And her heart stopped.
For it wasn’t her baby-round face and Rahul’s easy smile on the monitor. Nahin. It was a combination of them both.
Shona.
On the screen.
Filling it, as if she’d practically climbed into the webcam.
“Didi?” She tapped at the lens, brows furrowed, small mouth puckered with annoyance. “Hello?”
“No.” The word exploded from Priya’s throat like a gunshot. “Nahin. Na.” Her stomach lurched, her limbs went numb and the sensation of choking was that much more terrible. This was not happening. This could not be happening. Her baby wasn’t on a TV in front of a studio full of people. Her secret, so long kept, so hard and painful, wasn’t loosed to the world. But one glance at Rahul—still, like a stone statue, white like the insides of a broken coconut—and she knew it was no illusion. In an instant, her hope and her dream had become a nightmare.
“Turn it off! Somebody shut it down.” She could hear Sunny-ji barking orders, but her voice seemed distant, as if the shouts were from kilometers away. “For God’s sake, stop tape!”
Responses to Sunita’s orders were like the buzzing of bees, a wall of sound that made little sense to her.
Shona looked stricken, confused, wondering why the chat was not working correctly. “Didi koi?” she demanded. “Where are you? Anita Didi, where is Prithu? Make it work!” Anita appeared over her shoulder, and then, in what was the cruelest of mercies, the feed went pitch black. It was the same blackness that darkened Rahul’s eyes.
Shona’s cries of Didi had not fooled him one bit, not when the truth was in every line of her little face. He’d leapt up when she appeared on the screen, and now he loomed over Priya like a thundercloud. “She’s my child.” It was a certainty, not a question, and she felt it like a physical blow. “Our daughter.”
She rose on rickety legs. “Yes. Shonali. She is five years old. Nearly six.” Somehow the lines came, as if fed to her from offstage. Better that someone should dub for her in the booth, because her voice sounded like someone had stuck pins in her tongue. “When I left Bombay, I was pregnant.”
“When you left me you were pregnant.” Rahul made the distinction sound like a curse. “That…that is why your father shut the door in my face. Hai Bhagwan, Priya. What the hell?” He dug his hands through his hair, shutting his eyes tightly. The dampness that suddenly gathered at the edges of his lashes and spilled over was so damning that her knees almost gave out.
The studio lights had suddenly gone low, and the cameras swiveled away, with their operators nowhere to be found. But still, Priya felt pinned by the lenses. Surely they would catch every frame of her regret. No doubt they would cast her sins in sharp relief.
Rahul generally had a structured view of the world. He saw it in outlines, in storyboards. In neatly ordered columns and rows. He believed in broad concepts, like truth and honor and loyalty and safety…except that safety was an illusion, wasn’t it? It tasted like gunmetal and locked doors and panic buttons, but it was, fundamentally, a construct. A giant load of bakwas, of horseshit. His daughter, in a city clear across the country, shut away from him, unaware of his existence, was not safe. How could she be, when she didn’t know her father was somewhere in this world? He’d never seen her before today, never held her, never heard her laugh…never even known of her. One giant door had been locked—with him on the other side. Rahul balled his hands into fists, feeling the anger rise within him like the tide. “Shonali,” he murmured, testing out her name. “Shonali Anand.”
“Roy.” Priya’s correction was like a whip crack. “Shonali Roy. Shona has never had your name.”
Rahul’s fingers flexed, and he dug them into his sides so he wouldn’t be tempted to turn and strike her. Just the temptation was ugly, heinous, the impulses of the kind of man he did not want to be…but, of course, she saw his tiny movements and assumed the worst.
“Do it.” Her words flicked at him like the tongue of the lash. “Maaro mujhe. Hit me, Rahul, and prove my father was right to have kept you from us.”
He buried his fists in his jacket pockets, until it seemed they would burst through the bottom and tear out the fabric. “Your father was not right. How could he be? How dare he play with our lives? Who does he think he is, God himself?”
