This Stolen Life

by This Stolen Life (retail) (epub)

  ‘Soma? What’s the matter? Soma, open this door.’

  Nothing happened. Yamuna frowned. Either something was wrong, or the girl was refusing to answer the door. Either way, she needed to know what was happening. She knocked louder. ‘Soma. Open this door at once,’ she commanded.

  Footsteps shuffled to the door. The bolt slid back and Soma’s tearful face appeared round the door.

  ‘Are you alright?’ said Yamuna, pushing the door back gently. She peered into the little room. The bedside lamp was on. There didn’t seem to be anyone or anything unusual there. She looked back at the girl. Soma was standing at the foot of the bed. She was pale and her eyes were red. She was twisting the fabric of her nightie in her fists and her hands were shaking.

  ‘I’m sorry Madam,’ Soma said. ‘I… had a bad dream.’

  Yamuna remembered the letter. Perhaps it was that which had caused all this. She drew back and gestured to Bim that things were okay. Turning back to Soma, she said, as kindly as she could, ‘Is everything okay at home? You had a letter.’

  ‘Y… yes, Madam. That… I… it was just a bad dream, Madam. I didn’t mean to wake you.’ Soma bowed her head. Not for the first time, Yamuna was amazed at how young she looked. She suddenly felt sorry for her. Soma was capable and good with Louie, so Yamuna had assumed that she was dealing with everything with equal calm. But moving to another country was a big deal. Soma never talked about her family, but she must be missing home.

  ‘But you’re okay?’ said Yamuna. When the girl nodded, she said, ‘Would you like to get a cup of milk or something? I can come downstairs with you.’

  ‘No Madam. I’m fine, Madam. I’ll just go back to bed…’

  Yamuna sighed. ‘Okay.’ She stepped backwards out of the room. ‘You know you’re safe here.’

  ‘Yes Madam.’

  Yamuna stood at the top of the landing and listened as Soma shut the door and slid the small bolt across. She yawned. At least Louie had slept through it. Yamuna shrugged and went back to bed.

  * * *

  Soma pulled the covers up to her chin and lay there with the light on. She heard Madam go downstairs and back into her bedroom. She kept still, listening to the sounds of the house, for hours afterwards. Too frightened of her dreams to close her eyes.

  Chapter Ten

  Yamuna checked her hair again and fluffed it up with her fingertips. It framed her face nicely, but it didn’t make her look any less tired. That sense of release she’d felt when she first started back at work had fizzled away now and the tiredness had settled deep into her bones. Entertaining Bim’s friends was the last thing she felt like doing. This dinner party was important to Bim. She hoped the food was up to standard. She hauled herself to her feet. She should check on things.

  Bim wasn’t home yet. Upstairs, she could hear Soma singing an old lullaby to Louie, getting him ready for bed. Ordinarily, she would have gone up at bath time. Louie was always at his most amenable when he was in the bath. Yamuna liked to sit next to the bath and talk to him. He mostly ignored her, but she didn’t mind. It gave her a chance to feel as though she was being a proper mother, like she was pretending to be. Plus, there was a chance to check that he had no funny rashes or bruises on him. She lived in fear of him catching some scary illness and her not noticing.

  This evening, she had so much to do that she’d asked Soma to handle bath time. If the girl was surprised at the request, she didn’t show it, merely said ‘yes, Madam’ and took wriggling Louie from his mother. She never seemed to mind being asked to do extra work. Yamuna knew she should be grateful, but really, it niggled at her. Was it normal to be so subservient? Or did Soma take Louie so readily because she thought he had a rubbish mother?

  She rubbed her temples. Before Louis, she had been strong and capable. Now, she kept second-guessing herself all the time, feeling like a fraud. It was as though Louie, growing inside her, had drained her bones of confidence as well as calcium. She knew she wasn’t made for motherhood, but it was unacceptable to say that. She had to keep pretending she was capable, even if she knew she wasn’t.

  At least Soma was capable of looking after Louis. More than capable, she was actually good at childcare in a way that Yamuna could never be. She could trust the girl to do what was best for him.

