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Mrs Dubey, the outgoing centre manager of the playschool, smiled. ‘Not as villagey as you expected, then,’ she said, her voice dry.
Shefali turned around quickly. ‘Oh, no—I didn’t mean that!’ she exclaimed, though it was exactly what she’d meant and they both knew it. ‘It’s just that the centre looks so much like the one I worked in when I was in Delhi—at least from inside. And there’s so much space outside. You actually have a full-sized playground for the children. It’s lovely!’
There was enough genuine enthusiasm in her voice to win Mrs Dubey over, and her smile became a lot warmer. ‘I’m glad you like it,’ she said. ‘On Monday I’ll introduce you to the staff and take you through the paperwork, then you’ll be all set. I don’t think there’s anything else we need to cover now. What are your plans for the rest of the day?’
Shefali looked a little lost. It was a Saturday, and Mrs Dubey was right—without either the teachers or the children around, there wasn’t much for her to do here. ‘I’m not sure,’ she said. ‘I’d assumed this would take a lot longer. Can I start moving my things into the flat today?’
The playschool was a two-storey building, and the upper storey had a decent-sized flat that came with the job. It had looked rather nice when Mrs Dubey had shown her around earlier, and Shefali was looking forward to moving in.
Mrs Dubey was shaking her head, though. ‘I still need to move some of my boxes out,’ she said. ‘I’m staying with friends for the next few days, before I head out to Pune to join my son, so I’m getting the bigger things packed today and sent on directly. And we did say that you’d move in tomorrow.’ Her face brightened up. ‘I’ll tell you what you can do,’ she said. ‘My car’s free—the driver can take you for a drive up to the river. The Marble Rocks and the waterfall are lovely, and you won’t get a chance to do any sightseeing once you get caught up with schoolwork.’
It sounded as good a plan as any—and it would definitely beat spending the rest of the day in her hotel room brooding. The couple of quick internet searches that she’d done before she’d left Delhi had touted the stretch of the River Narmada running past the city as one of the most beautiful and unspoilt river views in the country.
An hour later, however, she was frowning as she stood at the riverbank. What she could see of the river as it meandered between tall cliffs of white marble was stunning. But the point of coming all this way had been to take a boat ride through the cliffs, and that was one thing she was apparently not going to be able to do. Every single boat seemed to have been commandeered by a TV crew that had set up operations on the riverbank.
‘But why can’t you rent me your boat?’ she asked one of the boatmen.
He shook his head firmly. ‘They’ve paid all of us to keep off the river while shooting is going on,’ he said self-importantly.
‘I need to speak to someone in charge,’ Shefali said, and before the man could stop her she had pushed through the crowd gawking at the cameras.
No one objected—probably with her ‘big city’ looks they thought she was part of the crew. At any rate, she managed to grab the sleeve of a harried-looking girl who was standing by the side of one of the cameras holding a large sheaf of papers.
‘Are you part of the crew?’ she asked, and the girl nodded. ‘I understand that you’ve paid the boatmen so that they won’t take any boats out. Is that correct?’
‘That’s right,’ the girl said, sounding wary now.
‘Look, I’m here on a very short trip, and I was really keen on a boat ride,’ Shefali said rapidly. ‘Is there any way I could take one of the boats out for a short while? Maybe when you’re taking a break or something?’
‘I’ll have to ask Neil,’ she replied. ‘He told us not to let any of the boats go out.’
At the name Shefali automatically looked at the crew, scanning through the faces. There he was, just a few feet away, she realised. Her tummy did an involuntary flip-flop of excitement. The man from the flight, looking even better now, his hair ruffled by the breeze and his tanned biceps exposed in a short-sleeved white T-shirt.
‘Who’s he?’ she asked the girl in an undertone.
The girl looked surprised. ‘Neil Mitra,’ she said. ‘He’s the anchor for our show.’
What show? Shefali felt like asking. They were from a TV channel, that was obvious—there was enough branding around to convert the entire city to single channel viewership—but... ‘I don’t remember seeing him in anything,’ she said instead. ‘Is he well-known?’ Neil’s looks were too unconventional to fit in the filmstar category, but she could imagine him being a hit on TV, with his direct eyes and quirky smile.
