The mobile phone was a wondrous thing. It cost money to make phone calls, so Soma didn’t use it for that, but it didn’t cost anything to receive calls. Sahan called her well after Louie had gone to bed. They had arranged the whole trip to York via quiet conversations late at night.
Conscious that she was leaving not only the house, but the whole town, Soma left a note for Madam with her number, explaining that she had gone out. She hadn’t told Madam about the phone, but there was no reason to hide it. If anything, Madam would be relieved that she could contact her.
With luck, she could be back before Madam got home and no one would know she’d even been out. Sahan texted her to say he had caught the bus, so she went out of the back door as always and ran to the bus stop.
She repeated, ‘Return ticket to York please,’ over and over under her breath until it was time to say it out loud to the driver. The woman driving the bus understood her without any problem. Soma went to take the seat Sahan was saving for her, feeling triumphant. She’d spoken to an English person and managed it.
It was strange sitting together like this with no Louie to provide a reason for her being there.
‘So here we are,’ said Sahan, after a few minutes. ‘This is strange.’
She looked across, glad he felt the same. ‘It is. But it’s good.’
‘It’s weird seeing you without Louie,’ he said. ‘You’ve got your phone?’
She pulled it out of her pocket to show to him.
‘You’ve got a phone and now you’re able to take the bus out to different cities. You’ll be a native in no time,’ he said.
She giggled and some of the awkwardness disappeared. She could do this. In the past few months she’d done more new things than she could even count. This was just another one. All she had to do was relax and let the day go as it would. She could see a new city. Learn more about this amazing country. Being able to have Sahan with her while she explored only made things even better.
They talked all the way to York. They had talked before, but this time it was different. It was just the two of them. No Louie. No careful space between them. The bus went round a corner, and pressed her shoulder against his. She blushed and looked up at him through her eyelashes, suddenly shy again. He smiled at her. His fingers moved across to hers and they held hands rest of the way there.
He didn’t let go of her hand when the bus stopped, or even when they alighted on the busy pavement. Soma looked around. The streets in York were narrower than the ones in Hull and seemed much busier. She felt a moment of panic, but Sahan squeezed her hand and that made everything better again.
‘Where shall we go?’ said Sahan, smiling.
‘I don’t know.’ It was all bewildering to her.
Sahan got a book out of his bag. There was a map folded into the back of it. He opened it up, fold upon fold upon fold, until it was several times the size of the book.
‘There’s lots to see. How about we walk through the Shambles? If we go this way, we can make our way to the cathedral.’
The places were just words to her. He showed her the map. She nodded. She didn’t really care, so long as she was with him. They walked through the narrow cobbled street, with mashed together houses leaning over them on either side. At one point they walked through a square, where a man was juggling fire whilst riding a sort of bicycle with only one wheel. They stopped to watch and her mouth fell open. She had seen fire jugglers before, but it had been at night and she had the vague memory of being held on her father’s shoulders so that she could see.
She glanced across at Sahan, who had let go of her hand to applaud. She felt her world opening up, like the map in Sahan’s book; getting wider and taller with each unfolding page. There was so much she didn’t know about. So much to learn. The places she’d seen on the little TV were real. It was terrifying and exhilarating at the same time.
The juggler leapt off his cycle, put out the fires on his juggling pins and took a bow. Sahan threw some money into the man’s hat. Then he picked up Soma’s hand again.
‘Shall we go on to the cathedral?’
When she nodded, he started walking, leading her along streets that were less narrow, but just as crowded.
‘Sahan,’ she said. ‘What is a cathedral?’
‘It’s a big church,’ he said. ‘Is that okay?’
She shrugged. She had seen churches before. There was a small one in the town near where she lived and bigger ones in Matara. She tried to remember if she’d ever been inside one.
‘Here we are,’ said Sahan.
She looked around, expecting a blocky, whitewashed building.
Sahan laughed. ‘There,’ he said, pointing.
She looked up. And further up. The building wasn’t a church, it was a palace, soaring up towards the sky covered in delicate decorations that looked too intricate to have been carved from stone. ‘Oooh,’ she breathed. ‘It’s beautiful.’
‘Wait till you see inside,’ he said.
He could have watched her for hours. They were walking through the vast nave of York Minster. Sahan had been there before and admired the elaborate bosses on the ceiling and beauty of the stained glass windows. But Soma was seeing these things for the first time. He was towing her along, holding her hand, because she was walking so slowly, looking at everything. The church had been built to inspire wonder and it was certainly doing that. Soma was transfixed.
He was glad he’d brought her here. Being away from Hull and Louie made Soma different. She seemed to have relaxed a little, opened up. When he was with her in the park, there was always something jittery about her. It was as though she was expecting Yamuna to jump out of the bushes at any moment. In fairness, he felt a bit like that too.
