The Stolen Girl (2 page)

My mum has never been one to go back on her promises. And I was so excited that, for the first time, the very first time, I would be doing stuff other girls did routinely, that for them was a matter of course. Sleepovers, staying up late sharing secrets, midnight feasts, giggling after lights out. ‘You said we could have the bedroom and you would camp on the sofa. What happened to your promises, eh? I don’t know why you keep insisting on moving all the time. I’ve had enough. I’m not going!’ I shout.

When she looks up, her bottom lip is trembling. That makes me mad. She’s going to use tears against me – talk about cheating!

‘I’m sorry,’ she says softly. ‘So sorry, Diya. We have to move, sweetie. We have no choice.’

‘Why?’ I yell. ‘Why do we have no choice?’

‘I’ve lost my job.’

A lie. She is a rubbish liar, her face flooding crimson every time she swerves from the truth. First tears and now a lie.

‘Nonsense,’ I say. ‘And anyway, the kind of jobs you do are a dime a dozen.’ I say this deliberately, aiming to wound as much as I can and, just as I thought, she flinches. ‘You could ask the chip shop owner, Ali. He’d give you a job in an instant. He fancies you anyway,’ I scream.

She doesn’t say anything, just allows the tears to keep on coming, making no move to wipe them. She fiddles with her pallu, twisting it into knots, the way she does when she is nervous and upset.

‘Why do we have to keep moving when we’ve barely settled? I’m not coming. You go.’

The neck of her sari blouse is soaked now. Her nose is running. I cannot bear to stay in this room, tainted by her anguish, any longer. I walk to the door, opening it so fiercely that I almost pull it off its hinges.

‘Wait,’ she yells. ‘Where are you going? We have to leave tonight.’

‘Have you not heard a word I’ve been saying?’

‘Please.’ Her voice is urgent, begging. ‘Please don’t, Diya.’

I slam the door shut with a satisfying thud on her teary face and clatter down the stairs, the smell of burgers and overcooked rice, the faint yellow tang of urine, the reek of feet and angst trailing me. I hear our door open and close as she attempts to follow me, but she has no hope in hell of catching up. I hear her breath coming in laboured gasps and after a flight of stairs, I do not hear her at all.

A police car idles half on the curb, half on the pavement, just outside the front door, blocking the entrance to the flats. I have a good mind to slap it, ask what they are doing obstructing people when they are supposed to set a good example, but I rush past instead, wanting to get away, not get in trouble with the police, and to put as much distance between my mum and me as possible. The anger is a hard ball in my chest, fiery and red, propelling me forward. I want to douse it with a chocolate bar or two, I think. I dig in the pockets of my sweatshirt. Damn, I ran out without my coat – it has some change in the pockets. And it’s freezing – even though, as the bullies said last week, snatching my coat and stuffing it in the toilet bowl, I have plenty of padding to keep me warm. Lily had found it for me, and together we cleaned it the best we could. I ran a load of laundry before Mum came home and she had been inordinately grateful; she’d kissed me and said, ‘What would I do without you, my best girl,’ her eyes shining, soft as chocolate-coated marshmallows. I’d pretended to blanch, pulling away.

Goosebumps, teeth chattering, the breeze smelling of battered fish, tasting of ice, nippy on my cheeks. I rush back to the door. The police car is still idling, though now another car plus a police van have joined it. I am not surprised or unduly bothered; there are often police cars idling by our block of flats. I’m annoyed though. If the front door was blocked before, when there was only the one car, now access to it is even more constricted. I know they have to make their arrests or whatever, but shouldn’t they be more considerate of the residents? I have a good mind to write a letter of complaint. I make a mental note to discuss the pros and cons of this with Lily at the sleepover – I’ve been a tad nervous as to what we’ll talk about, seeing as we’ll be spending almost twelve hours together. I worry that she might get bored with me, even though I have two movies lined up that we could watch and a choice of three more. I have been collecting topics we might talk about all week, just in case conversation lags. Then I remember that if Mum gets her way, there will be no sleepover, that we might be moving this very evening, and the orange ball of fury, temporarily doused by the icy breath of winter, sparks and blazes again.

