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‘What do you want to drink?’ Ben passed Riva the menu, interrupting her train of thought. ‘There’s a rather nice Bordeaux listed…’
‘You choose, Ben. Although I think I’ll have a mint tea first, to warm my poor icy fingers,’ Riva replied. Once, a chance remark like that would have had Ben promptly reaching out for her hands to massage warmth into them. But Riva rubbed her own palms together now, feeling saddened again by the distance that had crept into their marriage somewhere along the way. Where did these cold gusts fly in from, she wondered, blowing aside all life in a marriage and leaving only the carcass of something that was once so warm and loving?
Riva folded her pashmina and pushed it into her bag before running her fingers through her hair and sitting up in her chair. She was determined to enjoy her evening out with her husband and hoped – both for her sake and Ben’s – that she had managed to cover up her silly secret outing to BAFTA. It suddenly seemed so terribly sad to have snuck off to gawp at a film star she had once vaguely known – one who, in all likelihood, would probably look right through her if he saw her today! But it was even sadder, Riva thought, that she should have to hide such a thing from the man she was married to. It was daft and mean and Riva resolved she would never do such a thing ever again.
Ben, sitting across the table from Riva, scanned the extensive menu without seeing it. He had spent the past hour assiduously reading its contents in minute detail while waiting for Riva to turn up and knew exactly what he was going to order. What was preoccupying his mind was not Riva’s lateness. Nor was it anything to do with her carefully elaborate explanations of her whereabouts this evening. He and Riva never questioned each other about whom they had met in the course of the day; theirs simply wasn’t that kind of a watchful, possessive relationship. Tonight, however, Ben simply could not erase from his mind the conversation he had overheard between Riva and her dislikeable little sister, Kaaya, the previous night. It had left an acrid taste in his mouth and Ben wondered now if he ought to tell Riva about how hurt he was feeling. It would, of course, ruin their meal out and Ben knew that would only make him feel more wretched. It was true what they said about eavesdroppers never hearing good things about themselves – although he had not been eavesdropping, but had merely stumbled upon an accidentally overheard conversation. It must have been close to ten o’clock by the time he had come in from the pub. He had entered through the kitchen door and the sisters, sitting in the living room, had not heard him come in. He was just about to stroll into the hallway to say hello when he heard Kaaya’s loud voice ring out in her horrible brassy manner.
‘Admit it, you’re just too, too soft on Ben, Riva, constantly tiptoeing emotionally around him and thinking up various imaginative excuses for what is plainly typically selfish male behaviour.’
As Ben froze at the kitchen door, he had been relieved to hear Riva respond tetchily. ‘Look, it’s not as if he’s never worked, Kaaya. Don’t you go forgetting, honey, that Ben not only supported me for the time it took to complete my creative writing course at East Anglia, he bailed you out too with that loan for your PR diploma. Besides, he was a rock to us all when Papa died.’
But Kaaya – in Ben’s opinion, a self-seeking opportunist who mysteriously had every single man in her immediate circle seemingly wrapped around her little finger – was typically ungrateful. He could imagine her waving a dismissive manicured hand in the air as she spoke.
‘I paid back Ben’s loan years ago, in case you’ve forgotten! Yeah, sure, he even helped Papa once financially. But Ben was a different man then. Not the grumpy old git he is now. People change and you’re mad to keep clinging to some lost notion of what he once was. Chuck him out, sis,’ she advised coolly, as though Ben were no more than a carton of something going slightly whiffy in the fridge. It had taken superhuman self-control to keep from striding into the living room to let the pair know he had overheard their conversation. But Ben had stopped himself. Not to save Kaaya the embarrassment but, quite simply, to hear Riva’s response. Surely, surely she would spring to his defence.
Instead, he had heard Riva laugh. Perhaps it had been with astonishment or wryness, rather than amusement – it was hard to tell without seeing the expression on her face. But Ben had been so incensed by the sound of Riva’s laughter at Kaaya’s suggestion of ‘chucking him out’ that he had turned on his heel and walked out of the house, leaving the kitchen door swinging open on its hinges for the two women to puzzle over later. He had subsequently stayed at the pub until closing time, getting more and more drunk and wallowing in sadness and self-pity, trying desperately to convince himself that Riva would surely have defended him after his departure.
