A Scandalous Secret. Jaishree Misra

the most beautiful baby she had ever seen; blue eyes like enormous cornflowers in her tiny face and a shock of the blackest hair Laura had ever seen on a baby. The foster mother had handed her a small bottle of milk and Sonya, eagerly taking the teat into her rosebud mouth, had drunk deeply and trustingly, her little peachy cheeks working in and out as she sucked. Holding baby and bottle, Laura had felt a wellspring of emotion so deep it was as though her entire inner self was washed through with it, reviving her spirits and reorganizing her whole life in that one moment. And Sonya, as though sensing that love, had finished all the milk and then snuggled into the crook of her adoptive mother’s arm with a little sigh before falling into a sound sleep.

      Oh, how she and Richard had poured all they had into bringing Sonya up! Laura had swiftly given up her job as a classroom assistant (‘It never was going to be a proper career, was it?’ she explained to anyone who asked) and Richard took to working twice as hard to climb the ladder in the Planning Department of Bromley Council so that their child would want for nothing. And that was exactly what they had done: given Sonya everything that was within their reach, stretching themselves to achieve ballet lessons and school trips and even horse riding when Sonya had read Sea Biscuit and briefly wanted to become an equestrienne. And now, that adored child was embarking on a search for the woman who had so heartlessly abandoned her. Going as far as India to seek her out! It was madness, in Laura’s view; nothing less. Sonya’s birth mother had even refused to breast-feed the child, from what the social worker had told them at the time. Given all that they knew, Sonya’s decision to seek the woman out was confusing and hurtful and Laura, looking at Sonya and Richard josh around the soup tureen in her kitchen pretending to fight over the last dregs of soup, felt a sudden clutch of terror at what might lie ahead.

      Chapter Nine

      It was only when she was two hundred kilometres outside Delhi that Neha started to feel a bit calmer about her situation. Ananda never failed to dispel the worst case of the blues. Neha generally preferred going to the spa by train, but no tickets had been available at such short notice and so she had asked her chauffeur to take the new Fortuner which would not be required while Sharat was in Lucknow. The road up to Meerut had been fraught, as always, with manic drivers who seemed to have fingers glued to their horns. But after crossing into forest land, the drive turned all winding and leafy, and in the distance the foothills of the Himalayas were rising in soft green folds. Neha tried to relax, leaning back on the capacious seat and watching the last rays of sunshine dipping in and out between the trees.

      Dusk was falling by the time they got to Ananda. As the tall metal gates were opened up by a set of guards, Neha looked up at the old palace that was glowing orange in the light of the setting sun. It looked like the family who lived in the palace was not in residence; the windows were all shut and barred and only a couple of rooms on the ground floor were gleaming dimly with light. Neha was grateful as she would have been expected to make her routine social call, had the Thakurs been around. Not that she normally minded – her parents had been friendly with the family for years and she was particularly fond of Urmila Rani, the ninety-year-old matriarch who had been her grandmother’s classmate at Loreto Convent in Calcutta – but today Neha had come to Ananda with the specific purpose of shutting out the noise and confusion of everything around her. She really could not have coped with a social call.

      ‘Running away?’ Jasmeet had enquired when Neha called her fifty kilometers outside Delhi, on suddenly remembering that she had forgotten to return Jasmeet’s serving dishes before leaving in the morning.

      ‘Of course not! Why would I be running away? Sharat’s in Lucknow,’ Neha had responded hotly, lapsing into embarrassed silence when Jasmeet clarified what she had meant.

      ‘Running away from the heat, I meant, stupid. It’s still thirty-eight degrees. And we are nearly into October, imagine! But, bloody hell – Ananda! You could have told me, I might have also wanted to come along, Neha!’

      ‘You mentioned this was a busy time for you …’ Neha muttered before trailing off. Much as she adored her old schoolmate, the company of someone as boisterous as Jasmeet would have been unbearable at this time.

      ‘Busy is too right, yaar,’ Jasmeet said. ‘God I’m so fucking busy it’s not funny. Dinner party at the Swedish Embassy tonight, that bloody two crore Walia wedding next week. I think I’m going mad. And now you’ve got my best serving dishes, dammit!’

      ‘Oh, sorry, Jas!’ Neha said. ‘Listen, I’ll call Ram Singh straight away and ask him to have them sent with Sharat’s driver. He should be free, seeing that Sharat’s in Lucknow.’

      ‘Humph!’ Jasmeet grumbled, adding, ‘What’s gotten into you anyway? It’s not at all like you to be forgetful.’

      ‘I know, I know. I’m so sorry. What can I say … it was just so inconsiderate of me, Jasmeet darling. Forgive me? Please?’

      ‘Oh okay, then. You are one of my best clients after all,’ Jasmeet responded cheekily and before Neha could think of a retort, she hung up in typically abrupt fashion, with a grunt.

      Neha’s car was soon pulling into the vast colonnaded porch at the reception building. After she had disembarked, a pair of girls stepped forward with flower garlands and trays of sandalwood and vermilion. The aarti ceremony done, Neha walked into the hush of the dark cool building and sank into a sofa with a sigh. There was never a better place in which to get away from it all than Ananda, in her opinion. The very air up here, suffused with the fragrance of pine needles and herbs, was restorative. Merely breathing it in was part of the healing process, she believed. Over the years Neha had recommended the mountain spa to many friends who had turned to her in moments of crisis, but this was perhaps the first time she herself had needed to come here for reasons more compelling than the mere lure of massages. She counted on her fingers. This was probably her tenth visit, the first time being many years ago when Sharat and she had driven up from Delhi with a small group of friends. Neha smiled, remembering one conversation.

      ‘It’s the bloody Gulag over here! Uniforms and set meal times and prison walls!’

      ‘Come on, Sharat, don’t exaggerate!’

      ‘I’m not! It’s incredible that people pay to be tortured in this way! And the yoga, that’s the other thing – setting alarms for five in the morning so that you can shiver on a mountain top while some torturer twists your body into impossible positions. I’m in agony everywhere today. Look, see here, even my shoulder blades are all tensed up!’

      Sharat had roundly declared the experience not one he would ever want to repeat. But, for Neha on that occasion, it was as if she had reached paradise. Now a veteran of ten visits, she knew the routine well. She smiled at the girl who was bringing her the welcome drink of cold herb tea and downed it in one gulp.

      ‘Oh god, already seven pm!’ she said, glancing at her watch as she got up. ‘I think I should have something light to eat and then get to bed early. Can’t miss morning yoga! There’s something so fabulous about watching the sun rise from behind the mountains while doing pranayama. How we Delhi wallahs ever try to practise yoga inside air-conditioned closed rooms, I don’t know.’

      The girl smiled. ‘Did you wish to see the schedule of treatments that have been lined up for your week, Mrs Chaturvedi? You may want to change something?’

      ‘No, I’ll do all that tomorrow at the spa reception,’ Neha replied, nodding at the two staff members before she left the building.

      Neha took the familiar path down to the block that housed the rooms, going past the marble pergola where her yoga lessons were sometimes conducted, and cocked her head to listen out for the pretty sound of the running rill of water that lay behind it. The sun had long faded from the peaks of the surrounding mountains, which were now shrouded in a hazy purple mist. The spa too had shut down for the night, as had the swimming pool, which was now gently rippling, black and pristine. But the cluster of buildings that housed Ananda’s accommodation was well lit and Neha made for it, knowing that her suitcase would by now be unpacked, her things already neatly laid out in the cupboards.