Secrets and Lies

‘Oh goodness, I’ve got to show you something,’ Francesca said as the group reached the school. She fished out her iPhone from a small Purdey shoulder bag. ‘Piccies from our half-term hols,’ she explained, giggling as she clicked through a few photographs. Francesca turned her phone around to show the one she had picked for Sam and the others to see. They peered at a picture of Francesca’s husband, Tom, normally an immaculately clad banker, wearing a pair of baggy swim-shorts and beaming inanely as he struck a ridiculous muscleman stance with a surfboard on a Mustique beach. The women fell about laughing but Francesca said, ‘That’s not the half of it. There’s a real corker here somewhere. Ah, this one.’ The next picture was of Tom standing in the kitchen of their villa, still bare-chested and this time holding a large gleaming cucumber up against the crotch of his swim-shorts. The droll expression on his face made everyone scream with merriment and Sam forced herself to join in, feeling something catch at her heart. How greedily she always gathered up particulars of the kind of relationship Francesca took so much for granted and that would never be hers to have. It wasn’t that Akbar was a bad husband, but they certainly seemed to have a lot less fun than couples like Francesca and Tom did. Sam could not, in fact, recall Akbar ever having done something absurd purely to make her laugh, and had put it down a long time ago to her own taut demeanour; to the fear that lurked deep inside her, always half-expecting things to go wrong if she enjoyed herself too much.

Fortunately the school bell was now ringing and everyone was distracted by the emerging children. Sam didn’t think she could bear looking at more of Francesca’s happy holiday pictures.

They walked back home together, nevertheless, chatting companionably and carrying their load of colourful jackets and bags, the children tumbling ahead of them.

‘Coffee?’ Francesca asked as they reached her gate.

Worrying at the prospect of having to look at more photographs of Francesca’s boisterous family having fun, Sam made a hasty excuse which, thankfully, wasn’t entirely untrue. ‘I’d have loved to, Franci, but I’m going into town a little later to meet a couple of old school friends for a drink.’

‘Those two mates of yours from your school in Delhi?’ Francesca asked, adding, ‘I remember them from Heer’s birthday party, they were the only women there who came without children!’

Sam laughed. ‘That’s them all right. Couldn’t keep them away if I tried! Anita doesn’t have her own kids yet so Heer’s a sort of surrogate daughter for her whenever she gets maternal or broody. Which doesn’t happen very often. And Bubbles’ two are now far too grown-up for kiddie birthday parties!’

‘I’ll tell you what I do remember about your mate Bubbles—the fabulous croc-skin clutch she was carrying. Just gorgeous! Bea Valdez, she said it was. It’s not like me, but I just couldn’t help asking.’

‘Oh, Bubs would never mind anyone asking her anything. Sometimes I wonder how she retains her niceness considering the kind of stratosphere her family moves in,’ Sam replied.

‘Golly, yes, you did say once that they were pally with the likes of Lakshmi Mittal and Tamara Mellon.’

Sam smiled. ‘Lakshmi Mittal’s a family friend of theirs, I think. But Bubbles’ only connection with Tamara Mellon is that their daughters go to the same school. Oh, and that she buys every other Jimmy Choo shoe ever produced!’

‘Seriously?’

‘Absolutely seriously. She must have at least fifty pairs at any one time, dear old Bubbles. I mean, the sales girl at the Chelsea store personally calls her whenever a new design comes in, for heaven’s sake! Oh, and you should see her shoe closet—to die for!’

‘Ohhh,’ Francesca breathed dreamily, opening her gate. ‘Some people do have such dream lives, don’t they?’

Sam recognised the irony of the situation. Here was Francesca—whom Sam had always envied slightly—madly envying Bubbles, who was, all things considered, really just the archetypal poor little rich girl, the fat pimply teenager she once was still lurking just beneath the surface. But Sam would not dream of gossiping with Francesca about Bubbles and so, as Heer was now pulling her away, eager to get home, Sam waved her neighbour a hasty goodbye.

Punching in the numbers to open her electronic gate, Sam allowed her daughter through first, following her down the steps that led to the kitchen door. She unloaded Heer’s schoolbag, jacket and ballet slippers onto the kitchen table before grabbing her daughter, whose hands were already raiding the biscuit jar, giving her a big kiss before she wriggled away. ‘I bought those for me from Konditor and Cook today! Well, no more than one, Heer, if you want to be the world’s best ballerina. And early dinner tonight, okay?’ she called out after the small figure that was already bounding up the stairs to her room brandishing a large wedge of chocolate-chip shortbread in one hand.

