The Love Detective

by Alexandra Potter

  There’s a pause as I wait for him to speak, and I feel my chest tighten. I want to know but I’m almost too scared to hear his answer.

  ‘It’s kinda complicated,’ he shrugs.

  Three words. That’s all I get? Three words?

  I got the feeling he was already taken. Cindy’s words ricochet around in my head and I feel my heart freeze. Oh god, please don’t let him have a girlfriend.

  Quickly I look away so he can’t see the expression on my face.

  ‘We met at a fundraiser in New York.’

  Hearing his voice, I glance back at him, but he’s gazing into the distance. ‘She was working for a charity based here in India, we got serious pretty quickly.’ He turns to me. ‘We talked about me moving here – my company’s multinational, they have offices all over the world . . . I promised I’d try to get a transfer and come back, but then my dad got sick . . .’ He trails off, as if retreating into the past, then smiles ruefully. ‘There’s a reason they say long-distance never works.’

  ‘So what happened?’ I ask quietly.

  ‘My dad died. We broke up.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  He shrugs. ‘Like I said, life’s complicated.’

  There’s a pause and, as we both look at each other, something passes between us. An electricity, an energy, an anticipation.

  ‘Things happen that you don’t expect,’ he continues quietly. ‘Like I never expected to fall in love with you.’

  It’s as if we’re suspended in time. Everything seems to hold its breath. The world stops spinning. Did he say what I think he just said?

  ‘I’m sorry we didn’t find your sister,’ he adds softly.

  ‘Me too,’ I murmur, managing to find my voice, and as I meet Jack’s gaze I see the uncertainty in his hazel eyes and realise he’s just as nervous and scared as I am. And with every drop of courage inside me, I finally admit it, to him and myself, ‘But I found something else. Love.’

  Then, with fireworks bursting over my head and inside my heart, Jack wraps his arms around me and does something I’ve wanted him to do for a very, very long time.

  He kisses me.

  Chapter 36

  The room is in pitch darkness but for a streak of pale moonlight, which pokes through a tiny gap in the shutters. It catches the glint of sequins. Clothes strewn on the floor.

  A naked couple lying curled up in bed together, sleeping.

  Me and Jack.

  Something stirs me awake and for a few moments I do nothing but relish the feeling of lying here, not moving, my head resting on his chest, his arm around me. Everything is quiet but for the sounds of our breathing and his heartbeat beneath my cheek. Cocooned in a warm fuzziness, I feel a sense of peace and blissful contentment.

  And a flutter of excitement.

  My mind flashes back to earlier: kissing on the rooftop, on the stairs, in the corridor . . . Being in the room, Jack undressing me, his fingers brushing against my skin, his hot breath against my cheek. The urgency . . . the desire . . . his nakedness . . . both of us falling into bed, his mouth on mine, skin against skin, our limbs tangled together . . .

  As a delicious shiver runs up my spine, a vague noise in the background creeps into my consciousness. I ignore it, enjoying the sensations flooding my body, but it’s distracting. I listen, wondering if it’s coming from outside. It’s almost like a faint burbling . . .

  Suddenly I recognise the sound – it’s my phone.

  Oh my god, it might be Amy!

  Quickly I slide out from underneath the covers, carefully moving Jack’s arm so as not to wake him. Where is it? I can hear the muffled ringtone but the room’s in darkness apart from the one shaft of moonlight, and I can’t see anything. I try to open the shutters but the bolts are too stiff. It’s no good, I’ll just have to turn on the light. I go to flick on the bedside lamp, but it doesn’t work. Neither does the switch on the wall. Shit. The generator must be down.

  I can hear my phone still ringing and feel a rising panic. It’s going to ring off!

  Then suddenly I have an idea. Jack’s torch! He used it in the desert. I remember him putting it in the little daypack he carries everywhere. It must be here somewhere . . . I start feeling my way around the room, fumbling around the bed, through our clothes strewn on the floor, then finally trip over it at the entrance of the bathroom.

  Ouch. He’s always leaving stuff everywhere: trust him to leave it there, I think affectionately, rubbing my toe, then smile at myself. Honestly, I don’t think Jack could do anything right now that wouldn’t make me think of him affectionately.

