wore no rings.
‘Not any more.’ Her face assumed a guarded expression. ‘I guess you’re not either?’
‘No, but I’m moving in with my boyfriend when I get back.’ Her cheeks were burning. Letting even a bit of her secret go made it feel less special, even though Lou didn’t know her or Ian. She immediately wished she hadn’t said anything. ‘I’m not meant to talk about it really. At least, not until he’s told his wife.’
‘Oh! His wife,’ Lou echoed.
Ali thought she heard disapproval, but when she looked, Lou simply smiled and gave the slightest shake of her head. They detoured round a white cow standing among a pile of rubbish and plastic bags. ‘Odd the way sacred animals exist on such an unsacred diet.’ And the subject was closed.
For the rest of the short way, they walked in a companionable silence, each lost in her own thoughts. Entering the busy car park filled with sudden exhaust and engine noise, they found their minibus and chose two seats side by side.
As they drove to the safari lodge on the Chambal river where they were spending their last two nights, Lou found herself enjoying Ali’s company more and more. There was something about her that reminded Lou of her younger sister, Jenny, killed only eighteen months earlier in a motorway pile-up. Although Jenny had been a loner all her life, the two sisters had shared a particular bond. Since they were teenagers, they had confided only in one another, knowing that all their secrets were safe. Since Jenny’s death no one had come near to filling her place in Lou’s life, not even Fiona, her closest friend. Talking to Ali, Lou found a similar intensity to Jenny’s. She heard something like Jenny’s dry sense of humour, and sensed the same reserve. Lou had been given a glimpse into Ali’s life but she didn’t expect her to tell any more. Given her own unwillingness to bare her soul at this point in her life, Lou sympathised with the younger woman’s reticence and didn’t press her. She was relieved not to have to account for herself and explain the actions she’d taken only months before. There’d be plenty of time to examine the repercussions of those when she got home.
For those last two nights, Ali unexpectedly opened up. She followed Lou’s lead and chatted with the others after supper around the dying embers of the bonfire, easily finding her place within the group. But this happened so late in the trip that there was no pressure for her to give anything of herself away. By the time they returned to Delhi for the flight home, Lou had arranged to meet Ali again on their home turf. She was intrigued by ‘the cat who walked alone’.
2
Delhi airport was teeming with people. Lou’s suitcase felt heavy and unwieldy as she concentrated on tipping it to one side so that it could roll along on the one wheel that hadn’t jammed. She hated airports, hated flying and was trying to drift into the zone necessary for any air travel to be … not pleasurable, never that, but endurable. She was looking for that Zen-like calm where anything problematic would just slip by her. Key to that condition was maintaining a cool indifference towards everything going on around her. Otherwise, she would be reduced to a gibbering state of impatience, then fear.
She and Ali stood together in the queue that snaked away from the check-in desk. They didn’t talk, just observed the hordes: families with children refusing to stay in line; trolleys laden with belongings heading with their owners towards a new start in another country; couples entwined after the romantic holiday of a lifetime; others barely speaking.
Eventually, they reached the front. She hefted her case onto the scales, catching her breath as she felt an ominous twinge in the small of her back, and watched the number of kilograms clocking up. Please God, let the airline official turn a blind eye.
‘It’s four kilos overweight,’ he announced, barely looking up.
Fuck. She should never have put in the fabric she’d bought in Udaipur. Instead, she should have had them shipped home like the rest of the fabric and the two bedspreads she hadn’t been able to resist in Jodhpur. ‘But you’ll let it go?’ she wheedled.
The official was unmoved. ‘You’ll have to pay the surcharge, I’m afraid. The desk’s over there.’ He could have been pointing anywhere. ‘Or you’ll have to remove some of the contents.’
And do what with them? Leave them on the terminal floor?
She could feel herself dithering, flustered, incapable of making a sensible decision. To pay a fortune for a few lengths of Indian silk, or not to pay? That was the question. Fortunately, Ali answered it. ‘For God’s sake, you mustn’t pay on principle. You don’t have to pay more for your seat because you’re heavier than me.’
‘Thanks for that,’ Lou muttered.
‘No, seriously, the same should apply to luggage. There’s some room in my case. Let’s just transfer a few things and I’ll give them back when we land.’
Relieved to have her dilemma so easily resolved, Lou agreed and yanked her case off the weighing machine. As she slid it back towards the queue, the implications of this perhaps rash decision struck her. She was about to reveal her totally shoddy packing techniques to the entire airport. But too late now. Someone else had taken her place at the desk and Ali was already unzipping her case. She flipped the lid back to reveal her perfectly folded capsule wardrobe taking up two-thirds of the available space.
Reluctantly, remembering the haphazard approach she had taken to her own packing, Lou began to pull at the zip of her suitcase, eyeing the straining seams. It had only consented to fasten when she’d sat on the case and shifted her weight about on top so the zip could inch round. The only way forward was to repeat the process. She sat down heavily, then, holding onto the zip, her knuckles white with the effort of not letting go, she began to pull. Slowly at first, it then gave with a little rush before slowing again. With Ali holding the two open sides as close together as possible, the last corner was turned and eventually, to the amusement of everyone alleviating the boredom of their wait by watching her, the final side was coerced into unzipping.
Self-conscious, Lou clambered off the case, half falling as she did. Steadying herself with her hand on Ali’s butt, she was aware that most of the queue could almost certainly see all the way down her cleavage as she bent forward. Mortified, she straightened up as fast as she could, adjusting her top at the same time.
Released from her weight, the case sprang open at the very moment that someone’s uncontrolled child cannoned into it. The contents jack-in-the-boxed into the air. Her Zen-like calm still nowhere in the vicinity, Lou could only think of one thing as she watched her most intimate garments hit the terminal floor. Why had she packed the Indian silks at the bottom of the case, leaving all her more personal bits and pieces on top? Galvanised into action, she reached for the bra that was spread-eagled on the floor in front of the crowd and folded it in half, tucking the straps inside. She’d never thought of her breasts as especially large until this moment when the D-cups assumed an embarrassing enormity. Neither had she noticed how much the once pretty pink lace had faded and discoloured to a dusty greyish colour. If only she’d invested in the sexy new underwear she’d thought might help mark the start of her single life.
Just then a young boy made a dash for it, her other bra capping his head, the straps dangling over his ears. She watched in disbelieving horror as his mother yelled after him to stop, then gave chase across the terminal.
Ali was no help. She was bent double laughing. At least everyone else had the grace to pretend not to be.
As Lou shoved one bra down the side of Ali’s case, the second was handed to her by the smirking child whose apologetic parent had a firm grip
