Sylvia Garland's Broken Heart (31 page)

But even as she asked the question, of course she knew the answer. In Smita’s life, Smita came first. Everyone else, her husband, her mother, even her own son could only ever be a close second. If this move was good for Smita, it would go ahead, whatever the cost to poor little Anand. Besides, how often had Sylvia heard Smita praising the US? It was apparently light years ahead of Britain which Smita found increasingly grubby, run down and frankly past it. In her heart of hearts, Sylvia had to admit Smita had a point. Smita doubtless envisaged a better brighter future for Anand as well as for herself in New York. Of course, this person was her boss too; that could only help her on her way.

Since Jeremy seemed incapable of speech, Sylvia declared, “We have to fight this Jeremy. We can’t take it lying down.”

Jeremy raised an eyebrow. “What do you suggest we do?”

“Well,” Sylvia began. “Well. I think first of all you need to speak to your solicitor, don’t you, and see what he has to say. There must be some sort of order or injunction, mustn’t there, to stop this kind of thing happening. Why, it’s practically
kidnapping
.”

Jeremy sat looking anguished but didn’t answer.

Furiously, Sylvia scolded him. “Jeremy, this isn’t a time for hanging back and dithering. We need to act – and quickly.”

Jeremy sighed. “You can tell me to do whatever you like. You know perfectly well there’s no point; what Smita wants, Smita gets. It’s always been that way as long as I’ve known her.”

Sylvia wanted to shake him. As long as she’d known Jeremy, he’d always been the most hopeless, spineless,
useless
individual. And now, when he was faced with the crisis of his life, he was going to fluff it. In that instant Sylvia decided to take the law into her own hands. Jeremy might be a wet blanket but she was not.

Anand and Smita and Naisha left for Florida as planned at the beginning of August. To Sylvia’s surprise, the month didn’t drag at all. In fact, she found herself busier than she had been at any point in the past five years. She got up early and went briskly to the library. She read up on divorce and custody and so-called international “tug-of-love” cases. She made three separate appointments at the Citizens’ Advice Bureau where a spotty young solicitor called Toby with a disconcertingly frivolous eyebrow piercing advised her on the insubstantial rights of grandparents and cautioned her against taking the law into her own hands. She got in touch with a grandparents’ pressure group who were equally wishy-washy and encouraged her to lobby for reform of the law. She was so busy, she barely noticed the month passing nor the glorious August weather. She had no time to sit out in the gardens feeling sorry for herself as she usually did in the summer. For the first time in years, maybe for the first time ever, she had a mission.

She had not expected a postcard from Anand. After all, he was only four and Smita certainly wouldn’t spare a moment of her holiday to send a card to Sylvia. But a card
came, written in Naisha’s extravagant handwriting and signed in outsize letters by Anand. It said only, “Dear Grandma Sylvia, We are having a brilliant time in America. Love Anand” and, rather than giving Sylvia any pleasure, it merely served to turn the knife in the wound. In fact, it was on the day she received the postcard that Sylvia, having come to a dead end with all the official channels she had explored, decided to find a solution of her own to the desperate situation.

When Anand and Smita and Naisha returned, she breathed a little easier. Her little boy was at least back in the country now and she calculated that she had a few months to work out a plan. Anand was starting school in September and Smita would certainly not do anything to disrupt the start of his education. Sylvia guessed that she had at worst until Christmas to achieve what Jeremy could not. At best, she might even have the whole school year ahead of her, assuming Smita would make her move during the long summer holidays.

She got to spend an afternoon with Anand ten days after he came back. He had grown visibly during the month he had been away and it seemed to be a sturdier, less infantile child whom Jeremy delivered proudly to her door. He was browner too.

Sylvia dropped awkwardly to her knees to hug him. “Darling! I’ve missed you
so
much! Did you have a wonderful time?”

She sensed Anand was a little stiff in her embrace, a little resistant, as if a month was long enough for a four year old to have lost some of that day to day familiarity.
She held him close anyway, relishing the feel and the smell of him. But Anand burst out of her hug, as if she were smothering him and declared, “No, I didn’t have a wonderful time. I had a
weird
time.”

Sylvia looked up enquiringly at Jeremy who rolled his eyes and drew his forefinger across his throat behind Anand’s back.

Anand ran into Sylvia’s living room to reacquaint himself with his toys and Sylvia, accepting Jeremy’s helping hand, clambered stiffly to her feet to follow him.

“Surely you enjoyed Disneyland?” she asked, falsely cheerfully. “All those whizzing rides?”

“The rides were fun,” Anand said solemnly. “But not the people.”

He busied himself with his rediscovered belongings and refused to say anything else.

In the kitchen, in an undertone, Jeremy explained. “Smita hasn’t said much. But apparently he and the little girl didn’t hit it off at all. According to Smita, she’s a real little primadonna.”

Sylvia raised her eyebrows and Jeremy gave a rare harsh laugh. “I know. It takes one to know one.”

“So,” Sylvia asked eagerly, “is the whole thing off?”

“If only,” Jeremy said. “No, it’s very much on apparently. Remember, the little girl lives with her mother so she’d only be with them from time to time. I think Smita is hoping that if she and this guy get married, then his ex-wife will restrict his access to the little girl even more. Which would suit Smita to a T.”

“Oh!” Sylvia exclaimed. “How
nasty
.”