  My phone falls silent. Still, there’s no need to panic, I try to tell myself reasonably. Whoever it was will either leave a message or I can call them back, if I can just find it . . .

  Grabbing the rucksack, I start rummaging inside the pockets for the torch. No, nothing. Oh, hang on . . . My fingers curl around something small and hard.

  What’s this? I pull it out.

  In the pale shaft of moonlight I can see it’s a jewellery box. These must be the earrings he bought for his mum. Though that’s odd, I thought he’d already shipped them to her?

  Curiously, I flick open the lid. Only it’s not a pair of earrings. Nestled in the soft velvet is a ruby, glowing softly in the moonlight. It’s a ring.

  Suddenly my insides turn to ice.

  Every girl knows there’s only one reason a man would have a ring. I mean, men don’t carry rings around with them for any casual reason. And they certainly don’t secretly carry them around India in backpacks.

  Unless . . .

  Carefully I pluck the gold band out of the velvet and hold it between my fingers. The ruby sits up high, shouldered by two delicate baguette diamonds.

  Unless it’s an engagement ring.

  My heart starts thudding loudly in my ears and all at once I feel claustrophobic, as if the walls are closing in on me. I try and force myself to calm down. I’m jumping to conclusions. There’s got to be some kind of simple explanation.

  But what would Jack be doing with an engagement ring?

  In India. In wedding season.

  Abruptly someone presses ‘play’ on the recording in my head: She was working for a charity here in India . . . I promised I’d try to get a transfer and come back . . .

  For a moment I feel numb. Then, like a ten-tonne truck, it hits me, and suddenly everything seems to crash into place. Him acting strangely. Never telling me why he was here in India. Why he needed to get to Udaipur . . .

  Like a ghoul, a phrase jumps out at me. I’m here to keep a promise.

  Oh my god. Oh my god. He’s here to propose to his girlfriend, that’s the promise he’s here to keep. My mind is racing, I can feel myself spiralling. Anger stabs, yet my heart is breaking. How could he do this to me? Sleep with me? Tell me he loved me? When all the time—

  My mind jerks back to Sam. He cheated on me with Miriam, now Jack’s cheated on his girlfriend with me . . . I thought Jack was different. I trusted him. I believed in him. I believed in love, and now . . .

  My whole body has started to shake as if I’m in shock. I am in shock. A moment ago I was asleep in his arms and now everything has been turned upside down and I’m trapped in some kind of nightmare. He said he was in love with me, I try to reassure myself frantically. He said he’d never expected to fall in love with you, another voice inside my head reminds me, that life was complicated.

  A wave of panic rushes over me and I shove the ring back in the box, snapping the lid closed. I can’t look at it any more. Maybe if I put it back where I found it, I can make it all go away, pretend it never happened. With trembling fingers I begin fumbling with the rucksack. Yet, even as I’m trying to persuade myself, I know it’s impossible. I know it even before the backpack slips from my fingers, scattering chewing gum, pens, a few coins, a strip of photographs . . .

  It’s one of those taken in a photo booth. The black-and-white pictures have been torn in half, leaving two small pictures
of a couple smiling and laughing, their arms wrapped around each other. A beautiful young Indian woman and a man with longish hair.

  I squint at it in the moonlight.

  The breath catches in the back of my throat.

  It’s Jack. Jack when he was younger.

  The room tilts on its axis and the floor gives way beneath me. Clamping my hands to my mouth, I feel like I’m going to be sick.

  Suddenly, the sharp beeping sound of a text message pierces my consciousness, interrupting my spiralling thoughts, and I snap to. My phone, I’d completely forgotten . . . Dazed, I look around me and see a small flashing light, illuminated on the shelf. Pulling everything I’ve got together, I reach up and grab it.

  Two missed calls from Amy and a text: I have one new voicemail. She must have left a message.

  I hit call. It seems to take forever to connect. Muddled thoughts are spinning around in my head. A few moments ago everything was perfect, and now . . .

  I hear her voice.

  ‘Rubes? Are you there? It’s me, Amy.’ There’s a pause and I hear her voice breaking. ‘I don’t know what to do, it’s all gone horribly wrong . . .’ and with that, she suddenly bursts into tears.

