hand that was nothing like her own neat and precise handwriting.
Dear Neha Chaturvedi,
You will no doubt be very surprised to receive this letter. I will not beat about the bush as there is no easy way to say these things. You see, I am the daughter you gave away for adoption in 1993. You may well question my motives, but this is of far less concern to me than the explanation that I believe it is my right to ask you for.
I am planning to make a trip to India because I have a few things to set straight before starting university this autumn. Please let me know when and where we can meet. And please do not ignore this letter, as you have ignored me all these years.
My postal and email addresses are in the letterhead at the top, as is my mobile phone number, so you have several ways to contact me. I hope you do, but as I have your address, you should know that I will not think twice before coming straight to your house in Delhi unless you offer me an alternative place to meet. This will, I warn you, be regardless of your own circumstances, seeing how little you have cared for mine all these years.
However, I hope that will be unnecessary and I am in anticipation of a speedy reply,
Sonya Shaw.
Chapter Two
Sonya lay under her duvet and looked around the bedroom of her house in Orpington, memorising its every familiar and comforting detail. She tried to assess if this was another lump-in-the-throat moment, the likes of which there had been many since her plans had formed: plans not just for college but the fast-approaching trip to India too.
While there was still no response to the letter she had sent to Delhi, there was nothing that could be employed to dredge up much emotion on a peaceful morning like this. The room was awash with cheery sunshine, Mum was clattering about in the kitchen downstairs and Sonya had to admit, all was well in her world. Nevertheless, as had happened yesterday, and the day before, virtually the very first thought to assail her as she opened her eyes was that frigging letter. It was probably too early to be expecting a reply from Neha Chaturvedi just yet, as Sonya’s Indian friend, Priyal, had told her the Indian postal system was nothing like Britain’s. But what if her letter had never made it to its destination? It was entirely possible, of course, as getting the address had been no more than a series of stabs in the dark. But how annoying if Sonya would never even know if the lack of response was due to Neha Chaturvedi’s indifference or just an abysmal foreign postal system!
Trying to quell a sudden attack of butterflies in her stomach at the thought of India, Sonya decided to get up and abruptly swung her legs out from under the bedclothes. She stretched hard before getting up and padding her way across to her en-suite bathroom. Her eyes were not fully opened yet but she often said she could traverse her room blindfolded, this having been her designated space since she was a baby. It had, of course, been converted over the years from a bright yellow nursery that Sonya still had a fuzzy memory of, to a very pink girl’s room that was probably its longest incarnation until it metamorphosed into its present deliberately dark and somewhat gothic teenage space some years ago. Sonya sometimes thought of the room as being almost like a relative because of the way in which it had grown up alongside her. Suddenly, the thought of leaving it was quite unbearable and, yes – there it was – that great big lump forming in her throat yet again as she splashed her face with water in the sink and looked at herself in the mirror. Her skin, typically quick to turn golden-brown in the summer, was glowing with good health but she remembered, with a quick small flash of sadness, how she had scrubbed her face raw one summer many years ago, desperate to be less brown than she was so she could blend in better with her very pale-skinned cousins who were visiting from Canada. Luckily she had soon got over that phase with some help from a school counsellor but – even now – it didn’t take much for some small thing to rear its head up like a little devil and remind her of how little she was like the parents who had adopted her. In the way she looked, the way she spoke, even the way she thought about things. Much as she adored her mum and dad, they really were chalk to her cheese. But now she was actually planning on separating from them, the thought of it was unbearable.
Of course, it was right and proper to be sentimental at times like this, even though Estella had always scoffed at her ready propensity for tears. How on earth Sonya had ever become best friends with such a hard nut was inexplicable but Estella’s toughness came – by her own admission – from the procession of formidable old Italian matriarchs on her mother’s side of the family. Sonya pulled her toothbrush out of the mug. Well, she certainly wasn’t going to be apologetic about her current heightened emotional state, she thought as she squeezed toothpaste onto the bristles and started to brush.
The trip to India was nearly upon them now but, strangely, Sonya hadn’t got around to doing her packing yet. She, who was usually so OCD her packing was done weeks before a holiday. It was two weeks before their departure for Lanzarote a few summers ago that her dad had discovered Sonya was getting her toothbrush out of her suitcase every morning. She wasn’t that bad anymore, but, with only a few days to go now for India, she had not even got her case out of the loft. She wasn’t sure she could explain it but a strange kind of malaise had crept over her a few weeks ago. Perhaps she could blame Mum and Dad for being so negative about her going off to India. Or perhaps it was that at some level Sonya was herself terrified of what she would find when she got there. But she really ought to get packed today, given that she and Estella were due to fly next week …
Sonya wandered back into her bedroom and sat with a thump on her cushioned window seat instead. She looked out of the bay window and saw a clutch of children wearing uniforms at the bus stop down the road while an empty milk float trundled past her gate. It was obviously much earlier than she’d thought, and so Sonya lay back against the cushions and put her feet up, enjoying the feel of the sun on her toes. Distractions were aplenty as most of the clutter that was visible from Sonya’s present perch held – as her mum sometimes said – ‘a memory or three’. Half the things in the room were presents from Mum and Dad anyway, all kinds of mementos and photographs that marked birthdays and special events. But that clay cat, grinning from atop the dresser, was a present from Estella given to mark the day they left junior school. And around its neck were two pendants: one a red plastic heart that Tim had given her on Valentine’s Day along with a bronze skull pendant that Sonya had bought at a Limp Bizkit heavy metal concert last year. Nestled between the cat’s legs was a glass vial filled with various different types of sand, a memento from their family holiday in Lanzarote five years ago. Being a sentimental sort, Sonya found it hard to throw anything away and, among the vast collection of hairbands that hung colourfully from a mug-tree, were a few tiny ones decorated with plastic flowers that dated all the way back to her childhood when she had first heard of art collections and declared herself to be a Hairband Collector instead.
All in all, the style of her room was what Estella – who had herself gone all Scandinavian minimalist in design taste – once tartly described as ‘Terence Conran’s worst nightmare’. It was true that, every time the look and style of her room was revamped, Sonya had determinedly hung on to some of its previous features – her ‘Higgledy-Piggledy House’ Mum had called it, but she wasn’t going to have it any other way.
Sonya grinned, remembering shooing Dad away when he had got into one of his redecorating fits recently, demanding that her room be kept exactly as it was when she left for uni. It had taken some convincing because there had been six rolls of expensive Farrow & Ball wallpaper left over from the study room – smart stripes in maroon and gold – that Dad was convinced would be a centre piece if used on the eastern wall, while the rest of her bedroom remained its existing plummy purple. But she couldn’t get rid of her purple walls – this grown-up look had been carefully chosen as a treat for her sixteenth birthday two years ago. She’d gone with her father to the huge out-of-town B&Q to choose the colour and they had come back with not just brushes and cans of paint, but a set of mirrored black wardrobes that Dad had spent the whole
