by Zee Monodee
Her thoughts drifted back onto the memory of him and their encounter. “Such an arse. He probably thought since he looked like a giant and with his full beard, I’d find him menacing. But I gave him a good run for his money. How dare he imply I had nothing in my skull? While he could pass for a ...” She stopped, searching for the proper word. “A savage.”
Her outburst quelled, she heaved for breath.
The breathlessness changed to disbelief when she peered at the pair sitting across from her. Were they holding in their laughter? Because they both seemed a little blue.
“It’s not funny,” she grumbled.
It appeared Lara couldn’t resist any longer, because she gave in to the laughter, which, in turn, triggered her husband’s hilarity.
“Any man who dares to stand up to you qualifies as an oaf, Dee,” Lara said when she stopped laughing. “But I must admit this one must’ve made quite an impression if you’d go as far as label him a savage.”
Could Lara drop the light tone? Anyone hearing her would think the older Hemant sibling was addressing an airhead.
“He had a really loud mouth. And very dark eyes, too, as if they were spewing venom. He was just so … out of this world.”
Against her deepest wish, the last words came out on an awed whisper. The man had been intimidating, but she hadn’t shown him he’d rocked her world.
Lara chuckled. “It’s quite a lot to remember about a short encounter.”
Diya narrowed her attention on her sister. She hadn’t missed the teasing undertone. “Pray tell what exactly you mean?”
“Nothing! What else was there about this guy, though?”
“He’s an offence to British men,” Diya said.
“I beg your pardon?” Eric asked.
“He’s British. Speaks just like Hugh Grant.”
“And that didn’t charm you?” Disbelief coloured every one of Lara’s words. “You’re a goner for the Brit accent.”
“Not on this savage.” Diya shuddered. The one person who could shatter the fantasy, for she’d always loved the Brits’ accent. He’d ruined it for her.
More laughter reached her ears. When would these two stop teasing? If anyone listened to Lara, Diya fell hook, line, and sinker, for the first guy with a gorgeous accent, even if he happened to be ugly or a stinking idiot.
“Can we change the subject please? I don’t want to talk about this, and certainly not when you two will tease the mickey out of me.”
“Okay,” Lara said. “How’s work coming?”
Diya brightened. Did she have news for them—
“Congratulations on the contract,” Eric said before she’d had a chance to open her mouth.
“What contract?” Lara asked.
“ALIDA won the bid for the renovation of Palm Palace,” he said.
“Congratulations, Dee.” Lara reached out and hugged her.
Diya accepted the hug in dumbfounded silence. “How did you know about this?”
Eric laughed. “Ange is my sister, remember? She called me a little while ago.”
Shrieks and giggles erupted as the children ran in and jumped around their father, who picked them up and walked out of the kitchen towards the bedrooms.
“Excuse me, ladies. Okay, fellas. Let me get changed, then we’ll hit the water,” he said as he exited the room.
Left alone, silence fell between the two sisters.
“So, this means serious work coming now,” Lara said.
“Yeah, I still can’t believe we’ve won.” Diya sighed. “The money will come in handy, especially with the car’s insurance premium, which will surely go up now.” She threw her hands up. “For once when it’s not my fault.”
Pinpricks of unease tickled her under Lara’s intense perusal. The silence stretched, and she heard her sister take in a deep breath.
“Dee, don’t get me wrong, but don’t you think it’s time you stopped playing around?”
“Sorry? Playing around?”
“With those guys you date? You always dangle the line before them, but you snatch it back as soon as they start getting serious.”
With good reason, but she wasn’t going to tell her sister about that. No, the shame would be too much to stomach. So, she opened her mouth to shoot out a fitting retort, when Lara stared her straight in the eye.
“Dee, you’re not a teenager any longer, but a grown woman. You can’t keep finding something wrong with every guy you come across.”
Her first impulse screamed to offer something in her defence. The excuse formed in her brain—she did have a very good reason, but no one would even fathom that ‘old-fashioned’ and she could get along. She was very old-fashioned regarding this love business.
But still, she reckoned her sister was partly right. She wanted others to see her as a grown up, so she better start acting like one. That didn’t make the whole dating and finding one’s soul mate deal easier, though.
“I don’t know,” she said. “There’s always something that doesn’t stick. It never feels right. There’s never any spark, any recognition this is it.”
“You mean there’s no love?”
“Yeah.”
“Love doesn’t always come with a big bang. It grows little by little.”
“But—”
Lara reached for her hand. “If you never give it time to grow, how will you know when it might spark?”
“You’re right.” Her discouragement rang palpable in the concession. Sometimes, she wished a magical matchmaker, like the Fairy Godmother, existed, so she’d find Diya’s Prince Charming and send them on their path towards Happily Ever After.
Dreams, and nothing but. Her spirits crashed … only to pick up again when she glanced at Lara.
Lara, who had found her Prince Charming through some major twists of Fate.
“It took you over thirty years to find your path. I’m just twenty-four,” she quipped.
“True, but I made some mistakes along the way. That’s why it took so long.”
“You made it okay in the end,” Diya said as she nodded towards the patio, from where sounds of splashing and laughter drifted in. “I just pray I end up the same way, too.”
