The Stolen Girl (14 page)

D
earest Diya
, my darling girl,

Do you remember:

1) That time you decided to teach me to swim because you had read somewhere that everyone should know how to swim and you were shocked that I didn’t? You coaxed me into the water of that freezing outdoor pool.

You said, ‘Come on, Mum, it’s not that bad.’

You were so patient, even when I kept on crying, the tears mingling with the chlorinated water of the pool.

‘You are doing so well,’ you cheered.

And I smiled through my tears, splashed some water on you and said, ‘I am.’

I was afraid of the water after what happened to my parents, but for your sake, because you so wanted me to learn, I got in. I was terrified, and yet, I was so proud of you. As you held my hand and persuaded me on, I was thinking that when I was old and no longer able to take care of myself, a little senile perhaps, this was how you would look after me. With the perfect blend of gentleness and firmness.

But all the while I was also thinking, as you led me across the pool, admonished me to, ‘move your legs, Mum, move your legs’, not caring about the other swimmers gawping, the older ones smiling softly and meeting my eye, awe and envy mingling in their expressions, the younger ones hiding their smiles, all the while I thought, will I get to see you grow into a wonderful adult? Will I be with you when I am old? Will you want to know me at all after you find out? What will the knowledge do to you?

2) The one and only time we went on holiday? You wheedled and sweet-talked, and said, ‘Everyone goes, Mum, why not us?’

But the thing that clinched it for me was when you said, in a huff, ‘Why don’t we ever do normal things like other normal people?’

And so, I gave in and we spent many excited evenings, me swept along on the wave of your enthusiasm, researching holiday cottages, circling the ones within our meagre budget, planning how to get there.

I smiled along with you, while worrying about the hazards of a new place, the people we might encounter – all it took was one person to make a connection, place a phone call. I tried to shut out images of police ambushing the holiday cottage, dragging me away, your shattered face, the enthusiasm and excitement replaced by fear and heartbreak.

‘Relax, Mum,’ you told me on the train, barely able to sit on the seat, that’s how excited you were, as I surreptitiously checked out every single person in our compartment and the people walking up and down the train, the people getting on at stops, the people I locked eyes with at the stations.

We had rented a small caravan by the beach and we had the perfect two days. We bought burgers and kebabs at the local Tesco and cooked them on the tiny grill. We shivered under the blankets – the heating was not working, and we laughed ourselves to sleep telling each other funny stories. We built sandcastles replete with moats. We ran into the icy water and ran right back out again. We sucked on sticks of sickly sweet rock and let the wind whip our hair into a tizzy. We window-shopped and won 20p on the slot machines at the pier.

Somewhere around the afternoon of the second day, I relaxed. We sat on the beach and you played in the sand and gambolled in the water, your hands bunched into fists as if to grab hold of the miraculous waves, and I watched you and revelled in you, the magic, the miracle of you.

I took plenty of pictures. You see Diya, I never had any photos of my parents and I regret that more than I can say. You sputtered when you tasted salt and I have a picture of that. I have one of you sitting cross-legged in the water, still as Buddha, my golden brown marvel surrounded by all that bobbing blue. And there is one of the two of us, smiling into the camera, the one we asked a passer-by to take, our hands occupied by newspaper cones of chips, the salty oily smell of them, the smacking vinegary taste, seagulls swooping, sand winking honey-yellow and the sea surging and ebbing behind us.

You slept on the train home, your hair smelling of salt and dotted with sand, long black strands flecked with gold framing your face. Your arms around my neck, soft snores escaping from between half-open lips, a smile flitting across your mouth like a frisky butterfly alighting on a nectar-bountiful bush.

3) That time you were eleven and starting to grow breasts and I decided it was time for a talk? I sat you down and tried to tell you what would happen. You laughed as I stumbled over the words, as I tried and failed to meet your eye.

‘I know it all, Mum. I know what will happen to my body,’ you said.

‘You do?’ I asked, shocked, finally looking up at you.

‘They’ve told us in school.’

‘They’ve told you in school?’ I repeated, not able to process the information fast enough.

‘There is an echo in the room, don’t you think?’ You asked, eyes twinkling.

‘There is an echo in the room?’ I said and we fell about laughing.

Afterwards, I tried talking about boys and you sighed, impatient, and said, ‘I’m not stupid, Mum. I read a lot you know; I can put two and two together. And anyway, nobody’s interested in me.’ You had blinked and fiddled with your jumper then and I had cupped your chin, cornered your gaze with mine.

