by Helen Harris
At one point, Anand looked her straight in the eye and said, “Mummy will be cross, you know.”
“Oh,” Sylvia said. “Do you think so?”
Nervously, she looked around the departure lounge. Even though there was realistically no possibility such a thing could happen, she half expected Smita to come charging across the lounge, calling her every name under the sun and scooping Anand up and carrying him away. She cuddled him closer. “I think she’ll understand,” she said. “Eventually.”
A little while later, Anand said, “I want to telephone Mummy.”
Sylvia became alarmed; he wasn’t going to make a scene and attract attention in the middle of the airport, was he? “I haven’t got my mobile,” she said – which was true. “I didn’t think to bring it with me.”
Anand said, reaching into his bag, “I’ve got mine.”
“What?” Sylvia exclaimed in horror. “You have your own mobile phone Anand? I didn’t know that.”
Anand smirked. “Mummy said it was a good idea to have it for em-er-gencies. Is this an em-er-gency?”
“Certainly not,” Sylvia said crisply. She refrained from criticising Smita to Anand’s face but said instead, “You can’t possibly telephone her now dear. She’s at work and I’m sure she won’t want to be disturbed there, will she? She might be in some important meeting or something. You wouldn’t want her to get cross, would you?”
Anand sat glowering and fiddling with his phone.
“I know what,” Sylvia said briskly. “You can telephone her to say we’ve arrived safely as soon as we get to Delhi.”
Reluctantly, Anand put his phone back in his bag and said that he needed the toilet again.
At long last, coming up to half past five, their flight was called. Praise be, it seemed to be on time. Sylvia stood up stiffly and began to gather their scattered belongings. Taking Anand firmly by the hand, she set off on the interminable trek to their departure gate.
Joining the long queue of passengers lining up to have their boarding passes checked, Sylvia’s heart leapt up; here she was, on her way back to India, after all these years. Around her, passengers in saris and chappal sandals, passengers with sleekly oiled hair and dark liquid eyes, passengers with enormous amounts of hand luggage (surely forbidden?) were shuffling forward happily, excited at the prospect of their destination. She sneaked a look down at Anand’s frowning face. Oh, he would come round to it.
Ahead of them, she could see there was heavy security at the gate, hardly surprising in these sorry times. Two men and a woman in dark blue uniform, like policemen but not quite policemen, were standing next to the airline staff who were checking the boarding passes. They were watching the queue of passengers with grave expressions. Really, Sylvia thought, what good did that do? They weren’t checking bags or searching passengers; they were simply standing there looking sternly up and down the line. Well, she supposed it might just possibly deter some opportunist.
The queue inched forward terribly slowly. She worried that Anand was going to demand to go to the toilet yet again and they would lose their place in the queue.
Finally, they reached the gate. Sylvia fished for their boarding passes in her handbag and, after a moment’s sheer terror, retrieved them and handed them over.
“Mrs Garland,” said one of the men in dark blue uniform, “would you and your grandson please come with us for a few moments?”
“Why?” Sylvia exclaimed. “We don’t want to miss our flight.”
The three uniformed officials seemed to be surrounding her. The woman was concentrating on Anand, smiling down at him with a business-like smile and saying, “Come along now, little fella.”
Sylvia was proud to see Anand smartly put both his hands behind his back so the lady couldn’t take hold of one of them.
“We just need to ask you a few quick questions,” the pseudo-policeman said blandly. “It’ll only take a few minutes, that’s all.”
They led Sylvia and Anand some way back down the long corridor they had walked to the departure gate, through a pair of swing doors marked Staff Only and into a small windowless white room where Jeremy and Smita were sitting waiting, not speaking and both deathly pale.
Anand gave a great cry of joy and, letting go of Sylvia’s hand which he had pointedly taken in preference to the uniformed woman’s, rushed towards them.
Sylvia stopped dead in the doorway. She could not begin to understand how this calamity had come about but she knew the game was up and that, for her, everything was over.
