Chapter One
I blame it entirely on the pressure of work, but for the next couple of weeks Varun and I were still officially an item at the bottom of my in-tray. Every time it rose to the surface, saying, "Well?" I told it to bugger off, I was far too busy and important to deal with it just now.
It finally caught up with me on a Sunday morning, nineteen and a half days before the wedding. Having him dump me would obviously have been the simplest way out, but that wouldn't keep anybody's end up, least of all mine. I suppose I'd been hoping my imaginative autopilot would suddenly whack me on the head with a brilliant way out, but since "Abduction by Aliens" was all it had managed, I was still dithering over alternatives. These consisted of a) giving him the elbow, and b) plan B, which I still hadn't thought of.
Nobody was helping me think of it, either. Aliix was still asleep, and although a vaguely human body was sprawled on the sofa, it was absorbed in the football pages and therefore suffering from TMD, aka Temporary Male Deafness. The headline said, USELESS t**serS or something equally rude. This was nothing to what Ace had said the previous evening, when his beloved t**sers United had been thrashed three-nil by Thessalonika Under-Thirteen Girls, or whoever it was they were supposed to have thrashed.
Ace was Alix's "little" brother, though at five foot eleven he'd overtaken her by five inches. He was twenty-six, quite nice looking under the scruff, and his light brown ponytail was usually in vibrant condition, thanks to my Pantene 2-in-l, which he pinched constantly. With it he wore one gold earring and, except when t**sers had screwed up, a chilled-out air I defy anyone to beat.
"You might make some suggestion, even if it's completely brainless," I muttered. "You could at least show willing."
Not so much as a primeval grunt.
In the absence of even Ace's input, I looked out of the window for something to be irritated with besides myself, for having got into this mess in the first place. For once, there wasn't even a crisp packet dancing in the breeze. Just occasionally this corner of southwest London could look quite passable.
After a thirty-second time lapse, he uttered, "I'd make him a perv/gay, if I were you. Tell your mum you went round one night and found him poncing around in high heels and one of your bras, all upset because he couldn't find enough socks to stuff it with."
"Varun's not like you," I said testily. "He doesn't have to hunt under the bed every morning for any two putrid socks that haven't actually walked to the washing machine by themselves. He's got whole drawersful, all neatly rolled up and color-coded." In fact, he was such a perfect, tidy, organized pain, a knife in the guts would have been no more than he deserved.
"Anyway, I refuse to have a relationship with a perv/gay."
"Suit yourself. Sling me a couple of those chocolate fingers, will you?"
I slung. There were four left in the packet on the coffee table. Four, and I'd bought them only an hour previously, while picking up the papers at the Pop-In News 'n' Grocery round the corner.
He bit half off both of them and continued with his mouth full. "Your mum was bound to resort to emotional blackmail in the end. It's a mum's favorite weapon, and if you haven't sussed that out by now, then quite frankly, I despair of you."
In fact, I could almost have written a learned paper on Emotional Blackmail, Maternal Variety of. Well before phoning home an hour and a half previously I'd been psyching myself up for a hefty dose of precisely that.
The conversation had gone roughly like this:
"I'm terribly sorry, Mum, but I don't think Varun's going to be able to make it, after all."
"Oh, Ananya, really. I knew you'd let me down again, just when everybody's dying to meet him. I told wretched Shreya he was almost definitely coming and you know what that woman's like"do please try to persuade him."
"I really can't promise. He's terribly busy."
"Nobody's that busy dear." At this point her voice had taken on a plaintive note. "Sometimes I wonder whether you're ashamed of me and Daddy."
"Mum!" (I did my best to produce an appalled little laugh here.) "How can you say such a thing?"
"Well, I can't help wondering, dear. Every single time you've promised to bring him home, something's cropped up at the last minute. I'm sure you can persuade him if you try"but I really can't talk now"I've got a million things to do"nobody has any idea how much organization goes into a wedding"I'm worried sick about the seating plan for lunch"your aunt and uncle still aren't speaking and Granny hasn't a clue what's going on"I hope to heaven they don't start rowing at the table"you know what your aunt's like after a few drinks"and the florist I picked has changed hands and the new manager's lost the order"I've had to go and see her twice"still, must rush, and I'm sure you can talk him around if you put your mind to it. Bye-bye, dear."