  Yamuna got herself a glass of water and considered the servants they’d had at home. She had grown up with them around and was close to them. Close enough to remember to take them individual presents and go and catch up with their news whenever she went back home. Had they been so subservient towards her mother as Soma was to her? She couldn’t remember. Perhaps they were. Perhaps she was comparing Soma’s attitude to that of the agency nannies she’d hired from time to time. To them it was just a job. Soma at least cared. She finished her water and turned on the oven.

  The kitchen smelled reassuringly spicy. One of the things that Bim had often commented on when they’d first got married was her cooking. She had been quite adventurous with it in the early days, but since Louie had come along, she’d let things slide a bit. The same meals appeared every other week. Bim liked to have proper Sri Lankan food at least once a week, which meant that Sunday mornings were a frenzy of cooking. Sometimes, if they had a busy weekend, she would order the food from the takeaway. Bim never criticised as such, but his quiet ‘oh, has it been a very bad week? Is there anything I can do to help?’ always made her feel bad enough to make the effort the week after.

  The guests they were having that evening were Sri Lankan, but Bim had warned her that the wife didn’t particularly like hot food, so Yamuna had cooked things herself, so that the curries were mild. It had taken up most of her Sunday to cook and freeze it all. Luckily, Soma had helped with some of the preparation, while Louie had cheerfully messed around with potato peel.

  Yamuna dipped a spoon into the chicken curry and tested it. It really didn’t taste right without any chillies in it. Both she and Bim liked their food fiery. She frowned. She couldn’t make the dishes any hotter, but there had to be something she could put on the table to help alleviate the problem… She stood at the work surface, tapping her fingernail on the edge, mentally scanning through her cupboards. Chilli sauce. She had some chilli sauce somewhere. And chutney. The proper stuff from home, not the sweet pale thing from Tesco. She sped around the kitchen, taking down jars. There was some coconut in the freezer. Scraping fresh coconut was such a faff that Yamuna only did it a couple of times a year. She’d done a load in the weeks running up to Louie’s birth. Did she have enough time to defrost it and mix it up into a sambal?

  She was standing in front of the microwave, anxiously watching the coconut defrosting, when Bim arrived.

  ‘Hello, hello,’ he said. ‘I got your text. I have picked up wine.’

  She listened for any tone of disapproval in his voice and found none. She felt she shouldn’t disturb him with domestic things. Her mother had always dealt with the running of the house, while her father brought in the money. Things were simpler in those days. As a woman who also held down a job, which bits was she supposed to let go of? What did Bim expect her to do?

  He had never found fault with things, apart from once suggesting that he would really like to have curry and rice at the weekends because his meals were so inconsistent during the week. It was hard to tell with Bim if he was displeased. He was always so impassive. There must be things that knocked his equilibrium, but she was yet to find out what they were. Maybe she never would.

  Bim stood next to her and pulled bottles out of a Waitrose bag. ‘He’s quite interested in wines, I think,’ he said. ‘I didn’t want to put him off with any cheap stuff.’

  Yamuna knew nothing about wine, but she assumed that expensive was good. She paused the microwave to run a fork through the coconut. There were still ice crystals in the middle. She mixed it up and put it back in.

  ‘Hopefully,’ Bim continued, ‘he will want to go into partnership with me and invest. It’s a high-risk venture, but I think the guys wh
o run the company are onto something. I’m almost tempted to put the full amount in myself.’ He made a balancing motion with his hands. ‘It is a lot, though.’

  Yamuna nodded, not taking her eyes off the microwave. She didn’t really understand how Bim chose which companies he invested in. He seemed to rely on a magic mix of reading a lot of paperwork, interviewing people and taking a wild guess. Clearly, Bim was good at it and that was all that mattered.

  Ah. That looked done now. She opened the microwave again and took out the warm coconut.

  ‘I mentioned about the chillies?’ said Bim, glancing at the bowl.

  ‘Yes. The food is all mild. I thought I’d make something hot for everyone else.’

  ‘Good thinking.’ He smiled. He had a kind face when he smiled. For an instant, she had his full attention. She didn’t often see him like that. He was usually only half there, as though the major part of his mind was hiding away, reading stock market analyses. ‘You look very nice,’ he said.