Smita was at her desk, googling Thanksgiving traditions when her mobile rang. She and Anand were going to spend Thanksgiving with Abi’s parents, the first time she would meet them. Even though she knew it would be Thanksgiving with a Gujarati twist, she still wanted to be well up on things, not to appear unsophisticated or out of her depth. At first, she wasn’t concentrating properly, she thought the call was a wrong number. A woman was ringing her from Air India; what on earth? Her mind was too full of her future to focus seriously on anything else. It had been that way for weeks now, for months.
Ever since they had come back from Florida in the summer, Smita had been totally taken up with this amazing second chance which life had given her: a new life in New York with an unbelievably wonderful new husband, a perfect job and a brilliant future for Anand too. The small blemishes in the big picture – the annoying little diva who would be her stepdaughter, her mother’s ridiculous reluctance to leave Leicester for long periods of time – could all be dealt with. Now, at last, she had a real happy ending in her sights and nothing was going to get in her way.
The woman from Air India had the most irritating officious manner. “Would you please confirm,” she was repeating bossily, “that you are Mrs Smita Mehta?”
Smita snapped, “I’m at work. Why are you calling me?”
But then, in sheer horror, she understood that the woman was telling her something completely inconceivable: a Mrs Sylvia Garland, she was saying in her bossy little voice, had just checked in for the eighteen hundred hours flight to New Delhi together with her son Anand and, she wanted to know, did this woman have Smita’s permission to take the child out of the country?
Smita was aware she screamed. Cara, her PA, who was eating sushi at her desk, nearly jumped out of her skin and all across the room, heads bobbed up from screens and conversations stopped dead.
“No!” Smita yelled, “No, she doesn’t. You must stop her. She’s completely mad.”
The woman was saying something bureaucratic in her automaton’s voice, something about security procedures and rules for detaining people who were not bona fide passengers but Smita screamed over her, “Stop her! Do you hear me? You’ve absolutely got to stop her. She’s a danger to the child.” And then she screamed, for good measure, “She may be a danger to the aircraft too.”
Still shouting into her phone, she leapt up and grabbed her coat and bag. Before running out of the office, some remainder of her usual self made her stop and close the Thanksgiving article on the screen.
“Cara,” she panted at her gaping PA, “I’m sorry but I have to run somewhere. There’s a major major emergency.”
She ran out of the office. She knew people were staring and wondering. They would pump Cara, who was a chatterbox at the best of times, for a full account of what Smita had screamed down the phone. To her surprise, Smita couldn’t care less.
She stood on the pavement outside the Gravington Babcock building and nothing in the world mattered anymore apart from Anand. Her phone had cut out in the stairwell and when she tried to call the Air India woman back, it turned out she was ringing from a withheld number. Terror took hold of Smita. Her head was spinning. She could hardly think. How had this happened? Anand was spending the day with Jeremy, it had been agreed. Nothing had been said about Anand seeing Sylvia. Was this a conspiracy? The Air India clerk had not said anything about it but was Jeremy at the airport too?
Smita tried to call Jeremy but his phone went
straight to voicemail. Why was she ringing him? She was wasting valuable time; she had to get to the airport as quickly as possible. She checked her watch; it was quarter to three and the flight would leave at six. There was still time. She mustn’t totally panic and lose her head. A taxi would get her to the airport by four, worst case scenario by four thirty, before the rush hour traffic anyway. She would run straight to the Air India checkin desks, she would make the biggest scene of her life. They were responsible of course; they had let Sylvia and Anand check in for the flight. If they had suspicions, why hadn’t they called her first? Now Sylvia and Anand were through passport control and of course Smita didn’t have her passport with her. Would she even be able to go after them? Should she go home and get her passport quickly first – just in case? No, that would only lose valuable time; it was in completely the wrong direction. She had to get to the airport as quickly as she could and, once she was there, she would solve things somehow. She would involve the police if need be. This was a kidnapping after all, a crime. Sylvia should end up in prison. She would never ever be allowed to see her grandson again.
Shaking with fear and fury, on the verge of tears, Smita stepped out into the street to hail a taxi. Fortunately, there were always loads of them round here.
She said to the driver, “I need to get to Heathrow as quickly as possible please.”
