Sunita’s Secret

by Narinder Dhami

  ‘That makes it even better in a way,’ I said, with a grin. ‘Just imagine her face if she knew it was me!’

  Zara frowned darkly. She opened her mouth, almost certainly to say something cutting, but a shout from the gates interrupted us.

  ‘Zara!’

  The three of us turned. A battered old camper van, painted shocking pink, had drawn up to the kerb. A man with shaggy black hair was driving, and a woman sat next to him. What seemed like hundreds of children were hanging out of the windows, waving at us.

  ‘Zara! Zara!’

  Henry and I turned to stare at her. Zara blushed to the roots of her hair.

  ‘Who are they?’ Henry asked.

  ‘I have no idea,’ Zara snapped, ignoring the hollering children completely.

  ‘That’s your mum and dad, and your brothers and sisters,’ I guessed.

  The man, Zara’s dad, climbed out of the van and came over to us. He had the same sea-green eyes and long, feathery eyelashes as Zara.

  ‘Hi, sweetheart,’ he said, his eyes flicking over me and Henry. ‘Are these your friends?’

  Zara ignored the question. ‘What are you all doing here?’ she snapped, making it sound like an accusation.

  ‘Ah, well.’ Mr Kennedy cleared his throat, looking quite shockingly nervous. ‘We have to go into town to get some new shoes for Brad.’ He stared anxiously at Zara. ‘Is that OK with you?’

  I couldn’t stop myself from glancing at Henry. He looked back at me, equally stunned.

  Zara sighed loudly. ‘I suppose so,’ she said coolly. She turned to Henry and me. ‘See you tomorrow.’

  Henry and I moved reluctantly away, but not before we’d seen Zara’s mum hop out of the front seat. She wore the same anxious expression as her husband.

  ‘You can sit here, darling,’ she said to Zara, ushering her into the van before squeezing herself, folded double, into the back with the other children.

  ‘Well!’ Henry breathed as they drove away, the exhaust banging loudly. ‘Who do you reckon is the boss in that house?’

  ‘I think that’s obvious,’ I replied. Zara seemed to have her parents under her thumb so firmly, they were walking on eggshells around her. After meeting Henry’s mum that morning, I was beginning to realize that I wasn’t the only person in the world who had problems.

  But today, for once, those problems weren’t lying on my shoulders like a dead weight. It was hard to explain, even to Zara and Henry, but I felt as if I’d won an Olympic marathon and got a gold medal. How many people, if asked, would guess that I’d take the revenge option? That I’d destroy Celina’s bracelet because of the way she’d treated me? Maybe even keep the beautiful bracelet for myself?

  But I hadn’t. I hadn’t done any of those things. I’d faced temptation, and I’d won. I was a better person than that. If I told Mum, I knew she’d be proud of me, and that gave me the warmest glow of happiness inside.

  I bounced up the street towards our house, not caring for once if I met any of our neighbours. Mum and the twins were watching TV, and I greeted them energetically.

  ‘Why don’t we go out for a walk?’ I suggested, after recovering from the twins’ greeting, which was a complicated ritual but generally consisted of wrestling me down onto the sofa and hitting me with cushions.

  Mum’s eyes automatically turned to the window. ‘It’s not quite dark yet—’ she began.

  ‘I thought we could go and enrol at the library in the shopping precinct,’ I broke in. ‘If we wait any longer, it’ll be closed.’

  It was mean of me to ask Mum in front of the twins, I know, but I was relying on them to back me up. They didn’t disappoint.

  ‘Yeah, the library!’ Davey roared. ‘Let’s go, Mum!’

  ‘Please, please, please,’ added Debbie, bouncing up and down and making the floor vibrate.

  Mum looked anguished. I felt bad about forcing her into the situation, but we had to get used to going outside. We couldn’t hide for ever. Now, while I felt so happy and confident, was the time to begin getting used to our new life. Who knows how I’d feel tomorrow?

  ‘All right,’ she said without any enthusiasm. ‘Get your coats and boots, twins.’

  ‘I really think this is a good idea, Mum,’ I said quietly as the twins tumbled out of the room.

  She sighed. ‘I know you’re right, Sunita. It’s just that—’ She stopped. ‘Anyway, I do owe you one.’

  ‘What for?’

