by Mel Sparke
“Mm-hm. Apart from that,” nodded Maya with a little grin.
“Um, kind of like I’ve got this big weight on my shoulders.”
“Me too,” shrugged Maya. “But with me, I don’t know how I can get free of the feeling. Right now, I can’t see how I can make things better with my parents, how I could magically make them less strict.”
Joe nodded. He knew a lot of Asian parents were quite strict with and ambitious for their children; but then, so were plenty of other families. Part of him wanted to ask if it was a cultural thing in Maya’s case, but part of him felt that was too embarrassing and gauche a question to ask.
“But at least you can try and resolve things,” she continued. “At least if you talk to your mum – even if she tells you stuff that’s hard to hear – it’ll be better than keeping quiet and letting it wind you up inside.”
“Yeah, I know you’re right,” said Joe. “I’ll try and talk to her soon.”
“And you should tell the others that you hate being called Joey. They probably don’t even realise. But it really gets to you, doesn’t it?”
Joe looked at her in astonishment. “Ever thought about being a psychologist?”
“I think that’s on the potential career list my parents have drawn up for me, actually,” said Maya, smiling back at him.
Maya was still thinking about her conversation with Joe when a thundering crash jolted her back to the real world. Stepping out of her bedroom, she saw a stepladder lying in the middle of the landing and her sister’s head hanging upside down from the opened attic trapdoor.
“Oops!” said Sunny, her sleek one-length bob looking ridiculous hanging the wrong way up.
“What happened?” asked Maya, bending over to pick up the ladder. It crossed Maya’s mind that it might be fun to leave her sister up there for a while, but Sunny could shriek just as annoyingly and loudly as Marcus, so that would get on her nerves pretty quickly.
“I was just trying to come down, but it wobbled when I stood on it…”
“Yes, but what are you doing up there in the first place?”
Maya started climbing the upturned ladder as she talked, curious to have a peek at the long-unopened attic.
“I was looking for some old clothes I could use for my play. Mummy said there were lots up here, stored away.”
“Move over,” Maya said to her sister as she clambered into the loft space.
Sunny bunched up the long dress she’d shoved on top of her normal clothes and shuffled over to make way.
“I’d forgotten about all this,” said Maya, surveying the old trunks and cardboard boxes surrounding her. It suddenly occurred to her that this might be the place to look for her old photography project. “Come across any of my old school stuff while you were rummaging?”
“Maybe…” shrugged Sunny. “There were some exercise books and exam papers in among the old photos in that box over there.”
Maya walked over to the box Sunny had indicated and sat down cross-legged beside it.
“Don’t let me stop you doing what you were doing,” she said, aware of Sunny’s inquisitive gaze boring into the side of her head.
Sunny tutted and, knowing she was being told to leave, reluctantly slid through the trapdoor with much rustling of fabric.
Like the wicker basket in the hall cupboard, there was a real mishmash of old papers and memorabilia, plus a few pictures of her mother’s parents – Grandpa Naseem and Nana Jean. And there was a whole album of photos of her father’s family that Maya hadn’t seen for years.
It was fascinating to flick through; unlike Grandpa Naseem and Nana Jean who came to visit regularly, she’d never met her paternal grandparents. They’d moved to Canada to live with her uncle and his family when she was a baby.
They looked stern in these pictures, which must have been at least twenty years old judging by the style of the furniture and the suit Grandpa Ravinder was wearing.
There’s Dad, she found herself smiling fondly at the photo of her father as a student, standing beaming at the top of a mountain he’d just climbed with some friends. Pity he doesn’t look that relaxed and happy more often…
She flipped through more pictures of a handsome, happy-go-lucky young man, who seemed a world away from her dad as she knew him today.
And there’s him and Mum, she said to herself as her eye caught a slightly blurry picture she’d never paid much attention to before.