Priya flinched. Just barely. “I’ve had a good life. So have you. Do not pretend you’ve suffered so terribly from Baba’s scheme. He did what he felt was best for us at the time,” she recited as if by rote. “It was for us, for our family’s name and honor.”
“And was it best for Shona?” Shona. Gold. That’s what that little child on the screen was…something rare and precious and lovely. Something being locked away from him in a Kolkata vault. “Can you really say the same for her?”
“Haan. I can. I will.” Priya raised her chin, staring him down like prey. And she chased her whip strokes with tiger claws. “Shona has a family. She does not need you. We don’t need you.”
The words were brave, but he recognized them for the falsehoods they were. A script, written long ago and repeated over and over to herself. “Jhoot. That’s a lie, and you bloody well know it. Of course you need me.” His voice thundered across her skin like a train on a rusting trestle. “How could you not need me, Pree, when I have never not needed you?”
“Jhoot,” she parroted back at him. “Bahut sare saal ho gay, Rahul. Six years have gone by, and you haven’t died of love. You did not need me in all that time. Tum producer ban gay. You’re a big-time producer, strong and handsome. You have a life, na? And friends? Don’t pretend this is a love story and you stopped rolling the tape when I was not in the scene. Don’t pretend you didn’t exist without me. You did.”
“But you want me to pretend I don’t have a child. Is that right? Damn it, Priya, I can’t.” He dragged his hand through his hair. It was shaking. His eyes were wet. He couldn’t even remember the last time he’d shed tears. During his mother’s funeral rites some twenty years ago? His mother, who hadn’t lived to see her granddaughter… “Did you see her on that screen? She’s beautiful. She’s so beautiful.”
“I know. She looks like you.” With this acknowledgment, Priya seemed to gather her strength. “I see you inside her every day. But this does not make us a family. It changes nothing, because Shonali has parents and sisters and a life that doesn’t include you. The truth doesn’t build a sudden tie between us. We cannot be anything more to each other.”
It was a condemnation of the worst order, a complete dismissal of the joy they’d shared these past several days. As though she didn’t even want to forge a bond between them. The tears that had filled his eyes suddenly felt like grains of sand. “How can you say that? Of course we are tied. This tie, this rishta between the three of us, is the only bond that matters.”
“So taking me to bed…that did not matter?” She challenged him. With her words, with her eyes, with the way she stood, stiff and straight and remote. “Following my every footstep, inserting yourself into my life, my film. That did not matter? What were we doing when you didn’t know about Shona, Rahul? Playing a game? Koi khel tha, kya?”
“Don’t set a verbal trap for me, Priya,” he warned. “This is not my fault, my galthi.” He’d done nothing wrong, damn it. All he’d wanted was to care for her. “You kept the truth from me, even after your father did. For years. Why didn’t you tell me on The Raj? Or a hundred different times here in Mumbai? What were you doing with me? Why did you come with me from Nina’s bungalow?”
She drew herself up, closing her arms around herself. Thrusting him outside of her gates as though they were again those veritable strangers on the set of The Raj. Her silence told him both everything and nothing…and her retreating footsteps broke what was left of his heart.
He gave a count of five before he followed her offstage, into the deserted green room where she was gathering her things in quick, jerky motions. “Khabardar! Don’t you walk away from me.” His voice was as shaky as his stri
des were steady with purpose. “We’re not finished yet.”
“Y-yes, we are.” She threw a kela, of all things, into her bag. Appropriate, since this shit was, as Americans would say, totally bananas. “I have to get home. I have to ring Anita Didi and—”
“—and you have to answer to me right now.” He pulled her round until she was trapped between him and the wall. Her face was white, not like milk or wine or any other such pretty imagery, but like exposed bone. Flushed with blood and vulnerability on the edges. “You held this secret for six years, Priya, and every moment I held you these past six days, you lied to me. When I looked at you, you were lying. When I laughed with you, you were lying. When all I wanted was to move heaven and earth to be near you, you were fucking lying. Kyu? Why would you do that to me?”
Her throat moved in a convulsive swallow. Her lashes fluttered over her eyes, shielding them from his view. “It wasn’t lies, Rahul. It was simply not saying anything at all.”