‘No,’ said a voice near her ear. ‘Not at all. Now, if you’ll excuse us, we really need to begin shooting. We lost two days while I was in Delhi.’ He nodded at the girl, who backed away, looking flustered.
‘I’ll get the guys together, then,’ she said, and made a rapid exit.
Neil turned to Shefali. Wild horses couldn’t have dragged it from him, but he’d thought about her quite a bit since he’d last seen her.
‘A very short trip?’ he asked, his voice sardonic. ‘I thought you’d moved here? Something to do with education if I’m not wrong?’
Damn—he’d overheard her earlier. Determined to brazen it out, Shefali lifted her chin. ‘I meant it’s a short trip to this place. It’s miles out of the city, and I’m not planning to come here again in a hurry.’
Neil shrugged. ‘Well, tough luck. I guess you’ll have to get here some other day if you’re really set on boating.’
‘Or you could let one of the boatmen take me across when you’re on a teabreak,’ she suggested, keeping her voice even. He seemed to be being difficult for no reason at all.
‘Or you could watch a film of the cliffs,’ he said.
Shefali glared at him, and Neil gave her an unapologetic grin. ‘It’s not about when you leave,’ he said. ‘It’s about when you come back. You could land up bang in the middle of a take and ruin it for us.’ He thought for a bit. ‘Look, the waterfall is on a different section of the river—maybe if you go there and come back in a few hours we’ll be done.’
‘All right,’ Shefali said, and turned to go. She had no intention of coming back—not while Neil was around at any rate.
Neil watched her leave with mixed feelings. There was something about the girl that got to him. Probably the air of privilege that surrounded her—she assumed that people around her would do what she wanted. And she’d been pretty dismissive at the airport when he’d only been trying to help her. In stark contrast to the way she behaved, though, was the look in her eyes, which was guarded and vulnerable at the same time.
‘You can take a boat out if you want,’ he said finally, just before she went out of earshot. ‘Only don’t wave wildly at the cameras or anything.’
Strongly tempted to tell him that she had no intention of looking at his precious cameras, Shefali nodded politely and waited while he beckoned one of the boatmen over and gave him a few quick instructions in Hindi. If he was expecting her to fall at his feet in gratitude, he had a long wait coming.
Once they were a few hundred metres from the bank, she turned to look at Neil. He was with the TV crew, busily arranging the next shot, and he seemed to have forgotten all about her. Frowning, Shefali turned back and tried to concentrate on the boatman who was giving her a long and, she suspected, almost completely fictional history of the region. The cliffs were impressive, though—not the pure white she’d expected, but pale grey and massive, looming over both sides of the river.
The boatman was still talking half an hour later, when the boat came back to the small wooden jetty they’d started from. Shefali stood up gingerly, almost losing her balance as the boat rocked under her.
‘Need a hand?’ an amused voice said, and she looked up to see Neil standing by the riverside.
They seemed to be done with the shoot—the camera had been packed up, and Neil looked far more relaxed than he had earlier.
Not wanting to fall over on her backside and make a fool of herself, she took Neil’s outstretched hand and allowed him to pull her out. Electricity zinged between them and Shefali felt her skin heat up. He seemed quite unaware of the effect he had on her, releasing her hand as soon as she was on dry ground.
‘Come on, I’ll introduce you to the crew,’ he said, and then smiled slightly. ‘It’d help if I knew your name first, though.’
‘Shefali,’ she said. ‘Shefali Khanna.’
‘Well, hello, Shefali Khanna,’ he said gravely. ‘Meet Rafiq, our director.’ He waved at the pudgy ponytailed man who had come to pick him up at the airport. ‘And this is Priti...’ The girl she’d spoken to earlier bobbed her head at Shefali with a quick smile. ‘And those scruffy guys over there are Animesh and Sohail.’ The cameraman and his assistant, who were both almost as well turned out as Neil, gave him indignant looks.
‘We’re the actual stars of the show,’ Animesh said. ‘This guy just hangs around and shoots his mouth off in front of the camera.’
Neil laughed. ‘Back in a minute,’ he said. ‘I need to pay the boatmen and figure out tomorrow’s schedule.’
Sohail followed him, and Shefali was left with Rafiq and Priti. ‘What’s the show about?’ she asked.