The police vehicles are empty except for one of the cars. The driver’s face freezes, going as white as the breath escaping my mouth in heaving puffs, when he sees me running back, our gaze meeting for a brief second, his eyes the dark blue of regret. He opens his mouth and I wonder if he’s going to say something, but he only looks stricken. Oh well, no time to worry about that now. I clatter up the stairs without pausing to take a breath, run up to our door and screech to an abrupt halt.

It is wide open, a cluster of policemen forming an impenetrable wall around it in a semi-circle, enclosing my mother as if they are a rugby scrum. Mum’s face is devoid of colour, pale as the pristine pages of a new notebook, her orange sari garish in contrast.

All those police cars – they came for Mum? Do they think she’s a terrorist? I feel a giggle building inside and threatening to burst out of me at any minute. What a laugh we will have about this later, Mum and I!

Her eyes close when she sees me and she sways on her feet. A phone beeps, the radio one of the policemen is wearing crackles loudly.

‘Vani Bhat, I am arresting you on suspicion of the abduction of Rupa Shetty from Bangalore, India, thirteen years ago…’

Abduction? Ha!

‘…and on suspicion of obtaining leave to stay in the United Kingdom by deception, on suspicion of remaining in the United Kingdom beyond time limited by leave and on suspicion of being in possession of false identity documents. You do not have to say anything. But it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something you later rely on in court. Anything you do or say may be given in evidence…’

I am reeling from the assault of the words the policeman is uttering, the tableau being played out at the door to my flat, when I hear a clattering on the stairs behind me. I turn to see the driver of the police car who had caught my eye running up towards us. The door to Flat 3A opens and a small face peers out, two curious eyes the green of pond water. A sound from within and the door is slammed shut.

‘What’s going on here?’ I ask and my voice is reedy, wobbly as tentative notes being played by amateur fingers on a piano.

The group of police gathered outside our door turn as one to look at me and I squirm under the scrutiny of so many eyes. They look shocked, wearing the same expression as the man running up the stairs, the driver of the police car, who is breathing loudly and noisily behind me.

‘Sorry, we didn’t mean for you to be privy to this. We waited until you’d left. We didn’t think you’d be back so soon,’ one of the women says gently.

‘I forgot my coat,’ I say and immediately I think,
why am I telling them this?
The laughter is still bubbling in my chest in anticipation. I’m disbelieving. There is a mistake. There must be. ‘Why are you here? What’s going on?’ I ask once more.

There must be some quiet unspoken agreement among them as it is the policewoman who speaks again. ‘We couldn’t risk waiting any longer as she would have fled, given us the slip again, like she’s been doing for the last thirteen years.’ Her voice is soft, apologetic.

I feel the laughter morphing into tears, the taste of salt in my throat, at the sight of their serious faces, grave as headstones lining the cemetery, my mum’s closed eyes, her face blanched as if someone has taken an eraser to it and wiped it of colour and expression.

‘I’m sorry, I still don’t understand.’ Why am I being so formal? Why is my mum standing there rocking on her feet, her eyes shut, her face blank? ‘There must be some mistake. You tell them, Mum.’

She opens her eyes when I say ‘Mum’. ‘Diya is my daughter,’ she says, her voice high and scared but unwavering. ‘I am her mother.’ She is speaking to them but looking at me. There is apology in her gaze, and love, all the love she feels for me, the melting chocolate-button gaze. She is telling them she loves me with her eyes.

I realise with a start that she might be saying goodbye, that this was why she wanted to move, this was why she thought she had no choice. The first tendrils of fear bloom, creeping up from the pit of my stomach, taking a hold of me. ‘What did you do, Mum?’

The policewoman who spoke earlier looks at me and her gaze is tender, remorseful. I hate it. I hate her.