The worst part of it all was that, at some level, Ben knew Kaaya was right – what was Riva doing with a man like him anyway? It wasn’t like it had been when they’d all been young and full of promise back in their university days. After all, any one of them – Riva, Susan, Joe, Aman – could have turned out successful back then. It was all a matter of luck and chance. Despite one’s best efforts, life had a totally arbitrary way of dishing out favours, Ben knew that now. The pity of it was that back at uni, it was he, Ben, who had seemed most likely to be going places, the only one in the gang to be hand-picked by a bank when the milk rounds had started in their final year. It would be no exaggeration to claim that he had once been the most popular student on campus, not just a top student but also an ace debater and captain of the cricket team. Would anyone even remember now that he had been the first among them all to have landed a job, one that everyone was so certain would lead to a glittering career as a banker?
Twelve years down the line, however, events had taken a direction that no one would have predicted back then: Riva was a successful, award-winning novelist; Joe a consultant psychiatrist at one of London’s biggest teaching hospitals; Susan, the special needs co-ordinator at a primary school praised for its innovative teaching methods; and, most gallingly, Aman Khan of all people was now a fucking film star, earning megabucks in Bollywood, gracing magazine covers and being worshipped by droves of women in the farthest corners of the world. To Ben, Aman Khan’s resounding success had been the biggest surprise of them all. Kaaya’s came a close second – vacuous, self-absorbed Kaaya who had done amazingly well for herself as a Hollywood film publicist. Who in their right mind would have ever imagined that brain-dead Kaaya would one day turn into a better have-it-all feminist than her much brighter and nicer sister? Whenever Ben reflected on life’s vagaries (something he had a lot more time for since the bank had laid him off two years ago), he could see it all quite clearly: Riva Walia, one-time president of Leeds University’s student union and founder of Bitten Apple, the campus feminist rag, had merely got unlucky and was now trapped in a lacklustre marriage that was like a drug habit, impossible to break. And there, in her swanky Holland Park apartment across town, was Kaaya Walia – once considered the pretty airhead sibling – having her cake and eating it (and by God, was she eating it) with an office overlooking Soho Square, a designer apartment in Holland Park, two flash sports cars in the double garage, a wealthy investment banker husband and, as if all that wasn’t enough, an endless string of admiring men on the side. Ben had seen them, hanging adoringly around Kaaya at the fancy parties she threw – a besotted young colleague here, a well-heeled client there, men went mad for her. As they would have done for Riva too, had she been a different sort of woman. Riva was equally, if not more, attractive than her sister, but was not given to the sultry come-ons that Kaaya was so adept at. Riva was hard-working, sweet-tempered and persevering but, when all was said and done, it was Kaaya who was materially more successful. How unfair was that?
It made Ben feel wretched to think how easily his golden prospects had gone dark and sour, and how he had dragged Riva down with him. It was incredible to think that he, Ben Owen, should be out of a job. Incredible but true. Perhaps Kaaya had been right last night: he was holding Riva back and she was too kind to admit it herself. He ought to do the right thing by her and leave. Vanish into the ether. Perhaps allow her to pick up with Aman Khan where they had last left off. Which had been at the end of that first year at university when he, Ben, had thought he was king of the world, simply because he had got the girl, while poor luckless Aman Khan had left uni with neither a girl or even a degree. And now, there was Aman Khan gracing posters overlooking Leicester Square, gloating at the tiny luckless mortals that passed beneath!
Chapter Five
Kaaya delved into her handbag for her BlackBerry, wondering how illicit love had been managed in the era before mobile telephony. Perhaps spouses just caught each other out more frequently in those bad old days, when lovers had no choice but to use home phones after work hours. Kaaya, of course, called on Joe’s home phone only if it was Susan she needed to speak to. Which wasn’t often, as Susan was really her sister Riva’s friend more than hers. Nevertheless, there had been the occasional call – to invite Susan and Joe to dinner or, more recently, to help organise Riva’s surprise birthday party. Kaaya would be the first to admit that there had been a curious thrill in speaking to Susan, knowing that Joe was probably listening in at the other end of their conversation, longing to grab the phone and shower kisses into it.
