The sea was a dazzling, sparkling blue under the bright sun. The road shimmered in the heat haze. Soma was sitting in the back of an air conditioned taxi, sunglasses on her head. Sahan was looking out of the window, watching the houses and shops pass by. They had been back in Sri Lanka less than a day. Going back to her mother’s house to find her birth certificate was the first job in a long list of things to do. On the way back, they were going to go and see Somavathi’s mother. It had all seemed so sensible when they’d discussed it sitting in Yamuna’s kitchen, but now, as the car turned off the trunk road into a secondary one, she wasn’t so sure.
They passed the gates to the factory where she used to work. People trickled in and out of it. Lunchtime had started. Her village was only a few minutes away now. The cycle ride that had taken forever in the middle of the night, was nothing to a car.
The car slowed right down once it turned off the tarmac surface. The uneven road made it bounce and jostle the passengers. Soma looked out of the window at the familiar trees and verges and her heart pounded. There was suddenly less air in the car. A hand reached across and closed over hers. She turned her head to look at Sahan.
‘It’s okay,’ he said, quietly.
She shook her head. ‘I can’t.’ Her throat was closing up. The scars on her ribs prickled. ‘I can’t.’
‘Look at me,’ he said.
His eyes were like melting chocolate. A safe haven. ‘All you need to do is talk to your mother and ask her for your birth certificate. That’s all.’
‘But what if… he’s there?’ He shouldn’t be. That had been the whole point of coming at this time. But what if he was?
‘Remember what we talked about. You aren’t that person any more. You’re Soma. You’re not the frightened child with no one to turn to. You have me. You have Bim and Yamuna. You are not alone. He can’t hurt you.’ His gaze was firm. ‘I won’t let him hurt you. I promise.’
Her breath eased a little, but her heart still hammered.
‘What if… they try to make me stay?’
‘They can’t,’ he said, with finality. ‘They can’t make you do anything you don’t want to. Believe that and they’ll see that there is nothing they can do.’
The driver in the front slowed the car to crawl. ‘Which house, miss?’
She looked over his shoulder, through the windscreen. There was the shop, where she and her mother used to go to watch teledramas in happier times, where her stepfather later pretended he spent his evenings. Her throat closed up. There was a small knot of people around the shop. They eyed the car with curiosity.
Sahan squeezed her hand.
She cleared her throat. ‘Straight on. Three houses down.’ Her mother should be home at this time, grabbing a few hours between one job ending and another starting. Her stepfather should be out in the lumberyard where he worked. The car stopped outside the tiny house.
‘You’re not that child any more,’ Sahan said. ‘You’re my Soma.’
Which she was. She took a deep breath and pulled herself up straight. He was right. She was different. She had gone to a proper hairdresser, for the first time ever, and had her short hair styled. The face that looked back at her from the mirror wasn’t Jaya, nor was she the Soma who refused to go out by herself, but a different person again. Soma lowered her sunglasses from where they were sitting atop her neat crop, opened the door and got out. She heard the car door as Sahan got out too. A small crowd of people had followed the car and now stood around, watching. She turned to face them and saw blank curiosity on their faces. They didn’t recognize her. They were not expecting to see Jaya again. They didn’t realise that this woman, dressed in jeans and a light cotton top, could be the same girl. They would realise eventually, she was sure, but she had a few minutes before the penny dropped.
Sahan came round to her side and touched her elbow. She nodded and strode to the house.
Alerted by the car outside, her mother came to the doorway. As she stepped into the light, the first impression Soma had was that she looked less frail. She was no longer painfully thin and she had on a blouse that Soma had not seen before.
Her mother’s eyes, always distant, as though she was watching the world from far away, focused on Soma’s face. ‘Jaya?’
‘Amma.’
