A Scandalous Secret. Jaishree Misra

on the eve of a party. Everything’s well under control from what I can see.’

      ‘It’s a bit weird, though, that everything’s been delegated and there’s no more to be done. Now I just want it to go well and for everyone to enjoy themselves.’

      ‘Of course they’ll enjoy themselves, silly. I have to admit, though, that the party’s hardly topmost in my mind, given the holiday in India coming so soon after. Perhaps we should have spaced them out by a week so we could have planned both things properly. I can’t seem to get too excited about India at the moment.’

      ‘You’re daft. I’m so excited I can hardly stand still! Don’t forget there wasn’t the time to space things out. Not with us having to get back to England in time for the start of uni.’

      ‘Yeah, shame really that the visas took so long or we could even have managed an extra week in India. Maybe I’ll start getting excited once this party’s out of the way.’

      ‘Fuck me sideways with a broomstick, Sonya!’ Estella squawked. ‘The party’s nothing compared to this India holiday. It’s once-in-a-lifetime kinda stuff!’

      ‘Well, it sure solved a lot of people’s questions about eighteenth birthday presents,’ Sonya laughed.

      ‘Personally, I think both our parents have got off rather lightly with buying just the air tickets, especially seeing what troupers the extended families have been,’ Estella joked.

      ‘Too right. Your Uncle Gianni insisting we go all the way down south to Kerala was just the best. Imagine insisting on getting my ticket too!’

      ‘My Uncle G’s the sweetest. Helps that he’s loaded, of course. By the way, I’m off tomorrow to buy the backpack that Auntie Maria’s given me money for.’

      ‘Listen, we should make a date soon to investigate that travel shop in Soho too,’ Sonya reminded.

      ‘Which? Oh the one Toby told us about that specializes in tropical stuff? But I thought your mum’s already kitted us out with tubes of insect repellent and various other forms of goo?’

      ‘No, no, not that kind of thing. This shop does clothing and equipment and stuff.’

      ‘You make it sound like we’re headed off into the jungle, ready to hack our way through tropical undergrowth! I hardly think Delhi and Kerala require special clothing, Sonya.’

      ‘Well, we have to get shots down at the GP’s surgery so it’s not exactly a trip down the road to Bromley, is it?’

      Estella laughed. ‘It certainly ain’t that. I can’t wait to be off. Just need to get this damned party out of the way first. Oh fuck, I just remembered, Mum asked me to call Alberto’s deli for some salami. Gotta go!’

      After her friend had hung up, Sonya continued to lie stretched in her bay window, sunning her propped-up legs. She had fitted perfectly into this space until she was about ten but now, at a lanky five foot eight, she had to fold herself up in all sorts of ingenious ways in order to tuck herself in. She picked up a cushion and clutched it against her chest, trying to quell another flutter of anticipation. This trip – till recently some kind of distant and unlikely endeavour – had suddenly become a lot more real. Before anyone knew it, she would be off, flying into the unknown … an unknown past, by any measure, a curious concept. Finding out about a whole new family …

      Sonya tried to infuse herself with determination and pulled herself back into a sitting position. She plumped up the pillows in the bay window, instructing herself to get on with the task at hand. But instead she stayed where she was, scrolling through the apps on her phone to inspect her calendar. It had been five days since she’d sent that letter and she hadn’t mentioned it to either Estella or her parents yet. Only Priyal knew and that was only because Sonya had needed a source of information on all matters related to India. Priyal had suggested that a letter to Delhi could take anything from five days to two weeks to arrive.

      What would Neha Chaturvedi’s response be when it did finally get to her, Sonya wondered. Not that she cared, or anything, but if she did, she’d have given an arm and a leg to be a fly on the wall when that letter got opened. She had written three different versions and had eventually gone for the hard-hitting one because no other tone had seemed quite appropriate; certainly not namby-pamby politeness! Besides, pussy-footing about and avoiding tackling important issues just wasn’t her style.

      Sonya rolled to one side and slipped a sheet of paper out from under the mattress in her bay window. She’d kept a photocopy of the letter she had sent as writing it had been such a momentous task, she felt it important to keep a record of it. However, over subsequent examinings, Sonya had doodled absent-mindedly on the margins which were now covered in pictures of stubby little aeroplanes and, for some odd reason, the repetitive image of a spiralling tornado.

      Had she been overly melodramatic, Sonya wondered as she cast her eye over her scrawly writing. Perhaps the tone she’d adopted had turned just a tad too aggressive? It wasn’t entirely made up of course, because Sonya did feel genuinely hurt and angry with all that she now knew of her adoption. In her more logical moments, she knew it was crazy to feel so angry, especially given what an ace set of cards life had dealt her since she was adopted by Mum and Dad. But that didn’t take away from the fact that life could have been dire, thanks to the actions of the woman who had given birth to her.

      To prevent her runaway thoughts from messing up her head again, Sonya got up and turned on the radio. She did a few energetic toe-touches and stretches to Michael Bublé and sang along, trying to lighten her mood. She smiled at her reflection in the mirrored wardrobe. By working herself up into such a tizz over India, perhaps she was merely living up to the name her father had given her when she was six: Drama Diva. He often had a little dig at Mum as well while he was at it, dubbing her Drama Queen and calling them both his Deeply Dramatic Duo. He was a fine one to talk, given how teary he had been of late; almost as bad as Mum. Of course it was all due to the India plan, and poor Dad wasn’t as expert at masking his feelings as he seemed to think. With a mere five days to go before Sonya’s departure, both her parents had taken to behaving as though they were acting in a Ken Loach weepie, welling up at the silliest of things and quickly blinking away tears that they thought Sonya hadn’t seen. Of course, Sonya understood all the reasons for which her darling mum felt threatened by her going off in search of her real mother but it was really so unnecessary, given how poorly Sonya thought of the woman who had given her away.

      Sonya danced her way to the photograph that hung above the writing bureau, taken on her sixth birthday. She looked at her six-year-old self, standing before a Smarties-encrusted chocolate cake, flanked by her parents, both of whom were wearing silly paper hats. They looked so happy. As though that smiling threesome, caught in the camera lens, was the only thing of any importance in the whole wide world. Sonya’s heart did another guilty flip. She hated the thought of causing her parents distress. She had been quite shocked when she had overheard Mum remark to Dad that what they were going through was about the most painful thing that had happened to her since the string of miscarriages she had endured in her twenties.

      It was an instantly sobering thought and Sonya stopped dancing to return to the window seat. After another last glance at the photocopied letter, she slipped it back under the mattress. She had also kept a copy, imagining – perhaps dramatically – the kind of events it could set off; legal proceedings even! If that was the case, she certainly didn’t want to be caught out, unable to remember what she had written. Not that she was frightened or anything – after all UK laws did actively encourage people to rediscover the details of their birth. But in the end, the final draft had been secretly photocopied on Dad’s scanner in his den before she had stuffed it into an envelope. She had sealed it before she could stop herself and then cycled like the clappers down to the post office on the High Street to make sure she did not change her mind. But, although it had been sent in haste, Sonya knew – hand on heart – that she had thought long and hard about the possible consequences of taking this step of contacting her birth mother. It was quite honestly the most difficult decision she had ever made in her life but Sonya had eventually made it, comforted by the sheer numbers of other adoptees who had done