She gazed at the small photo of the young man, staring straight at the camera, and the besotted, pretty Indian girl who was gazing up at him. The boy, slimmer and happier looking, was still recognisably her dad. The girl, on closer inspection – was most definitely not her mother…
CHAPTER 17
OPEN MOUTH, INSERT FOOT
Searching for her keys before she left for the photography club, Maya was only half-listening to the conversation that was going on in the kitchen.
“What are they? Balloons?” she heard Brigid ask.
“No!” said Ravi with a note of outrage in his voice. “It’s a drawing of little piglets – seven of them!”
“Seven? My, my,” Brigid’s voice drifted though. “And what made you think of drawing seven little piglets, then?”
“They were at the fair I went to last week with Maya and those other people. We…” he trailed off, suddenly realising he’d told what he wasn’t meant to tell.
“What fair was that, Ravi?”
“It was a secret. I wasn’t meant to say… was I, Maya?”
Ravi stared up as his alarmed-looking sister appeared in the doorway of the kitchen.
“Ooh, look at the time, Ravi – Blue Peter will be on soon. Off you go and watch it,” Brigid smiled at him, then looked up at Maya and motioned her to sit down at the kitchen table. “Now, since when did you take him to a fair?”
“Um, it was last Wednesday. It was that big agricultural show – the one at the country park,” Maya answered, wriggling in her seat like a kid who had been caught ringing the neighbours’ doorbells and then running away.
“And why is that a secret? Your mother and father wouldn’t have a problem with you taking Ravi along to the likes of that!” Brigid’s penetrating green eyes bore into Maya.
“No… but they’d have a problem if they knew I was there with that club I’ve joined.”
“Ah, the photography club up at the Education Centre. Yes, my Ashleigh said she’d seen you there. And are you enjoying it?”
Maya was caught on the hop. She’d expected Brigid to give her some kind of lecture, but now here she was enquiring pleasantly about her new hobby.
“Y-yes… I think I’m going to love it,’ Maya answered her cautiously. “Our lecturer has got us all entering a competition already – at the Peacock Gallery.”
“Really? Well, that’s nice,” Brigid nodded. “I’m glad you decided to join the club and I’m glad you like it so much. I thought you would – that’s why I tried to put the idea in your head in the first place. But…”
Ah, I haven’t got out of it yet, winced Maya.
“I didn’t mean for it to get you into more complications with your parents.”
“Brigid, I—”
“Now, Maya, let me finish,” interrupted Brigid. “We may not speak about it out loud, but me and you have an understanding, don’t we?”
“Yes, I guess so,” Maya muttered.
“I understand that, as a young adult, you need a bit more freedom than your parents are willing to give you. Is that right?”
Maya nodded, wilting under Brigid’s stern gaze.
“And you understand that I’ll keep quiet about you meeting up with your friends most days and doing something like this photography course, right?”
Maya nodded again.
“The thing is, Maya, you and me keeping secrets, it’s not ideal. Your folks are lovely people at heart – but the way I see it, it’s not hurting them, and I know you’re a good girl who isn’t running around wild.”
I wish th
ey would think that way, Maya said to herself.
“Now, here’s my problem: you’re sixteen and responsible for your own actions. But you can’t go involving a seven-year-old boy in a web of lies!”
“I didn’t ask him to lie!” Maya protested, miserable at her confidante’s disapproval. “I had to take Ravi with me on this field trip because I was babysitting him, and I thought it would be easier to tell him it was a secret, rather than risk him blabbing about me being part of this photography club!”
“Maya, you can’t put pressure like that on a little lad! It’s not right and it’s not fair to involve him!”
What Brigid was saying was true, she knew, but Maya still didn’t know what else she could have done.
“Y’know, I think you maybe should tell your folks about this club, rather than get deeper and deeper into a mess over it,” Brigid continued.
“But it’s only you and me that know about it! I’ll just tell Ravi not to tell—”
“Maya, you did that before and he accidentally let it slip to me. He’ll do it again – he’s only a child.”