But here, with the threat of discovery so remote, Soma was wide-eyed and delighted with the world. She had seen so little of it. Things he took for granted were new discoveries to her – British street food, bendy buses, enormous book shops, doughnuts. Doughnuts! He had bought her one from a street vendor, just to see the expression on her face when she bit into it. When she looked at him, with her eyes shining, he felt… invincible. How could he ever have thought this was passing phase?
He looked down at his hand, wrapped protectively around her smaller one. He was holding a girl’s hand and he wasn’t feeling any of his usual reactions. In the back of his mind, Cara’s voice corrected him, ‘woman, not girl’. Woman, then. Still no nausea. That had to mean something, didn’t it?
Looking up, he spotted the time on the ornamental clock. It was nearly quarter past the hour. ‘Soma,’ he said. ‘Look at the clock.’
‘Hmm?’ She turned and glanced at it, tearing her eyes away from the stained glass window. ‘It’s very nice,’ she said.
‘No. Watch.’ The clock hit quarter past and a mechanism whirred.
He watched the delight on her face as two knights came out of the clock to strike the bell. He didn’t think he’d ever felt this happy.
Finally, it was time to go and they sat on a half wall, waiting for the bus to take them back to Hull. Soma wrapped her scarf around her throat and face snugly and made Sahan laugh.
‘You look like you’re hiding,’ he said.
She had forgotten she was meant to be hiding. She gave him a quick glance and was relieved to see his eyes sparkling. ‘I’m not,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to get cold.’
‘It’s not that cold, honestly,’ said Sahan, still laughing. ‘You should loosen that scarf a little bit. Let me see your face.’ He reached across and tugged a loop of it down, revealing her face. His hand grazed her cheek and she felt his touch somewhere deep inside.
His smile fell away. His gaze held hers. Had he felt it too? Sahan took a breath and his fingertips touched her cheek again, the softest, gentlest caress. The thrill was so intense, she could barely breathe. Her whole existence narrowed to focus on him; his eyes, his mouth, the delicious warmth of his fingertips against her skin. The moment stretched. Was this what it was like to want to be touched?
The bus pulled in at the stop.
‘The bus. We should…’ Sahan’s voice sounded deeper. He cleared his throat and moved his hand away. ‘We should get on.’
‘Yes. Of course.’ She sprang to her feet and followed him. They sat together again, close together, hands intertwined. Neither of them spoke on the way back although Soma felt every touch, every shift of muscle. She wanted to memorize it all.
When the bus finally arrived back on the approach to Hull, she rang the bell at her stop, stood up and left him sitting there. Once she was off the bus, she turned to look at him through the window. He raised the hand that she had been holding only a few seconds before and waved. She smiled and waved back. The bus pulled away and he was gone, leaving her alone.
She walked back in a hazy cloud, barely noticing anything around her. She could feel the ghost pressure of his hand still in hers and on her face she could still feel his touch as though she had been branded by it. She let herself into the house and was relieved to find that her note was still there. She had just scrunched it up when she heard the garage door scrolling open. Madam was home. Quickly, she hung up her coat and scarf and took off her shoes.
Yamuna came in, carrying a sleeping Louie. ‘He fell asleep in the car,’ she whispered to Soma. ‘We may as well put him to bed now.’
If Madam noticed that she was glowing with happiness, she didn’t mention it. Soma took the sleeping baby in her arms and took him upstairs. She laid him gently in the cot, and leaned over to kiss him goodnight. Then, because she thought she would burst if she didn’t tell somebody, she whispered in his little ear, ‘I went to York with Sahan today. I love him.’
Sahan lay on his bed, fully clothed and wide awake. He tucked one arm underneath his head and held his other hand up to look at it. He could still feel the shape of Soma’s hand in his. He closed his fist around the feeling, trying to hold it there. Today was the first time he had seen Soma without Louie to give her context. Without the pram, she seemed somehow smaller, more accessible. Seeing the guarded look in her eyes when she’d first got on the bus slowly melt away had made him feel as though something inside him was melting in response.
It was the first time in years that he had been able to bear contact with someone. He had held her hand, bumped into her, touched her cheek without a single flinch. Not a hint of repulsion. All too familiar longing stirred, but without the usual dousing of shame.
He wanted to hold her. It would be okay with Soma. She was different. There was something about her shyness, her vulnerability, her ability to be amazed and overwhelmed by the world. She was different to the worldly wise, hard-bitten girls from his course. She was sweet and kind and… pure. And it was okay to fall in love with her.
