Secrets and Sins. Jaishree Misra

He could imagine her waving a dismissive manicured hand in the air as she spoke.

      ‘I paid back Ben’s loan years ago, in case you’ve forgotten! Yeah, sure, he even helped Papa once financially. But Ben was a different man then. Not the grumpy old git he is now. People change and you’re mad to keep clinging to some lost notion of what he once was. Chuck him out, sis,’ she advised coolly, as though Ben were no more than a carton of something going slightly whiffy in the fridge. It had taken superhuman self-control to keep from striding into the living room to let the pair know he had overheard their conversation. But Ben had stopped himself. Not to save Kaaya the embarrassment but, quite simply, to hear Riva’s response. Surely, surely she would spring to his defence.

      Instead, he had heard Riva laugh. Perhaps it had been with astonishment or wryness, rather than amusement – it was hard to tell without seeing the expression on her face. But Ben had been so incensed by the sound of Riva’s laughter at Kaaya’s suggestion of ‘chucking him out’ that he had turned on his heel and walked out of the house, leaving the kitchen door swinging open on its hinges for the two women to puzzle over later. He had subsequently stayed at the pub until closing time, getting more and more drunk and wallowing in sadness and self-pity, trying desperately to convince himself that Riva would surely have defended him after his departure.

      The worst part of it all was that, at some level, Ben knew Kaaya was right – what was Riva doing with a man like him anyway? It wasn’t like it had been when they’d all been young and full of promise back in their university days. After all, any one of them – Riva, Susan, Joe, Aman – could have turned out successful back then. It was all a matter of luck and chance. Despite one’s best efforts, life had a totally arbitrary way of dishing out favours, Ben knew that now. The pity of it was that back at uni, it was he, Ben, who had seemed most likely to be going places, the only one in the gang to be hand-picked by a bank when the milk rounds had started in their final year. It would be no exaggeration to claim that he had once been the most popular student on campus, not just a top student but also an ace debater and captain of the cricket team. Would anyone even remember now that he had been the first among them all to have landed a job, one that everyone was so certain would lead to a glittering career as a banker?

      Twelve years down the line, however, events had taken a direction that no one would have predicted back then: Riva was a successful, award-winning novelist; Joe a consultant psychiatrist at one of London’s biggest teaching hospitals; Susan, the special needs co-ordinator at a primary school praised for its innovative teaching methods; and, most gallingly, Aman Khan of all people was now a fucking film star, earning megabucks in Bollywood, gracing magazine covers and being worshipped by droves of women in the farthest corners of the world. To Ben, Aman Khan’s resounding success had been the biggest surprise of them all. Kaaya’s came a close second – vacuous, self-absorbed Kaaya who had done amazingly well for herself as a Hollywood film publicist. Who in their right mind would have ever imagined that brain-dead Kaaya would one day turn into a better have-it-all feminist than her much brighter and nicer sister? Whenever Ben reflected on life’s vagaries (something he had a lot more time for since the bank had laid him off two years ago), he could see it all quite clearly: Riva Walia, one-time president of Leeds University’s student union and founder of Bitten Apple, the campus feminist rag, had merely got unlucky and was now trapped in a lacklustre marriage that was like a drug habit, impossible to break. And there, in her swanky Holland Park apartment across town, was Kaaya Walia – once considered the pretty airhead sibling – having her cake and eating it (and by God, was she eating it) with an office overlooking Soho Square, a designer apartment in Holland Park, two flash sports cars in the double garage, a wealthy investment banker husband and, as if all that wasn’t enough, an endless string of admiring men on the side. Ben had seen them, hanging adoringly around Kaaya at the fancy parties she threw – a besotted young colleague here, a well-heeled client there, men went mad for her. As they would have done for Riva too, had she been a different sort of woman. Riva was equally, if not more, attractive than her sister, but was not given to the sultry come-ons that Kaaya was so adept at. Riva was hard-working, sweet-tempered and persevering but, when all was said and done, it was Kaaya who was materially more successful. How unfair was that?

      It made Ben feel wretched to think how easily his golden prospects had gone dark and sour, and how he had dragged Riva down with him. It was incredible to think that he, Ben Owen, should be out of a job. Incredible but true. Perhaps Kaaya had been right last night: he was holding Riva back and she was too kind to admit it herself. He ought to do the right thing by her and leave. Vanish into the ether. Perhaps allow her to pick up with Aman Khan where they had last left off. Which had been at the end of that first year at university when he, Ben, had thought he was king of the world, simply because he had got the girl, while poor luckless Aman Khan had left uni with neither a girl or even a degree. And now, there was Aman Khan gracing posters overlooking Leicester Square, gloating at the tiny luckless mortals that passed beneath!

       Chapter Five

      Kaaya delved into her handbag for her BlackBerry, wondering how illicit love had been managed in the era before mobile telephony. Perhaps spouses just caught each other out more frequently in those bad old days, when lovers had no choice but to use home phones after work hours. Kaaya, of course, called on Joe’s home phone only if it was Susan she needed to speak to. Which wasn’t often, as Susan was really her sister Riva’s friend more than hers. Nevertheless, there had been the occasional call – to invite Susan and Joe to dinner or, more recently, to help organise Riva’s surprise birthday party. Kaaya would be the first to admit that there had been a curious thrill in speaking to Susan, knowing that Joe was probably listening in at the other end of their conversation, longing to grab the phone and shower kisses into it.

      She glanced at the time on her phone. This was the best time to catch him, just as he would be finishing his daily workout. He was in fact probably just settling down before one of the computer terminals at his snazzy wi-fi enabled gym, from where he used his new secret email account to write her long and sentimental emails. Kaaya preferred telephone conversations to emails, writing being much more Riva’s thing than hers. Besides, tapping on a keyboard was murder on her delicately French-manicured nails.

      She inspected their perfect pearly sheen now as she stretched out on her chaise longue, listening to the distant buzz of Joe’s phone. On her face was the smile that Riva used to describe as ‘Kaaya’s cat-smile’ when they were children. But Kaaya’s smile faded as the ringing tone continued and she realised that the answering service was going to kick in. Kaaya was accustomed to having men grab hurriedly at their phones to answer it without delay when her name flashed up on their screens. Still, she reckoned she could give Joe the benefit of the doubt this once. He had, after all, proven to be a most attentive lover this past month. Unsurprisingly, actually, given that she was his first (and, quite likely, would be his only) extramarital dalliance in the ten years he had been married to Susan. He had, in fact, all the gauche charm of the first-time adulterer, as eager as a puppy with his affections. Kaaya was familiar with the sort, and she found she enjoyed their attentions rather more than those of the more blasé seasoned cheats. The only problem with a lover as ardent as Joe was that there was every danger he would get too serious and start talking divorce and remarriage. And that was definitely territory Kaaya was not interested in. She already had a husband, for heaven’s sake, and a rather high calibre one too! No, Joe was merely a timely emotional prop to help her through this rather bleak time.

      Kaaya’s thoughts stopped drifting when Joe’s phone stopped ringing. ‘This is the Vodaphone messaging service. Please leave a message after the tone.’

      Kaaya kept it brief. ‘Hi, it’s me. Call when you can.’ She did not need to specify who she was and that she was alone. Joe already knew that Rohan was in Japan for a week and had vowed to see her every day in his absence. Or rather, every night after work. Except Tuesday, he had said, as it was his old classmate’s birthday. Kaaya glanced at the digital calendar on the wall. Of course – Tuesday, that’s where he was. The bloody birthday party!

      Kaaya clapped her phone down on the coffee table, trying to quell