“But if I tell them, they’ll be furious – me doing something behind their backs. Something so frivolous… They’ll stop me from going!”
“Ah now, maybe they will and maybe they won’t,” Brigid smiled at her kindly. “But I don’t see what choice you really have after this. And anyway, what if you do well in this competition? Shows at that gallery are always in the local paper – what if your parents open the newspaper one day and there’s your name plastered under some photo or other?”
“I won’t win anything. I’ve only just started and there’ll be hundreds of entries from all over!” Maya argued weakly.
“Well, it’s up to you, Maya. All I’m saying is that all these secrets are maybe just getting a bit out of hand…”
“I know,” said Maya forlornly, before suddenly spying the time. “Oh, Brigid, I’ve got to run – I’ve, er, got the photography club tonight and I’ve got so much to do to get my entry ready for the competition on Saturday.”
“You will be back before your folks, though?”
“Um, no – I already told them I’d be out tonight.”
Brigid furrowed her brow.
“And where exactly did you tell them you’d be?”
“Round at Sonja’s for tea,” said Maya grimacing, aware of another lie surfacing.
“Oh, Maya!” scolded Brigid.
Before her sister could leave the kitchen and catch her eavesdropping in the hallway, Sunita slipped quietly into the living room…
“Nice. Very nice. Yep, that’s the one I’d go for.”
Alex was peering at the contact sheets of tiny prints from Maya’s last two rolls of film. As she’d suspected, her shots of passers-by and piglets from the country park show were nothing to write home about, but the photos she’d taken at the End on Sunday had come out pretty well.
“The composition’s great in it and everyone looks relaxed and unaware of the camera. What do you think?”
Maya took the small magnifying glass from him and bent over the contact sheet to look at the shot Alex had circled.
There, in miniature, were her friends, all gathered round their favourite table at the End. As this was shot 34 of a 36-frame spool, by this point they’d managed to lose their self-consciousness and seemed almost to have forgotten, in the midst of their conversation and the noise and hubbub of the café, that Maya was hovering around snapping them.
She peered at the group: Matt and Catrina had their backs to her, but their faces were in profile as they stared each other down.
Probably trading insults as usual, thought Maya.
On the other side of the table, Kerry was waving. At first, Maya had assumed she was waving at her, but on closer inspection, her gaze was going past Maya’s head, presumably towards Ollie, who was busily whipping around the café, seeing to the needs of the Sunday morning breakfasters.
Next to Kerry sat Sonja, her mouth wide in mid-chatter, and on Sonja’s right was Joe, who looked more dazed than usual – as well he might with everything going on in his family life. Or maybe it was just that he was gazing in stunned wonder at Sonja’s ability to yap without pausing for breath.
“Yes, you’re right,” Maya agreed with Alex. “I’ll get this one printed up.”
“Bit of a queue happening over there,” Alex alerted her to the list of names as everyone vied for time in the darkroom. “Last minute panic and everything. Are you OK to stay a little longer tonight to get this done?”
“Yes, no problem,” said Maya. As she’d told Brigid, her parents thought she was at Sonja’s. And as she hadn’t told Brigid, the other reason she’d be home later was that she had a date with Billy after the club.
Maya couldn’t decide which was thumping harder – her heart through nerves, or her head from the stress of keeping secrets.
“Maya… That’s a beautiful name. What does it mean?”
“Um, I don’t know actually,” Maya answered, racking her brain for a memory of her mother telling her anything more about her name, other than it belonging to some favourite auntie on one side of the family.
Billy smiled at her across the chequered tablecloth and looked ridiculously handsome.
Don’t get flustered. Maya told herself. He’s just a boy, like Joe and Ollie and Matt, and I don’t get all embarrassed when I talk to them.