‘It’s called Soul of the City,’ Rafiq said. ‘We’re doing twelve episodes in twelve different cities. Here—take a look at some of the stuff we’ve done for one of the earlier episodes,’ he said, holding out an iPad to her. ‘This was in Vizag.’
‘It’s very rough,’ said Priti, the girl she’d spoken to earlier. ‘The final edit still needs to be done. But it gives you the feel of the thing.’
It certainly did. It cut between interviews with college students, politicians and housewives, with bits of local music interspersed with breathtaking footage of beaches and hills. And Neil was amazing—he looked even better on camera than he did in real life, and he managed to connect with each and every person he interviewed.
‘This is great stuff,’ Shefali said once the clip was over. ‘You guys are incredibly talented.’
Rafiq gave her a smug look. ‘Of course we are,’ he said. ‘And having Neil striding around and looking like God’s gift to womankind doesn’t harm our ratings either.’
‘Is this his first show?’ Shefali asked curiously.
Priti looked surprised. ‘You really don’t know who he is, do you?’ she said.
Shefali shook her head.
‘He’s pretty well known,’ Priti said. ‘Been with the channel for almost three years, and he’s had two very successful shows recently. Of course they’re on fairly serious themes, but he handled them brilliantly.’
She named the shows, but clearly she didn’t expect to Shefali to recognise them. Shefali wasn’t sure whether to be annoyed or amused by Priti’s slightly patronising tone. She didn’t watch TV at all, except for the movie channels, and she had no idea if the shows Priti was talking about were big league or not. For all she knew they aired at ungodly hours, and only housewives who were very, very bored or very, very frustrated watched them.
Neil was standing next to her again. ‘Coffee, anyone?’ he asked.
Priti shook her head vigorously. ‘We need to wrap up some still shots of the river before the light goes. But we don’t need you for that—you and Shefali go ahead.’
‘Come on, then,’ Neil said. ‘Unless you’re in a hurry to get back?’
Shefali shook her head again. She hadn’t seen the waterfall yet, nor the temple with the sixty-four statues of dancing girls that Mrs Dubey had been raving about, but she’d have to come back some other day.
Probably it was the effect of the sun, but she was terribly conscious of the man next to her as she climbed the stairs leading to the main road. She surveyed him from under her lashes. He was quite amazingly good-looking, she decided, though his looks were unconventional. His hair was a rich brown, with a couple of gold streaks in it. It was an unusual colour—most Indian men had jet-black hair or, more rarely, sandy-brown. His skin was tanned a perfect golden brown, and he had a square jaw with a cleft chin, and uncompromising, steady blue-grey eyes.
Trying to distract herself, Shefali stopped a couple of times to look at the carved stone figurines being sold at the stalls lining the stairs. There was a little marble one of Ganesha, the elephant-headed god, which she picked up and looked at for a while before putting it back.
‘Don’t you want it?’ Neil asked.
‘My mum collects them,’ Shefali said. ‘But it’s going to be a while before I see her again, so there’s no point buying it now.’
‘Won’t she come and visit? Check on how you’re settling in and stuff like that?’
‘According to her, moving here is the dumbest thing I’ve ever done in my life,’ Shefali said drily. ‘She’s planning to stay put in Delhi and wait for me to come to my senses.’
‘Ahh—like that, is it? Do you miss her?’
Shefali shook her head. ‘Not really. Oh, look at that!’ ‘That’ was an intricate carving of an elephant, displayed in the window of the next stall. It was pretty enough, but really she’d pointed to it only to distract Neil from the conversation.
He gave it a considering look. ‘Bit lopsided, if you ask me,’ he said. ‘And I’ve never seen an elephant with quite such beady eyes.’
Shefali laughed, and they climbed the last few steps to the road.
Neil looked around. ‘You know what, I don’t think there’s a single decent café around here,’ he said.
‘I’m OK with tea at one of those tapri stalls around the corner,’ Shefali said, but Neil shook his head. ‘Now who’s being a snob?’ Shefali asked teasingly.
‘That would be me,’ Neil said. ‘I’m a little fussy about the kind of tea I drink. Cold drink instead? Or, if you’re done here, we can head back to the city and grab a coffee there?’
‘Heading back to the city sounds like an idea,’ she replied. ‘Should I meet you there? I borrowed a friend’s car, so I’ll have to go back in that.’