‘No!’ I shout, ‘please, no,’ babbling, desperate as the policewoman restrains me, her arms gentle yet surprisingly strong, as my mother is led away by the posse of officers, as flat doors open and heads peek out, as my whole world turns upside down on a February evening while shadows steal up the walls and night sneaks in via the back door and takes up residence.

‘I love you, Diya. I love you so much,’ my mother says, softly blowing kisses into the air around my face and, even though she leans close, she can’t quite touch me, and even though I lean in towards her, I am being held back by the policewoman. I struggle, I kick. I want my mother. ‘You are my daughter. Believe me. You are.’ Mum looks right at me as she says this, as if conveying a part of herself. ‘Nothing can change that. Nothing. I am sorry it had to happen this way. At the time…’ Her sigh is immense, catching on a sob. ‘Perhaps there was some other way, but at the time… I will explain everything in my letters. I will write. I love you, Diya.’

My mother’s words float up the stairs, echoing up the stairwell like dispatches from a ghost, propelled by the deflating air from the popped bubble of the truths I took for granted and believed up until now, the purple smell of horror, the scarlet taste of pain, the icy white grip of shock raising goosebumps.

‘I am your mother, Diya. You are mine. I love you, Diya, my darling girl, light of my life,’ are her last words to me, as she is led away.

B
reakfast
: 1 slice of toast (wholemeal from a 400g loaf). No butter.

Mid-morning snack: Banana.

Lunch: Tomato Soup. No croutons.

Afternoon snack: Apple.

Supper: Mixed salad. No dressing. No croutons.

A
arti twines
the salad on her fork, around and around, the leafy green reminding her of fields gleaming in the sun. She aches to be home, where there are people hired to look after her, to cater to her every whim. She brings the fork to her mouth but her stomach recoils, nausea threatening to get the better of her. She welcomes the familiar feeling; it comforts her, even as she rushes to the bathroom, is sick over the bowl, heaving until there is nothing left inside to purge. How many toilet bowls in how many bathrooms has she heaved over? How many years of her life spent like this, bent double over a cistern? The dirty yellow smell of vomit and hurt. The feeling of being cleansed, of floating on air. She has missed it, she thinks as she rinses her mouth, the mouthwash tart, stinging. It’s been a few years.

The reflection staring back at her from the mirror confirms this assessment. Lips sagging like the drooping belly of a portly woman who’s lost weight too quickly. Tired skin the colour and texture of crinkled orange rind. Lines radiating from sunken eyes – no money left for Botox injections anymore. None of the so-called ‘age-defying’ creams do what they promise. Not one. Age has crept up on her when she has not been looking, not been watching. It has crept up and taken residence while she has been busy hunting for her daughter.

Her daughter.

Nausea threatens again. She grips the sink hard, closes her eyes. A silhouette swims in front of closed lids, the shadow gradually taking definition and shape, growing from baby into young girl in a matter of minutes. The face she has imagined so many times, each feature chosen carefully, created lovingly from her fantasies. This is the curse of never having seen her child in the intervening years since she held her as a baby. Her profile changes with each conjuring. Will her daughter be like this for real? She doesn’t know. All she has is this: an illusion fabricated by her yearning, painted by her imagination. Aarti pictures young honeyed skin radiant with the first flush of youth. Soft, liquid eyes the colour and texture of warm sunflower oil, curving upwards tantalisingly at the ends. Her whole life ahead of her, her best years to come.

What was she, Aarti, doing when she was her daughter’s age? Photoshoots, ads, television appearances. Well on her way to becoming the top model in India.

Eyes still shut against her reflection, she turns away, out of the bathroom, avoiding looking at her supper, greenish yellow leaves wilting and tired-looking on the chipped blue plate. She counts the number of steps from the wall of the bathroom to the wall at the other end of the room. Fifteen. Her world reduced to fifteen steps, fifteen spans of her – admittedly long – feet. This her life now, for the foreseeable future.