  She felt a flush of warmth in her face. A burst of shyness. How ridiculous to feel shy around a man she’d had sex with. They had a child together. But all that was… it was what you did when you were married and wanted to start a family. He didn’t often look at her. Really look at her, as though he noticed. When he did, she wondered if he liked what he saw.

  ‘I like the new hair.’ He raised his hand half way, as though to touch it, then lowered it. ‘Very nice.’ He looked down at the wine bottles. With that, he was off again. ‘I think I’ll put these on the side table, ready to open when they come. Unless you want a glass now? Would you like one?’

  ‘No. I’m fine, thank you.’ While he went into the dining room with the wine, she threw the coconut in a bowl and pushed in the onions that she’d diced a few minutes earlier. Adding chilli powder, she squeezed in half a lime. Rather than have to get the food processor out, she quickly washed her hands and started to mix it with her fingers.

  The doorbell rang. Yamuna cursed under her breath. They were early and she was up to her wrist in coconut sambal.

  Bim popped his head into the kitchen. Seeing her holding the mixing bowl, he said, ‘I’ll let them in.’ He withdrew, then reappeared. ‘Don’t worry. It’ll be proof positive that you made all the food yourself.’ He gave her another rare smile and disappeared again.

  Yamuna stopped mixing and allowed herself a moment to accept her husband’s approval. Good. At least she was good for something. She had borne him a son that she couldn’t look after, but at least she could still cook a meal good enough to impress potential business partners.

  Not for the first time, she wondered if Bim had ever really wanted to get married. He hadn’t pretended that he could give her hearts and flowers, but then she hadn’t been bothered. Since she had failed to find a love marriage for herself, an arranged marriage was a sensible option. Getting married was a chance to get away from home and get on. A practical arrangement to avoid being left alone in her old age. She thought about her single colleagues at work who desperately haunted dating websites, and smiled grimly. The dream of a happy ever after was the same all over the world. She had a man who respected her, a comfortable home and a child. She wasn’t going to be alone. Perhaps she should be content with that.

  Yamuna sighed and returned to her mixing, rubbing the ingredients together until they meshed into one.

  * * *

  The smell of curry wafted up the stairwell. Soma picked up the portable unit from the baby monitor and went to the top of the stairs. There was the sound of muted conversation from the dining room. She wondered if she should go downstairs. Madam had said that she would leave something in the pans for her. The idea of real food was appealing. Madam was a good cook and the food she made during the week was nice, but it wasn’t the same as proper food from home. On weekends, when Soma and Louie spent time in the kitchen with Madam, Soma helped with the chopping and peeling. She watched and she learned. She had thought she knew how to cook, but now she realised that there was a world of food she knew nothing about. Even the curries – there were more types of curry than the three she could make.

  Heading downstairs, she paused again before stepping out into the ground floor landing. The door to the dining room was shut. People were talking. It seemed they were still eating. Soma tiptoed past the door and into the kitchen. She lifted the lids and looked into the pots on the stove. Her stomach growled. She got a plate out of the cupboard and dished herself up a decent portion. When she heated it up and tasted it, it seemed to be totally bland. She checked for the chilli sauce, but couldn’t find it. With a sigh, she sat at the table to eat a meal that smelled like heaven, but fell short.

  She had only just started eating when the doorbell rang. Someone answered it. Soma carried on eating. The door to the kitchen opened and Madam came in, with a thin, rat faced man. She handed him a plate. ‘Help yourself to the food,’ she said. ‘You’ll need this.’ She put the bottle of chilli sauce on the table.

  Soma tensed. Was this man going to come and eat his meal in here now? As always, strange men, especially Sri Lankan ones, made her chest constrict in fear. Sahan didn’t, but then he wasn’t exactly a stranger any more. She started to eat faster. She could go and sit in her room after she’d eaten.

  Madam paused on her way out. ‘Is Louie okay?’

  Soma nodded towards the baby monitor, which was sitting on the side. ‘He went to sleep without a fuss.’