Only the driver was nowhere to be found, though the car was still parked in the spot where Shefali had got out. After several attempts to locate the driver had proved fruitless Shefali left a note on the windscreen and gratefully accepted Neil’s offer of a lift.
‘I wonder where he could have got to?’ she fretted as she got into his dangerous-looking SUV. ‘He doesn’t have a mobile, and he told me he’d stay in the car.’
Neil shrugged. ‘Must have wandered off for a smoke. Message your friend and tell her you’re OK—I assume he’ll contact her when he does go back eventually.’
Shefali dutifully shot off a message to Mrs Dubey, and then leaned back in the passenger seat, yawning hugely. It had been a long day, and she was tired. The emotional strain of the last few weeks in Delhi was catching up with her, and she felt exhausted all the time.
‘Close your eyes and take a nap,’ Neil suggested, sounding amused. ‘It’s a long drive.’
It was dusk by the time they finally pulled up in the city centre, and Shefali’s eyes blinked open as the car came to a stop. Realising that she’d taken Neil at his word and slept blissfully all the way back, she jerked upright, feeling embarrassed and hoping she hadn’t snored or drooled all over the seats.
‘It’s past seven—coffee or an early dinner?’
‘Both,’ Shefali said. ‘I need to wake up.’
Looking back, she knew that was the moment she should have said she was tired and wanted to go to her hotel. But the thought didn’t cross her mind. The attentions of a man as attractive as Neil were flattering after what she’d been through, and besides, she couldn’t bear the thought of having to go back to her dreary hotel room.
The little café they went to was full of young couples—most of them looked like college students who’d sneaked off for a date without their parents knowing. Neil got them a table near a window and then went to fetch their coffees.
Shefali watched him as he stood at the counter. He was far and away the best-looking man in the place, and something like pride stirred in her chest as she watched several women give him the once-over and then glance across at her to see who he was with.
‘Here you go,’ Neil said, reaching across the table to set her cappuccino in front of her.
He settled into the sofa opposite her and Shefali couldn’t help but notice the breadth of his shoulders and the way his T-shirt strained across his muscles as he leaned back. She looked quickly at his hands. No rings. She definitely wasn’t in the market for anything serious—not for a long, long while—but some harmless flirting wouldn’t do her or her self-esteem any harm.
‘So, tell me more about what you do,’ Neil said. ‘College professor? Coaching sweatshop?’
Shefali shook her head, laughing.
‘All through college I wanted a teacher who looked like you—I never was lucky enough,’ he said.
‘I work with kids,’ Shefali said. ‘Who don’t care how I look. But I’m not really a teacher any more—it’s more administrative work.’
‘Do you like kids?’ Neil asked.
Shefali hesitated. All her life she’d made a point of saying the correct thing. It had been drilled into her so thoroughly that it had become a part of who she was. Maybe it was time to start saying what she actually thought for a change.
‘I hate that question,’ she said. ‘No one asks Do you like adults? do they? I love working with children, and I like most kids just the way I like most adults. But kids are human beings too, and there are some who’re perfectly obnoxious.’
Neil laughed. ‘Well, that’s honest, at any rate,’ he said. ‘And where are you working now?’
Shefali leaned forward. ‘Let’s not talk about work,’ she said. ‘It’s unlikely we’ll meet again—you’ll be out of here when your shoot is done, and I’m going to live here for a while—let’s talk about stuff we wouldn’t discuss with anyone otherwise.’
Neil raised his eyebrows. ‘Like...?’ he asked. He was always wary of women who tried to get too close too quickly. So far one of the main attractions Shefali had for him was that she wasn’t throwing herself at his head the way most women did.
Shefali picked up on his hesitation and said, ‘Don’t worry—I’m not talking about a Freudian psychoanalysis session. Just general stuff. Nothing personal. Like what I told you about not always liking kids.’
Neil relaxed a little. OK, not so dicey, then. She was just amusing herself. Just as well—he was beginning to find her quite disturbingly attractive, and the lighter they kept things the better.
‘You first or me?’ he asked.
‘You first,’ Shefali said. ‘One deep dark secret that you’ve never told anyone else.’
‘I’m petrified of dogs.’