  Mum smiled. ‘Do you really expect me to believe that the twins tidied their bedroom all by themselves this morning? Thanks, love.’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ I said cheerfully.

  We set off for the library. Mum looked nervous at first, but as we walked on, and the darker it became, the more she relaxed.

  Outside the library, though, she stopped. I knew why. Light was blazing from every window of the building.

  ‘Sunita,’ she whispered anxiously, ‘it’s so bright in there.’

  ‘Well, you can’t expect people to choose their books in the dark,’ I pointed out. ‘Come on. If anyone stares at us, we’ll pull faces at them.’

  Davey and Debbie cheered. We all linked hands and advanced towards the sliding glass doors.

  Although I was talking the talk, I was still secretly very nervous, and my heart was hammering in my ears. The library was busy. There was a long queue at the counter, and there were people seated at every one of the long bank of computers along the opposite wall.

  ‘I’ll get some registration forms,’ Mum whispered, glancing warily from side to side. ‘Sunita, you take the twins to the children’s section.’

  I herded the twins across the library, leaving Mum to join the queue at the counter, her eyes fixed firmly on the floor. As I realized with dismay that the children’s area was packed with mums and kids, I gave myself a silent lecture. We’re not criminals. We haven’t done anything wrong. We’ve got every right to be here. Anyway, no one’s going to take any notice of us.

  I was almost right. Nobody took any notice of us until the twins began arguing over a book about dinosaurs. By the time I’d refereed the dispute (luckily, before any blows had been struck), we were getting a few curious stares. But I told myself that was just because of the twins. Nothing else.

  When Mum eventually joined us, she was smiling.

  ‘The ladies at the counter were so nice, Sunita,’ she whispered, her face glowing with relief. ‘We can borrow books right away.’

  Something had changed, I realized, as we marched up to the counter to check out our books. This time Mum wasn’t looking down at the floor, and neither was I. Maybe some of those people in the library had recognized us. Maybe they hadn’t. But whether we made ourselves miserable about it or not was down to us. I think Mum was coming to the same conclusion.

  We skipped down the library steps, Debbie and Davey singing a song about the alphabet they’d learned at school. Everything was going so well, it was a shock to hear a voice say, ‘Mrs Anand?’

  Although it was dark, I guessed that all the colour had drained from Mum’s face. I know, because it was the same for me. We turned round, dreading what we would see. Police? Journalists?

  A short, round-faced young woman with blonde curls stood there, smiling at us. She had a pink-cheeked, sleepy baby in a buggy, and a pretty little girl with the same blonde curls was holding her hand.

  ‘Megan!’ Debbie and Davey screeched, launching themselves at the girl like rockets.

  ‘Oh, hello,’ Mum said in a shaky voice.

  ‘Sunita, Megan’s my bestest friend at school,’ Debbie announced, grabbing her in a vice-like hug.

  ‘And she’s my girlfriend,’ Davey added, planting a big wet kiss on Megan’s rosy cheek. ‘She likes me better than Debbie, don’t you, Megan?’

  Megan giggled, and wisely said nothing.

  ‘I’m Jan Rice, Megan’s mum.’ Mrs Rice smiled at us. ‘I’ve been wanting to invite you round for coffee, but you always seem in such a rush whenever
I see you at the school.’

  Mum glanced at me. I raised my eyebrows just a little, and nodded gently.

  ‘Oh.’ Mum made a huge effort. ‘Coffee would be lovely. Thank you.’

  ‘Bring the twins as well,’ Mrs Rice said. ‘Megan would love them to see them anytime.’

  ‘We can play in the Wendy house my dad built for me,’ Megan added.

  ‘You’re lucky,’ Davey said enviously. ‘We haven’t got a dad.’

  Mum and I glanced at each other in utter horror.

  ‘Yes, we have, stupid.’ Debbie poked him in the arm. ‘We just don’t know where he is, that’s all.’

  ‘Why?’ Megan asked curiously.

  I could feel Mum trembling at my side.

  ‘Megan.’ Mrs Rice laid a hand on top of her daughter’s curls. ‘You know we talked about this before. Some children don’t have their mummies and daddies living in the same house, and it’s rude to ask too many questions.’ She looked at Mum, and her eyes were full of sympathy. ‘Please come and have coffee with me sometime. Will you?’

  ‘Well, all right,’ Mum replied. But I could feel her still shaking beside me.

