by Zee Monodee
She laughed and threw her head back as she settled against the booth, a bottle of Guinness in her hand.
“Told you,” he said with a soft smile as he mimicked her, then brought his beer to his lips.
The same lips which had brought her much pleasure the night Nour had been conceived.
Focusing anywhere but on his luscious mouth, she let her gaze roam over him, noticing once again the lack of long locs.
“Why did you cut your hair?” she asked.
He shrugged. “Just didn’t seem to fit any longer. I mean, I was back home, where family duties awaited me. It was a fresh start. I wasn’t who I used to be anymore, you know.”
She could understand him. She was lucky that she didn’t live too close to her family to always have them on her back and could thus live her life as she wanted, dress sense included. If it were up to her mother, she’d be in kurtas and churidars all the time. She’d gotten berated often enough for not wearing a saree during religious ceremonies to know she should don some ethnic wear when going home for such events.
“Tell me about your family,” she said. “It’s a big one, isn’t it?”
He nodded. “My father has seven kids, yeah.”
Something in the sentence tickled her curiosity. “Not your mother?”
“My mother has three of the sons and one of the daughters. His second wife has the others.”
At this, she blinked. “Is your family Muslim?”
“I wouldn’t put it that way. Polygamy is more tradition where I come from.”
“A tradition you subscribe to?” Her heart started hammering as she asked this.
He huffed. “One-woman man.”
“Good.” The word escaped before she could clamp her mouth shut.
He tipped the neck of the bottle her way as his eyes narrowed. “Because you’re a one-man woman?”
“Not negotiable,” she bit out.
“I know.”
Made sense. He knew about Gary.
“Does Humphrey know this?” he continued.
Her stomach bottomed out. She hadn’t thought of him in a while. He’d been away to see some sick great-aunt in the country. Out of sight, out of mind. She really knew how to do that well.
“He does,” she replied, having caught herself. “But … it’s not like that between us.”
What had possessed her to say this? Next, she’d spill the beans about how she was moving into a marriage of convenience.
When Zediah didn’t reply, she swallowed hard.
“He’s giving me a good future, Switz.” I can count on him. She didn’t add this part aloud, though.
“It’s been hard for you, hasn’t it?”
She blinked at the question asked once again in his soft tone, the one that could blanket any quiet with its subtle notes that nevertheless reverberated so strongly.
“Who told you?”
“Oksana. But she wouldn’t go into details.”
The nanny, of course, knew all she’d been through since Nour’s birth. It had been a stroke of luck that she had visited the Lighthaven shelter with Kelsey a few days before going into labour, and they’d stumbled upon Oksana.
The Russian girl had thought she would be coming to work as an au pair in Europe, but she’d been deceived and embroiled in a human sex trafficking ring. Thanks to the work of the Lighthaven Foundation, she had made it out of that Hell, looking for a second chance with nothing and no one waiting for her back in Russia. Oksana had been her rock during the past nine months.
Watching her son’s father, who sat across from her, Rio wondered whether she should tell him what it had been like for her. It still smarted how he had left her in the lurch when he had returned home to Bagumi, and the small part of her still hurting from that pain worked itself to the forefront to spill from her lips.
“I had quite a few opportunities to get married since you left, since being single, and worse, a divorcee, is just not done. A few wanting a visa, but not as much as it would’ve been before. Brexit, you know. Then Nour was born, and it was apparent his father wasn’t a White man, and certainly not Gary.
“I got the St John’s Wood house in the divorce, and it fetched a pretty penny without even going on the market. I bought this place and settled here, even though my mother wanted me to rush to the cramped quarters they call home over the restaurant.
“There was a proposal from a rich older man in Surrey, with the caveat that I should leave my mixed-race baby with my family if I ever wanted to be his wife. Then there was this hotshot young doctor from Ilford. He wanted more kids as it would be his first marriage, and of course, my focus should be on his kids and not mine, so best I give up my baby while he was still so young and he wouldn’t remember his mother.”