Sam exchanged a smile with her maid, who was brewing up some fragrant masala tea. ‘Oh, a cup for me too, Masooma,’ she said, pulling off her trainers. ‘And then we can do the month’s accounts, yes?’ Not that the accounts needed doing as they weren’t into July yet, but Sam knew she had to stay busy and keep herself distracted until she was with Anita and Bubbles. Miss Lamb’s letter had been carefully put away in the bottom of her lingerie drawer where Akbar would never find it. She could never discuss it with him. Only Anita and Bubbles would understand her pain and guilt.

By evening there was a light drizzle falling. Sam pulled up at a parking meter as near to Anita’s Aldwych office as she could manage. The space was tight and it took a couple of shunts before the bulk of her Audi was comfortably contained in its slot. Odd how expertly she could do that, without Akbar’s presence in the car making parallel parking fraught with all kinds of perils. After turning the wipers off, she sat for a few minutes watching raindrops make their journey down the windscreen, some unhesitant and quite certain of their destination, others—like her, she couldn’t help thinking—tentatively stopping and starting before finally rolling reluctantly towards the bonnet. When the rain had eased a bit, Sam emerged from the car, pulling her handbag and pashmina from the back seat. Then she zapped the central-locking system, which responded with its familiar reassuring beep. Akbar usually did that while striding purposefully away from the car, without even glancing over his shoulder, but Sam preferred to be sure the locks were down and flashing their little red lights before she could walk away.

Shivering, she wrapped her stole around her bare shoulders and assessed the gaps in the traffic before darting across the road. Even a passing summer shower could instantly turn London back to a wintry grey, the city seeming to return with relief to being its favourite avatar. She looked at her watch as she quickened her steps for Bush House. She’d told Anita four o’clock and already it was a quarter past. Her super-efficient journalist friend often despaired over Sam’s rather scatty time-keeping abilities, recently joking: ‘Imagine if I were to open up the news bulletin with…It’s—oh crikey, so sorry everyone—just a couple of minutes past ten. But does it matter, for heavens sake, just a few minutes this way or that?’ Anita had mimicked Sam’s lazy drawl as she said that last sentence, eliciting a good-natured smile from Sam, who would have been the first to admit she had airily carried over the concept of ‘Indian time’ into her life here in England, unlike Anita. Constantly amazed by Anita’s brusque professionalism, Sam often found it hard to imagine that they’d managed to stay friends since they were seven.

She went through the tall doors of the BBC that were invariably surrounded by dripping scaffolding, and waved when she spotted Anita standing at the top of the stairs joshing with an elderly security guard. Anita would chat to anyone, and had once claimed that casual conversations were the sources of her best stories.

They hugged as Anita reached the bottom of the stairs. ‘Are you okay?’ she asked Sam, who nodded. ‘Sorry I couldn’t speak when you called…’

‘Don’t worry, but I couldn’t get hold of Bubbles either and really needed to hear one of your voices.’

‘Is she coming?’

‘Of course, she said she’ll meet us at Heebah at five.’

‘Make that six then,’ Anita said wryly, pulling up the hood of her gilet as they stepped outside the building.

‘She won’t be late today. She just has to drop her mum-in-law somewhere before getting the car and driver to herself.’

Sam ignored Anita’s eye-roll. Anita was the only one of them who still travelled on the tube—which was fine until she started making a virtue of it. Occasionally, if she went on for long enough about carbon footprints and off-setting emissions, Sam would feel guilty enough to walk across the park or hop on a 98 bus to get into town. But that wasn’t really an option on a day as rainy as this, and for Bubbles to even dream of travelling anywhere but by car was ridiculous, given her millions. Well, her pa-in-law’s gazillions, to be more accurate.

Sam took her friend’s arm as they walked over the zebra crossing, hastening their footsteps for the politely waiting traffic. The drizzle was turning heavier and the café was still half a block away. As usual, she’d forgotten to carry a brolly and pulled her stole over her head. She was ruining another good pashmina, but Akbar had told her to get her hair done in honour of his boss’s visit yesterday and that hadn’t cost very much less.