She glanced at the time on her phone. This was the best time to catch him, just as he would be finishing his daily workout. He was in fact probably just settling down before one of the computer terminals at his snazzy wi-fi enabled gym, from where he used his new secret email account to write her long and sentimental emails. Kaaya preferred telephone conversations to emails, writing being much more Riva’s thing than hers. Besides, tapping on a keyboard was murder on her delicately French-manicured nails.
She inspected their perfect pearly sheen now as she stretched out on her chaise longue, listening to the distant buzz of Joe’s phone. On her face was the smile that Riva used to describe as ‘Kaaya’s cat-smile’ when they were children. But Kaaya’s smile faded as the ringing tone continued and she realised that the answering service was going to kick in. Kaaya was accustomed to having men grab hurriedly at their phones to answer it without delay when her name flashed up on their screens. Still, she reckoned she could give Joe the benefit of the doubt this once. He had, after all, proven to be a most attentive lover this past month. Unsurprisingly, actually, given that she was his first (and, quite likely, would be his only) extramarital dalliance in the ten years he had been married to Susan. He had, in fact, all the gauche charm of the first-time adulterer, as eager as a puppy with his affections. Kaaya was familiar with the sort, and she found she enjoyed their attentions rather more than those of the more blasé seasoned cheats. The only problem with a lover as ardent as Joe was that there was every danger he would get too serious and start talking divorce and remarriage. And that was definitely territory Kaaya was not interested in. She already had a husband, for heaven’s sake, and a rather high calibre one too! No, Joe was merely a timely emotional prop to help her through this rather bleak time.
Kaaya’s thoughts stopped drifting when Joe’s phone stopped ringing. ‘This is the Vodaphone messaging service. Please leave a message after the tone.’
Kaaya kept it brief. ‘Hi, it’s me. Call when you can.’ She did not need to specify who she was and that she was alone. Joe already knew that Rohan was in Japan for a week and had vowed to see her every day in his absence. Or rather, every night after work. Except Tuesday, he had said, as it was his old classmate’s birthday. Kaaya glanced at the digital calendar on the wall. Of course – Tuesday, that’s where he was. The bloody birthday party!
Kaaya clapped her phone down on the coffee table, trying to quell her rising irritation, and used the tip of her forefinger to pick up a fleck of dust that was shining silver on the glass surface. It wasn’t like Manuela, her fanatically hard-working housekeeper, to miss even the tiniest smear or speck. Kaaya glanced around the room, forcing herself to take pleasure in its perfect designer chic – the Italian sofa in soft cream suede, the sweeping chrome down-lighters, the bunches of fresh yellow rosebuds arranged on the mantelpiece in small square glass vases. It was the perfect setting for an elegant woman like her. After all, Anton, Kaaya’s Parisian jeweller, had once explained how even the highest quality gold was just metal without the embellishment of a perfect stone. But what a waste to be looking as fabulous as she did tonight when there was no one around to appreciate it.
Kaaya got up, sighing as she walked into her bedroom. She peeled off her Chanel jacket and hurled it onto the floor. Manuela would put it on its upholstered hanger and return it to its rightful place in the walk-in wardrobe when she came in tomorrow morning. Divesting herself of the rest of her office clothes, Kaaya riffled through her vast collection of home outfits, wearing only her mauve lace lingerie and a towering pair of purple patent leather Jimmy Choos. Without too much ado, she chose one of her many Joseph silk kaftans and threw it onto the clothes horse. Then she slipped off her bra and panties and surveyed her curvy but gym-toned naked figure with momentary satisfaction before finally pulling the kaftan over her head. Kicking off her five-inch stilettos, Kaaya slipped her feet into a pair of gold chamois slippers and padded her way back across the pile carpet to fetch herself a drink from the cabinet. As she walked, she could feel the soft fabric of her kaftan brush rather pleasurably against her bare nipples. Oh, what a bloody waste to be feeling so sexy on a night when her lover was unavailable. If Kaaya had been a little more adventurous, there were numerous others she could have summoned with a click of her fingers – suave old Rodney Theobald from the art gallery, for instance, or Henry from the accounts department at work, the latter no doubt ready and willing for a quick bonk at five minutes’ notice! Henry had held a candle for her ever since she had joined Lumous PR a year ago and, last Christmas, he thought he had hit the jackpot when she snogged him in the broom closet and allowed him to slip one hot hand under her bra. But he – single, adoring, available – was far too easy for Kaaya. She generally preferred a chase to be more exciting, even when it was a new client she was wooing at work. Which was why affairs with seemingly happily married men were the bigger challenge. But they certainly came with some irritating constraints. Damn Joe and his friend’s birthday party! Kaaya considered calling him anyway, to make him sweat just a tiny bit under the scrutiny of his wife and friends…That would serve him right for leaving her in the lurch on a night like this, she thought, picking up her phone again.