The wince on his face turned into a look of pain, and his fingers tightened on the bottle in his grip. Seconds later, he put it down—it had really looked like he would’ve smashed the glass in his hold if he’d kept it there.
“I’m sorry.” His heaving breaths punctuated the two words.
She shrugged, suddenly spent. Oksana, Kelsey, and Minnie, her sister-in-law, were the only ones who knew about these events. The ones who’d seen her cry when everyone else tried to make her ashamed for getting out of an abusive marriage and birthing a dark-skinned son.
She realized then she’d wanted Switz Bagumi to know about this, to understand what it had been like for her when he had thought only of himself on the day he’d turned his back on her.
“Humphrey had no conditions, I presume.” His nostrils flared with those words.
“No.”
“But you don’t love him.”
And it was relevant how? “Switz …”
“Tell me you love him, Rio, and I’ll be off your back. I promise.”
She gulped. He would not play that card with her. She’d imagined a future with him once and look where it had brought her.
“It doesn’t work that way,” she said softly.
His lips drew to a tight line. “You once told me you wished I’d taken you away, Rio. Tell me again, and I’ll do just that.”
A sob hitched in her throat. How she remembered those words spilling from her lips, the hurt and the pain and the rage that had pushed them out of her to let them tumble onto him when she’d thought she’d found a safe abode in his embrace.
How she’d wished someone had taken her away from Gary before the abuse started. How she’d often wished this person would’ve been the gorgeous young man with long locs and fire burning in his eyes as she’d swiped his pint of Guinness from him to take a long sip. She might’ve been engaged back then, but it didn’t mean she had turned blind and couldn’t realize how delicious a man seemed when she laid her eyes on him.
But it was too late now … wasn’t it? He hoped his words would change what, exactly?
Shaking her head from weariness and a sudden feeling of defeat, Rio dropped her bottle on the table and propped her elbows on the surface, palming her face. After a deep breath, she lifted her head and stared at Zediah.
“What are you doing here, Switz?”
“I told you,” he bit out. “Righting my wrongs.”
He was indeed doing just that. Look at Jalil and Quraisha. Look at Nour.
What about her?
She didn’t have an answer here, and he seemed to reckon the same thing. Slowly, he got up and started out of the kitchen. She felt too spent to follow him and to do what? This discussion would be going nowhere.
Seconds later, he came back in her sight, now decked in his jacket and coat. Energy pulsed from him again, but this time ruthless and sharp and meaning business.
“There’s been only you for me, Rio. There will be only you.”
With those words that left her absolutely felled with shock, he walked out of her house and closed the door softly behind him.
After everything that had recently happened, now this?
What was she supposed to do in the end?
Chapt
er Eight
The next twelve-plus hours happened in a daze for Rio as she tried to come to terms with Zediah’s parting words.
It was Saturday, and she was looking forward to some quiet time at home while Oksana took Nour to Storytime at a nearby bookstore. Then the usual baby playdate with the other nannies and mums afterwards. It always helped to have a peaceful afternoon when she would then have her son entirely on her own for the night and the next day as the nanny would be off duty.
Alas, peace was not to be hers as a notification chimed on her phone.
Wedding dress shopping @ Southall
A groan escaped her. Of course, they counted on her to pick up the bill at the many designer shops they would be visiting. At least, it wasn’t going to be at the mecca of all Indian high-end fashion in Brentwood, where even a millionaire would wince at the tab.
She had no way out, and with another moan, she remembered the many Tupperware boxes on the drying rack in her kitchen downstairs. She wouldn’t put it past her mother to have sent all this food just so Rio would have to, at some point, come return the containers to the family home.
But this could prove to be a good distraction from her worries. Or not. So, with a sigh of resignation, she got up, changed into wide palazzo trousers with her thermals underneath and threw on a long silk shirtdress on top. No way could her mother criticize this attire. Or go on a rant about Rio thinking herself above her station and getting all Westernized now with tight flesh-revealing clothing.
