Secrets and Lies

‘Madamji, you are being called onto the set. Immediately please!’ he said, taking his cue from Zeba’s glowering expression.

Zeba threw a falsely apologetic look at the girl, who looked like a child that had suddenly had her lollipop snatched away from her. ‘I am so sorry,’ she said, getting up and smiling sweetly before turning to Gupta and saying, ‘Gupta-sahib, please take this author’s details and arrange a time with her for a proper interview. She is writing a book and we must help her. Okay?’

Gupta nodded, his face a mask. Madamji’s acting was so good that he sometimes had to check later with her whether she really meant what she said in front of other people. Zeba had already turned away from the girl, thinking it best not to wait for a reply. Security in this place was not what it used to be, Zeba thought crossly as she hurried back to her rooms, carefully picking her way over the network of cables and wires that lay strewn across the floor of the studio. In the era of the big stars, journalists knew their place and never wrote badly of the celebrities, no matter what they got up to—bigamous marriages, name changes, even changing religions to suit their convenience. Nobody questioned anything. They were like Gods in those days, lording it over ordinary mortals from the big screen. Now everyone thought film stars could be their friends, thanks to their TV sets that took them right into people’s living rooms. But why journalists considered it their job to expose film stars and find something—anything—to destroy them, Zeba had never been able to work out. Didn’t they have politicians to chase any more?

She closed the door behind her in relief, throwing herself down on the bed. Suddenly remembering the hours it had taken her hairdresser to get her seventies-style beehive hairdo just right, she hastily sat up again. Casting a quick look at the mirrored wardrobe, she breathed a sigh of relief. No damage done, thankfully. Zeba angled her face to examine herself in the mirror. Her skin glowed alabaster white, just turning a pale rose over her cheekbones. Her neck was smooth and curved downwards quite marvellously to shapely shoulders. She looked into tawny brown eyes that, she had on excellent authority, were capable of making hardened underworld dons swoon. Then she fluttered her lashes, trying to see what it was that other people saw, smiling, lips together, then lips carefully parted, revealing a sparkle of fine even teeth inherited from her father.

The journalist wanted to know when she had taken up acting. Well, Zeba knew exactly when she had: aged two, when she had first become conscious of her ability to make people coo over her merely by pouting coquettishly and swinging her little hips. But she wasn’t exactly going to divulge all that, was she? Nor that there was one particular day when she had realised that she would kill—yes, kill—to be the star. An image of Lily D’Souza clad in a white robe, declaiming for all she was worth on the school stage, flashed into her mind. Zeba could even remember the words…‘Oh God, that madest this beautiful earth, when will it be ready to receive thy saints? How long, oh lord, how long?’ She remembered the electricity of that moment: the pain that seemed to drip off Lily’s beautiful face, the silence pervading the school hall, and, most of all, the awed expression on the old drama teacher’s face as he gazed up at Lily with the kind of expression none of Zeba’s own histrionic efforts at school had ever elicited. Oh yes, if a knife had been handy at that moment, Zeba would have happily leapt onto the stage, killing St Joan right there in the middle of her bloody audition. She could imagine the reaction if she ever told a journalist all that. Wouldn’t they just love it? The story of how Zeba Khan, aged seventeen, had fought for her role in the school annual production with a new girl, Lily D’Souza. Beautiful, brilliant Lily D’Souza, who was later found dead in the school’s rose garden. Oh how the press pack would love it, dementedly carrying the story on all their networks, reporters standing outside her house, breathlessly exclaiming over the unsolved case in which top star Zeba Khan was clearly involved! She remembered the time a careless remark she had passed about a local politician had made the morning news, thereafter being repeated all day on an endless loop in red ticker-tape at the bottom of the TV screen. They were starved for stories, these 24-hour news channels, and fell upon the smallest scrap of celebrity news as though it were manna from heaven! This story would not be a scrap of news, though. It certainly would not be difficult for a reporter to find interviewees—old schoolmates jealous of her success, teachers she had been rude to, any number of people who would no doubt delight in giving chapter and verse on how stuck-up Zeba Khan had been at school. There was a lot of stuff from those days that was well worth keeping hidden, after all.