***
Exactly twenty-four hours later, Diya jumped into her truck and waved good-bye as she sped from the lushly green garden of the Marivaux villa.
Despite loving her sister, Eric, and the children to bits, she couldn’t bear to live in the quaint, quiet area. Not one nightclub within a kilometre—what youngster could live in such conditions?
And no matter that their actions stemmed from good intentions—Lara and Eric always got parent-y with her. Her parents, too, had the same stance, and in the end, they’d had her running away screaming for sanity. In the Hemant household, she’d craved her freedom and her solitary peace.
No different today, when she needed her haven. Solace. Tranquillity.
Her destination thus became her very own flat in a newly erected residential area in Tamarin, the up-and-coming little village on the Western coast quietly becoming the social hub of expats and other rich, successful young entrepreneurs.
Diya swerved into her parking space, as usual not bothering if the big vehicle overlapped into the adjacent, usually vacant space allotted to the other empty flat on her floor.
However, this time, the adjoining area happened to be occupied, and she jammed her foot square on the brake right on time to avoid hitting the shiny red car.
Shoot, she’d need to be more careful.
Slithering out of the Ranger, she checked out the vehicle to her left. A Saab executive saloon. Classy, elegant, and obviously, very new. Straight out of the dealer’s branch, judging by the white TP temporary registration plate on the back.
At first glance, she’d say the car cost nothing short of two-point-five-million rupees. Goody. New neighbours, and rich ones, at that. What waited for her upstairs?
As she stepped into the lift, she let her thoughts wander to the new occupants who’d
share her floor. She’d loved the peace and quiet and the relative anonymity of not really having many neighbours.
With who would she be sharing the lobby between the flats from here on?
A noisy family, or a single executive? Man or woman?
Maybe a single and successful, handsome man. Interesting.
No. Single and successful guys lived in penthouses with private lifts. Like Dean Mishra, the bloke who occupied the top floor of her complex. She’d have totally stalked him if he hadn’t resembled an alien who’d have needed no makeup or props on an Avengers set.
Diya shuddered as his image wormed its way into her mind. Would her new neighbour be as hideous? Oh, well, in that case, she’d just have to ignore him and get on with her life. What mattered was that the flat was hers, and hers alone.
She loved her big, three-bedroom space. Basically, she loved having her own place. It’d been Hell to wrestle with her mother for the permission to come live on her own, but in the end, Gayatri Hemant had given in when her determined daughter had used every trick in the book for her parents to yell, “Get your own place, for God’s sake!”
Quite a feat to accomplish when parents here hoarded their children until the offspring’s marriage tore them apart.
Her cell phone rang as the lift doors opened on the third floor.
“Speaking of the devil,” she said as she glanced at the caller ID. With a weary exhale, she picked up. “Hi, Mum.”
“Hello, sweetheart.” The shrill voice gushed her greeting. “I just called Lara, and she said you left to come back to the flat.”
She didn’t miss the reproach in the tone as her mother all but spat the word ‘flat’ out. “It’s my home, Mum.”
Her mother sighed at the other end. “Diya, I thought you’d have realised your folly by now. Come back home. It’s not good for you to live all alone in such a large building. You don’t even have people close by if ever a problem should arise.”
She grimaced. She’d heard the same litany ever since she’d settled here. Lara had told her how nagging their mother could be, but Diya had never suspected their parent could harass anyone this bad. Even for her, who usually had no trouble to work around her mother and do as she pleased, it had become hard to put up with such relentless persecution.
Once onto the glossy black marble of the lobby floor, she focused her attention on stepping on the star-like reflections of the tiny lights from the ceiling. This time, something blocked her path. Cardboard boxes in front of the left flat.
Aha!
“Mum, you’ll be pleased to know I’m no longer alone. New neighbours settled into the flat next door.”
Her tone lost some of its perkiness when she noticed the huge box labelled ‘Toys.’ A family, all right. Out went the fantasies of the handsome, single stranger. The loss of that image echoed with a loud, wet splash in her mind.
Pulling herself out of the dejected thought, she concentrated on the conversation—if any talk with her mother could be called a conversation—at hand. “How are you doing, Mum? And how’s Daddy?”
“Oh, you’ll never believe this!”
Diya braced herself for the assault on her eardrums as the outburst continued.
“There were prayers today at Ruby’s place, and everybody was talking about your interview in WideView.”
WideView, the monthly lifestyle supplement of one of the local papers, had featured a three-page slot on a house ALIDA had decorated. The project had been their first break, commissioned by a friend of Ange’s mother, who had seen the scheme the two girls had done in the Marivaux family home in Floreal.
The interview in question amounted to nothing more than a few lines here and there in the body of the article, though. The photo spread took the brunt of the space.
“I gather you’ve seen it, too. What do you think of the house?”
“Simply marvellous, sweetheart. It made me so proud to tell everyone my little girl had done all of it,” the older woman gushed, before she went quiet.
Something bad was coming. Her mother hadn’t buttered her up for nothing.