She was already feeling defeated as she left Knightsbridge. Nothing good could come from this outing, but what could she do? Unless she wanted to go on a pissed-off rant and scream the whole truth and nothing but at her parent, and then expect the sky to come crashing down on her head, there she’d remain between a rock and a hard place.
“Where’s my Roshan?” her mother bleated out when Rio walked into the flat above the restaurant empty-handed.
You’d think someone had ripped her heart out with the theatrics. Rio almost expected the sound of a thunderbolt and then the view panning in and out on the older woman’s face, three four five times in rapid succession. Then a high-pitched “Nahiin!” would fall out of her thin lips while she clutched her face with her hands in a very vivid rendition of Edvard Munch’s The Scream saying ‘No!’
Blast, it felt way too much like stepping onto the set of a Zee TV or Star Plus Indian soap opera when she came here. The vibe just seemed to do it to her, turning her into a drama queen who had inherited the tendency from her very own mum—horror of all horrors.
“Nour has a play date today,” she said.
“And it’s more important than coming to see his Nanima?”
It grated on her every time her mother used the suffix with her designated title. Using -ma tended to imply she was the child’s overarching mother, with Rio just being an unfortunate blip in the picture.
“You’ll survive,” she mumbled under her breath.
“What was that?”
“Rio! You’re here!”
Saved by her sisters-in-law—Minnie and Tanya were coming down the stairs from the flat above. The two must have been hunkering away from the venomous tongue of their mother-in-law. She so understood them.
A flurry of cheek kisses and hugs ensued between the young women.
“Come on. We’ll be late.”
Trust her mother to speak up or work some drama whenever the spotlight turned away from her. Dutifully, the three of them followed behind as the older woman went straight for Rio’s Range Rover on the curb.
The shops were just a fifteen-minute walk down The Broadway. Still, they’d have to take the car given how Hema Mittal would love to rub it in the face of everyone who saw them that her daughter owned and drove a luxury vehicle the queen used.
Rio took deep breaths all the way and luckily found a parking spot in front of the shopping centre as a vehicle exited right in front of them. They all got out, and Minnie squeezed her hand beside the car in a silent show of support. Rio squeezed back, making sure to tag around Tanya as the poor girl was still not immunized against the sting of the matriarch.
At the counter in one of the Indian wear emporiums, her mother straight out told the shop assistant they were there to look at bridal attire. Rio exchanged a look with Minnie. This meant the skirt would weigh at least forty pounds with all the embroidery on it, the dupatta shawl adding a further twenty to the load. Tanya’s scalp would be burning after just an hour of wearing this, what with her short hair that couldn’t be made into a sturdy bun.
“We’re not going for red, are we, because, you know …”
And here we go. As horror-filled Rio, she also reminded herself she shouldn’t have expected any less. Tanya and Rishabh were already sleeping together, meaning the young woman wasn’t a virgin bride who would honour the precious colour.
“Oh, it’s okay,” Tanya replied with a laugh as if she hadn’t even registered the barb. “Anushka Sharma wore the most beautiful soft pink lehenga for her wedding.”
Indeed, the Bollywood queen had worn a pastel embroidered skirt and blouse combination for her wedding to a cricket legend.
“We’d have to find the right pink for you, though,” Minnie quipped.
“If you’d allow me,” the shop assistant said. “This beautiful maroon and gold would look so much better with your complexion.”
Rio took a step back as the deliberations went on. Her mother always found fault with every item the saleswoman removed from the shelf in its plastic bag and opened out on the counter for them to peruse. Thank goodness she hadn’t brought Nour—the potential for baby spit-up to end up on these precious garments gave her the heebie-jeebies.
Almost an hour later, her mother had vetoed every piece of clothing that had been presented to them. Rio made a silent note to book an appointment for Tanya at the designer wear mecca in Brentwood so the girl would get to choose her bridal attire in peace.