A few minutes later they ducked with relief under the awning of the hookah café, squeezing their way past brass tables that had been placed on the pavement for smokers. Since the introduction of the smoking ban, Sam had taken to feeling sorry for all those smokers who had been relegated to muddy pavements as they bubbled into brass hookahs and stared moodily out at the rain. Sam had spent years going uncomplainingly to places like Heebah for the sake of her two best friends as, going by the law of averages, it had seemed altogether fairer that they should go to smoking rather than non-smoking establishments. She had tried not to think of it as a sacrifice anyway, having long ago got into the habit of taking shallow breaths when she was around her friends. Anita had been smoking since they were fifteen, claiming then that it helped her concentrate on cramming for their exams, although Bubbles had taken to it only after her marriage, citing her reason as stress induced by, alternately, her mother-in-law, father-in-law, children and husband.

The women were ushered to the table that Sam had sensibly thought to book earlier in the day, and settled onto a pair of commodious white leather banquettes. Sam noticed that all the Persian hookahs and filigreed marble ashtrays had gone, replaced by artful bowls filled with colourful glass beads. Anita ordered their drinks: a full-bodied Shiraz for Sam and a vodka tonic for herself. After their waiter had left, she said, ‘Well, let’s see Lamboo’s letter then’, and as she shrugged off her damp gilet she saw that Sam was already holding it out in her direction.

Bubbles looked fretfully out of the car window—they had left Belgravia at least half an hour ago, taken fifteen minutes to get to the art buyer’s office on Curzon Street, where her mother-in-law had disembarked, and were still only just approaching Grosvenor Square. The traffic snarl-up around the American Embassy wasn’t helped by the ghastly concrete road blocks that seemed to have become a permanent feature of the square. She could see a metal passageway with a makeshift placard saying ‘Visas’ that was occupying half the road and snaked all the way around the block. The passageway was empty of people, the embassy probably having shut at five, although a hulking guard with a jutting chin stood holding an impressive piece of weaponry while gazing at the passing traffic. He caught Bubbles’ eye briefly through the car window as she drifted past, but there wasn’t the usual flicker of interest on his impassive features. He had obviously not registered the fancy car and liveried chauffeur in the way most people did, sneaking unashamedly curious peeks at the occupants of the rear seat to catch a glimpse through smoked glass of such blessed beings that could afford to ride in a Maybach. They were hardly likely to know that she, Bubbles, rode in it only when accompanying her imperious mother-in-law like some kind of handmaiden. Nor would they know that there were things money and Maybachs couldn’t achieve, such as being able to get through the London traffic faster on a day like this. There was no point getting tetchy with the poor driver, as her mother-in-law had done a few minutes ago. He was doing his best with the bulky car that had purred again to a standstill. To distract herself, Bubbles delved into the magazine rack behind the seat and found copies of Tatler and American Vanity Fair. She leafed through the first and then the second, trying to absorb the gossip and the fashion tips. But her concentration was terrible today. She hadn’t been able to think straight since the arrival of Lamboo’s letter this morning, unable even to speak to Sam when she had seen her name flash repeatedly on the screen of her phone. Slapping the magazines down on the seat, Bubbles opened her bag and took out the envelope for the umpteenth time. She gently ran her fingers over its rough paper, in some inexplicable way relishing the painful tug she felt in her heart. Just when her psychotherapist had confirmed that she was finally learning to put futile memories away, this! Someone—it must have been Anita—had once said that people remembered happy things like their childhood days and first love and first taste of ice-cream in a cone only when they were unhappy. If that was so, then it was clear to Bubbles that she was condemned to be surrounded by her memories despite the best psychotherapy Harley Street had to offer. And how they had rushed back this morning, faces and voices emerging thick and fast from some kind of wintry mist, even the tiniest details etched with sudden frightening clarity before her eyes. Bubbles shoved the letter back into her Mulberry tote, nervously rubbing her other hand over the cold hardness of its metal studs, warming them against her palm as she looked out at the rain.

It had rained in Delhi too that morning long ago, complete with lightning flashes and thunderclaps, which was not so unusual for late December. The downpour had made the roses in Miss Lamb’s garden drop their petals all over the winter earth, like red spatters of blood. Or so Bubbles had thought, until she had actually seen what blood looked like after it had fallen on wet earth—virtually invisible to the eye. She shuddered. ‘Where are we now, Mottram?’ she asked in a high voice, for want of anything else to say.

