‘Five people?’
‘Yes, ma’am. Very rich man, Mukesh Ambani. Him, his wife, his very beautiful daughter and his two very fat sons.’
‘What, one family lives in a twenty-seven-storey building?’
‘There are five hundred servants also, ma’am. The saying is that some days when the sun is going one way the building’s shadow falls across Dharavi slum, but I am not sure that this is true because the slum is not so close.’
‘Whether it’s true or not, there is something seriously not right about one family living there and a million living in the slum, even if it is a five-star slum.’
‘Yes, ma’am,’ Pinto answered. ‘Government-designated! This very rich man, Mukesh Ambani, he is not so popular in Mumbai, although his cricket team is getting better.’
Pinto sped up and joined the flow of heaving traffic, although with every vehicle seeming to go in a slightly different direction, it was hardly a flow.
Annie bit her lip twice and broke a nail grabbing the back of the front seat somewhere between the twenty-seven-storey house and getting back to the hotel, but she paid him triple the usual, as he had been so patient with the other passengers.
When she looked at her watch, she could hardly believe it was only just midday. She’d been away for so little time yet she felt as though she’d entered a whole new world — like Narnia.
As she walked down the hallway to Room 1802, she felt her phone buzz in her bag to tell her she had a message.
Hoping it was Hugh, she scrabbled to find it, but it wasn’t from her husband; again it was from Pinto.
Thunk u so much. If u happey. I’m veary happey every think naice because of u. thunk again far halp me, god help u
So, she was giving him the right money, and she felt stupidly happy at finally knowing that for sure.
She texted back: My pleasure, Pinto. And then, after a moment’s thought: See you tomorrow morning, and after yoga let’s go sightseeing.
Chapter Sixteen
To Annie’s delight there was an email from Daisy waiting for her when she logged on at the business centre.
However, her excitement was short-lived.
Hey, Mum. All good here but I need a new dress to wear to this uber-cool party that Freya is having next Saturday. I’ve seen one for $349 — looks awesome on. Could you pay that amount into my account? Pretty please? I’ll wear my old silver heels, the ones I wore to that dorky wedding last summer, unless you want to pay in extra for a new pair lol! D x
Annie sat back in her chair and re-read the email. Not a word about India, about yoga, about her, Annie, at all. Just another attempted withdrawal from the Bank of Jordan. She’d bought Daisy a dress a few months before, she recalled, to wear to another one of Freya’s parties, whoever Freya was.
She had paid it, last time, the however much it was for the dress. She had paid it without even thinking. She had been pleased to be asked. Now, she was not. Now she had a lump in her throat and was trying not to admit how hurt she was. She wanted her daughter to look beautiful and feel confident and happy when she went out, but she also wanted her to at least ask how Annie was doing on the other side of the world in India, a matter of weeks after her own mother’s death. It wasn’t as though she’d just popped out to get the groceries; it wasn’t as though this was an ordinary time in her life.
Pinto, who had never even been to school let alone studied marketing at university while living in a flat and eating food paid for by his parents, had just managed to thank her properly for paying him the equivalent of $30 — and he had actually done something to earn it.
She had made him happy and he had told her.
She couldn’t even remember if Daisy had thanked her for the last dress, let alone told her how happy it made her for Annie to buy it for her.
The lump in her throat turned to a rare burning fury, smoking away the goodness from the morning’s laughing yoga. That spoiled little madam!
But no sooner had she thought that than she felt the dreary burden of guilt settling around her shoulders like a wet blanket. Daisy was her daughter. Her precious, living daughter. It was a mother’s job to love and spoil her children. Wasn’t it? She’d lost one and come close to losing Daisy, after all. And if she’d got into the habit of spoiling her, in a way she herself had never been spoiled, there was a very good reason for it. She could hardly blame Daisy for her selfishness, but nor was she in the mood to further indulge it.