The look that passed across her mother’s face was not relief, as Soma had half hoped, but something akin to horror. ‘No. No. Go away. You must go away.’ She darted forward and pushed Soma in the chest. ‘Go. Go. Before he—’
‘Amma, it’s okay. This is Sahan—’
Her voice dropped. ‘Get away, girl. Why did you come back here? Go away. We are all better off if you’re not here.’
‘She needs a copy of her birth certificate,’ Sahan interrupted.
She seemed to notice him for the first time. ‘What?’
‘Birth certificate.’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Wait.’ Before they could say anything else, she darted into the house. Soma turned to Sahan, gripped by sudden horror. ‘We can’t leave her here.’ She looked over at the people watching them. ‘I can’t leave her with him.’
She ducked into the darkness of the house. ‘Amma. Amma, come with me. I have a good life now. Come with me.’
As her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she saw her mother holding out a small envelope. ‘Here. Take it. Now go.’
She took it and closed her hand over her mother’s. ‘Come with me.’
Her mother stepped closer and placed a hand against Soma’s cheek. For an instant she looked like she had done before it all went wrong. ‘No. I can’t leave here. Don’t worry about me,’ she said. ‘He doesn’t hurt me. He is… since you left, he’s been better. He doesn’t drink like he did. He knows they’re watching him.’ She smiled, a ghost of the smile she had once had. ‘When you left, they thought he’d killed you.’ Tears filled her eyes. ‘I knew you weren’t dead. When I saw that you’d taken the necklace, I knew you weren’t dead. I know what it feels like when a child dies. I told them.’ She nodded to herself. Her hand drifted to touch her stomach. ‘But it frightened him.’
‘They? You mean everyone in the village?’
She nodded and patted Soma’s cheek. ‘I’m so sorry, my Jaya. I let you down.’ She sighed. ‘It all came out, after you disappeared. You tried to tell me, but I wasn’t listening. I’m so sorry.’
Soma shook her head. She couldn’t speak. There was so much she wanted to say and none of it would come out.
‘You’re a clever girl. Like your father,’ her mother said. She looked over at the doorway, where Sahan was talking to someone from the village. ‘Your man, is he a good man? Does he treat you well?’
‘Yes.’ Soma smiled. ‘Yes, he does.’
‘Then that’s all I need.’ Her mother pushed her gently towards the door. ‘Now go. I don’t want him to come back and see you. Things are better when you’re not here.’
Her mother didn’t want her there. Somehow, Soma wasn’t surprised. From her bag, she pulled out a bundle of pale blue airmail sheets. ‘Here.’ She thrust them into her mother’s hand. ‘Write to me. I’ve put an address on them already. Write to me.’
Her mother looked at the paper. ‘Yes,’ she said, faintly. Soma knew she wouldn’t.
She had something else. She took out a small red packet. ‘I lost your chain,’ she said. ‘It went out into the sea. So I’ve got you a new one. Hide it like you hid the other one. For when you need it.’
Her mother tipped the chain onto her hand. It was simple, with slightly more gold than in the original. Finally, she smiled. ‘Thank you. Now go.’
Outside, there was a small knot of people watching. Familiar faces, every one. When her father had died these were the people who had come, bringing food and kindness. The same people who sang and laughed at her mother’s second wedding… and wept at the baby’s funeral. They watched. They helped. But how could they help if her mother didn’t want to be helped?
‘Can we get anything for you, miss?’ said the man from the shop. He had been talking to Sahan. Why was he calling her ‘miss’?
She looked back towards Sahan, who smiled at her. ‘No thank you,’ she said. ‘We should be going now.’
She turned her back to her mother, embraced her and whispered, ‘Are you sure? You can come with me.’
Her mother pulled away and gently took Soma’s face in her hands. ‘This is the bed I made, I will stay here,’ she said. ‘Have a happy life, my girl.’
She stepped away. Sahan bowed his head to her mother and the older woman nodded to him. They walked towards the car.
As she was about to duck into the car, the shopkeeper stepped into her line of vision. ‘We are looking after her now, miss,’ he said. ‘I don’t let him drink in my shop any more. I don’t think he gets it from anywhere else either.’