‘Old Burlington Street, Madam,’ the chauffeur replied. ‘I’m trying all the back roads to get out of this mess. Not long now, hopefully.’

Bubbles recognised the shops of Regent Street as the car turned a corner and she saw shoppers burdened with raincoats and bags, crossing the road and waiting at bus stops, looking as though they carried the weight of the world on their shoulders. She wondered sometimes at the sorrows that might afflict other people, occasionally feeling pangs of guilt at her own rather pampered existence. The cafés were all brightly lit and buzzing with people taking shelter from the rain. She could see a couple kissing in the large window of Starbucks, a mug of shared coffee steaming in between them.

The car crawled over the lights at Piccadilly Circus. They weren’t far from Heebah now, thankfully. Suddenly Bubbles longed to see her two old schoolmates more than anyone else in the world. Anita could be such a pain sometimes, carping on about left-wing stuff and recently making her feel personally culpable when her in-laws’ company bought up an airline. As though those were things she had any control over at all. She’d tried sarcasm (‘I’m not exactly Binkie’s dad’s business advisor, y’know’) but nothing could stop Anita once she had mounted her soapbox. Sam was different, good old Sam. Unfailingly tactful and diplomatic, always playing peacemaker. In truth, though, Bubbles loved them both, even Anita, whose energy and intellect she could draw upon when required, which was frequently. Sometimes she wondered whether it was the combined presence in London of her two oldest friends that had kept her sane all these years. In that respect, at least, she had been lucky.

After the chauffeur had pulled up alongside the maroon and gold awning of Heebah, Bubbles stepped out gingerly, careful not to get her new Manolos wet. A couple of men gave the car, and then her, appreciative glances as she wended her way past the pavement tables into the restaurant, pushing her heavy mane of auburn hair back from her face. Her linen trouser-suit was probably crumpled, but she could tell from Heebah’s fawning mâitre d’ that she still looked expensive. She had never figured out how people uncannily smelt affluence emanating from her person, but they invariably did, even when she hadn’t bothered to dress up.

She made her way across the room as she spotted her two friends. They were deep in conversation and saw her only when she was ushered into her seat. After she had ordered a champagne cocktail for herself, she turned to them. There was none of the usual preamble about clothes and hair and weight today. Instead, she nodded at the letter that lay on the table between Sam and Anita and said sombrely, ‘What the hell do you think Lamboo’s doing?’

‘I was just saying that it’s amazing how she managed to track us all down,’ Anita observed, adding, ‘well, that’s assuming she has sent letters to everyone. I haven’t had mine yet.’

‘It must be waiting for you at your flat. She wouldn’t leave you out. Wonder whether she’s written to everyone, you know, the whole batch of ’93?’

‘Something tells me it’s just us, actually’

‘She must have met someone who knew our addresses,’ Bubbles suggested. ‘Or maybe the internet makes all this easy now. My Ruby was talking about some Facebook website thing where her school friends meet and chat or something…’ Bubbles stopped rambling. The last thing any of them wanted was to be chatting to their other school friends, their little circle having snapped firmly shut the minute they had left school.

‘It wouldn’t have been that difficult to trace us,’ Sam was replying in her usual pragmatic manner. ‘Why, Lamboo might just have called one or the other of our parents in Delhi. I think we’re worrying too much. Maybe it’s just as her letter says: she’s retiring from Jude’s and wants to see us before she “disappears into the deep hush of a convent”.’

‘Mmm, I don’t know…typically poetic, but something tells me it’s more than that,’ Anita said dubiously. ‘It’s clear she’s holding something back…like here, where she says, “I have so much more to tell you girls before I go, but perhaps it is best to wait until you are all gathered here together as before”’. Anita tapped the letter with her forefinger. ‘How the fuck does that not indicate she really wants to say something else, huh? Would she really summon us 4000 miles just to say goodbye?’

It was Bubbles who first said the unsayable, uttering the name not mentioned between them in all these years. ‘Do you think they might have found some new leads in Lily’s case?’ she asked in a small voice.

‘Nonsense. After fifteen years?’ Anita scoffed, although she sounded more nervous than incredulous. ‘I can’t see the Delhi police being that efficient somehow.’