‘I think Soma has something going on that she doesn’t want us to know about,’ Yamuna said, as she got into bed. It was one of those rare evenings where both she and Bim were going to bed at the same time.
He was sitting up, reading a copy of the FT and scribbling notes on a pad of paper. He said ‘mmm,’ without looking up.
‘First, she didn’t tell her family where she was, so they had to write through the agency. Then, there was the whole thing where the agency wanted to check that she really was here. Now she’s got a new mobile phone. She didn’t tell me, but I can hear her, whispering in Sinhalese in her room. And she’s been wandering around with this stupefied look on her face.’ She turned to look at her husband. ‘Are you listening?’
Bim lowered his paper with exaggerated patience. ‘Does it matter?’ he said. ‘Everyone has a mobile phone these days and she’s probably using it to phone home.’
‘It does matter.’ She held up her hand to tick off her points. ‘She’s been here four months and she’s never wanted to call home before. I asked her. Even showed her where to get the long-distance phone cards. Secondly, why the secrecy? Why the daydreaming? I think she’s got a man.’
‘So? She’s a grown woman.’
‘A grown woman? Have you seen her? She looks like she’s about twelve. I have serious doubts about how thoroughly that agency checks people’s age.’
‘You said they showed you photocopies of a birth certificate and passport.’
‘They did. But those were photocopies. What if they were clever forgeries?’
Bim lowered his paper again and finally looked at her. ‘You think the agency is a bunch of master criminals now?’
Was he really so obtuse that he didn’t see a problem? ‘But Bim. Who is this man she’s met? Clearly, he’s Sri Lankan, because she speaks Sinhalese to him. How did she meet him? She doesn’t go out at the weekends, so she must meet up with him when she’s with Louie. I don’t want Louie exposed to strange men.’
Bim shook his head. ‘I think you’re worrying about nothing. Where would she meet a Sri Lankan around here?’
‘I don’t know. Unless it’s someone she knew already. Maybe she had a boyfriend who moved to the UK and she followed him here.’ Yamuna chewed the inside of her cheek. ‘What if she lets him in the house when we’re out? What if they sleep together when Louie’s around, Bim?’
Finally, Bim frowned. ‘Do you seriously suspect that the girl is bringing a man into this house?’
‘Yes. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.’
‘Well… you could ask her.’ He held up a hand as she started to protest. ‘Even if she doesn’t tell you anything, her reaction will tell you something.’
Yamuna opened her mouth to argue again, and then shut it. ‘Actually, that’s not a bad idea. Not asking her, but I could ask Sahan. He knows the other Sri Lankan students at the uni. Between them, they’ll know all the other Sri Lankans around here. Especially the young ones. He might be able to find out who this guy is that Soma’s so taken with.’ Having a plan of action made her feel better already.
‘Isn’t Sahan busy studying for his exams?’ said Bim. ‘Besides, you don’t know that there is a man involved, yet. All you know is that she’s got a mobile phone. That’s not the same thing.’
‘I know she’s up to something,’ said Yamuna. ‘I can feel it in my bones. I’m going to find out what it is.’
‘Speaking of mobile phones,’ said Bim. ‘There’s something wrong with mine. I keep having to plug it in to charge by lunchtime. I must get a new one.’ The newspaper came back up and he resumed reading.
Yamuna glared at him. He was engrossed in his paper again. He blatantly didn’t care. She turned away from him, annoyed. Sometimes, she got the impression that he only kept her and Louie around to say he had them. Like pets or houseplants. Wife, tick. Son and heir, tick. He had what he wanted now. It didn’t matter how they felt about it, so long as he could wheel them out when he needed them.
What had her life come to? Getting married was supposed to make her life better, not make her feel more and more irrelevant.
She shook her head and curled up with her back to him. What was done, was done. There was no undoing it now.
She would have to catch Sahan and ask him to find out some information for her. Really, the only place she could think of where Soma would meet someone her own age was the university, which was only twenty minutes’ walk away. She wondered idly what she’d do once she found out who this guy was. She frowned. She herself had always been too plain, too serious to get any attention from attractive men, but had seen enough hearts broken to know that the sort of man who insisted on sneaking around out of sight was the sort of man who meant trouble. Soma was young and she was in a strange country. A girl like that was easy prey. If this man was looking for a girl to take advantage of, Soma would be perfect.
The thought that Soma could bring a man into the house and put Louie at risk bothered her. Could it be? Despite her irritation at Soma, she still had to admit that the girl seemed to care for the baby. Yamuna had never seen her do anything that could harm Louie. Even the whispered conversations she’d heard were late at night, well after Louie went to sleep. No, she decided. Whatever else there was to worry about, she didn’t have to worry about Soma neglecting her baby.