Hi darling, not sure about the dress: seems a lot when I only just bought you one, she wrote. Busy getting out and about in Mumbai. I think you’d be impressed by what I’ve been up to over here. Did you get my other emails? Dad is very busy with work so I’m left to my own devices. It’s a whole new world. Talk soon, love Mum.
She pressed send, then clicked on an email from Rhona. Rhona would cheer her up, she was sure.
She was also wrong.
Annie, the hot totty is pregnant!!!!! her friend wrote.
Four months gone!!!! That’s why the bastard has been acting so weird. Afraid that I would see her tiny little baby bump, I suppose. Although it’s so small that none of the big kids even noticed it. He told me yesterday. By text!!!!! And I’ve been a wreck ever since. I mean it’s not like I want him back or anything, the low-down disgusting FAT loud filthy piece of scum, but I just wasn’t prepared for this. The grief he gave me about getting pregnant with Caleb! Do you remember that? The backtracking and brownie-pointing I had to scrabble around with to make up for that. I could never even ask him to look after the kids on his own because he’d made it so clear that it was my choice to have a fourth. (Choice? Huh! The Pill AND a condom? That kid was coming whether I liked it or not.) So I had to do all the work. And I did! And it was bloody hard and I was tired all the time so no wonder I didn’t want sex and he was ‘forced’ to get it from that slut at the dentist’s. If he’d helped out around the house every now and then it might have all ended differently. Why do I feel like this? I can’t stop crying, Annie. The kids are freaked out, too. They won’t say much — well, Joe won’t say anything, but the girls are all red-eyed and dramatic and I think they think it means he doesn’t love them anymore. Does it mean that? I can cope with him not loving me, but not them. And now I’m not sure I can cope with him not loving me either. He must love HER much, much more if he let her have a baby. Just like that. A baby, Annie!!!! I don’t want him back, honestly, but I want something. God, sorry to rant, but just be pleased you can’t see me. I look disgusting. My hair is doing something weird and the crown fell off my tooth yesterday so I look like a witch, and not the sexy, fun sort, but the hubble, bubble, toil and trouble sort. Better go. Caleb’s got a cold which means he’s not running around as much as usual, but every time he coughs it sounds like a demolition ball hitting a brick wall. Email me. Please!!! I miss you!!!!
Annie felt wretched on her friend’s behalf. Rhona was never a wreck. Never. She was as solid as a rock — and for her to be crying and using multiple exclamation points, against which she often railed? Bad news.
Annie wished she were there, to squeeze her friend’s hand and reassure her that everything was going to be OK. Since she’d lost Eleanor, Annie knew only too well the feeling of having no one who understood, no one who wanted anything more than to make the bad things go away. Eleanor had always been that person for Annie, and sometimes for Rhona, too, and now they just had each other and here they were on opposite sides of the world.
She certainly did remember how tough Rhona had it when Caleb was born. Aidan was a funny chap at the best of times: great fun when there were other people around, but always jiggling and restless when there wasn’t anything much going on. He loved having friends over at the drop of a hat, going to parties, organising outings, conjuring up plans for weekends away. It was always lively, but he could be tiring, and Annie knew that, although his kids loved him and thought he was a riot, it was Rhona who picked up after him, who picked up after them all.
But that was what wives
did, what mothers did. Annie had done it, too. Younger men might be more useful around the house these days but Hugh, like Aidan, was not domesticated at all. He would no sooner be able to do a load of laundry than crochet a pot-plant holder. He never cooked, he never cleaned, he didn’t even mow the lawn — they paid someone else to do that. He didn’t take the kids to their after-school commitments or ever join the PTA or help with their projects or take them to the doctor when they were sick. That was her: she had done all that. And she hadn’t minded. Then. But looking back, after reading her daughter’s email and her friend’s, she minded now.
When had she and Hugh struck that deal, exactly? At least Aidan had told Rhona he wasn’t going to help after Caleb was born (the man really was an arse), but with Hugh he had somehow assumed, and she had assumed right along with him.
Had there even been a discussion about her not going back to work?