She stopped short, deciding to call Riva first. The juicy tidbit of news she had for her sister could not wait any more. The din of a noisy restaurant was apparent in the background as Riva’s voice came down the line. She was shouting to be heard over the clamour. ‘Hello? Hello? Kaaya, that you?’
‘You sound like you’re in the middle of a railway station,’ Kaaya said, enjoying, as always, being rude about the kind of downmarket places her parsimonious sister tended to hang out in.
‘It’s a restaurant, actually, Kaaya dearest.’
‘Really? I don’t exactly detect the hush of discreet waiters and thick white linen in the background…or the tinkle of crystal, for that matter,’ Kaaya said, her voice dripping with sarcasm.
‘What? Can’t hear…hang on, I think I need to walk towards the door,’ Riva said.
‘I said, it – sounds – too – noisy – to – be – a – restaurant. Oh, never mind.’ Kaaya sighed but Riva had heard her this time.
‘Well, I’m hardly one for shelling out six months’ worth of royalties on a minuscule platter of nouvelle cuisine, just because it’s got some jumped-up cheffy name attached to it, am I?’ she retorted, refusing to rise to her sister’s snobbishness.
‘Now, I can think of various responses to that, Riva darling, but I’ll spare you while you’re dining, lest you choke on your sausage and mash. Who’re you with anyway? Not that sad specimen you call a husband, by any chance? In which case, you must be dining at the finest greasy spoon. Or – I know – a greasy chopstick basement in cheapest Chinatown. Yes?’
Riva laughed. ‘Cheapest Arab Town, actually. Wassup, anyway?’
‘Okay, won’t keep you. Just that I have news for you. You’ll never guess whom I met this arvo.’
‘Who?’
‘A college mate of yours…said he remembered you…Care to wager a guess? Oh, I can’t bear this so I’m just going to tell you. It was Aman Khan, King of Bollywood, no less!’
There was a pause before Riva spoke again, her voice calm. ‘Aman Khan? Where on earth did you meet him?’
‘At my office, believe it or not. He came with a director – some oily bloke called Shah – to talk about getting a publicist for a forthcoming crossover film of his. Indrani down in reception recognised him from her regular diet of Bollywood. She was all aflutter, near fainting point, I can tell you. And I do have to say he’s really quite a looker in the flesh. You never said he was so dishy or I’d have taken more trouble keeping up with his films!’
‘How did my name come up?’ Riva asked.
‘Oh, we got chatting and I told him that my big sister was his classmate at Leeds Uni.’
‘I wish you hadn’t. He’s hardly likely to remember me, is he?’
‘That was the peculiar thing, Riva: he did! He suddenly got all animated too, telling me about how you cornered him on his first day on the campus to stick a placard in his hand. Typical of the shop-stewardy sort of thing you would do, come to think of it!’
‘How curious he remembers that!’
‘Or was the placard just a chat-up ruse on your part? Clever, if it was. He still remembers it anyway…’
‘Of course it wasn’t a chat-up line! There was some kind of protest on in uni when he joined, if I recall.’
‘Well, I told him you were still a bit of a trade unionist and rabble-rouser. Putting pamphlets through people’s doors and doing your soapbox thing down at Speaker’s Corner every Sunday morning.’
‘Kaaya, you didn’t!’
‘Sure did.’
‘Oh Kaaya!’
‘Course I didn’t!’ Kaaya cut through Riva’s wail. ‘What do you take me for? He wasn’t there to talk about you anyway so we swiftly moved on to other things.’ Her voice became smug. ‘Think I may have netted a big fish today, sis.’
‘Well done, you,’ Riva said quietly, not sure if Kaaya meant that she had netted a new client in Aman – or a new admirer. The latter was not an unlikely scenario, given the earthy sex appeal Kaaya oozed in such abundance. Surely Aman Khan, like most men, would not be impervious to Kaaya’s beauty? Riva wondered why the thought should make her suddenly feel so despondent.
