Anita and Me (36 page)

‘Oh this! Well, I had a tip-off.’ Papa patted his nose and tipped his head towards the Big House. So that’s what they had talked about, property and money. I was disappointed. Mama came out onto the step, Sunil charged in and around
our legs with a banana for a gun and one of mum’s hairbands on as a helmet.

‘This whole field,’ she said, gesturing to the view opposite. ‘It’s going to be houses soon. Mr Singh told papa.’

‘How does he know?’ I asked.

‘He owns it,’ mama said. ‘That new building next to his house, that is the show-home office or something.’

‘Is he moving too?’ I wondered aloud. I could not imagine Mireille and ‘Arry living next to a pretend home which would be full of dreaming strangers every day, oohing over the carefully chosen fittings and making plans around as yet empty plots of land.

‘I don’t know,’ papa said. ‘I didn’t ask him that.’

‘What a shame you did not get to know Mr Singh before,’ sighed mama. ‘All that time we were here …’ She did not finish the sentence, we each filled in our own stories in the pause.

Papa broke it by fumbling in his jacket pocket and handing mama a small velvet pouch. ‘Oh Shyam, a present? What for? Why did you spend so much …’

‘I didn’t buy it,’ interrupted papa. ‘And it’s yours anyway.’

Mama gasped as she pulled out my Nanima’s diamond necklace from the velvet folds. ‘How …’

Papa shrugged. ‘Harinder-saab said he found it.’

‘Do you think …’ mama began.

‘Daljit, leave it,’ papa said finally. ‘It’s come back. That is enough.’

Only Mrs Worrall was invited from the village to our leaving party. We felt we had already said goodbye to everyone else. Auntie Shaila had brought us all presents to mark this next reincarnation in our English life cycle. She gave mama a metal OM to hang above the door of our new bungalow. ‘Don’t worry about someone taking it. Now you’re in a nice area and half your neighbours are Hindu so they’ll have one of their
own.’ Papa received a car cleaning set, a shampoo, chamois leather and plastic scraper for an icy windscreen. ‘Now you have a garage, Shyam-saab, please keep your car a little nicer. And anyway, you will be using it much more now we will be living so close to you …’ For Sunil, she brought a tricycle so he could work off some of his increasingly manic energy in our new, large, landscaped garden. And for me, a beautiful ink pen with my name engraved on the side. ‘For all those topclass medical essays you will be writing at your grammar school!’

I already knew I wanted nothing to do with bodies and breakdowns, but I thanked her wordlessly with a hug. No false protestations or promises to get fitted for a stethoscope straight away, I opted for a gracious silence and kept my options open. I used the pen that night, wrote a short note and pushed it through the appropriate letter box. ‘Dear Anita, We’re moving on Saturday. I’m going to the grammar school, so at least you won’t be around to tease me about my tam-o’shanter! See you around. Meena.’ She never replied, of course.

From the reviews of
Anita and Me.

‘The crucial ingredient is Meena’s relationship with Anita Rutter, local lewd flower – skinny of hip, vicious of nature and owner of a dog called Nigger. Best-friend-best-enemy stories have been done before, but this is a beautifully specific portrait.’

CHARLES O’SULLIVAN
,
Observer

‘A perceptive, assured and very funny novel.’

PETER GROSVENOR
,
Daily Express

‘A delightful read,
Anita and Me
bounces along, giving an amusing and refreshingly straightforward picture of British Indians.’

MARK TULLY

‘On one level,
Anita and Me
is a simple story of the path from innocence to experience. On another, it contains the elements of tragedy – death, love, jealousy, rivalry, betrayal – and it can be read as a modern-day fable. Meera Syal is a fine comic writer and she mines a rich vein of Indian-English life.’

ANITA ROY
,
TLS

‘Avery entertaining and engaging novel.’

PHILIP HENSHER
,
Mail on Sunday

‘A delicate, beautifully observed picture of Britain as we rarely see it in our fiction – diverse, mixed and mixed up with all our histories irretrievably braided together. An impressive first novel by the multi-talented Meera Syal.’

YASMIN ALIBHAI-BROWN
, author of
No Place Like Home

‘This is the kind of book you want to rush home to finish reading…As a portrait of small town England,
Anita and Me
is superb, as a story, it is skilfully told, gracefully written, with a lightness of style, and a sense of being truly free and at ease. If you haven’t read it yet, do so just as soon as you can. And remember to carry it to work, so that you don’t get impatient to get back to it’

URVASHI BUTALIA
,
India Mail

‘Meera Syal has called this book “the embarrassing teenage novel that was always lurking in my knickers drawer,” but that’s the only remark of hers we should be ready to ignore. Her semi-autobiographical debut novel is pure class.’

BEN DOWELL
,
Comedy Review

‘A marvellous first novel from the feisty scriptwriter of
Bhaji on the Beach.’

TINA JACKSON
,
The Big Issue

Fourth Estate

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Previously published in paperback bypublished by Harper Perennial 2004, and Flamingo 1997

Reprinted seventeen times

First published in Great Britain by Flamingo 1996

Copyright © Meera Syal 1996

Meera Syal asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

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EPub Edition © SEPTEMBER 2012 ISBN: 9780007378524

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