She’d been so happy to leave her HR job to have Daisy, and then before she could even think about going back to work she’d been pregnant with Ben, and she truly could not remember ever talking about what would happen after that.
They had been difficult days, the most physically demanding Annie could remember. A thirteen-month-old and a newborn? There were weeks when she felt like a cow, being milked around the clock by angry sucking machines. When she thought of that time now she saw herself in a black room, like a modernist Madonna: lonely, bleak, hollow-eyed, pale.
It had been such a good morning in Mumbai, so full of colour and surprise and unexpected delight. She had come back to the hotel buzzing, but how quickly a good mood could blow away — like the fine top layer of sand across a beach, disappearing at the first suggestion of a breeze into a vast dark ocean never to be seen again.
Annie felt her old emptiness start to work its way into her crevices, but then Heavenly Hirani floated into her mind, just like a cloud. ‘You need to laugh, that is all. Just laugh.’
Annie had been about to answer Rhona by scorning Aidan and his poor taste in cheap sluts. Misery loved company, after all, and in the wake of Daisy’s email, she had a few exclamation points of her own to get rid of.
But with Heavenly’s words ringing in her ears she decided to take a different approach.
Oh, sweetie. No wonder you’re upset. What is he — competing in the Double Standard Olympics? And to tell you by text? What a nutless wonder! But you know, I’ve been thinking. It could end up working out VERY WELL for you. This way you are going to get a brand-new baby to cuddle and kiss (don’t think they won’t want to palm it off on you every time they can) and you didn’t even have to have sex with the filthy piece of scum to get it. Plus you can hand it back whenever it poops. Rhona, this is going to be a blast! Caleb won’t be the youngest anymore, which he will LOVE. The girls will get firsthand experience of what it’s like to be in charge of a vomiting mini-troll, so they will never ever want to have sex, ever, for fear of winding up with one of their own. And Joe will probably become a priest. The good kind. On top of that, the hot totty will end up pudgy and tired like we all did. And Aidan doesn’t know what’s about to hit him. Young mums aren’t like we were. He’ll be up feeding it expressed milk at 3am and wandering around wearing a Baby Bjorn every Saturday and Sunday so she can sleep in. Within a year he will look 105 and be thoroughly tapped out and exhausted, while you will be the windswept and interesting wrinkle-free ex who can lounge in the bath with a good book and a glass of pinot. Chin up, darling. You’re about to get all the Schadenfreude you so richly deserve.
Annie pressed send, feeling mildly elated, but another layer of sand was blown off the surface of her mood when she got back to her room and picked up the Hindustan Times.
Doctors at the hospital had reduced the medication that had been keeping Preeti in a coma, and she had regained consciousness, Annie read, her heart hammering. Damage to the young woman’s lips and throat meant she could not speak, but she had been able to communicate with her father using a notepad and pen.
This treatment must be very expensive, Dada, her first message had said. I am so sorry, my ATM card is in my bag and there is money in my account.
The wind blew, another layer gone. How different from the message Annie had been given by her own daughter. It was ridiculous to compare the two, but also impossible not to.
Who would do this to me? Preeti asked, on her notepad, the paper reported. My life is over. My future is gone.
The culprits, needless to say, had yet to be nabbed.
BY THE TIME HUGH GOT BACK to the hotel it was dark. He looked exhausted.
‘You would not believe the time I’ve had,’ he said bending to kiss Annie on the forehead as she sat on the bed with the newspaper. ‘Talk about a wild goose chase.’
She was not going to tell him what she had been doing while he was chasing banana-pickers around the countryside; she was not going to tell him about Daisy or Rhona or poor Preeti. She was going to wait and see how long it took for him to ask. ‘You didn’t find it?’
He took off his tie and loosened his shirt collar. ‘Well, we know where it isn’t. It isn’t in Chennai, where it was made. It isn’t in Bangalore, although it was between 11am and 1pm yesterday, and it isn’t in Pune, where it’s supposed to be now, but hasn’t arrived. How a twenty-tonne machine could go missing I seriously don’t know. The Indian suppliers are good guys, but they seem just as mystified as I am, which is a worry because they’re in charge of the thing.’