“Hema-ji!” came a strident call from the doorway.
Rio, Minnie, and Tanya all moaned softly upon glimpsing the temple’s biggest busybody, Mrs Savitri Sinha, converging upon them.
Rio glanced at her mother, who seemed to have lit up after being called by the respectful suffix attached to her name. Everyone hearing them would surely figure out she was someone important.
A little girl was flitting about Mrs Sinha. “You know my granddaughter, don’t you? Nitisha. She’s my Tulsi’s eldest.”
“Of course, of course. Such a pretty girl,” Rio’s mother was saying.
“And this is your daughter and your bahus,” the other woman continued. She fawned over said daughter and daughters-in-law to kiss their cheeks and squeeze their upper arms hard.
They were still wincing from the pain as Mrs Sinha turned back to Hema Mittal like whiplash and started discussing them as if they weren’t present.
“Still no more grandchild, Hema-ji?”
“What can I tell you? My godh is still so empty of a new baby to cradle.”
“Have faith, Hema-ji. Have faith. You know my Dev didn’t become a father for so many years. And now, his wife is expecting their third. And my Tulsi is in the family way, too.”
“Yes, yes, of course. God knows best.” Did the woman’s words sound pinched? “What about your Smita? She just finished university, didn’t she? Not engaged yet?”
“Ah, you know those young, modern girls. All about her career, she is. She is interning at a very good law firm in The City. I told her she should nab a good prospect there, you know. Them mostly being lords and such.”
Rio frowned as her mother’s face paled. Everything inside her knew the woman’s mind was flipping at lightning speed in her database to find a way to one-up her rival. A churning sensation started in her stomach; this meant nothing good.
Hema Mittal gave a trilling laugh that rang absolutely false. “Lords, you say? My Riona is almost engaged to one. He’s actually an earl, but we don’t really care about all this. All that matters is h
e is a good boy, hain na?”
Wait, what? What did Humphrey have to do with this? Rio hadn’t told her family anything about him. They didn’t even know about the gala. They’d have shown her any pictures if they’d found something in the society pages, blowing the image to take centre-stage in the family living room.
Everything inside her wanted to lunge ahead to point out she was not engaged to Humphrey, and more importantly, the man owed her nothing.
A soft hand on her arm stopped her from jumping forward at the blatant showing off of her mother. Minnie knew the mind games her mother-in-law loved to play—she would definitely keep Rio in check.
Rio looked her way, and her sister-in-law gave a slight shake of her head. As if to dissuade her from blowing her top off in the crowded shop made even more jam-packed as the two older women were blocking the entrance and only exit.
“Mummy-ji,” Minnie went on with a soft tone. “Pardon me for interrupting, but we should be heading home, shouldn’t we? Papa will be expecting his tea.”
“Of course, of course. Very sorry, Savitri. That man would be lost without me.”
Mrs Sinha cackled and concurred, and Hema Mittal walked out of the shop with her head held high, surely since she had ended up with the scene-stealing statement in the encounter.
Fuming, Rio went to the car and waited until everyone had packed in, then she started towards the restaurant. So this was what it would come down to?
“That poor Savitri,” her mother was going on. “A daughter who refuses to marry because we all know she never will. Too much playing sports when she was young, I tell you. Turned her into almost a man, and now she doesn’t like men. Hmph. Then Tulsi ran away with this dark-skinned playboy who fancied himself a Kollywood movie star. Have you seen how dusky her little girl is? Such a shame, really. Their next child won’t be any fairer, I can assure you.”
Could she stop the car and bodily throw her mother out? All her life, she’d heard veiled barbs about skin colour, yet today must take the cake. The little girl in the shop, Nitisha, looked like she’d grow up to be the next Jourdan Dunn. And, of course, such a beautiful model wasn’t considered pretty as she was dark-skinned.