  Chapter 37

  I lean my cheek against the window of the bus as it rattles along the dusty roads. It’s early. The sun has just risen, tinting everything in a weak sepia glow and, as we pass through towns and villages, I gaze absently through the glass. Looking, but not seeing. My mind spools backwards with every turn of the wheels, back to that hotel room in Udaipur, back to a few hours ago . . .

  I’d dressed quickly, pulling on some of my ruined clothes without caring, and filling a bag with a few things, and quietly opened the door. It was as if my mind had gone into laser focus: I had to get out of there. I had to go. Now. But at the doorway I’d paused and, for the briefest of moments, let my eyes rest upon Jack’s sleeping figure, at the space where only a few moments ago I’d been lying, the imprint of my body still on the sheets, before firmly closing the door behind me and slipping away into the night.

  A passing cab had taken me to the local bus station. Once there I’d called Amy back. She’d answered immediately and, on hearing my voice, promptly burst into tears again. It turns out she hadn’t got any of my messages until now. Partly because the mobile phone service can be so hopeless here, but mostly because the battery on her phone had died soon after our argument and she’d left it out of avoidance and laziness, until she’d finally charged it and made the shock discovery that I hadn’t flown back to London, as she’d assumed, but was still in India looking for her. Furthermore, that I was here in Rajasthan.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Rubes,’ she’d sobbed down the phone, ‘I had no idea you were looking for me,’ but I’d quickly shushed her. There was no need for apologies, justifications or explanations. None of that was important right now.

  ‘Just as long as you’re OK,’ I’d told her firmly, ‘that’s all that matters.’

  There was so much to say, on both our parts, but all of it could wait.

  She was in Jodhpur, a few hundred kilometres away; as luck would have it, there’d been a bus leaving shortly that would get me there by noon. When I told her, I’ve never heard her sound so relieved.

  ‘What would I do without you?’ she’d said gratefully.

  ‘I dread to think,’ I’d replied, as I always did.

  But what I didn’t tell her, and what she couldn’t know, is that I needed her as much as she needed me. If the truth be told, probably even more so.

  This time Amy isn’t late to meet me. As I pull into the bus station, she’s already here, anxiously waiting, and I’ve barely disembarked before we’re giving each other the biggest hug. It’s so good to see her. It’s been less than a week since we were together in Goa, yet it’s felt like forever. So much has happened, to both of us. But there’s an invisible bond between sisters that’s unbreakable, and now, back together again, time does that thing of simply melting away, and it’s as though we were never apart.

  ‘Hang on, where’s your suitcase?’ she asks, as we finally break apart.

  ‘It’s a long story,’ I reply, looking her up and down and feeling relieved that, apart from the puffy eyes, she doesn’t seem any the worse for wear. ‘More importantly, what’s happened? Where’s Shine?’ Earlier on the phone she’d been so upset I hadn’t wanted to press her, but now I was full of questions.

  As usual my sister is full of surprises. ‘He’s back at the house,’ she answers, her face clouding over.

  ‘House?’ I repeat in astonishment. ‘What house?’ Listening to her voicemail, I’d assumed they must have broken up. ‘Amy, what’s going on? I don’t understand. You said on the phone it’s all gone wrong—’

  ‘We didn’t get married,’ she blurts, her eyes reddening. ‘We couldn’t . . .’ She breaks off and I can see she’s fighting back tears.

  After all this time, I thought I’d be relieved, but all I feel is concern. ‘Why? What happened?

  ‘I discovered something terrible!’

  Oh god, it must be because of the other woman. Amy must have found out. That’s what must have happened. I suddenly feel fiercely protective.

  ‘Hey, come on, it’ll be all right,’ I say, giving her arm a squeeze. ‘You don’t have to talk about it now, you can tell me all about it later, over a nice cup of chai.’

  She gives me a small, grateful smile, then seems to pause, as if just noticing something. ‘Ruby, why are you wearing pink clothes and a jewelled bindi?’