I should have expected nothing else. My mother is nothing if not predictable.
To distract myself I picked up the Magzine on Sunday; the lovelorn small ads are always good for a laugh. As usual they were crawling with slim, attractive, bubbly, solvent women who WLTM unmarried, un-broke, un-sad, un-ugly blokes for caring and sharing.
You had to admire their optimism. "Maybe I should put an ad in," I said." 'Daft cow, 30, needs passable bloke for one day only. No polyester shirts, no creeps, positively no sex, fifty quid.' "
"I'll do it for fifty quid." The little toad grinned. "Only you'll have to buy me a flash suit first."
"Brilliant. You look exactly like Mum's idea of a thirty-five-year-old merchant banker." Quite apart from the ponytail and general scruff, he frequently acted fifteen and a half, too. I could just see him trying to liven up a "proper" type do with a "guess the size of so-and-so's waist's" competition.
Currently occupying the cupboard that passed as a third bedroom in this flat, Ace had moved in for a temporary week a couple of months back, and had stayed because he preferred paying cupboard-size rent to the room-sized variety. He beat the last occupant, anyway: she'd been the type of girl who writes "Lisa" on her eggs to stop people nicking them. Ace nicked everything, but he had his uses. If you had a sudden craving for Jaffa Cakes just before Grey's Anatomy began on tv, he'd nip to the Pop-In if you asked him very nicely.
I mooched back to the window, where the sun was pointing shining fingers directly at our Victorian sashes. "Just look at the state of these," it tutted. "A brisk application of Mr. Muscle is long overdue, if you ask me."
Equally irritating were the customers at the Cafe Montmartre. Just across the road and three doors down, the Cafe Montmartre had recently tarted itself up in green and gold. It had cluttered up the pavement with tubs of perky spring flowers and new green tables, where smug people with no Varuns to dispose of and absolutely no consideration for those less fortunate were blatantly enjoying cappuccinos with their Sunday papers. "It's no use"I'll just have to say I've dumped him. Maybe he's turning horrendously jealous and possessive."
"That'll never wash with your old lady"she'll only think it shows how keen he is."
There was no arguing with this.
" 'Course, you could always do what I usually do, when up to my nuts in hassle," he went on, turning the pages noisily. "Leg it. Or wing it"I'll take a quick look in the cheap-flights bit..."
Constructive suggestions from Ace had always come under the "Forlorn Hope" heading. Working on autopilot, my hand conveyed another chocolate finger to my mouth. The fact that the previous fifteen or so were making me feel vaguely sick was irrelevant. While under stress I've been known to autopilot jars of cocktail gherkins, half a packet of stale Ryvita, even a Bonio, though I admit this was an extreme case.
"You've stuffed nearly that whole packet in the past twenty minutes," he tutted. "Don't come moaning to me next week about your big wobbly bum."
He'd had at least six, but I let that go. "I'd suffer the lardiest bum in creation all through the forthcoming bikini season if I could just get Varun out of the way without Mum giving me a guilt trip for letting her down again. It's that old hag Shreya Malhotra. She's bragged to her about him."
"So?"
"So if I don't produce this hot favorite in the perfect-potential-son-in-law stakes, she stands to lose about three million points."
Shreya Malhotra had been my mother's "friend" and neighbor for nearly twenty-five years. Neither could stand the other, but they pretended for the sake of form. It all stemmed from them each having two daughters of almost exactly similar ages. Arch-rivalry, in other words, from the time we were old enough to do anything to brag about. Take our first ballet exam, when Sarah Malhotra and I were six.
At the end of a doorstep conversation Shreya had dropped a casual, "Oh, by the way, Anita, did I tell you Sarah got a Highly Commended?" This had been uttered in the smug knowledge that I'd only got a Fairy-Elephant Pass.
The reason I know this is because Mum had nurtured it in her bosom ever since. The neighborly rot had started here, so to speak. However, she'd got her own back later, when I got my Junior Dolphin swimming badge a whole term before Sarah. Fifty points to the Malhotra, fifty to the Kashyaps. And so it had gone on: not just me and Sarah, but my younger sister Preeti and Shreya Malhotra's Tina.
The scores had been relatively even until three years ago, when Shreya had notched up fifty trillion points in one go. Sarah Malhotra had Got Engaged. Not to just anybody: to some minor landowner with a country house and a second cousin who was a Sir.