He kicked his shoes off and lay back on the bed. ‘They are going bananas, excuse the pun, back at the office at home, but all I can do is rely on what I’m being told here, which is “Yes, Mr Hugh, it is on its way.”’ Hugh wobbled his head as he spoke. ‘On its way where is the question.’
He closed his eyes, sinking into the pillows. ‘Oh, that feels good.’
Earlier in the day Annie had talked herself into suggesting they brave the traffic and go out for dinner, but looking at her tired husband lying back in the bed half-asleep already, she realised that was not going to happen.
She felt anger stirring with sympathy in her belly, and then his phone rang.
His eyes sprang open and he jumped out of bed to answer it. The banana-picker was still AWOL.
Ten minutes later he was still talking, although Annie had stopped listening. She changed into her gym clothes and slipped out the door. She didn’t think Hugh even noticed.
Chapter Seventeen
Annie slept fitfully, her stomach churning, her mind whirring, and was awake well before the alarm went off.
She considered texting Pinto to say she wasn’t going to laughing yoga.
She felt more like crying.
In the end, though, she dithered so long that it was too late to pull out: he would already have been on his way to meet her. She knew that, even with no traffic, it took him half an hour to get from the guesthouse to the Taj Lands End.
And her mood began to lift, as always, just at the sight of the city as they swept over the Sea Link, the sun rising behind her, the Arabian Sea rippling beside her.
She felt even better when she saw that half the laughing yoga school had coincidentally turned up dressed in a similar shade of burgundy.
Three were in saris — one with gold threads shot through it, one with blue flowers, one with green flowers — and four in tunics — one spotty, two floral, and one plain.
The ladies seemed to find this hilarious, particularly Heavenly, who re-arranged the circle so that every second person was wearing the same colour.
‘Like rubies in a friendship ring,’ she said. ‘Like lovely laughing rubies.’
By the time Annie was through the first round of ‘very well, wonderful, beautiful’ she was positively uplifted.
It was physically impossible to hold onto her own personal dark cloud when she was surrounded by lovely rubies on Chowpatty Beach, all chanting their hearts out and smiling at the sun.
I am very well, wonderful, beautiful, not miserable, she told herself as the exerc
ises began.
This time, Heavenly got the entire school sprinting up and down the beach, from the shore to the banyan trees. It may not have started as a laughing exercise, but it certainly turned into one very quickly. It wasn’t just that saris weren’t made to sprint in; it was that the elderly bodies contained by saris weren’t made to be doing the sprinting.
Shruti was bright red in the face from the exertion of laughing, rather than running, and a new woman Annie hadn’t seen before was clutching onto Priyanka’s arm, her legs crossed, as if in danger of an embarrassing accident — which only seemed to be making her laugh more.
The different speeds at which everyone was running meant that they were coming towards each other instead of all going in the same direction, which led to a lot of collisions in the middle.
Pooja and Suraj had stopped to have a row up near the trees, and Annie was laughing so hard, she was just about on the brink of an embarrassing episode of her own.
‘OK, OK, I am thinking the running exercise is not working so well for us today,’ Heavenly finally said, gathering them all back into a circle. Laughter continued to ripple around them in waves, rising and falling with heaving shoulders and upturned mouths. ‘For now, I would like us to do a special friendship exercise.’
‘To go with our friendship ring,’ called out one of the rubies.
‘Yes,’ said Heavenly. ‘This is very easy. Now, everybody, off with your shoes. Everybody. That means you, too, Mikhila.’
‘Veejay doesn’t want me to take off my shoes,’ said Mikhila, the newcomer who had been avoiding the embarrassing accident. ‘Because then you will see I have a very long second toe.’
‘We don’t need to see your toes to know that you wear the churidars in your house,’ said Priyanka.
‘What does that mean?’ Annie asked Sandeep, who was, as usual, standing next to her.
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