In the mirror, Zeba saw fear and guilt darken her face at the memory of Lily and reminded herself angrily that nobody had liked the new girl. ‘Thinks too much of herself,’ someone had said, and, ‘What does she think, that she can just walk in and take over from us?’ But, even after it had been well established that Lily was the most conceited little bitch they had ever met, Zeba had been astonished to hear that Lily had had the nerve to put her name down for the lead role in the play that year. It wasn’t just that Zeba always, always played the lead—everyone knew that—but Lily was new, an outsider, for heaven’s sake! A new girl didn’t ever show such impudence if she knew what was good for her. It was no less than arrogance to think she could waltz in and steal things that had always belonged to others. Besides, it was Zeba’s final year at the school and the part of Joan of Arc had been virtually written for her. Why, old Moss, the drama teacher, had even adapted parts of the script to suit her accent as he had heard that scouts from both film school and the National School of Drama were going to be in attendance. Zeba had toiled all year for the role, neglecting her schoolwork to practise for hours before her bathroom mirror till each line had been perfected like a carefully chiselled jewel. Did everyone think she would quietly stand by and let some cocky brat from the sticks just waltz in and rob her of all that? All that effort, all that work, her ticket to film school and her dreams of stardom? Well, the bottom line was that it was not Lily D’Souza who shone in the limelight at the annual production that year. It was Zeba. It was Zeba Khan, as it always had been and was always meant to be. And, despite the circumstances surrounding that fact, Zeba could still—even after all these years—take some satisfaction from it.

Chapter Five

DELHI, 1993

By the time Lily D’Souza had been at St Jude’s for two weeks, there were not many classmates left still trying to befriend her. She had, on her very first day, managed to upset half the population of the class by declaring that Delhi was a crass city because of its Punjabi business population, not stopping to consider that half the girls in Class XII were the daughters of Punjabi businessmen. Then, granted exemption from studying Hindi on the basis of having come from another state, she airily dismissed what was the mother-tongue of most of her classmates as ‘the language of politics and corruption’.

Even the normally peaceable Sam and uncomplicated Bubbles had retreated hurt, burnt by Lily’s acid tongue on too many occasions to persevere any more with amiable overtures. No one wanted to befriend the new girl, for that was what Lily was still persistently called.

‘It’s because she’s so horrible that we can’t stop calling her “new girl,” I think,’ Bubbles remarked as their group sat under the gulmohar tree sharing their lunches one day.

Startled by her bench-mate’s unlikely astuteness, Anita agreed. ‘Absolutely It’s not like I haven’t tried seeing it from Lily’s point of view. I mean, it’s never easy to break into an established group. But we’ve done everything to make her feel welcome, haven’t we? Well, at least Sam has.’

‘And me!’ Natasha chipped in. ‘I even offered her my Mont Blanc pen set, you know, when her crappy ball-point ran out in Biology the other day. But would she take it? Like heck! Just too nose-in-the-air, that’s what.’

‘Essentially, Lily’s done nothing to try to belong,’ said Anita firmly.

‘It’s like she’s in another world, floating way above us. Just because she’s pretty’. Zeba spat out the word.

Only Sam was still faintly doubtful. ‘Maybe we should give her more time…I mean, we don’t know yet exactly why she was brought here, but it’s almost certainly because something bad has happened in her past.’

‘But then she should tell us about it. We can only sympathise if we know.’ This was Nimmi speaking, a cheery sort of girl whom Sam knew was usually quite reasonable.

‘Definitely We’re all so open with each other, aren’t we?’ Natasha was starting to sound quite indignant now.

‘Maybe she will be too, once she’s settled down and starts coming out of herself,’ Sam replied.

Natasha spluttered on a mouthful of ham and cheese. ‘Coming out of herself! You’re not suggesting shyness is her problem, Sam? Have you seen the way she looks around the classroom? Looking without seeing, that’s what she does. As though we’re all too far beneath her to be noticed. You’re the only one she’ll deign to talk to, Sam, and even that is only when she needs something.’

‘Yeah, and have you seen how she only ever sits in the front row? Because that way she doesn’t need to look at anyone else,’ Zeba grumbled.

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ Sam murmured, ‘maybe we’re reading too much into all this. The front bench is just the place she was given. I sit in the front row too.’

‘But you’re different, you’re class monitor,’ Bubbles said, adding, ‘you’ve always sat in the front row. And you keep looking back at us at least.’

‘Yeah, only to say “ssshhh…quiet” and suchlike!’ Sam replied.

‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, Sam—even you should be able to see that Lily’s just a stuck-up, arrogant little bitch,’ Zeba demurred, nibbling delicately at the edge of a shammi kebab.

‘Perhaps she thinks she’s above us because she’s the Princy’s relative and lives in her cottage,’ Bubbles offered.

‘But she said on her first day that she wasn’t related to Lamboo, remember?’ Nimmi queried.

‘Well, that’s clearly a lie, isn’t it? Why would Lamboo take her into her house if they weren’t related, huh? And didn’t Lamboo describe Lily as her relative to you, Sam?’ Zeba asked.

‘She did, actually, I’m sure I didn’t mishear that. Something about her being Lily’s nearest relative after the loss of her parents,’ Sam said, getting up and dusting sandwich crumbs off her navy pleated skirt. She scanned the playground, empty except for their own little group occupying the only shady area under the trees. Delhi in June was as hot as hell and she could see dust lifting off the basketball courts and hanging in the still air. Luckily these were the last two weeks of term before the summer holidays and she would soon be off to the hills with her family. Much as she loved Delhi, she hated the coming season of sandstorms. Already there were days when her throat and nasal passages felt clogged with dust, and she feared greatly for both her father and brother, both asthma sufferers. She cast a look at her watch.

‘C’mon, girls, we don’t want to be late for Gomes. There’s just five minutes left until the bell, and I need to fill my water flask from the cooler on the way to the lab.’

‘Oh it’s only our Gomesey,’ Zeba said lazily, stretching her lissom legs out from under her and tying her long brown tresses into a loose knot at the nape of her neck. ‘He never gets cross. I’ll take care of that.’

Everyone tittered uneasily but Sam’s forehead creased into a small anxious frown again. She had been waiting to have a serious conversation with Zeba about her relationship with their Chemistry teacher. ‘I’ve been meaning to say, Zebs…’ Sam adjusted her tone, trying to sound less sanctimonious. ‘You really must stop this absurd thing before it goes too far. I feel so terribly scared of what might happen, you know.’

But Zeba merely smiled cheekily up at her, amusement making her pretty brown eyes twinkle and dance. ‘Listen, Sami, this “thing,” as you describe it, has been going on for a couple of months now and nothing has happened, has it? Has it?’

‘What do you mean, “nothing”—you mean, like, you haven’t had full-blown sex, yeah?’ Natasha clarified.

Bubbles squealed at the sound of the word ‘sex’, clapping her hands over her ears and giggling uncontrollably. Zeba threw her a disparaging look as Sam tried gamely to continue her counsel. ‘Even if it’s not…sex,’ she cleared her throat, ‘you have been doing…all kinds of things you just shouldn’t with a teacher, Zeba.’

‘Only waist up, Sam, nothing waist down,’ Natasha said in a reassuring tone, adding, ‘and he only went past her bra just the other day.’

Bubbles squealed again but Zeba regally ignored her this time, nodding in appreciation of Natasha’s defence. ‘Anyway, it was Gomes who made the first move, not me,’ she said.

‘Yeah, like that makes a real difference,’ Anita said sardonically.

Natasha put in another mild entreaty on behalf of Zeba in her phlegmatic American drawl. ‘Hey, listen, we all know of Zeba’s irrepressible desire to flirt. Can’t we just let it be?’

‘And what can I do anyway if he keeps flirting with me?’ Zeba asked, emboldened by Natasha’s defence and trying now to sound wounded.

‘Well, if you’re such a victim you could try reporting him, couldn’t you?’ Anita enquired caustically.

Sam cut in hastily, ‘I don’t know about that. We’ll have to think things through before taking such a course of action. Reporting a teacher is a big deal. Gomes will go and lose his job and there’ll be an enquiry and heaven knows what else. Can’t you just try to put an end to it yourself, Zeba? Just tell him he’s too old for you or something.’

‘But right now it’s just so amusing, Sam,’ Zeba giggled. ‘Last week he was leaning over me, to use the pipette, y’know, and, when his hand slipped it landed on my thigh…’

‘If I were you, I’d have screamed my lungs out at that point,’ Anita said sharply.

Zeba looked pityingly at her as though assessing the unlikely prospect of anyone, Gomes or otherwise, making a pass at someone who wore glasses and pigtails.