But Kaaya was now ending the conversation in her usual abrupt manner. ‘Better let you get on with din-dins, then,’ she said, before adding a cheeky postscript. ‘Love to you but none to that crabby hubby of yours. Oh, and mind you don’t choke on a bit of cartilage, eating all that cheap meat.’
Chapter Six
Aman walked up the metal stairs to board his flight for Dubai. He was impressed by the sheer bulk of the massive Airbus A380, remembering a letter he had recently received, signed by Sheikh Al Maktoum himself, which contained all sorts of lavish promises to revolutionise the whole concept of luxury air travel. But even Aman Khan, for whom luxury was now a byword for existence, found himself impressed with the private suite the air hostess was now ushering him into. He looked around with pleasure, feeling comfortably cocooned, as the air hostess hung up his Armani coat in a small closet. Since becoming a star, he had learnt the value of privacy, but air travel had remained the one arena in which no amount of money could buy this precious commodity. He had toyed many times with the idea of a private jet, but had not taken it any further because of his fear of small aircraft. Sitting down in a capacious seat, Aman resolved to get his secretary to write to Sheikh Al Maktoum and thank him for coming up with the idea of private cabins on board flights. He kicked off his Loake loafers and settled himself down. After the rigours of the publicity hoopla for his latest film release in London, the air hostess’s standard patter about his seat converting to a flat bed was unobtrusive and reassuring. Adopting his usual method of tackling long-distance air travel, Aman asked for lime juice with soda and angostura bitters.
‘No, nothing to eat, thanks,’ he insisted, ignoring the anxious expression on the woman’s face. The food earlier in the evening at the Mayfair house of the Bindra brothers had been the usual rich Punjabi fare and was still sitting heavy in his stomach. The Bindras were the biggest distributors of South Asian films across Europe and a visit to their home had become compulsory on his London trips; which wouldn’t have been too trying, were it not for the fact that Mrs Bindra always assumed he must miss Indian food terribly when he was travelling abroad. And she sure went to town on all those ghee-laden gravies, when all he really wanted was some soup and toast.
After the air hostess had left, closing the door to the suite softly behind her, Aman strapped himself into his chair, feeling his spirits lift as the behemoth he was ensconced in started to trundle down the runway, picking up speed before it pulled upwards into the eastern sky. Very civilized, he thought, fiddling with the technology around him after his drink had been served. Aman picked up the in-flight magazine and leafed through to the entertainment section. He had over a thousand films on demand – and only seven hours to watch them in! He decided to order a second drink before turning the privacy button on, which, as the air hostess had explained, meant that he would be left alone to watch as many films as he liked until ten minutes before landing. ‘Except in the very unlikely case of an emergency, of course, Mr Khan,’ she had said, smiling. He had smiled back, not voicing aloud the passing thought that, in his current bleak state of mind, the idea of an emergency was not such a worrying proposition.
He looked out of the minuscule window at the empty vastness beyond, dark and purple at its edges…Who would ever imagine that an unsatisfactory marriage could bleed so much of the happiness out of life?
Still, he had many other things to be grateful for. Aman picked up the remote control to search for one of those…Ah, here it was, the Bollywood selection, including eight films in which he played the lead! He scrolled downwards to the earliest of them – Krodh – and clicked on it. He watched his younger self appear in a few fragmented black and white shots under the opening credits. Only the tie he was wearing was imbued with colour, glowing an arty fluorescent red. Very James Bond, he thought, breaking into a sudden grin. He sat back as the film started and watched himself appear on the screen alongside Amitabh Bachchan. As a twenty-something sidekick, in comparison to the great Bachchan, the towering real hero of Krodh, the young Aman Khan was just a boyish young runt! Perhaps it was true what the rags said…Aman had grown better looking over the years, although it wasn’t due to plastic surgery, as some of the magazines had imputed.
Aman leant his head back on the leather upholstery, remembering his excitement at being offered that first big break. It was a year after Aman had returned from England, having decided to give up on university there. And the break couldn’t have come at a better time, when his life appeared to have ground to a complete halt with a failed attempt at a university education and a broken heart. Even now, it wasn’t hard to recapture the gut-wrenching disappointments of that summer.