eyes are a pale grey, so that they seem to look through you, not like Simon and his mother’s dark blue.
‘You are a lawyer,’ Simon reminds him.
‘We’ll get a lawyer,’ his father says.
At the police station, things happen quickly. Since what I have stolen costs less than two hundred pounds, I am told that I will be turned away with a police caution. Though, if I accept these terms, this will still count as a conviction and I will have a criminal record. (It’s true I’ve been arrested before but, since I was underage at the time, I didn’t get a criminal record.) When the officer interrogating me suggests the caution, I say, ‘I will take this under advisement.’ I have been waiting all my life to say these words. I confer with my lawyer, and I take the caution and the criminal record that comes with it. When we come out, my lawyer (organized by my nearly-father-in-law), a middle-aged woman called Gudrun, who is built like a Rottweiler, tells me to get a grip on my life.
‘Grow up. Get therapy. Next time, you’ll get fined or do time. And it’ll get really difficult to get a job. Kosher?’
Various members of my family are standing about outside the police station, waiting to pick me up. Simon is pacing up and down, ignoring everyone. The moment he sees me, he rushes up to me and engulfs me in a hug. He holds me tight and I stand rigid, not feeling like I can touch him right now, though I can feel the thudding of his heart.
He pulls back finally and searches my eyes. ‘Rilla, we can still do this. They didn’t want to give us another slot, but they did in the end. Let’s do it now. Okay?’ He’s still looking at me like I’m the most important person in the world. He has taken his jacket and tie off and he probably has no idea where they are. I love this about him. I love that he doesn’t care where half his clothes are.
‘Simon,’ I whisper, ‘I shoplifted. Don’t you see? That’s not normal.’
‘You’re under a lot of stress. The wedding, and the warning about not completing your MA. It happened. It happens to a lot of people.’ He looks firm. ‘If you just put one foot in front of another, it’ll be over soon. Then we can deal with the rest of it.’
‘Don’t you see?’ my voice cracks. ‘I can’t do this. I’m – not ready.’
‘You want to postpone the wedding? Okay, okay, look, we can do that. We’ll do whatever you want. Whatever you need.’ He is scanning my face, trying to sound re-assuring, though I can see none of this is making sense to him, none of it is really sinking in.
I look at him wordlessly. How can I explain it to him? How can I find words for something that I can’t fully understand myself?
I mutely shake my head. ‘The thing is, Simon,’ I blurt out finally, ‘I can’t go through with it. None of this is working.’
‘I told you,’ says my mother, tears pouring down her cheeks.
Somehow I escape everyone. I think it is because I scream, ‘Leave me alone!’ and disappear down into the underground before anyone can stop me. I enter a train at random, staring down anyone who dares to look at me, standing there holding on for dear life, still in my silver wedding dress. After a few random stations have whizzed by, I get off. I run out of the tube station and I end up on a park bench, bent double, face in hands, taking gasping breaths.
I say I escaped everyone, but I didn’t, because Rose is here with me.
I sit up. ‘I made such a mess of it. I always make a mess of it. Rose, why can’t I get one thing right?’ The tears that have been threatening all morning now start to pour down my face.
She takes my hand. She sits quietly, just holding my hand. Sometimes I think it’s uncanny how she knows just what I need her to do. When you’ve grown up with someone, maybe you get so used to each other that you know what every movement means. Every gesture comes with its code, every mood, each slump of the shoulders, every turning away. My sister knows the code. She can sense it before I can.
The fit of crying passes after a while and I sit there, my nose red, sniffles catching in my throat.
‘I guess you knew I was going to break up with him?’ I say now. I don’t look at her. I don’t need to, I know the look on her face. She doesn’t respond.
I stare blankly around me, where life seems to be carrying on as normal. A swan sits regally on the edge of a duck pond, its mate doing laps in the water. A chunky peanut-butter Kit-Kat wrapper sits next to an overfull bin that is starting to smell of dead rat in the sunshine. The bench I am sitting on has been dedicated to Lady Cornelia North, who donated it to the council in 1986. Red buses line the park, parents with dark circles under their eyes determinedly push buggies, a jogger talks to herself as she fast-walks past. I shut my eyes tight.
‘I guess I knew,’ Rose says.
‘I’m hopeless.’ I place my face in my hands again. ‘I wreck everything.’
‘Why this though, Rilla? I thought Simon was the one.’
I jerk my head. ‘He barely knows me. He thinks I’m perfect. I’m the opposite of perfect. You know! It wouldn’t have worked. How could it ever have worked?’
‘What if I make you the most beautiful garland in the world, Princess Multan, my phool, my Queen of Roses, Princess of Hearts?’ Rose’s voice becomes rounder, louder. Like she’s talking in a theatre, her voice ricocheting off moonbeams.
I speak through my tears. ‘Then perhaps I will marry you, Rup. Is that really your name?’
Rose gently blots away my tears, then she bows ironically. ‘Of course, my princess. It is I, Rup Singh. I was a prince once. A sorceress turned me into a commoner. I wait for the love of a true princess to change me back into the real me.’ Rose switches back to her normal voice. She speaks as if seeing this scene in her mind’s eye, from a long time ago. ‘And now you sit on the balcony waiting for the garland. You comb your beautiful black hair. Roses bloom in your cheeks. Your delicate hands cradle your heart. Your voice, like a nightingale’s, sings to your lover. To me.’
‘My lover with swarthy brown cheeks and coarse hands,’ I say. ‘But I love you anyway. And you come back with the most beautiful garland in the world, made of roses and marigolds, jasmine and hot-house zinnias. And in the centre, forming the heart pendant, a moth orchid. The most precious flower in the world for the most beautiful princess. You scurry up the trellis outside my window like a monkey. You give me the garland. I give you a kiss and promise to marry you.’
‘And I turn into a girl,’ Rose says.
We both laugh. My laugh has a catch in it, but it’s a laugh nonetheless.
‘I turn into a little brown nut of a girl,’ my sister says. ‘Ugly and scrawny, shifty and sly. Because the witch that transformed me did so not from a prince, but a princess. Now I am back. I am not Rup, but Rupa Singh.’
‘Oh well,’ I say softly, looking at her face now, shimmering in front of my eyes, ‘I promised to marry you, so I will.’
‘You will take me for your partner?’ Rose says. ‘Even though I am a woman?’
‘No one is perfect,’ I say.
We laugh. Laugh