‘Have you looked at yourself, Diya? Really looked at yourself? You do not see what I see, do you? The caramel eyes one can lose oneself in, the straight nose, the lovely lips that actresses pay huge amounts to have pumped up? I know you are worried about your weight, but that is puppy fat, darling. You will lose it as you grow into your adult body. And even if you don’t, you are beautiful, just as you are.’

You had blinked away the tears beading your eyes. ‘To you, perhaps, Mum,’ you said and I wished with all my heart that I could show you what I saw when I looked at you.

I had led you to the mirror, asked you to look at yourself.

‘You are beautiful,’ I said. ‘Repeat after me.’

‘You are beautiful,’ you said and we laughed, your tears dispersing like rain drops.

‘You know what I mean, silly girl,’ I said.

‘You know what I mean, silly girl,’ you repeated.

And once again, we were laughing, laughing until tears – happy ones this time – rolled down our cheeks.

We had some good times, didn’t we? All we need in this life, I have learnt, Diya, is to know we are loved. We want to be loved and cherished and to be the centre of someone’s world. You are the centre of mine. I hope you know that, sweetie. I hope you do.

I hope that today you pull out a memory of the good times we had and it soothes you like a hug.

Night night, my love. Sending kisses, the sweetest of dreams and all my love your way,

Mum

F
riend

Noun:
a person attached to another by feelings of affection or personal regard.

Related forms:
friendless, friendlessness, non-friend.

‘
O
h my God
, Diya, I am so sorry,’ Lily says, engulfing me in a hug so tight it knocks the breath right out of me.

I inhale her smell: milk and vanilla, so familiar in the unfamiliar world I am still finding my bearings in that my legs almost give way right there in the school corridor.

‘Friend’ was one of the first words I wrote in my first ever vocabulary book. I think it came right after ‘Mother’. I knew the word, its meaning and usage long before I actually understood what friendship entailed, what being a friend meant, many years before I experienced friendship with this wonderful girl standing next to me, her eyes shining with empathy, her arms feeling like home. I have first-hand knowledge now of what being a confidant means, the giggling and sharing of secrets, the making of promises. The only first-hand knowledge I had before Lily was that of being friendless, experiencing the state of friendlessness.

I met Lily, on my first day at this school, when she came up to me and said, ‘Hi, I’m Lily. Nice to meet you,’ her hand outstretched and her grin wide.

No child in any of the other schools I had attended had done that. They had just ignored me and I had ignored them back, a defence mechanism on my part. It didn’t work though. They didn’t leave me alone for long, the bullies. And ignoring the jeers and taunts required gargantuan effort on my part. I learnt the hard way not to flinch when they called me names, to wipe my face clear of expression, to bury my nose in a book, risking being labelled a swot. After all, what was one more label to add to the many I seemed to amass no matter what school I went to?

I had thought Lily was making fun of me, that this was some new kind of prank. I had been afraid to take her hand. She had sensed my hesitation and she had put her arms around me, surprising me because, once again, no one had ever done that before and also because of how good it felt, how natural. We were just two girls greeting each other, two
friends.
That was the first time I allowed myself access to the word in the context of me, allowed a sliver of hope to nudge in.

‘Oh come on, I’m not that scary,’ she had laughed into my stiff, unused-to-hugs shoulder.

And I had breathed in her smell, that curious blend of milk and vanilla, reminiscent of ice cream, and relaxed, feeling comforted.

And after all those years of not having a friend, it was that easy. That was Lily. She openly and disarmingly chose me for a friend and stuck with me, stuck by me.

Initially, I found it hard to confide in her, afraid she would mock me, laugh at my silliness. I had no experience of sharing. But she taught me how. She gave and gave and waited until I could give back. She is a blessing and now, standing here, I appreciate just how much.

‘I have missed you,’ I say, realising as I say it that it is true. I have, even though everything I feel has been masked and taken over by the incredible flower of pain that flourishes within me, binding my insides in a stranglehold.

Her eyes sparkle while mine are dry as skin inflamed by eczema. I have exhausted tears this past week. I am empty, numb. It is so nice to see Lily, a familiar face after the jumble and upheaval of the week off school for which I had had such high hopes: the various tests; the different doctors; the pungent smell of chloroform and bleach, mixing with the purple, sickly sweet aroma of illness and death lingering in the corridors of the hospital; the psychologist with her big eyes and thick glasses which somehow make her eyes look even bigger; the gooey taste of chocolate and the comforting crunch of crisps forever ruined by the briny tang of guilt and hurt and loss so that now I cannot eat a chocolate or a crisp without feeling sick with the ache of what I have lost, without that flower, the weed stirring in my stomach, burgeoning.