Shreya's smugness had known no bounds. For months she'd popped round every other day with pictures of pageboys' outfits or whatever, saying, "What do you think, Anita? We're still dithering over transport"can't decide between the white vintage Rolls and the horse-drawn carriage"such a pity you can't rely on the weather."
At first Mum had smiled nicely and made her a cup of tea. Later she'd smiled through clenched teeth, and made her a cup of tea. Later still she'd smiled through clenched teeth, made her a cup of tea, and wished to God she had some arsenic to put in it.
As you may have deduced, Preeti's wedding, to my mother, was the rough equivalent of a rollover lottery jackpot. There were no ancestral acres or Sir-type uncles to brag about, but in one respect at least, she could outdo Shreya. While Sarah,Tina, and I are what you might call passably attractive"at least nobody's ever asked us to stick a bag over our heads"Preeti, as I said before, is Something Else. My mother had convinced herself that she'd win Bride of the Year and get invited onto Richard and Judy. In short, Mum's hour of glorious getting-her-own-back was about to come. All she needed to ice her perfect wedding cake was one thing: i.e., to cap Tina Malhotra's chinless Rohit with my tall, suave, handsome, witty, I-think-he-must-be-getting-serious Varun Raichand, merchant banker.
Yes, I'd laid it on pretty thick.
By now you're probably wondering why on earth I invented him in the first place. Be patient; I'll get around to it. The point I'm trying to make here is that if I gaily told Mum I'd dumped him before he'd been shown off to Shreya Malhotra, she'd be just the teeniest bit miffed with me.
Ace had gone quiet. I thought he was back with t**sers until he jabbed his finger at the paper. "Blimey, I'm a genius. Take a look at that."
Half expecting a one-way cheapie to Outer Mongolia, I humored him and cast it a glance.
And another. "Ace, this is an escort agency."
He gave me that noble-patience look blokes can do so well. "I'd hardly be showing you an ad for a male impotence clinic."
"There's no way I'm going to an escort agency! The men must think you're desperate."
"You are desperate."
"You know what I mean. What kind of man does that, anyway?"
He considered. "Okay, a bloke who fancies himself and wants money. Still, worth a try."
I eyed the advertisement again. The woman in the picture looked as if "desperate" had never entered her vocabulary. The blurb was worded to persuade cynics like me that hiring an escort was no iffier than hiring a carpet shampooer, and a lot more fun.
Well, anything was better than blitzing your shag pile. "I'd feel a prat, explaining the situation. They'd crack up."
" 'Course they wouldn't."
"I bet they would." The woman in the picture looked a bit like I might look if I lost about three stone, went blond, and had a personality transplant. Cool. Classy. In control. The type who hasn't done anything stupid or embarrassing since she was three and a half and smugly knows she never will again. "I'd have to check the small print, but I have a feeling that paying a man for his company is against my principles."
"Look at it this way, Ananya. If you hadn't got a car for the day, you'd hire one. You haven't got a bloke for the day, so hire one."
Given Ace's version of male logic, it was no use trying to explain that hiring a Varun was a whole different ball game from hiring a Ford Escort with air bag. "The men are bound to think you're dying to inspect their credentials."
"You could always say you're a lesbian but you haven't got the nerve to tell your folks."
"Any more helpful suggestions?" Still eyeing that smug, skinny blonde, I consoled myself with the thought that she'd probably get osteoporosis by the time she was fifty, and, furthermore, probably had no boobs to speak of unless they were silicone implants, in which case they might well leak. "I bet they charge an arm and a leg."
"Probably. You wouldn't want some cheap bloke, would you?"
Well, no.
"You get what you pay for, right?"
At this point Aliix staggered in, yawning as if she'd been up half the night. Which she had, if the coming-in noises I'd heard at roughly four-fifteen were anything to go by.
Wrapped in a long, fleecy dressing gown patterned with teddies, she flopped into an armchair and yawned again. "Ace, if you make me a cup of tea I'll give you two quid."
"Bugger off," he said.
"Three quid, then," she pleaded. "Before I quietly die of dehydration."
"You'll have to die, then. I'm trying to talk Ananya into giving this a go."
"Giving what a go?" She covered another yawn.
Ace passed her the paper. "See? Perfect answer to her little problem, or what?"
