagined that she would spare him more than a moment’s thought. Until that night, when they were all gathered quite casually at Riva’s house and Kaaya had caught him looking absently at her cleavage. Instead of doing that thing that women like Susan did – rather sheepishly adjusting their necklines and swiftly looking away – Kaaya had deliberately bent over to pick up an almond out of a bowl, further revealing the alluring swell of her breasts. Then she had looked up at him through her lashes and smiled knowingly as she delicately placed the almond on her tongue and chewed on it, leaning back and running one finger along the rim of her wine goblet.
That had been the start of it and Joe still felt giddy at the memory of the days that followed – the snatched flirtatious conversations at parties and restaurants edging them closer to very dangerous territory, that first kiss on Riva’s wet driveway last Christmas, stolen while the others were busy collecting their brollies and drunkenly kissing everyone else in the hallway, and finally, one frozen day in January, a long, lingering lunch at China Tang, which he had managed by pleading a trumped-up illness at work to be able to leave at midday. It was only after that lunch, convinced by Kaaya’s passionate air and seeming sincerity, that Joe had finally plucked up the courage to take their relationship to the next logical step, one he was quite sure he would not have taken for a mere physical fling. It was something he had only rather wildly dreamt about before, listening with some amusement to other people gossiping about such things in half-horrified, half-admiring tones. Adultery. Infidelity. Big words, as though it required more than a couple of syllables to express such major transgressions. At what stage exactly did one describe a relationship as adulterous? When a man first held his wife’s body and imagined she was someone else? When he first lied to a woman he barely knew about the state of his marriage, allowing a near stranger to believe that his wife of ten years could not make him happy? Even if it had to be a physical act, at what precise point in the continuum between kissing and having full-blown sex did an affair slip into the realm of infidelity? The simple truth was that, by the time Joe had decided to have sex with Kaaya, he had seemed to have no choice in the matter at all. He was, in fact, so ready to burst with love and longing for this beautiful, beautiful creature, so convinced that it was nothing short of a gift to be offered her love, that turning away from it would have seemed the bigger travesty. He had loved Susan well enough, but now it was as though he simply loved Kaaya more.
It had been a perfect day too, nothing about its clean white snow and crisp sunshine indicating that something immoral could be afoot. They had driven out that morning through the peaceful Oxfordshire countryside bathed in winter sunshine, heading for Bray. After a light lunch at a country pub – both of them being too nervous to eat very much – they had checked into a local B&B, and made fervent love all through the afternoon. It was only when the sun had started to set beyond the fields, and the plane tree outside their window was filled with the noise of returning birds, that Joe had even remembered they both had homes and spouses to get back to.
He had told Susan he was attending a day conference at Oxford and she seemed to think nothing of it when he returned late that evening, exhausted and unwilling to talk. Odd that he had never before noticed how tatty Susan’s pink bathrobe was, or how annoyingly she slurped on her mug of bedtime cocoa while watching TV. But he had managed to blank it all out, turning away from Susan in bed and pretending to be asleep until he could hear her breathing lapse into soft snores. But sleep did not come easy to him that night, his nerves jangling from being on edge – not from guilt, surprisingly, but because of the plan that had been made to spend a whole night at Kaaya’s apartment the following week. Luckily, Rohan’s job involved a great deal of travel and Susan was not unaccustomed to Joe needing to do the occasional night shift. It would not be difficult to manage.
All Joe knew that night, as he drifted into sleep remembering Kaaya’s warm, luscious body in the hotel bed, was that he could not wait – not just to make love to Kaaya all night but to experience the magic of waking up in the morning and seeing that she was not just a dream he had conjured up in the night.
Susan prepared a cafetiere full of coffee before calling up the stairs for Joe to wake up; it was a habit formed over the years since they had moved in together – eleven this year, ten since they were married and fifteen since they had first met. Susan noted the figures with sudden shock, never having been one for showy anniversary celebrations. For fifteen years, she had loved one man so wholly that the possibility of losing him now seemed so tragic it was almost laughable!
With one ear cocked for the creaks and sounds of Joe moving about upstairs, Susan made her sandwich, wrapped it in a bit of foil and tucked it into her handbag alongside an apple. Normally by the time this was done Joe would have appeared in the kitchen – tousle-haired and sleepy-eyed in his pyjamas – just in time to collect a kiss from her before she left for school. It was his job to clear away after her, of course, collecting the milk and newspaper from the doorstep and waving her off as she reversed her car down the drive.
Today, however, there was no sign of Joe, even after the sandwich had been made, and things had gone very still upstairs. Susan wondered if she ought to go up to the bedroom to make a pretence of saying goodbye. She took a quick look at her watch and hesitated. It wasn’t the lack of time – she still had ten minutes to spare – but the wrenching memory of the overheard phone call last night that was stopping her. There had been no point confronting him with it last night, not when they were surrounded by their friends and everyone had been so drunk. After that, either because of the alcohol or sheer exhaustion induced by shock, Susan had slept the sleep of the dead, waking up far too late to do her customary half hour of yoga. And there wasn’t the time to start hurling accusations at Joe right now, not when she had so little time before she needed to leave for work. It would have to wait till the evening. Or perhaps she needed to ‘gather more evidence’ first. There was every chance Joe would just deny it outright, telling her she had imagined it. Would premature questioning not merely present him with the opportunity to cover his tracks more efficiently, giving him time to come up with a plan to deceive her better? Perhaps he would even put his head together with the person he had so casually addressed as ‘darling’ to come up with a finer plan to fool her and string her along a bit more…
Who was this other woman? And why on earth would she have gone after a married man? If she knew Joe was married, that is…Susan felt her stomach twist and quelled a sudden desire to retch. What was she to do? There had never been a template for responding to a husband’s infidelity in all the books she’d read. As far as she knew, infidelity wasn’t something anyone in her inner circle had ever had to cope with anyway. Not her mum, her two sisters, or her best friend, Riva. And it was much too late to go rushing out to buy those trashy magazines she saw at the dentist’s that emblazoned problems across their covers such as: ‘My husband is gay’ or ‘He slept with my mother’…