  ‘Huh?’ Quickly snatching my hand to my forehead, I feel my fingertips brush against it. ‘I must have forgotten to take it off,’ I murmur, my mind flashing back to last night’s weddings, to Jack, to the ring—

  It’s like a door blasting open on an aeroplane. My stomach lurches as I start freefalling through my emotions: pain . . . disbelief . . . betrayal . . . Another man has lied and cheated on me . . . With sheer brute force, I slam it closed again. I don’t want to go there. I can’t go there.

  Looking up, I meet Amy’s gaze. She’s staring at me. ‘Looks like we’ve both got a lot to talk about,’ she says quietly and, looping her arm through mine, leads me to the waiting taxi.

  Set in the middle of the desert, Jodhpur has a timelessness that makes you feel as if nothing has changed here for hundreds of years. A magnificent fort cut out of the rock dominates the old walled city below, which is made up of a maze of winding back streets filled with textile shops, bazaars, and the indigo-painted houses that give Jodhpur its alternative name of the Blue City.

  Driving through the ancient walls, we twist and turn along narrow streets, zigzagging back and forth, until the taxi pulls up outside a magnificient old haveli.

  ‘Hang on, this is the house?’ I ask, in bewilderment. I stare at it, feeling stunned.

  ‘Yes, it belongs to Shine’s uncle,’ nods Amy, seemingly unfazed. ‘Nice, isn’t it?’

  ‘Nice?’ I gasp, staring at it, feeling slightly dumbfounded. And I haven’t even started on the uncle bit.

  As Amy pays the taxi driver, I climb out to get a better look, shielding my eyes from the strong midday sun. If I had questions for Amy before, now I’ve got even more. I stare at the imposing stone archway and huge studded doors that look like something you’d see on a castle, whilst thinking of our own uncle and his pebble-dashed bungalow. To say our family and Shine’s come from two different worlds is something of an understatement. Now I think I know how Kate Middleton must have felt, meeting the in-laws.

  Or nearly-in-laws, I remind myself, feeling thankful Amy didn’t go through with the wedding. Followed by a flash of fury towards Shine. I don’t exactly know what’s been going on, but I’m more than ready to give him a piece of my mind. How dare he treat my little sister like this? Leading her on, getting her to elope, when all the time . . .

  Indignation bursts inside me. I’m usually a pretty calm person, but seeing my sister so upset makes me furious. I’ll show him! He might h
ave been able to pull the wool over Amy’s eyes with his sexy yoga teacher act, but now it’s me he’s dealing with!

  Feeling fiercely protective, I turn towards Amy, who’s waiting for me by the archway. Together we walk through and into the courtyard. It’s stunningly beautiful, opening out into a large paved area with a fountain in the middle and a kind of terraced veranda filled with potted ferns, large velvet sofas, and walls hung with old sepia photographs of maharajas.

  ‘There’s Shine,’ nods Amy, towards the fountain.

  I glance across and at first I almost don’t recognise him. He looks completely different. Gone are the white robes and bare feet; instead he’s wearing jeans, a smart blue shirt and what look like a pair of polished brogues. Hearing our footsteps, he turns and I’m bracing myself for our greeting, when we’re interrupted by the rumble of car tyres behind us and have to step to the side as a car sweeps past us. And not just any car, but one of those really expensive Mercedes.

  Somewhere, deep inside me, an alarm bell starts ringing.

  One of those really expensive Mercedes.

  Hang on. Surely it can’t be the same . . .

  No sooner has that thought fired across my brain than the dark-tinted windows buzz down and the dark-grey door opens. One long, stiletto-clad leg appears, followed by another, and a woman emerges. Swishing back her curtain of glossy dark hair, I catch a glimpse of her face. She’s wearing big black sunglasses, but there’s no mistaking her. It’s the same woman I saw Shine with in Goa!

  ‘Oh my God, Amy,’ I hiss, grabbing onto her sleeve and trying frantically to pull her back.

  ‘Rubes?’ Glancing at me, she looks taken aback at my panicked expression. ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘That’s her!’ I gasp, my mind racing in disbelief.

  Fuck! What is she doing here? And what’s going to happen when she sees Amy? I suddenly feel a beat of fear. Well, one thing’s for certain, I’m not going to stand around to find out.