‘I am so sorry. I didn’t know where you were, Diya. I tried asking around. Nobody in your block of flats knew. If I had known, I would have been round in an instant.’ Lily’s voice is high-pitched with pain; she is hurting for me.

‘I am sorry about the sleepover,’ I say.

‘Pshaw…’ she says, a jumble of discordant sound bursting out of her mouth as she is surprised mid-sob. ‘That’s the last thing you should worry about,’ she hiccups.

‘I was so looking forward to it,’ I say, and even as I say it, I feel the pain bloom in my stomach and I want to double over. I manage to stay still, and even though my eyes prickle, they are dry.

‘Yes,’ she says, launching herself at me for another hug.

‘Hey, Diya, Lily,’ the boisterous throng of classmates pushing past call and Lily pulls back to stare at me, her eyes wide with shock, tears glinting at the corners, sticking to her eyelashes like glitter in a child’s painting, the sequins on my mother’s sari.

No, don’t think about that.

‘Did you hear that?’ she asks.

Did I just speak my thoughts out loud?
I think.

‘They talked to us, the coolest gang in the school actually said hello to us!’ Lily is smiling and at that moment, with her sparkly eyes and her glowing face, she looks stunning.

‘You look beautiful,’ I say. ‘You should cry more often.’

She stares at me for a minute and then links her arm through mine. ‘As if I don’t cry enough already, silly,’ she says good-humouredly. ‘As it is, everyone calls me a cry baby.’

I quickly discover that I am a celebrity. At lunchtime, Lily and I are invited to join the cool table; they move over to make space for us.

‘How
are
you?’ they ask me. And, ‘Is it true?’

‘What?’ I say, looking at a point above their heads, thinking of nothing. My strategy is finally working. My mind is blank.

‘That your mother was arrested for kidnapping you?’

I flinch, I cannot help it. Epic strategy fail.

‘Leave her alone,’ Lily stands up, picking up her tray and mine with one hand and tugging at my arm with the other, ‘Come on, let’s go.’

‘No, wait. Sit, please.’ The girl who asked the question – I don’t know her name, I was practising my strategy when she told me – has the grace to look embarrassed, two spots of colour dancing high on her cheeks which make her, for one brief moment, look less like her friends and more like herself, a tiny bit of personality shining through. These popular girls all look alike, clones of each other. Long blonde hair, long black boots, endless legs.

Lily looks at me. ‘You want to?’

I shrug.

She sits back down.

I admire her courage, the way she holds her own in that gaggle, the way she is happy to give up hanging with the cool crowd if it means I am spared being a target.
She is a true friend,
I think.
I can trust her,
I think and the pain starts again.
I trusted my mother and look what happened,
a voice inside my head whispers. I want to double up. I ignore it, will it away.

All around me there is chatter. My classmates talking about who fancies who, who has put on weight and who they are convinced is anorexic. They talk about
X Factor
and the latest band to make number one, they prattle about clothes and phone apps and I think how far removed I am from all of this. I think, why did I ever feel nervous to come here? Why was I scared of these
kids
, once upon a time?

I eat my sandwich but I cannot taste it. I cannot taste anything anymore. I have stopped craving chocolate and crisps, have gone off them. I eat because I have to, because Farah does not let me leave the table unless I finish what’s on my plate – ‘This is one of the rules in this house, Diya, and you have to abide by it. I haven’t given you much, look, just the same as the boys.’

The joy I used to derive from food is not there anymore. It does not comfort like it used to. I am blank inside, numb, except for the times the flower blooms, taking over. Mostly this happens late at night, the darkness as unrelenting as the images that scroll under closed lids. My mother keeping vigil when I was ill, her worried gaze fixed on me, her gentle hands ministering cool cloths to my blistering forehead. My mother taking a hold of my hands, dancing me around the flat when she read my report. My mother cooking, her hair escaping in flustered tendrils around her face, beads of sweat trembling on the top of her upper lip as she stirred and sprinkled and fried. My mother holding me, her arms administering the comfort I always took for granted. My mother’s soft, love-filled gaze, the way her whole face transformed when she looked at me. My mother being led away, between a posse of police officers. My mother’s voice, drifting in a ghastly echo up the stinky stairwell, ‘I am your mother, Diya. You are mine. I love you, Diya, my darling girl, light of my life.’