He was looking at her pleadingly, as though asking for forgiveness. He knew who she was. She understood why they were calling her ‘miss’. With her fancy hair and upper class ‘husband’ she had come back as a completely different creature to the one they knew. They thought that she had somehow gained power. She felt a sudden urge to laugh. She smiled at him instead. ‘Thank you.’ She looked across at Sahan, who was waiting for her to get into the car. ‘We appreciate it ‘
As the car pulled away, she blew out her cheeks and rested her head back.
‘Are you okay?’ said Sahan.
She tilted her head to look at him. ‘Yes,’ she said, her tone full of surprise. ‘Yes, I am.’
Somavathi’s village was bigger and less remote than the one Jaya had been born in. Soma had changed her clothes when they stopped at a rest house. She had swapped her jeans for a more sedate plain cotton dress and slippers. She and Sahan left the car at the top of the road, where the last streetlight was, and walked the last few yards, guided by the torch in Sahan’s hand. They had chosen to come in the evening, when people were likely to be home. It was too dark to tell how big the house was, but it looked in better repair than the one her mother lived in.
The man who answered their knock looked so much like his dead daughter that Soma nearly cried out. As it was, she merely said, ‘My name is Jaya. I was on the bus that crashed. I would like to talk to you.’
The man’s eyes widened. He said, ‘Wait, please.’
They waited, under the unadorned light bulb in the porch, shifting position to wave away the mosquitos. She looked at Sahan. He nodded, reassuringly. They had agreed that she would do the talking. He was there just to accompany her.
When the door finally opened again, it was a woman who invited them in. She must be Somavathi’s mother. ‘Come,’ she said, quietly. ‘She’s dead, isn’t she?’
Her tone, half fear, half resignation, pierced Soma. It had been hard enough reading the pain in the letters that arrived, but to see it etched on the faces of these people… it was horrible.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I’m so sorry.’
The mother began to cry, big, hiccupping sobs that shook her. The father’s eyes filled with tears. He put an arm around his wife and said, ‘Sit. Tell us.’
She sat, cautiously, on a wicker chair. Sahan stood next her, his face expressionless. Even though he said nothing, it was hard to disguise the fact that he came from wealth and privilege. If the couple noticed, they didn’t care.
‘Somavathi was sitting next to me on the bus,’ Soma began. ‘When the crash happened, I was in the water near her. I pulled her to the beach and tried to get her to breathe again, but…’ Tears filled her own eyes. She wiped them away and realised her hands were shaking. ‘She was already gone.’
The mother let out a wail. A face peered in from one of the adjoining rooms. There must be other children. Somavathi’s siblings. The father gestured with his hand and the face withdrew.
‘But,’ he said, ‘they said she was alive.’
Soma shook her head. ‘I did a bad thing.’ Her chest felt tight and it was hard to breathe. Sweat prickled on her forehead. She had to do this. ‘I was running away from people who hurt me. I found her passport and the plane ticket in her bag and… I took it. I pretended I was her. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.’
The mother was sobbing loudly. A teenaged girl emerged from the room. ‘You stole my sister’s name?’
‘I was desperate. I know it was wrong, which is why I’m here.’
‘You took her job?’ the girl continued, standing next to her mother, glaring.
Soma nodded. She pulled out an envelope full of money. Once she had decided she was going to tell these people the truth, she had also decided that she would give them all the money left in her bank account. Since she’d only taken out a small fraction of it, there was far more than the real Somavathi would have sent home.
‘I saw your letters,’ she said. ‘Two of them. I know she was supposed to send money home. Here. This is most of what I was paid when I was there.’
‘You think you can—’ The younger girl began.
The father took the envelope. ‘Why?’ he said. ‘Why did you pretend? Why did you come here?’
‘I did it because I was scared. I saw a chance to run away where I wouldn’t be found and I took it. It was selfish and wrong. I know that. I can’t make it right, but I am trying to make it better.’