“You don’t mind that we just came for a pizza, do you?” he asked before she could come up with any conversation herself. “I don’t know about you, but I’m a bit skint – a fiver for a pizza was all I could afford. We could’ve gone for a burger, of course, but then that’s not very…”
Romantic? Maya silently finished his sentence for him as she watched him blush slightly.
“No, it’s fine, I love pizza and I’ve never been here before,” she smiled encouragingly, gazing round the restaurant at the overblown but cosy Italian decor.
“Not what you’re used to, though,” he smiled back at her, looking a little more confident again.
Maya gave a half-laugh, wondering what on earth he meant.
Does he think I only go to fancy restaurants? Or that I never eat out at all? she puzzled to herself.
“I mean – and maybe I’m rushing a bit here – I’d love to go out to an Indian restaurant with you sometime,” he beamed as if about to give her a big compliment. “You must know so much about all the amazing food – I always just have the same thing and go for a chicken tikka massala every time!”
“Well,” said Maya, still trying to figure out where he was going with this, “if ever I go to an Indian restaurant, I always go for a vegetable korma. I don’t really like hot food.”
Billy laughed as if that was the funniest thing he’d heard in ages.
“But what about at home? What do you tend to have at home?”
“Whatever Brigid, our home help, makes for us,” Maya answered, her fixed smile now fading fast.
“Ah, right…” It was Billy’s turn to look confused. “So, uh, how long have you been here?”
“In this restaurant? About twenty minutes,” she answered him straight-faced, using the same sarcastic tone of voice she usually kept for Sunny. Then, seeing his face drop, she softened it by adding: “I’ve lived in Winstead for about a year and a half now.”
“And where were you born?” he continued clumsily.
“London. Where were you born?” Maya was starting to feel irritated.
“Me? Oh, I’m just a Winstead boy, born and bred. Very boring.”
Too right, thought Maya. What’s he going to ask next – if he can see my sari collection?
“Have you ever, you know, been back for a visit?”
“To London?” she asked, deliberately misunderstanding him.
“No,” he laughed nervously, sensing her irritation but not really taking it on board. “I mean India.”
“No – my parents prefer skiing holidays,” she answered flatly.
&n
bsp; Maya could see what he was doing: trying to fit her into some stereotype without even getting to know her first. She could almost see herself through his eyes as some exotic Hindu princess with a deep, innate sense of the mystical world, a talent for making chapatis and a video cabinet full of Bollywood classics.
But I’m none of those things! she seethed inwardly. I’m me, I’m British, I’m the same as all my friends. I like chart music, Ewan McGregor, watching Disney videos with my little brother, and strawberry sundaes the way Nick makes them down at the End. How dare he make assumptions about me?
“They prefer skiing? Wow, that’s amazing!” Billy said in astonishment.
You may be pretty, thought Maya, staring stony-faced at the tactless boy opposite her, but you’re also pretty stupid.
CHAPTER 18
DEEPER AND DEEPER
“Maya!” said Sonja in surprise. “I didn’t expect to see you tonight!”
Maya lifted her eyebrows tellingly and slid into the booth beside Sonja and Kerry.
“I just thought I’d take a diversion on the way home, in case any of you were still here.”
“Well, we are for the next ten minutes – until Nick throws us out,” said Sonja looking pointlessly at the wonky clock on the wall that pointed to twelve. “So what happened to your date? Didn’t exactly last very long, did it?”
“No. It wasn’t a whole lot of fun so I bailed out early. Said I had a headache.”
“Why? What happened?” asked Kerry with concern. She and Sonja had only just finished idly wondering how Maya was doing on her first date and keeping their fingers crossed for her. The last thing they expected was to see her wandering into the End at ten to nine.
“Why? How about he was a patronising git?” said Maya, relieved to be in good company after an hour’s worth of tortuous conversation with Billy.
“In what way? Did he act like you were thick or something?” asked Sonja incredulously. No one she knew was smarter than Maya.
“No – he just had all these preconceptions about me; asking me things like how did I feel about arranged marriages and Buddhism and stuff…”