He appeared unconcerned – as if distraught women with no luggage asked him to get them to Heathrow as quickly as possible every day of the week. “Which terminal?” he asked.
Smita panicked. Of course she had no idea. “Air India,” she said. “The Delhi flight. Which one would that be?”
The driver shrugged. “Not a clue, love. There’s hundreds of flights. We can’t possibly keep track of them all. Check your ticket.”
“I haven’t got a ticket,” Smita snapped. “I’m going to meet someone.”
She leant forward. In an instant, she was her usual self again. She pointed at his radio. “Ask your controller.”
The driver checked his rear view mirror and leant forward and said, “Air India. Delhi. Someone tell me which terminal?”
A babble of voices responded, “Three.”
The driver said to Smita, “You’ll know for next time.”
She sat back in her seat and looked out of the window and ignored him. For a moment, she considered telling him what was happening to her; how her little five-year-old son was being kidnapped and, if he didn’t get her to the airport in time, her little boy would be whisked away to India, of all places, by his lunatic grandmother. But she was embarrassed; it was a horrible humiliating feeling to be at the centre of a soap opera. Feeling even more embarrassed, she thought of Abi. She was sure nothing so luridly out of control had ever happened to him. Everything in Abi’s life seemed so beautifully organised; his divorce had been smooth and amicable, his ex-wife was apparently reasonable, she conveniently already had a new partner herself and she had agreed with no fuss to Alisha coming to Florida with her father to meet Smita. There was no crazy ex-mother-in-law waiting in the wings to wreak havoc.
Smita had a sudden flashback to Alisha sitting crouched at the edge of the swimming pool, whining about Anand and Smita to her mother on her pink mobile phone. Of course; Anand had a mobile now too. Smita had given it to him as a security thing when he started school. But because she was worried about the health implications, she had forbidden him ever to use it except in an emergency. He had actually never called her on it although she had once or twice, for fun, called him. Fumbling in her agitation, she called Anand’s number but it rang and rang with no answer. She knew it was charged and switched on because she had thought to check it before sending him off with Jeremy in the morning. So why didn’t the child answer? Had Sylvia, who disapproved of mobiles, confiscated his phone? Or was there some other sinister reason why he couldn’t talk to her?
Desperately, Smita called Jeremy’s number again. Of course this nightmare was all his fault. He had tricked her; he had told her he would be spending the day with Anand, he had never said a word about his mother. Smita knew that somehow or other Anand still saw a good deal of his other grandmother, on days when he was supposed to be with his father but his father was too busy. When she was in the US, she knew that Anand sometimes spent whole days with Sylvia which she resented intensely but arguing with Jeremy about it was so unbelievably aggravating that sometimes she just couldn’t be bothered.
Smita believed Jeremy had a blind spot where his mother was concerned. It was perfectly obvious to anyone who had spent as much time with the two of them as Smita had that Sylvia did not have natural maternal feelings for her son. Smita had realised that much long ago. It was doubtless part of the reason Sylvia so ridiculously over-compensated with Anand. Not that she could ever make up for the wrong she had done to Jeremy. But Jeremy had some sort of deep-seated hang-up about his mother. Despite all the self-pitying stories he had told Smita over the years about his lonely childhood and his distant party-going mother, in some inexplicable stubborn way, he still had her on a pedestal. When he and Smita argued about Sylvia, he would always defend her. It was sick, Smita had often thought angrily, it was simply sick to be so loyal to someone who had treated you so badly.
Two things had made it incredibly much worse of course: Roger’s death and the arrival of Anand. Once Sylvia became a widow, Jeremy’s sense of duty knew no bounds. Whatever Sylvia wanted, Sylvia got, whatever the cost to Smita, to Jeremy and, ultimately, to their marriage. Smita had raged about it often enough but got nowhere; Jeremy would dig his heels in, go all quiet and long-suffering and do exactly what Sylvia demanded. And then Anand had become the battleground. To Smita’s disgust, Jeremy seemed to share Sylvia’s delusion that she could make up for her past failings as a mother by becoming a wonderful grandmother. Well, that was bullshit. On this Smita and her mother agreed absolutely; Sylvia’s child-rearing methods were simply crazy. And now, sitting in the taxi, on the verge of throwing up from sheer nervous tension, Smita had this one small satisfaction; they had been right.