“You know, Vimla’s nephew just came back from England. He’s got a PhD in Econometrics from the London School of Economics—”
And he’s looking for a girl to marry.
Diya didn’t need to hear her mother say the words. Goodness gracious, when would this sick matchmaking game ever stop?
“No.”
“But, Diya—”
“Mum, it’s no. Full stop. I’m not interested.”
The line went quiet, before she heard a huff.
“Fine, suit yourself. Just don’t say you never had a chance when you end up an old maid.”
She rolled her eyes despite the fury building up inside her like steam in a pressure cooker. “What’s so wrong with that? It’s your generation that needs a man for everything, Mother. Not mine.”
Annoyed at having lost her temper, and ticked by the quiet coming from the other end, she snapped. “Oh, forget it. I have to go. Kiss for you, love to Daddy.”
After cutting the call, she pressed her forehead against the cool glass in the side panel of her front door.
Would her mother ever stop irritating the hell out of her? Not likely. Gayatri Hemant lived for torturing her daughters into culture and conventions.
With her key in the lock, she glanced at the translucent glass blocks framing the wooden door.
How come they seemed grey? They were usually electric blue. Diya ran a finger over the surface and winced. A thick layer of dust coated her finger, and she’d left a long trail behind on the glass.
“Great. Not.”
I need to clean.
Thinking of her to-do list, her mind prodded how she also had to go and greet her new neighbours.
But after the call she’d just cut, she didn’t feel fit for much of anything except lounging on the sofa in a perfect impersonation of a couch potato. Run down by a truck. That’s how any encounter with her mother could be described. Though her still beautiful, fifty-something mother resembled nothing like a truck.
Once inside the front room, the television beckoned, and she flopped down onto the floral-print, overstuffed sofa. As she took in another rerun of Friends on the screen, heaviness settled on her eyelids, and she closed them when drowsiness descended on her.
Diya revelled in the peace and the quiet occasionally broken by Janice’s loud chortles and “Oh. My. Gawd!” statements. She hovered between wakefulness and slumber ...
Until the sound of smashed glass jerked her out of her sleep.
She rushed into the entrance, to stop in her tracks once on the living room threshold. Shards of glass glinted akin to diamonds off the crimson carpet runner in the hallway. The side panel sported a gaping hole, its jagged edges winking at her like a bad omen. Any second now, she expected to see thick blood materialize and drip from their uneven, pointed tips.
Diya blinked, and all notions of her Stephen-King-like vision shattered when she glanced at the foot of the door. For there, near the panel, lay a white and blue, very round football.
Chapter Three
The new neighbours! Had to be them.
Catching her already fuming after the call from her mother, the people who’d moved in next door had really chosen the worst time to get acquainted with her, and the worst way, too. She didn’t have the money to put in another door. Not without a loan, and who would she ask for the dough? Surely not her family, who’d see this as proof she couldn’t strike it out on her own.
The vandal would have to cover the cost. No way out of it.
Glass crunched under her feet as she hopped her way to the front door. So, finally, her thick-soled, sock-like slippers with the huge furry head of Minnie Mouse on the toes had proved more than comfortable and come in handy.
Diya picked up the ball, an original, Premiership-issue Umbro, and snorted with disdain.
Money-loaded brats for new neighbours. Just what she needed.
Goodby
e privacy; hello turbulence.
With her hand on the heavy chrome handle of the door, she yanked the panel open as a tentative knock resounded from the other side of the threshold.
Her self-righteous anger died when she encountered the two little boys in the lobby.
Angelic didn’t start to describe them. Who would have the heart to berate such cute kids? The eldest, who looked like a tween, topped her by a few inches, his light-gold hair and deep grey eyes striking in a face already hinting he’d be a very handsome man when he grew up. The other boy was smaller—early primary, she’d say, with big, sparkling blue eyes and unruly dark hair.
He flashed her a shy smile, showing the gap where upper front teeth should be.
“Good afternoon, miss. Sorry for breaking your door,” the elder boy said.
Diya frowned in surprise at the pronounced inflection of a posh British accent in his voice. They were foreigners? She’d have pegged them for local, French-origin white boys.
“You blokes live there?” she asked with a nod towards the flat on the opposite side of the lobby.
The tall lad grinned. “Yes, we moved in yesterday.”
“Oh.” She’d missed their arrival. Nothing ever happened when she was around.
“Thorry, mith,” the little boy said.
His lisp sounded so adorable, and Diya melted. Tenderness filled her heart, and she couldn’t suppress a smile. How could anyone stay angry at such a precious little boy?
Squatting until her eyes drew level with his, she held the ball out. “I gather this is yours.”
He nodded. “We’re really thorry.”
She grinned and ruffled his hair. “We’ll forget about it this time, okay? You better be more careful, though. What if one of you had gotten hurt?”
They nodded in reply.
“I’m Diya. And you are?”
The elder boy stepped closer and held his hand out. “I’m Matthew, and this is my little brother, Josh.”
“Pleased to meet you, lads. So, you moved in with your mum and dad?”
Matthew shrugged. “Only us and—”
“Josh, Matt!” A booming male voice resounded in the lobby. “Didn’t I tell you not to go out?”