  Debbie and Davey had to be physically removed from Megan before we could say goodbye and leave. As the twins ran on ahead of us, I turned to Mum.

  ‘She knew, didn’t she?’

  ‘I think so,’ Mum said. Her voice sounded thick, as if she had a cold.

  ‘Mum, are you crying?’ I peered anxiously up into her face.

  ‘It’s silly, I know.’ Mum wiped her wet face. ‘But when someone’s nice to me …’ She shook her head.

  ‘You will go and have coffee with Mrs Rice?’ I asked.

  ‘I think so.’ Mum straightened her shoulders. ‘No, I will. Promise.’

  I slipped my hand through her arm, smiling. Three milestones in one day. Celina’s bracelet. The library. Mrs Rice. I had a feeling things were, slowly, going to get better.

  At school, we were supposed to lock our lockers, but no one ever did. Although the school was brand new, the lockers took a lot of abuse. Locks were broken, kids regularly lost their keys and, even if they did have keys, quite often people forgot to use them. Apparently one of the top priorities in Mrs Bright’s school manifesto was to sort out the unsatisfactory lockers situation. Until then, though, most of us just followed the unofficial line, which was not to leave anything valuable in them.

  I had a plan. I’d left early for school this morning, even before Mum and the twins were up, and I’d loaded the washing machine and laid the table for breakfast before I left. Mum would be pleased. I’d slipped into school early and illegally, and now I was making my way stealthily to the Year 7 lockers. I stopped next to Zara’s, which was two down from mine. I knew the lock on hers was broken, and that she’d complained bitterly about it to Mr Arora about five hundred times. Of course, it went in one of his ears and out of the other.

  I opened Zara’s locker, which was obsessively tidy – books stacked in order of size and thickness in neat piles – unlike mine and Henry’s, which were chaos. I placed a Twix and an apple on top of Zara’s maths book, and smiled to myself. I just wanted to let her know that there were no hard feelings about yesterday.

  As I closed the locker door, I heard the sound of soft footsteps. I panicked and whisked myself round the end of the lockers, flattening myself against the wall.

  Zara tiptoed round the corner.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ I asked, stepping into view.

  Zara gave a little shriek. ‘I’ve just been to the toilet,’ she snapped. ‘Is that a crime?’

  ‘Yes, if it’s before the morning bell,’ I replied.

  ‘Well, what are you doing here then?’ Zara demanded.

  ‘I – er – I just wanted to put some books in my locker,’ I said quickly. ‘My bag’s really heavy.’

  I opened the door of my locker, not expecting to see what I saw. The tangled mess of textbooks and papers and pens had been cleared up, the books stacked in order of size and thickness in neat piles.

  ‘Zara!’

  ‘What?’

  I spun round, a big grin on my face. ‘You tidied my locker!’

  ‘Who says it was me?’ Zara snapped, her brows drawn down like a ferocious bulldog.

  I couldn’t stop smirking, even though Zara was glaring at me. ‘Well, thanks anyway.’

  ‘No point in thanking me,’ Zara growled, yanking the door of her own locker open. Her face was a picture as she saw the chocolate bar and apple perched neatly on top of her books.

  ‘Did you put those there?’ she spluttered.

  ‘Who, me?’ I asked innocently. ‘Why would I do a thing like that?’

  ‘How childish!’ Zara sniffed. But I noticed that she slipped the apple and the chocolate into her bag.

  ‘Your parents seem nice,’ I said casually as we walked back to the playground.

  ‘Oh, so you saw that in all of thirty seconds last night, did you?’ Zara snapped, biting my head off as she always did when things got personal.

  ‘I’m very observant,’ I retorted. ‘Since when were you crowned queen of the Kennedy household?’

  For once, Zara was utterly speechless.

  ‘Only I could see that your mum and dad were terrified of upsetting you,’ I went on boldly. Now I’d started, I might as well finish. ‘Why is that?’

  I wondered if I’d gone too far. Zara looked as if she didn’t know whether to hit me or not. Then, amazingly, she shrugged and looked sheepishly at me.

  ‘Because of this, I suppose.’ She pointed at the birthmark on her face.

  ‘Oh.’

  I didn’t say anything more. We were silent as we went outside, but I just couldn’t stop breaking into smiles. The weather was cold and grey and very November-like, but there was sunshine inside me. I was remembering how it felt to be happy, and I liked it.