Jeremy shrugged. “It’s a nasty business.” He added, “I’ll scoot off now. I’ll come and get him at six so please make sure he’s here and ready. Smita is picking him up from my place at seven.”

After Jeremy had left, Sylvia went and sat in the living room with Anand. She didn’t want to deluge him with difficult questions but she longed to hear all he had to say. She was a great believer in “out of the mouths of babes and sucklings”; she still remembered the shock and thrill of little Jeremy saying to his father all those years ago: “I saw you playing with Nikki Palmer in the swimming pool. Why was she laughing so much?”

Anand appeared absorbed in his game. He had poured all the plastic animals out of their container and seemed to be sorting them into some kind of categories. Sylvia watched him quietly for a little while and then asked, “So what did you like best about America?”

Anand considered her question. “I liked the ice creams and I liked the sea.”

Sylvia was overjoyed;
their
things, he had singled out their things, seaside and ice creams, both of which he had discovered with her. But then she wondered if he was maybe just saying those things in order to console her. “Not Disneyland?” She asked. “Not all those whizzy rides?”

Anand frowned. “Disneyland is hot and smelly,” he said scornfully. “There are queues for everything. But we got to the front of the queues because Grandma Naisha felt faint every time she had to stand in one.” He grinned cheekily.

Sylvia would have stood it out in the queue of course.
She changed the subject. “Where else did you go darling, apart from Disneyland?”

Anand looked rather vague. “We went to the hotel. We went shopping. We only went to the beach a few times.”

Sylvia wondered how to steer the conversation round to the two invisible members of their party whom Anand wasn’t mentioning: the bossy little girl and her father. She asked brightly, “Did you meet any nice people in Florida?”

Anand shook his head.

Stumped, Sylvia went into the kitchen to get them some tea. When she came back, Anand had incorporated her oriental metal bird with the bent beak into his game; the animals were grouped in a circle around it and when Sylvia asked him what the bird was doing there, he answered, “The animals are praying to it” and queasily she wondered whether she detected Naisha’s influence.

Anand said nothing about Smita’s new boyfriend or his daughter the whole afternoon and it upset Sylvia that he was withholding something so significant from her. He was such a thoughtful little chap; maybe he worried it would upset her. But she was frightened to ask anything about it in case it upset him. This was awful; she had to get out of this impasse if she was to get anywhere at all.

At a quarter to six, finally, she tried one more time, “Did your Mummy and Grandma Naisha enjoy America, do you think?”

Anand considered. “Mummy liked it,” he said, “but Grandma Naisha was pleased to come home. She said America was too big and too fast for her and she didn’t
like the food; she said it tasted like cotton wool.” He giggled.

Sylvia risked one small step closer. “What did your Mummy like?”

But Anand frowned and caused a diversionary commotion by flapping around the room with a toy owl, hooting and he didn’t answer.

When Jeremy came back, Sylvia cornered him again in the kitchen. “He hasn’t said a word about the new boyfriend or the little girl,” she whispered urgently. “It’s not natural. He’s bottling it up.”

Jeremy said in alarm, “Please don’t get involved in all that, Mum. It’ll only cause more trouble.”

Sylvia bridled. “Why on earth shouldn’t I get involved? It’s my business too.”

Jeremy frowned. “Please,” he repeated. “Take my advice and stay well out of it. Everything is terribly, terribly delicate at the moment. I’m doing everything I can, believe me. I just need you to steer clear.”

Sylvia bit her tongue. Jeremy was doing his best, was he? Well, that was hardly reassuring. She gave him a hard stare which she hoped made perfectly clear that she had no faith in his best and she went back into the living room and told Anand, maybe slightly too bossily, to tidy his things before he went home.

After Jeremy and Anand had left, she sat down with her new laptop and did some more research. Her computer classes at the library had been a godsend; now she could work on her plan in the comfort of her armchair and in complete secrecy too. She had so much to get ready.

A fortnight later, she saw Anand again. He was full of his new school – Sylvia had bought him his first satchel – and he seemed already to have forgotten all about America. He told Sylvia about his new teacher, Miss Mackerel, and his new friends Baz and Sky (was that possible?) He didn’t seem to have done much reading or writing or sums yet but he had learnt a rousing song about a yellow bird high up in a banana tree which he sang lustily for her from beginning to end.

It was only when Sylvia asked him casually whether there had been any word from his mother’s friends in America that his face fell and he told her sadly that he and his mother were going back to America again for Thanksgiving.

Sylvia blurted out, “When is Thanksgiving?”

Anand didn’t know but he knew it was not long to go. Panic-stricken, Sylvia hurried into the kitchen and looked it up on her calendar; late November. Unsteadily, she came back into the living room and looked at Anand playing on the floor. Thanksgiving was less than two months away. It was a hugely important festival for Americans, she knew that; the sort of occasion on which life-changing decisions might be made public, engagements announced. With mounting horror, Sylvia realised that the crisis was upon her; much sooner than she had anticipated, the moment had arrived when she was going to have to put her highly problematic plan into action. She felt sick. She had imagined comfortably that she had at least until Christmas
before she would have to do anything irrevocable. Yet here they were, at the end of September and the moment was now. She felt light-headed and she began to perspire. But she looked fixedly at her grandson and imagined an empty space where he was playing. After that, everything came relatively easily.