no clichés like, ‘It’s not what you think’ or ‘She’s not important.’ In a way I wish there had been because in those moments of silence I understood that he could not possibly love me and that he loved himself much more. He expected me to say something, to do something, but I just stood there in silence, staring at him. And then I walked away.
I ran down the stairs and out of the building, cars beeping as I flew recklessly across the road, not caring if they knocked me down. I ran like I never wanted to stop but when my sides began to ache I couldn’t go on any more. Stumbling on a bench in Green Park, catching my breath, the tears began to trickle down my face.
The only other person apart from Ki who knew me inside out was Jean. I had showed him who I truly was and he had rejected me. Was I not good enough? Was that it? Was I fooling myself that he loved me? Did he mean it when he asked me to marry him? Did I make that up too? Was it because since Ki’s death I had been distant, or was it because I made him wait? He said that he would wait for as long as it took.
My arm and my chest, the ugly blotchy creases – he had pretended that they didn’t matter? Did she have ugly blotchy creases that he ran his fingers down while whispering that he loved her, every single part of her? Was that it? Was he touching her, saying that he was there for her, while the Guru was touching me? Did he pretend to love me because he pitied me?
Tears streamed down my face.
‘Help me, Ki, please, I need you. Show me a sign if you’re around. You said you would. Please. Are you seeing all this? Are you?’ Nothing came. ‘You lied to me. You said you would always be with me but how can you be? If you were with me you wouldn’t let any of this happen. None of this. But you’re dead and dead people can’t do anything, can they? I trusted you and you lied. I let you give up because you promised you would always be with me, but you deceived me just like everyone else.’
The rain began falling. I sat on the park bench thinking that there was really no such thing as fate: imagining providence having a hand was just a way of not feeling alone, a way of making sense of a pointless journey. ‘I’ll give you one last chance. Speak to me like you said you would. Go on, I’m listening now. Do you want me to beg? I’ll beg if you want.’
I crawled down onto my hands and knees. ‘See, I’m begging you. Please.’
Still nothing came.
Clutching at the blades of grass I fell forward on my knees onto a patch of muddy wet grass and began sobbing my heart out, oblivious to who was watching me. I looked up at the grey, miserable sky and the bursting rain clouds. ‘Fall harder, go on, is that the best you can manage? I don’t care what else you throw at me, send someone else to feel me up, go on, I don’t care any more. You’ve taken everything, everything. Do you hear me? You probably don’t even exist, do you? All made up, all of it, lies.’
I sat back on the bench and was aware that I was making an awful gut-wrenching sound. The wailing came from feeling cheated by the death of my closest friend, cheated by love and the injustice of being touched up and having my faith simultaneously taken away. Unable to fight any more, I let the rain pour down on me. It soaked through my coat as I sat there continuing to think. I thought about the nature of love and how that too was a lie. Ki’s boyfriend had left her to die. Jean Michel had fooled me into believing that it was possible to love. All along my parents had been right. Life wasn’t about emotion, emotion was for people who had nothing better to do with their time. It was about coping and easing the struggle, being practical and realistic, that was what my dad was trying to prepare me for. Their ideas about love were practical, they left no room for emotion and no room to be hurt, let down or disappointed. They were right: romantic airy-fairy notions of love did not exist, and if they did they were impractical and could only lead to disappointment. Life was all about survival. Trust no one as everyone was out for themselves, have no expectations: that way you could not be let down.
Eventually, when I could take the cold no longer, I made my way to the train station.
I was soaking wet so that each time I moved slightly the seat made a sloshing sound. Water ran down from my hair into my face and then dripped onto my coat, which was covered in mud. A scummy dark mess of brown on a brown coat; dirty on the outside, dirty on the inside. The commuters desperately avoided eye contact with me and tried not to look when I emitted that erratic sound; that noise when you can’t quite control your breathing. By the time I got to the High Street I had assimilated the day’s events. I managed to go into McDonalds and clean myself up a bit and by the time I reached our road I had tried to pull myself together. When I got to the blue front door of our semi, I even managed a fake smile.
My mother was in the kitchen making rotis and my father was in the sitting room, snoozing under his newspaper despite the Hindi music blasting out of the television. Their world rotated the same way it had done since 1972 when they came to London. In the evenings, Mum rolled out the rotis and made sure they were perfectly circular. During the day she worked at a tailor’s and sometimes took home extra work making Indian garments. My father had been on the same route for twenty years and wasn’t taking retirement until he saw me married; something else he succeeded in making me feel guilty about.
Although I could see the connection between retirement and marriage, he managed to find a connection between marriage and most things, and if it didn’t provoke a response in me he would bring out the death card. ‘Tell me, who will look after you, Nina, when I die?’ And if he wanted to provoke an extreme response he would say, ‘Are you going to do the same as your sister?’ This, however, was rare, as he did his very best not to mention her.
My sister Jana had left when she was eighteen. Her departure deeply wounded my parents as she had gone off to live with a ‘white boy'. They decided the best way to handle it was to pretend nothing had happened and not to talk about her, exiling her into the recesses of their minds. The jewellery my mother had saved for her wedding was safely packed away in the hope that at some stage it could be used for me. So I knew it was madness going out with Jean Michel because it couldn’t lead anywhere, but he convinced me that everything would work out and that he could win them round. Foolishly, I believed him.
Outwardly my parents hardly ever showed signs that Jana’s departure had affected them, and in those intervening years many things happened but their routine remained the same. At exactly seven o’clock they would eat and by eight they would both be in bed, flicking between Zee TV and ITV.
‘Didn’t you take your umbrella, beta? What has happened to your coat?’ my mother asked, putting down her rolling pin and handing me a multi-stained tea towel to wipe myself down with.
‘I fell over.’
‘Go and get changed,’ she said, picking up the rolling pin and pointing it at me.
‘Ma …’
‘Hmmm …’
‘About Raj, Ma, you know, the accountant man.’
She put down her rolling pin again and turned to look at me. Her eyes lit up like all her prayers had finally been answered.
‘I’ll see him. You can call his mother to arrange it.’
Why exactly these words came out of my mouth remains a mystery; perhaps it was easier than, ‘Ma, I’ve been touched up by a Guru, I’ve lost my job, found my boyfriend with someone else and have accepted that Ki is dead.’ Or maybe it was just that I was finally ready for the kind of stability they had: a gale-force wind could descend upon them, or an earthquake that measured eight on the Richter scale, and they would still be unaffected. In the words of my father, ‘This is what the routine and the discipline are both bringing.’