  We made our way over to Henry, who was sitting on our favourite bench. We shouted. He ignored us. We waved. He didn’t wave back. He looked stunned and dazed, as if he’d just had some terrifically good, or some terribly bad news.

  ‘You do realize that we’ve been calling you for the last five minutes,’ I said, tapping his arm as Zara and I reached the bench. ‘Ignoring Zara is not a very wise move.’

  ‘Oh.’ Henry’s stare was glazed. Then he focused on us, and managed a small smile. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘No chocolate bars today?’ Zara asked pointedly.

  Henry shook his head. ‘I forgot to stop at the shop.’

  ‘Funny.’ Zara squinted up at the sky. ‘I don’t notice any pigs flying past.’

  ‘Henry?’ I was beginning to feel a little nervous. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘I’m fine.’ With a startling change of mood, Henry jumped to his feet and threw his arms open wide. ‘Never better.’

  ‘Now you’re scaring me,’ Zara said with a frown. ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘It was Sunita.’ The words tumbled out of Henry in an unstoppable stream. ‘I thought about what she said, and I decided to do a secret good deed for my mum. So I sneaked out into the garden early this morning and swept up all the fallen leaves she’s been moaning about. She’s been nagging my dad to do it for ages, and he hasn’t.’

  ‘And?’ I asked eagerly.

  Henry’s pale blue eyes were saucer-like with amazement. ‘She loved it! She guessed it was me, even though I didn’t say anything. And you know what? She couldn’t stop talking about it all through breakfast. We didn’t even argue about what I ate, like we usually do.’

  ‘Saint Sunita strikes again,’ Zara scoffed.

  ‘Don’t listen to her.’ I grinned at Henry. ‘I’m glad your mum was pleased.’

  ‘Me too,’ Henry agreed. Then he frowned. ‘The trouble is, clearing up the leaves took me so long I only had time for a quick bowl of cornflakes. And then I was thinking so hard about what happened, I forgot to stop at the shop for chocolate.’ He looked hopefully from me to Zara. ‘Have you got anything to eat?
’

  ‘Zara’s got a Twix and an apple she might share with you,’ I remarked. ‘Someone left them in her locker.’

  ‘Oh, a secret admirer?’ Henry asked.

  ‘As if!’ Zara snorted. ‘Here.’ She pulled out the apple and handed it to Henry. ‘Your need is greater than mine.’

  Henry looked disappointed, but he was too polite to ask for the Twix, so he dutifully bit into the apple.

  ‘I still think that this secret good deeds stuff isn’t all it’s cracked up to be,’ Zara grumbled, perching on the bench arm. ‘I mean, where’s the fun in being nice to people if they can’t show you their undying gratitude because they don’t know who you are?’

  ‘But that is the fun of it,’ I said earnestly. ‘Them not knowing. And even if they guess, they still love the surprise. And you get the fun of surprising them. It’s a win-win situation.’ I grinned teasingly at her. ‘Come on, admit it. Didn’t it make you feel good this morning when I saw my locker?’

  ‘That wasn’t me,’ Zara snapped, trying not to blush and failing.

  ‘My mum guessed it was me who’d swept up the leaves, and she was still thrilled,’ Henry agreed. ‘She didn’t even sigh when I put sugar on my cereal, like she usually does.’

  ‘Oh, hurrah,’ Zara said with a sniff. ‘Domestic harmony at last in the Williams household.’ Her gaze shifted to a point beyond my shoulder. ‘Hello, here comes trouble.’

  I didn’t turn round. ‘Celina?’

  Zara nodded.

  ‘Pretend you’re a duck, Sunita,’ Henry said solemnly, ‘And that everything Celina says is just water off your back.’

  Zara and I grinned. I mentally squared my shoulders and breathed in deeply through my nose as Celina stopped purposefully in front of us.

  ‘I’m surprised you’ve got the nerve to show your face today,’ she said with a curl of her perfectly glossed lips. ‘My dad’s going to complain to Mrs Bright about you attacking me.’

  ‘Quack quack,’ I replied. Zara and Henry burst out laughing.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ Celina snapped.

  ‘Private joke,’ I said airily. ‘Now, don’t let us keep you. I’m sure you have many more people to annoy before the morning bell.’