  Madam nodded and turned back to the man. ‘When you’ve finished, you can stay here in the kitchen until we’re done, or go back to the car. Up to you.’ Her eyes flicked to Soma and back. ‘We are in the next room.’

  It sounded like warning. To whom? Was she warning the man not to hassle Soma? Or was she warning Soma?

  ‘Thank you, Madam.’ The man’s smile made Soma want to run and hide. There was something about him that tripped alarm bells in the animal part of her brain. She focused on her plate.

  ‘I’m Kemasiri,’ said the man. He came over to stand near the table, next to her; too close. The smell of fresh cigarette smoke came with him. ‘I’m Mr Perera’s driver.’

  Soma did not reply. She had a sudden image of a glowing cigarette tip, held between rough fingers, inches from her face. Her throat clenched, making it hard to swallow.

  ‘What’s your name?’

  She could feel him looking at her. Her skin prickled. She knew that feeling. She reminded herself that she wasn’t trapped here. She could go upstairs and lock her door. If he touched her, she could call out and Madam would come. She wasn’t poor, frightened Jaya now. She was Soma. She could handle this.

  Kemasiri picked up a plate, moved over to the pans and served himself some food. Now that he wasn’t leaning over her, she felt better. She had to get a grip. Her stepfather couldn’t follow her here. She couldn’t carry on being frightened of strangers or cigarettes for the rest of her life. She had to let it go.

  ‘You are Somavathi, aren’t you?’

  Soma jumped. What? How did he know? The letters sprang into her mind. What did he know?

  Kemasiri was watching her. She said nothing.

  ‘Where are you from Somavathi?’

  ‘Galaga—’ she started to give her real home town without thinking, then remembered that Somavathi wasn’t from there. ‘Matara.’ She glanced up to see if he’d noticed her slip.

  His eyes narrowed. He’d noticed. ‘Which is it then?’ he said. ‘Matara or somewhere else?’

  ‘Matara,’ she said, quickly. Too quickly. She saw the quirk in his eyebrows and realised immediately that she’d made the wrong choice. He had spotted something was amiss.

  ‘Oh really? I know it well. Where did you live exactly?’

  No! She hadn’t considered the possibility of him knowing the place. She would have been safer talking about a place she actually knew.

  ‘I have family there, you know,’ he continued.

  Fear ripped down her spine. Had he met the real Somavathi? She sneaked a glance at him.
He was watching her from across the room, his lips pressed together in a strange half smile.

  ‘Really?’ she managed. Her plate was still half full, but her appetite had gone.

  ‘You might know my brother,’ he said, slowly. ‘He runs the furniture shop next to the Cooperative. Big, fat man. Bald.’

  He was watching her. Oh god, she should answer. It sounded like the sort of person everyone knew. ‘Uh… yes. I remember him.’

  There was a flare of something sharp in his expression. ‘Yes. He is very… memorable.’ Kemasiri nodded.

  She couldn’t stay here. If she continued to talk to this man, it was only a matter of time before he asked her a question she couldn’t bluff her way out of. She walked over to the bin and started to scrape the remainder of her meal into it.

  ‘Ah, you haven’t finished already?’ said Kemasiri. He put his own plate in the microwave. ‘You’ll waste away if you don’t eat properly.’

  ‘I… I’m not that hungry. And I have to go and check on baby.’ She washed her hands, rinsed her plate and put it next to the dishwasher. Madam didn’t like her to stack the dishwasher.

  She turned to find Kemasiri standing next to her. She gasped.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. He smelled of cigarettes and curry. ‘Did I frighten you? I didn’t mean to. Please, stay and chat.’ He took a step back. ‘It’s not often I meet someone from near home. It would be nice to… talk.’

  Soma backed away. ‘I’m very sorry.’ She snatched up the baby monitor. ‘I have to go and check on baby. Enjoy the meal. It’s very nice.’ With that, she fled the room.

  When she got into her own bedroom, she pulled the bolt across and, for the first time in weeks, jammed the chair against the door handle. Had she given herself away? How had he known who she was? Had Soma’s friends been in touch with him, hoping he could find her? She sat on her bed, arms wrapped around her knees and tried to stop shaking.