Ever since Jane told me about her impending extradition – I have looked the word up, know now what it means, although I stubbornly have
not
written it in my vocabulary book, the first ever word I needed to look up that hasn’t gone in the book – I have been consumed with a desire to do something. I cannot just let her go. I cannot. She is here, in this country, close by for now. But she may not be soon. She will be taken to India and charged with…
No. Nononono…

And then, despite myself, I think of another woman, searching desperately for the child she lost, looking into every little girl’s face and seeing her daughter, recognising some feature of hers. Thirteen years of searching, waiting, longing, hoping, while I was being loved and looked after by another woman.

I ache for my mother, I miss her. And yet, I feel sorry for this other woman, I feel upset for her loss. I cannot equate the girl this woman lost with me. I cannot see my mother as a villain – the woman who loved me so much that she endured thirteen years of being afraid of her own shadow, scared to look behind her in case the shadow pounced and snatched her child away as she had, once long ago, appropriated another woman’s.

I feel guilty, I feel torn, I feel terrified, out of my depth. The flower runs riot inside my body, my head aches and I do not want to think, to feel. I want the luxury of an empty mind, I want the anonymity, the welcome respite of dreamless sleep, but both evade me.

I have read every single book on the bedside table in that little room in Farah’s house that is temporarily mine, but I couldn’t recount the stories in them to anybody even if my life depended on it. I know at what time of the night Zain calls for his mother, at what time Sohrab stumbles to the loo. I know when Affan runs to his parents’ room on padded feet and when he is led back gently by his mother and eased into bed. I know when they cry out in their sleep and when Farah rushes over to comfort them. Those times I curl into a foetal position, smothering my sobs with one pillow and the pain in my stomach with another.

On the rare occasions when I do sleep, I dream. I see a woman and a child. Then I see another woman who says the child is hers. The women fight, they pull the child, they break her in two. I wake up with my head pounding, my heart trying to crawl out of the stranglehold of my chest. I open the window and breathe in big gulps of freezing air, startling the fox who looks up from his dominion of the bin and peruses me curiously with tawny eyes. I watch the couple making out under the lamp post in the alleyway and wish for the blessed relief of an ordinary life.

I taste the sweet night air and I talk to my mum. ‘Mum, it is 2:30 in the morning. Are you awake? In another life, my life of less than a week ago, you always, without fail, no matter how tired you were, used to fall asleep after me. You once told me that you never let yourself give in to the persistent command of your droopy eyelids until mine closed, until my breathing settled into the regular rhythm of deep slumber. You would always fluster awake if I so much as moved, remember? It comforts me, Mum, to think that you are awake somewhere thinking of me, while everybody else sleeps, the soft blue blanket of air in their rooms populated by their reveries, punctured by their sighs, perforated by their dream-coated mumbles. Wherever you are, you will be worrying about me, I know. I am fine, Mum. I am. I hope you are comfortable. I hope you are okay. I love you, Mum. I miss you so. I wish…I wish you were here. If you were, I would drift off to sleep content in the knowledge that all was well in my world. You are less than fifteen miles away and yet it feels like eternity, an immeasurable, unbridgeable distance. And soon, you will be gone. To India. I cannot contemplate that, Mum. I will not accept it. I cannot just sit here, helpless, and let you go. I will do something – that is a promise, even though I feel powerless, like a mere pawn in this game being orchestrated by players who do not know me and yet hold my fate in their hands. At times I am angry with you, Mum, for doing what they say you did, for getting us into this situation. But then your face looms and I cannot stay angry with you any longer… I love you, Mum. I hope this kiss I am blowing to the stars makes its way to you.’

I close the window before the nippy draft invades the whole house and Farah wanders in bleary-eyed to check on me. Goosebumps have sprouted on me like sores, my hands are blue as sorrow, my teeth chatter like unruly children. I cannot bend my fingers. And yet, I don’t feel the cold. I don’t feel anything except the weed of pain which has taken me over.

The fox has disappeared inside the dustbin, only bushy tail visible, waving like a hand at an airport. The lovers have disentangled themselves from each other’s embrace and are making their separate ways home, turning to look back at each other from opposite ends of the alley. A car zooms past. A drunk sings loudly, slurring on the words as he stumbles home. Where is my home? Who am I? Rupa Shetty? Diya Bhat? Who am I?

‘Diya?’ I startle into the present at the sound of my name. For now, I think wryly, I am Diya Bhat. ‘You and Lily want to hang out with us after school? We’re going to Crazy Joe’s for milkshakes.’

Lily is looking at me hopefully.