She looked at the mother, who was crying too hard to talk. She went over to her and knelt down. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said again. ‘If there was anything I could say to help, I would.’
The woman looked up at her through tearing eyes. ‘She didn’t suffer?’ she said.
Soma shook her head. ‘I think she was knocked out when it happened. When I saw her, she was floating. She looked… like she was asleep.’
‘She was a good girl.’
She hadn’t known her, but she supposed she must have been. ‘Yes.’ Soma looked up at the younger girl, who was crying too now. She wished there was something to say.
‘I have this too.’ She reached into her bag and took out Somavathi’s passport. ‘Here.’ She handed it to the younger girl who took it, almost reverently.
She glanced over her shoulder at Sahan. He said, ‘Okay. We will go now.’
‘Are you a policeman?’ the younger girl asked.
Sahan didn’t reply. ‘Come,’ he said to Soma.
‘Thank you for talking to me,’ said Soma. ‘I’m very sorry. If…’
Sahan made a noise in his throat.
‘Yes, sorry. I’ll go now.’
They backed away to the door. No one said anything. Soma looked back at the little family. The mother was holding the passport now. ‘Thank you,’ she said, suddenly. ‘For telling us the truth. At least now we know.’
Soma nodded and left. Her throat felt tight. She walked behind Sahan, who had the torch, until they got to the car where the driver was waiting. She held herself together until they left the village. Only then did she break down and cry.
Sahan leapt out of the tuktuk the minute it stopped. He paid while Soma scrambled out. As the three-wheeler chugged off, they stood together and looked up at the big gates that shielded Sahan’s family home from view of the road. The top floors of the house gleamed white in the sunlight. He had called his parents that morning and told him the purpose of his visit. They had not been happy.
‘Ready?’ he said, glancing at Soma.
She bit her lip and nodded. She looked terrified. That was no good. She had to look confident.
‘Remember, I love you,’ he said. ‘You are everything.’
Her gaze met his and he saw the glow ignite. It seemed to unfurl her. She stood up a little straighter. ‘Yes,’ she said. She touched her hair, as though it were a lucky talisman. ‘I’m ready.’
He nodded, took her hand and knocked smartly on the gate. The gardener opened it so quickly that he must have been lurking behind it, waiting for the knock. Sahan glanced upwards and wondered who else was watching.
Head held high, he led the way in. The front door was open, but there was no one waiting for them – a deliberate sign that he was allowed in, but not being made welcome. They left their slippers by the door and stepped in. The terrazzo tiles were cool underfoot. Water tinkled in the little indoor water feature. His mother’s jasmine plants were in flower. Everything was just as it had been when he’d left three years ago. The thought that this might be the last time he came here made his step falter. He glanced over at Soma, who was taking it all in wide-eyed, and thought it was worth it.
His mother was standing by the door to the veranda, her hand resting on her heart.
‘Amma.’ He started towards her, but stopped when his father appeared beside her. ‘Thatha.’
‘What is the meaning of this?’ His father demanded.
His wife put a hand on his arm. ‘Let’s hear what the boy has to say,’ she said, her tone dubious. ‘Let’s sit down and talk.’
‘Sit down—’ his father began, but a shake of his mother’s head stopped him. Sahan felt absurdly grateful for her placatory tendencies.
Out on the veranda, Priyanka was lounging on a chair, flicking through a magazine with exaggerated nonchalance. She looked up and grinned before going back to the magazine. Sahan wondered what she was doing. Her apparent disinterest would only annoy their father even more.
Everyone sat down on the wicker chairs, Soma perched on the edge of hers. Both his parents were watching him, his mother wary, his father simmering. Soma glanced at him. He had to get on with it.
‘This is Jaya – Jayanthi, sometimes known as Soma,’ he said. They had decided to keep using Soma as a nickname. ‘My fiancée.’