“Khamoshi, silence, is still not the truth.” He pointed out the obvious, grasping her chin and forcing her to look upon him once more. “I can’t even wrap my bloody head around the years I lost with my daughter while you were in goddamn Calcutta, but here in Bombay, you stole so much more. You’re leagues worse than your father, Priya. He didn’t know what sort of man I was. You betrayed me knowing full well who I am.”
“Nahin.” Color flooded back to her cheeks in stripes, as though he’d given in to a coward’s darkest impulse and hit her, and she sagged against the wall. “Rahul, I was just…main sirf…I was only keeping us safe,” she stammered. Us. She meant Shona and herself. Two, not three. “Don’t you understand? Shona is not mine, and it was not my secret to tell. Did you even hear her on the chat? Didi, she said. She doesn’t call me ma. She cannot. And I can’t call her my daughter. When I cannot even claim her, how can you? It’s not possible.” She was openly weeping, tears coursing down her cheeks in twin rivers of grief. Of guilt. “How could I tell you the truth, Rahul, when I lie to myself every hour?”
“You could’ve asked me these exact questions years ago, and I would’ve had answers. I would’ve had lawyers. I would’ve fought anybody and everybody to get her back for you.” He wanted to feel a little victorious that he’d hurt her, that he’d gotten through to her, but all he could process was a kind of hideous sadness. “If you’d just come to me, confided in me, I would’ve protected you, Pree. Forever.” No, he was wrong…he felt more than just sadness. There was still fury. “Nahin,” he corrected, softly. “Her. The girl who loved me. The girl who trusted me in Simla. I would protect her. Not you…not this icy cold bitch you’ve become.”
Chapter Twenty
“How did this happen?” Sunny whirled in a half circle as she stared down everyone in the booth. DJ. Mary. Rajan. Sophia. “Yeh kisne kiya? Who did this?”
Blank gazes met her molten one. Bahenchod. Duffers. Not a one of them would confess to wrongdoing, would admit to knowing the word “wrongdoing”. Mumbai was full to its brim with actors, na? When the door slammed open to reveal Shaw, they all scattered, eager to have the opportunity to flee. Only Rajan spared her a quick glance before shrugging his thin shoulders and slipping past Shaw into the hall.
Davey didn’t pay him any mind; as usual his razor-sharp gaze was only for her. “Sunita, what was that out there?” He looked as uneven as she felt, patting his pants pockets as if checking for his cigarettes and then, upon finding them empty, settling for clenched fists. “How the hell does something like that happen on our watch?”
That was the question, was it not? One that her staff hadn’t seen fit to answer. She felt like baring her teeth, like scratching someone’s eyes out…like screaming. “Don’t you know? It was sabotage. Someone came into the booth when we were on the studio floor and traded the film footage for a live feed.”
His brows furrowed, and he lingered on one word. “‘Someone’?” he echoed. “You can’t think I knew about this, can you?”
Couldn’t she? It was perfectly rational, wasn’t it? If she could suspect DJ or Rajan or anyone else who had keys to the booth, then why not her producer? “Why? Kyu nahin? Did you know, Davey?”
He looked appalled by the suggestion. But, again, everyone in Mumbai was an actor, a performer. “Rahul’s my best mate,” he reminded her. “I would never betray him this way. That’s completely absurd.”
Nothing was absurd when children were involved. That, she’d learned from Sam and Viki. Suddenly, it was entirely believable to her that her lover could have orchestrated today’s entire drama. “Even if the ends were justifying your means? Even if it meant he learned of his daughter?”
“Even if. That was an awful way to drop the news on him, Sunita. He should’ve learned in private…preferably from Priya. Why would I go out of my way to hurt him?” Davey had taken her questions with a measure of calm, as if her interest was academic, but now he cocked his head, studying her with an increasingly grim expression. It turned him from handsome to fearsome, sexy to scathing.
“But you think I’d hurt you, don’t you, darling? After everything we’ve been to each other, everything we’ve done to each other. You think I’m capable of betraying you.”