‘You let him grab your thigh?! Really, Zeba, how can you be such an idiot!’ a horrified Sam exclaimed, ignoring the sound of the bell clanging in the distance, which announced the end of the break.

‘When you’re Zeba, being an idiot is the easy bit, Sam,’ Anita put in drily.

Sam could not bring herself to smile, despite Bubbles and Natasha going off into gales of giggles at that. ‘Just don’t encourage him, Zebs, please!’ she implored.

Zeba got up along with the others, now looking slightly more shame-faced than before. ‘It’s actually not so easy to put Gomes off, you know, Sam…’ she said as they dusted down their uniforms.

‘Why not?’ Anita demanded, picking up her satchel. ‘Give me one good reason.’

‘You see…well, okay, I’ll tell you because I eventually would have anyway. But, listen to this—Gomes says he might be able to get the Chemistry paper for me before the Board Exams. A friend of his is the person who’s going to be setting it. Just think of it…’ Zeba looked around at the group, half pleading and half excited.

There was a sudden silence as everyone stopped walking to look at her open-mouthed.

‘He what?!’ Anita screeched.

‘Oh Zeba, how could you…’ Sam breathed.

‘Listen, I was going to share the paper with you guys, so don’t look at me like that!’ Zeba said.

‘Oh God, Zeba, like that would make it all better. Oh, I just don’t know what to say,’ Sam wailed.

‘Listen, without it I’ll just flunk. And there’ll be no getting to the film institute without a school leaving cert. Then my parents will ground me and there’ll be no outings and no fun, and life just won’t be worth living,’ Zeba said, her voice rising dramatically.

‘We’ll talk about this later—okay? God, there’s the second bell! Now I won’t even have time to go to the loo,’ Sam wailed over her shoulder as she hurried away from the group of friends. Leaving them to wend their way across to the Chemistry lab, she ran towards the water-coolers, nodding absently as she passed a gaggle of seventh graders on their way out of choir practice. They had temporarily suspended their trilling to say hello to her but Sam’s thoughts were miles away as she hastened past them with a serious look on her face. Normally she made it a point to talk to her many fans among the juniors, but today she had not even noticed that she had left them gazing disappointed at her retreating back.

How horribly muddling all this was, Sam considered while filling her water flask. As head girl she really ought to do something about this ghastly mess, but what? Perhaps she ought to let Gomes know somehow that the girls all knew what was going on and that his dirty secret could not be contained any more. Anyone could stumble upon Gomes and Zeba in the lab, which was where—as far as Sam knew—most of their trysts took place.

She ran down the corridor and reached the lab just as her group of friends were walking through the door. By now Sam was perspiring profusely, both from the heat and out of fear. Fortunately the Chemistry lab was the coolest and darkest room in the school, shaded by ancient trees. Set back from the Edwardian building that housed all the classrooms, it had once been the outside kitchen of the old convent that had since acquired a brand-spanking-new stainless-steel canteen indoors. Converting a kitchen to a lab must have been easy, Sam had observed when she had first set foot in this building. The shelves of colourful spices had been replaced by bottled chemicals and the sink now bled the pink juice of potassium permanganate crystals rather than the blood from meat. The faintly unpleasant smell of hydrogen sulphide hung over everything now, though that apparently hadn’t been much of a deterrent to either Gomes or Zeba.

Sam tried not to feel nauseated when she saw their Chemistry teacher simpering openly at Zeba while the group took their places on the stools surrounding his desk. Gomes was a tall, slim man with a mop of oily black hair, and would not have been bad looking were it not for an underhand kind of manner that Sam had often found quite sly. Even the way he walked around made it look as though he were sliding around the lab rather than walking. The incorrigible Zeba looked nonchalant as she perched herself on a stool right under the teacher’s nose amid all the clattering and shuffling. She placed one foot on the stool next to her, a position that caused her skirt to slide a few inches up her long legs. Gomes whipped out a handkerchief and wiped his forehead with it, his small black eyes flicking momentarily towards the shadow between Zeba’s thighs before he struggled to look away. Sam took up her station at the counter as Gomes came around lighting the Bunsen burners, keeping a wary eye on Zeba who was whispering with Bubbles and saying something so hysterical that it was making both girls shake with laughter. As Gomes approached the pair, he dropped the matchbox, scattering matches all over the floor. This made the girls crease up some more and then, while he was scrabbling around on his knees, Zeba stood up behind him to make a thrusting gesture with her hips, wearing a droll expression on her face. Sam flashed a warning look at Zeba as the whole class started to titter and Gomes staggered back to his feet, red in the face. The laughter didn’t seem to bother him, though, and he merely looked adoringly at Zeba as she readjusted her facial expression to one of faux respect, leaning forward on the counter so that he could see right down the V of her open-necked blouse to where her cleavage nestled temptingly. Sam shot a look around the classroom and saw that while most of the girls remained oblivious to the drama of Zeba and Gomes, busying themselves with today’s silver-making experiment, Lily D’Souza had her eyes carefully fixed on the pair. Sam saw those pale blue-grey eyes narrow in recognition before Lily looked as though she were calculating something in her head. Sam shivered and looked pleadingly at Zeba, who was still behaving as though she’d inhaled a whole canister of nitrous oxide. Oh, she was going to get such a telling-off when the school day finished.