His father switched focus and glared at Soma. ‘Who is this girl? Where did she go to school? What education has she got? Where is her family from?’ He demanded, in English, as though Soma wasn’t there.
Soma was staring up at his father. Her hand clenched Sahan’s. Too late, he realised that an overbearing man shouting at her was the last thing Soma needed. He should never have brought her here. He moved closer to her, leaning forward to shield her.
‘If you have anything to say, Thatha, say it to me,’ he said. ‘She did nothing to disappoint you.’
His intervention wrong-footed his father, who stared at him. Sahan took advantage of the momentary lull. ‘You know the answer to all those questions. She was – is – Louie’s nanny. I met her in the UK. I am going to marry her.’
‘Have you taken leave of your senses, boy?’ said his father. ‘After all that we’ve done for you, this is how you repay us?’
‘I didn’t realise your love came with strings attached.’
His father stopped, as though slapped. Behind him, Priyanka made an impressed face.
Before he could say anything more, Soma said, in Sinhalese, ‘I know I’m not the sort of girl you hoped your son would fall for, but I promise you, I will look after him.’ She was looking directly at his mother. ‘He is a very clever and hard-working man. He needs a wife who will support him. I can do that. I know that all you want is for him to be happy.’ She glanced at him shyly and smiled, a tiny, sweet smile. ‘That’s all I want too.’
While his father made huffing noises, his mother was studying Soma, taking in the neat hair, the young face, the hand that was holding Sahan’s like a lifeline. ‘How old are you, child?’
‘I’m twenty-one.’ Soma’s back straightened, as though challenging her to find fault with that.
‘Bah. A child,’ said Sahan’s father. ‘Children, playing stupid childish games. This is not a game, Sahan. Just think of the damage you’re doing. Just think what it would do to my reputation if the press heard about this?’
It was the mention of the press that did it. Until now, Sahan had been worried about how upset his parents would be, but clearly, his father was only worried about the complexion this ‘scandal’ would give to his political career. All this angst worrying about hurting their feelings and they didn’t care about his feelings at all.
He stood up and pulled the surprised Soma up with him. ‘I’m sorry you feel I might damage your reputation,’ he said, coldly. ‘I came to tell you I was getting married. I’m sorry you don’t feel you can be happy for me.’ He tugged Soma’s hand. ‘Come on Soma, we’re leaving.’ Without waiting to hear the response, he towed her out through the living room and into the front garden. He was so angry, he could barely see. He wrenched the gate open and stepped out into the road.
‘Sahan?’ Soma laid her free hand on his arm. ‘Are you okay?’
Someone called his name. He turned. Priyanka’s head popped out through the gate. ‘Sahan wait.’ She slipped out.
‘I just wanted to say,’ she said. ‘If you need someone to represent the family at your wedding, you can count me in.’ She grinned at Soma. ‘I don’t know you, but I’m glad Sahan found someone who loves him. Someone had to, I guess.’ She gave her a peck on the cheek. ‘You look after him.’
‘I will,’ said Soma.
‘And you too.’ Priyanka turned to Sahan. ‘I know it looked bad, but I think Amma will come round with time.’ She punched Sahan lightly in the arm. ‘I’d better get back in before the shit hits the fan. Keep in touch okay?’ She turned and ran back inside.
They watched as the gate rolled shut. Soma pulled an umbrella out from her bag and put it up, casting a patch of shade that gave a small respite from the sun. Sahan took the umbrella, so that they were both sheltered under it. It wobbled a little and he realised his hand was trembling. ‘Let’s get a tuktuk from the top of the road,’ he said.
They walked for a few minutes, in silence. He thought about the quiet way that Soma had said exactly the right thing to appeal to his mother. Glancing sideways at her, he was struck by how far she’d come from the timid girl with the buzz cut hair and enormous, frightened eyes. She was so much braver than he could ever be. He was lucky to have her.
She caught him looking at her and smiled. ‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘They’ll come round.’
He really hoped she was right.