She checked her watch for the hundredth time. Should she call her mother? Would she have, through her vast network of Gujarati connections, some contact at Air India, somebody at Heathrow who might be able to help? No, she didn’t want her drama broadcast to the entire extended family. Besides her mother might have a heart attack, her mother who loved Anand selflessly, who would never ever in a million years do what Sylvia had done.
Smita suddenly remembered the day Anand was born, the glow of happiness briefly darkened by Sylvia’s visit with her bizarre gift: that weird, unsafe mobile with all the dancing Indian figures. It was like the moment in the fairy tale when the wicked fairy appears at the cradle with her poisonous blessing. It had been a clue to all the wickedness which was to follow, all the wickedness which had come to such a hideous climax today.
The taxi plunged into the nasty orange Heathrow approach tunnel and Smita checked her watch again: ten past four. She had almost two hours ahead of her to rescue Anand. Please, please let it be enough. She gripped the armrest and leant forward, getting ready to race from the taxi the minute it stopped. She was in such a state she could hardly get the fare out of her wallet. It cost a bomb but she didn’t care.
Before the taxi had even come to a halt, she had her seatbelt off and was pushing at the door handle, urging the driver to release it. She leapt out and thrust her wad of ten pound notes at him through the window. Thank God she had happened to go to a cashpoint that very morning.
Inside the terminal, she frantically scanned the indicator boards near the entrance; Air India seemed to have dozens of check-in desks. She noted the range of numbers and began to run towards them.
Of course there were massive queues at the check-in desks, massive chaotic queues with ridiculous amounts of luggage. Smita pushed forward through them, repeating mechanically, “Excuse me, emergency, emergency, excuse me.” People meekly let her through, no-one objected and she reached a desk where a s
ulky-looking girl was checking in an elderly couple with enough luggage for a huge family. Smita interrupted them. “Sorry. Sorry. My name’s Smita Mehta. I’m here about my son. I don’t know who I need to talk to?”
The girl’s sulky face lit up. She stood up and called out, “She’s here. The mum’s here.”
All up and down the row of check-in desks, the counter staff raised their heads and looked eagerly at Smita. Hot with embarrassment, Smita understood that she was the excitement of the day; the mother of the would-be kidnapping victim.
“I’ll call my supervisor,” the check-in girl said busily to Smita and, to the elderly couple, “Wait just a moment.”
The supervisor came over briskly, a short plump woman squeezed into a too-tight uniform. She turned out to be the owner of the officious voice on the phone and she said bossily to Smita, “Please come with me quickly.”
“I came as fast as I could,” Smita said defensively, annoyed that she seemed to be somehow at fault here.
The woman threw her a sideways look as she led her away from the crowds at the check-in counter. Smita knew that look; it said, “Bad Mother” and it made her livid.
Showing a staff pass, the woman led her through some anonymous double doors into a drab part of the airport which was obviously not open to the public.
“Your ex-husband is already here,” she announced smugly. “He came by Tube.”
Smita exclaimed. “How come?”
“We called him,” the woman answered coolly. “Both numbers were in the child’s passport and, to be on the safe side, my colleague and I called both.”
Smita calculated quickly: Jeremy had been summoned, so he hadn’t been here all along, he wasn’t part of the conspiracy. But that didn’t excuse him; he had been supposed to be spending the day with Anand, not palming him off on his mother behind her back. If he had done what he was meant to, none of this would have happened. This time she was literally going to kill him. And how typical, how absolutely bloody typical of him – even in the direst emergency – to take the Tube. He was so mean and always accusing her of extravagance too. He had wanted to send Anand to the local state primary. He said it would be good for him to mix with a range of different children. Well, she didn’t want him to mix with a range of different children, thank you very much. She had heard the horror stories. If Anand’s father was too mean to pay for him to go to a good school, she could perfectly well do it herself, thank God, out of her own pocket.