She has done this so many times that she has lost count. Her life measured by the span of a room. Living out of a suitcase. Futilely following leads. The impersonal, generic smell of hotel, metallic air freshener and draining hope, raw despair.

That woman, Vani – her name causing a finger of bile to tickle Aarti’s throat, threatening nausea again – is going to prison for what she did. And she, Aarti, is in a prison of sorts herself. Has been for the last thirteen years. Imprisoned in her head by thoughts of that woman with
her
daughter. Imprisoned by the passage of time, the lost years. Imprisoned by each day her daughter grows without her. Imprisoned by the changing image of her daughter conjured by her imagination, which may not even come close to the real thing. Imprisoned by myriad hotel rooms in myriad cities in foreign towns, following wasted leads.

But this time, it is different. This time she is assured of a happy ending.

She cannot sit still. She walks to the window, looks out onto the grey desultoriness of a deserted car park. It has started to drizzle. No surprise in this cold, miserable country. Rain spatters, an oblique hazy curtain visible in the murky yellow light of lamps dotting the car park, ricocheting off cars the smoky blue of unending night. She has deliberately chosen this view. Has been doing so for the past ten years. She does not want a repeat of what happened that time. Her lawyer has warned her that he won’t be able to get her out as easily if it happens again…

And so she avoids temptation, eschews hotels by city centres. Books rooms without views, which look out onto a land devoid of people, except for the solitary figure, valiantly making his way towards a car, hunched against the weather, fighting the pull of icy wind, hood turned down over his head, covering his face so he looks furtive, up to no good. The car, one of many moody grey silhouettes wearing darkness like a frown, briefly flashes gold and red as it is unlocked. Orange brake lights sweep over the desolation as it reverses out, fleetingly exposing forlorn rows of slumbering cars like the sudden flash of a camera catching a woman unawares. A spurt of noise punctuates the thick navy silence which settles like a sigh after the roar has subsided, as suddenly as it started.

Aarti looks out onto a landscape as bleak as the inside of her head feels most of the time. All the time, really, with the exception of today. Today she should feel triumph. Today she should feel joy at the culmination of thirteen years of pursuing leads in the quest for her child. Happiness that Vani is being punished for what she did to Aarti, for what she has taken from her. And yet, all she feels is drained. Empty. Tired beyond belief. She stares at the narrow functional hotel bed; white sheets, three pillows, a stain in the shape of a heart at the right-hand corner, the bedstead chipped in three places. She looks longingly at the bottle of sleeping pills beside it. She will take one; she will nod off, soon. As soon as she hears.

She peruses her phone, sitting on the table beside her solitary dinner, the flaccid leaves forlorn, dejected. Any time now, it will ring to say that the witch has been apprehended. Any time now. After all these years of waiting, searching. All these years of grief and heartache and loss. All these years…
Give them back to me, bitch. Give my life back to me.

She gives in to impulse, to the invitation of the bed, the sheets smelling of starch and carrying within them the imprints of all the people who have lain on them before her. The memory of sweat and semen. She closes her eyes. Waits for the phone to ring, to puncture a silence so heavy that it threatens to drown her in its depths, and wonders, as she often does these days, how it is that her life, which held so much promise, is reduced to this, how it is that she is here, in this lonely room in this impersonal place. Waiting. Alone.

It is a sensation as familiar as nausea, as familiar as spewing her insides into a toilet bowl. The two constants in her life: being sick and being lonely. She loses them for a bit and then reunites with them like old friends. There was that brief, glorious time, those few wonderful years when she wasn’t lonely – when there was Vani. But after what Vani did, how can she trust that memory? She cannot rely on it. She would much rather welcome the loneliness than the illusion of trust and happiness and friendship that Vani supplied only to betray her so completely and thoroughly. No, at least loneliness never promised anything different. Loneliness did not trick her or show her the promise of a delightful, befriended future only to take everything –
everything
– from her and leave her more wretched than ever, a wreck of what she once was.

She has always been lonely.