The denial was caught in her throat. No paralyzed even her limbs. And in that stretch of seconds, Davey backed away, his fists shoved into his pockets and his back as stiff as a board. “Damn it, Sunny,” he whispered. “This is…this is unconscionable. I wouldn’t deceive you. I wouldn’t hurt Rahul. But you…you can’t believe me, no matter what I say. No matter what the truth is. That’s what you’re not capable of: having even the tiniest bit of faith.”
“Tell me who George is,” she heard herself demand. It was a question that had no place here. In the office. In this discussion. It was irrelevant to everything but her weakness. “Just tell me, and perhaps that will make it better.”
He flinched. “Thank you, Ms. Khanna. You just proved my point.” For ages now, he’d called her Sunny or Sunita or Rani Sahiba. Never once responding to her constant formal address in kind. As if he shared a secret kinship with her, even if she was unwilling to acknowledge it. But now…now, he said it twice. “I’ve no doubt we’ll discover who switched the feed, Ms. Khanna. In the meantime, I’ll make certain we reschedule Rahul and Priya’s interview for when they’ve hashed out their differences, and we’ll come up with alternatives for their slot at the production meeting tomorrow.”
“Davey—”
He cut her off with a swift shake of the head, with a “No” that wasn’t caught anywhere but between heaven and hell. His exit was quieter than his entrance. The door barely made noise as it clicked shut. Yet Sunita heard it for hours afterward. For days. Resignation, it turned out, was nearly deafening.
Davey stared at his mobile like it was radioactive. Every time it danced up on vibrate, it was like a particularly venomous snake or one of the absurdly large cockroaches that occasionally skittered across the bathroom floor. He didn’t dare touch it.
Sunita had called him a dozen times in two days, left voicemails that he deleted without giving a listen to…even though every fiber of his being longed to hear her voice. Because every fiber of his being also wanted something else, something more. If it made him a colossal fool, so be it. He’d been a fool for her since the day they met. Since he’d stood there for a full two minutes before she reckoned she ought to give him the time of day. If he’d only realized then what he’d be getting himself into, what fresh hell awaited him.
The production meeting had been an exercise in torture, fraught with palpable tension until Sophia stood up, burst into tears and confessed that Nina Manjrekar had bribed her to sabotage the taping. Something about her having kids to feed and a husband who’d broken a limb…it had all turned into a haze of shouting and ended with Sophia being sacked outright. The lack of common sense in some people was, frankly, still a shock to him. Wouldn’t it have been simpler to come to him and ask for help rather than letting some horrible woman force
her to destroy innocent lives?
“You’re English, saab,” Rajan had offered with an apologetic shrug, once the wailing had stopped and they were left with the task of re-mapping the episode.
As if that explained everything. He was English. British. Welsh and Irish, fuck you very much. But all in all, an outsider. Someone none of them trusted. So that made it all right to use his booth for revenge plots. That made it all right to assume the worst of him. That made it all right for him to be sitting in front of his telly, watching Hindustani soaps and praying he wouldn’t break down and pick up his phone.
“I’ll take care of Nina. Leave her to me and Sam,” Rahul had told him, in a tone that suggested he’d already suspected she was behind the whole debacle…and a tone that suggested it was better for Davey not to ask what had happened with Priya. After all, they were men, weren’t they? One didn’t go about spilling their guts and sobbing out maudlin tales of heartbreak. No, it was better to drown it all in a bottle, smoke it away in a pack of cheap Indian cigarettes, stuff it down, lock it in a box and pretend your life wasn’t in complete shambles.
He’d asked anyway.
“She told me to bugger off. I’m a father, and she told me to bugger off. Can you believe it?” Rahul had tried to sound like an uncaring ass, like an arrogant sod who was more affronted by Priya rejecting him than by anything else. But it only took a few carefully placed hmms and really?s to crack him, to pull forth an indelicate choking noise and the confession of, “I need her, Shaw. I love her. And I want to get to know Shonali. Is that so bad?”
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