‘It’s possible she just suddenly got a bit maudlin or emotional or some such. After all, the date she’s suggested will be exactly fifteen years since Lily died,’ Sam offered before trailing off.

‘Lamboo emotional? Don’t think so somehow. It just isn’t part of the Brit psyche, stiff upper lip and all that.’

‘Oh God, it just doesn’t make sense,’ Bubbles said, picking up her champagne flute from the table and taking a long swallow. Sometimes the very act of thinking made her head hurt.

‘D’you know,’ Sam said, wrapping her shawl around her shoulders, ‘I met Aradhna Singh at a lunch party the other day. She was just back from her school reunion at St Jude’s. Makes a point of it to go every year, apparently. And she was saying that ours is the only batch that has never had one. A reunion, I mean…’

Anita thumped her glass down on the wooden table with some vehemence. ‘Well, that must’ve been a happy thought for Aradhna,’ she said.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, don’t you recall how miffed she always was at us being the top dogs at school? Their batch, coming straight after ours, would never have matched up, I reckon.’

‘Her “crème de la crème”, Lamboo called us. Remember?’ Sam said softly.

‘Don’t think that meant anything particularly. She just picked the term up from the Brodie play we were doing that year.’

‘Oh that’s not true, Anita,’ Sam protested. ‘Lamboo just doted on us. She really did believe we would go on to do special things.’

‘Well, how the mighty have fallen then,’ said Anita.

‘Oh don’t say that,’ Bubbles cut in, trying to offer comfort. ‘At least you’re doing useful things and meeting interesting political types. Y’know, like Boris Johnson and all…’ She trailed off, knowing how unconvincing that sounded, before making another attempt. ‘I remembered that expression—crème de la crème—just the other day actually, when Binkie got an invite to the Gorbachev concert which said that London’s “crème de la crème” was being invited. Somehow it felt much more special when Lamboo used to say it…’

‘We were special to her…’ Sam insisted.

Anita leaned forward to pick up the menu. ‘Well, only until her precious crème de la crème took so violently against Lily D’Souza. That could never have been lost on someone as canny as old Lamboo, even though—to be fair—she never once did let on. But I was always sure it was the reason why she never had us back for a reunion. I mean…’ she paused, keeping her eyes on the menu, ‘surely it would have been anathema for someone as morally upright as Lamboo to jolly around with us after Lily’s death…’ Anita’s voice dropped as she kept her eyes down, unable to make eye contact with her two companions as she continued in a mumble, ‘…especially seeing how plainly we benefited from it.’

Anita had aimed the comment at herself, but in the silence that followed it slowly dawned on her that Sam and Bubbles might have misunderstood such a clumsy expression of remorse. Discomfited, she looked at her friends and saw appalled expressions on both their faces. Realising suddenly how wounding her words must have been, she leaned forward and clutched Sam’s knee, her expression now mortified. ‘Heyyy, Sam, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to sound so sharp, nor be so terribly thoughtless. I’ve just been feeling so tetchy all day’

‘God, me too. Even my father-in-law noticed,’ Bubbles said, taking another long sip of her drink, the flute trembling slightly between her fingers.

Sam was looking into her own wine glass, now stained pink from the Shiraz. ‘I can’t deny…’ she whispered, her face suddenly full of lines and shadows. She took a deep breath before continuing, ‘You know, even today I can’t think of that year without my heart squeezing itself so hard in my chest, it’s as if I can’t breathe for a few minutes. I know we never speak of it but…Lily’s death on the night of our Social. I honestly don’t know how we ever…’ She turned back to Anita, but her friend could see that Sam’s dilated pupils were unable to focus on her own. A glass of wine was usually all it took to make Sam a little drunk, but this, Anita knew, was something else altogether. Poor Sam was clearly trying to gather herself together, her voice trembling as she continued speaking in a low voice, now seeming unable to stop her thoughts. ‘You know, it was only much, much later that it really sank in. The enormity of what we had done. I know I just wasn’t myself that winter…death seemed almost to be stalking me like some evil beast…but still…I shouldn’t try to find excuses for myself…’ Sam stopped abruptly and shivered. The women sat in silence for a few minutes before Sam squeezed Anita’s hand, which was still in hers, indicating forgiveness for her earlier remark.