He really looked unbelievably pleased with himself.
Aliix's sleep-fogged eye slowly demisted. "Ace, this is an escort agency!"
He raised his eyes to the ceiling. "I know, thicko! She needs a bloke for the wedding!"
"Oh, that little problem. I thought you were going to show me some con for one hundred percent Herbal Shrink-Your-Bum-in-Three-Weeks pills."
"Thanks, Aliix," I said. "I feel really great now."
She looked positively hurt. "You're the one who's always going on about your wobbly bits!"
"She thinks the bloke'd think she's panting for it," said Ace.
"He probably would," she replied. "Most blokes think all women are panting for it anyway."
"No, we just hope"it's what you call eternal optimism."
"It's what you call eternal obsession with your dangly bits," she retorted.
"Can we please get back to the subject!" With a pained expression, he pointed at the ad again. "I mean, I'm a bloke and I don't think most other blokes'd think old Ananya's that desperate for a Brad."
Dear little boy. I felt my self-esteem positively soaring.
Poor Alix wasn't quite with it. "It's a Varun she's desperate for, not a bloody Brad."
"A Brad pitt," I explained, reaching for the last chocolate finger. "Geddit?"
Aliix made the resigned, might-have-known face that often followed Ace's utterances. "He really is a bit much first thing in the morning. I've told Mum often enough he should have been drowned at birth, but she just says, 'I know, dear, but at least I cut his tail off.' "
Inured to this sort of thing, Ace was gaping at the empty packet. "She's eaten the whole lot!" He waved it at Aliix. "Look at that! She'll be moaning next week that her knickers have shrunk!"
"I'm stressed!"
"You're making her more stressed!" Aliix said crossly. "Go and do something useful, will you? Like sticking a tea bag in a cup."
"Why can't your regular slave do it?" he demanded.
"He's still asleep, and you're not."
Ace winked at me. "As you see, Ananya, it's still at the honeymoon stage. Give it another couple of months and she'll be cracking the whip so hard, the poor bloke won't know what's hit him."
Alix refused to rise. "If you do me some toast and Marmite as well, I'll make it five quid."
"Okay." He departed for the kitchen.
While Alix rebent her head over the paper, I thought about toast and Marmite, too. Even better, one of Ace's Cigrets. After months of smug abstinence, I could suddenly have killed for one really good nicotine hit. As a bonus, it would probably taste absolutely vile and make me throw up all those chocolate fingers.
Alix was reading that ad. "You're not actually going to do this, are you? I thought you were going to phone this morning and say he couldn't make it."
"I tried." I was examining my nails, which should have cheered me up, since I hadn't broken any for ages. Still, when they got to this stage I could practically guarantee that at least two would part with their French-manicured tips in the next two days. "She gave me a load of emotional blackmail about being ashamed of them, made an excuse about being busy, and hung up. So yes, I might just clutch the odd straw."
"Ananya, you can't pay for a man! It goes right against the grain."
I'd almost known her instinctive reaction would be the same as mine. Aliix and I went back a long way, to our third day at university, where we'd had rooms in the same hall. We'd both been desperately homesick, while pretending to be the height of cool as we downed gallons of beer at Freshers' Nights. After getting drunk enough to throw up in adjacent loos, we'd confessed to each other how we wished we were dead and were terrified of lectures starting, in case everybody else was cleverer than us and make us look thick. From then on, things had improved no end.
Although we were invariably right about absolutely everything else, I was beginning to think we were both overreacting on this one. "It's a service, like any other. What if you just fancied a civilized evening of La Boheme and wanted someone else to fight their way to the bar in the interval?"
"Oh, come on] What kind of 'service' are they going to think you're after? I saw a chat show about escorts not so long ago. You should have seen them"all bragging about how much they made on the optional extras and how the poor desperate women were so grateful. And believe me, none of them looked remotely like a Varun."
"Then they were obviously the other type of escort. It hardly looks like a front for gigolos. No harm trying, anyway. If they haven't got anybody suitable, I'll forget it."
"You should have forgotten it weeks ago. You should have dumped him before your mother started hoping it was Getting Serious."
Exactly.
So why hadn't I?
Because it had been easier not to, that's why. I'd have been back to square one.
Square one had started like this.
(How?that I will tell u in next update)
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