into my eyes.
Then Simon crashes into the room. His grey suit and tailored burgundy waistcoat with the blue paisley tie tucked in looks good on him but he has already managed to undo the top button of his shirt.
‘I saw a policeman walking up the driveway! What’s wrong?’
‘Nothing! Nothing at all. I—’
‘What are you doing here?’ Simon is staring at the policeman, looking completely confused.
‘Now, sir, there’s no need to panic. I just need to speak to Miss Kumar here, that’s all. At the police station, that is.’
‘You know you’re not supposed to see her!’ My fiancé’s mother waves a hand about, tries in vain to get Simon out of the room. She is wearing a steel-blue skirt, with a long coat and hat to match. She looks as neatly put together as always, but her cheeks are a little red and her pearl necklace slightly askew, giving her a jaunty Camilla Parker Bowles look. Marie Langton has obviously been hitting the gin a little early today.
‘What is all this about, Officer?’ my father Manoj Kumar intones, smoothing back his salt-and-pepper hair that has been styled to such perfection that parallel comb-streaks can still be seen in it. He pats the collar of his Indian sherwani coat – long, gold and white, and too tight for him – that the GIF has made him wear today. ‘Surely, there’s been a mistake. We can get it cleared up in a jiff.’
There’s something about uniforms and official people that makes my father use his posh English, the one from which all trace of an Indian accent has been wiped. His disinfected accent does have its uses in some situations. Not in this one though.
‘Miss,’ the officer says, totally ignoring him, ‘if you come with me quietly, there’s no need for a display.’ He’s looking significantly at me. The man actually wants me to go quietly, he doesn’t want to make a fuss and that’s not out of laziness, I can see that. He is trying to protect my feelings. If he doesn’t have to say what he’s arresting me for in front of my family and in-laws, he won’t.
Everyone is staring at me. There is a sea of unblinking eyes, all waiting for me to speak.
‘The thing is,’ I look from face to face, ‘here’s the thing. See? I’m being arrested for shoplifting. You see what I’m saying?’ I say it with the air of someone about to choreograph a song to the theme. If this were a musical, I would be singing it. The thing is, the thing is, folks, be-ware! I am being arrested because I am wild as a hare! A hare, you say? A hare, I say! A hare? A hare! A hare? Be-ware! I think I’m going to pass out. I stare frantically from face to face. Get me out of here, get me out of here, I want to say, but nothing comes out.
‘That’s piffle,’ my father says to the police officer. ‘Rilla is a good girl. She would never do such a thing.’ He looks genuinely confused. It’s like my teenage years have left no impression on his memory.
My mother’s chin is trembling though. She’s pulling out a hanky that she has tucked into the sleeve of her sari blouse. My mother has the tendency to burst into tears. In family pictures she can be seen in the background with a hanky covering her eyes. Of course, since every family picture is crammed with the GIF, you would have to really be searching – a Where’s-Wally-scale search – to find her.
Now my father is patting her on her back and making shush-shush noises. It’s my wedding day, I’m getting arrested, and it’s just been revealed to everyone that I am a kleptomaniac. But no, my father is comforting my mother. Everything is upside down.
‘Darling, what’s going on?’ Simon asks. He has tucked a Hot Cocoa rose in the lapel of his new grey suit just for me, and his eyes, his eyes are even now looking lovingly at me. I swallow painfully. I don’t want to hurt him, but I know I’m going to. He places a hand on my shoulder. He is medium height, though this still makes him a good few inches taller than me. His dark hair falls over his forehead just the way I like it. ‘This is just a mistake, isn’t it? We should really get on with it. There’s a crowd of people waiting.’
The thing with Simon is he always thinks the best of me (and he hates to keep people waiting). He’s loyal, doesn’t worry a lot about little things and he rarely has any problems with other people. Which basically makes him the opposite of me.
‘I did something stupid. I’m so sorry.’ Suddenly my shoulders are slumped and there is a crack in my voice. I hate this kind of thing in myself. You think you are dealing with a situation in one way and then your body betrays you and it turns out you are not dealing with it at all. I realize that right about now I could do with a hug, but no one is offering me one.
‘This won’t take long, sir,’ the police officer says to Simon. ‘Now if you just—’
‘We’re about to get married though.’ Simon frowns. ‘You can’t just take her away. What’s your proof anyway?’
‘I am not at liberty to discuss the details, sir.’ The officer smoothens his moustache.
‘Can’t you wait till they’re married?’ My mother’s hands are clasped, beseeching. ‘At least wait till they’re married. Please, you have to!’
My mother – the only one in this room who really knows me, besides my sister Rose – has always said that no one will want to marry me. I’m just too rude, clumsy, stupid, standoffish, unfeminine and ungroomed. At the moment she just wants to make sure that I get married quickly, before Simon finds out what I’m really like. The one thing she is sure would never happen is now actually starting to look like it never will. There is an ominous twitch in her cheek.
One of the aunties, Auntie Dharma, is counting her beads. ‘I told you not to fix a date when Mercury was retrograde. Shani is in the house of marriage.’ She is wearing a salwar-suit, her chunni placidly on her head, and a long thin white plait lying mousily on her back. She is skinny, her face as wrinkled as a prune, and her large eyes goggle from behind thick black spectacles. She calls herself a spiritual healer and works in a local meditation centre. She believes luck in marriage comes from your karma in a past life.
The other auntie, Auntie PK – the journalist who only ever wears khadi cotton, only ever in shades of beige, and doesn’t pluck her eyebrows or wax her upper lip or armpits – is looking cross and saying that someone will pay for this. She means some man somewhere in an air-conditioned office drinking a macchiato before changing for his tennis game. Her short spiky hair is standing up all around her head.
I breathe deeply. I can get through this, I’ve been through worse. And this isn’t the first time I’ve been arrested. But the walls of the white room are closing in on me. There are too many people between me and the door. I look hopelessly at the window. This is when Rose steps in.
Rose. My beautiful sister Rose, in her long silver dress – silver is really her colour, not mine, her beautiful hair blacker than black, her eyes dark as coal, her rosebud mouth, a glow all around her body, walks up to me and gives me a hug. I swallow painfully. A tear escapes but it disappears in Rose’s hair – or she brushes it away for me, knowing I hate people seeing me cry. It is just like Rose, she knew I needed a hug. No one else did. But she did.
She pulls back now and looks into my eyes. ‘It’ll be all right. Okay? Okay?’
I swallow and nod. I try to take deep breaths.
She cups my cheek in her hand. ‘This is not a big deal. You’re bigger than this.’