Zeba was, however, her usual insouciant self when Sam cornered her after their lab session.

‘You should have seen the way Lily was looking at you when you were flirting with Gomes,’ Sam hissed, squeezing Zeba’s elbow hard as they walked to the gate to emphasise her point.

‘First of all, Sam, it’s not me flirting with Gomes but the other way around, okay? And secondly, I’m not scared of Lily. What can she do to me, hanh?’ Zeba replied brazenly.

‘What can she do? She can tell Lamboo, that’s what! And then we’re all in big trouble.’

‘She’ll never tell Lamboo, yaar,’ Zeba dismissed airily.

‘Oh, and what makes you so confident?’

‘Well, because they never talk to each other at all—we all know that. Whatever goes on in the Princy’s cottage after school, happy chit-chat between Lamboo and Lily doesn’t seem to be part of it.’

Sam recognised the truth of what Zeba said. The principal and Lily certainly did not seem to get on very well. On some days they barely made eye-contact with each other when Miss Lamb was taking their English lesson, or so Sam had observed. So it was a relatively safe deduction that Lamboo was the last person Lily would go snitching to. But that didn’t take away from the fact that Zeba was still dancing with death, playing with fire—no hyperbole would suffice to express Sam’s terror.

But to Zeba she merely said, ‘You could be right about Lily not telling Lamboo. I do hope for your own sake you are. But someone else could sneak…’

‘Who? No one in our class would tattle, you know that.’

‘Hmmm,’ Sam conceded reluctantly. ‘Look, we’ll talk about this later, Zeba, and I’ll help you figure out a way to get rid of Gomes. But I gotta go now. I have Haroon coming to pick me up today.’

The conversation was dropped as Bubbles joined them in the exodus to the school gates. ‘What are you two talking about?’ she asked.

‘Nothing much,’ Zeba said. ‘Well, I’m off to my bus. Bye—and stop fretting, Samira Hussain! I’ll look after myself. I promise!’

‘What’s she talking about?’ Bubbles asked.

‘Oh, just that damn Gomes thing. I really, really want her to put an end to it before it all goes horribly wrong.’

‘Do you think—just maybe—sex and all…’

‘Oh Bubs, how can you be so naïve?’ Sam said, throwing her head back in despair. ‘There’s only one person Zeba will ever love and that’s herself. Thing is, she’s so beautiful she’ll always have men chasing after her, and I guess she’ll just use that to get what she wants.’

‘Maybe Gomes loves her?’ Bubbles offered, undaunted. ‘After all, he’s risking his job and all that too.’

Sam finally smiled in sheer exasperation. ‘What is it with all these theories of love, Bubbles Malhotra? And, pray, are you being kind enough to walk with me to the gates only because a certain Mr Haroon Hussain is expected? I know I foolishly mentioned in your presence during lunch break that my brother was coming to pick me up.’

Bubbles blushed and Sam squeezed her arm, laughing, ‘You’re just hopeless at hiding your feelings, you know!’

Bubbles had met Haroon at least a hundred times, having been a regular visitor to Sam’s house since the age of six. But her comfortable old relationship with Sam’s big brother had recently undergone a curious shift that she had magnificently failed to conceal. Sam wasn’t sure yet how serious it was, but it would have been impossible to miss Bubbles’ newly developed curiosity about Haroon’s life, or the ineptitude with which she conspired to be in his presence, only to become all gauche and awkward when she was.