Jaishree Misra - Secrets and Lies

Victoria tapped the envelopes on the wooden surface, her face turning pensive as she remembered her batch of ’93 and the dreadful events of that year. She had another night to decide whether to post these letters or not as the school peon would turn up on his bicycle at nine o’clock to take her mail to the post office. Agonising over this decision for days, she had tried imagining how the letters would be received by those four girls who had so deliberately never returned to the school.

Victoria still saw them in their grey-crested blazers and knee socks, even though they would be in their early thirties now, women of the world, married…some with children, she knew, and husbands and jobs. Every so often, a snippet of news about one of them would arrive, either via one of their old classmates, or in the pages of those glossy gossip magazines she leafed through while sitting in the dentist’s waiting room.

Victoria understood perfectly why they had never come back, of course. The reason lay in that lonely grave at the bottom of her garden. Why, she herself had nearly left St Jude’s after Lily’s death, unable for weeks to step into the rose garden without remembering that terrible December night—and the sight of Lily as she lay on the damp earth speckled with freshly fallen petals. The picture had been imprinted on Victoria’s memory forever: Lily’s sequined dress pooling around her body like water and her face, her beautiful face, not yet drained of colour, turned up to the sky as though admiring the stars.

It was Lily’s unblinking eyes that had first given it away.

That, and the blood seeping over the side of her head.

LONDON, 2008

The letters arrived at their destinations almost fifteen years after the death of Lily D’Souza.

The first to receive hers was Bubbles Raheja, as she sat curled up on a divan in the morning room of her palatial Belgravia home. She was in a state of unusual tranquillity that morning, as none of the family were at home and, consequently, she was painting her toenails a cheery post-box red when the maid brought in the mail. Generally it was Sooki, the silent but ever-smiling Thai pedicurist at the discreet little salon tucked away in a Mayfair side street, who tended to her nails, but, sometimes, doing little tasks like this for herself gave Bubbles an odd sort of pleasure that she struggled to explain. On one level it transported her instantly back to her teenage years in Delhi when she and her sisters would squabble over the last congealing dregs of Toffee Pearl, sometimes having to mix it with Cinnamon Brown and a few drops of nail-polish remover to get it to spreading consistency. But, these days, Bubbles manicured her own nails as a form of rebellion; the only kind of rebellion Bubbles ever mounted against her husband and in-laws: quiet and private and completely inconspicuous. She knew how deeply Binkie would loathe the sight of his wife sitting in as public a space as the living room performing such an ungainly task for all the house staff to behold, but that was exactly what made it so agreeable. Of course, her timid insurgence was a bit wasted, given that Binkie wasn’t around to witness it—but then Bubbles had long grown used to making do.

She smiled at the maid and ordered a cup of elaichi tea before gesturing for the pack of mail to be left on the inlaid marble foot-stool at her elbow. Then she returned to the unfamiliar job at hand, frowning as she concentrated on getting the second coat just right. It was only ten minutes later, when the maid carried the tea-tray in and tried to make room on the small stool crowded with bottles of varnish and thinner and balls of cotton wool, that the pack of unread mail fell to the floor and Bubbles spotted the plain white envelope. The sender’s address typed onto a label in the lower left-hand corner instantly caught her attention. How could it not? The nail-polish brush was hastily discarded as Bubbles reached down to pick up Miss Lamb’s letter. She did not notice until much later that a drop of varnish had fallen onto one of the cream silk cushions, forming a permanent testament to her guilt—a round red blotch that rather fittingly resembled a small splash of blood.

A little later that same morning, Samira Hussein also looked disbelievingly at the envelope in her hand. It had her Kensington address and postcode absolutely right, which in itself was surprising. Was it her imagination or had her fingers actually started trembling as she read the contents twice over? She looked at her reflection in the hall mirror and was startled by her own stricken expression. The cloying, sickening smell of the Gallica roses in their cut-glass vase suddenly filled her nostrils. She cast a baleful look at their perfect velvet folds. Sam never normally bought roses—there was good reason for that—but this bouquet had been given to her by Akbar’s boss who had been invited to dinner last night, and the maid must have thought she was being useful by replacing the more customary gladioli with them. Sam picked up the telephone. If there ever was a time to break the old pact of silence, it was this. She did a quick count on her fingers even though she already knew—fifteen years this winter. She waited, desperately willing Bubbles to answer the phone, but by the seventh ring Sam knew it was useless.

‘This is the Orange voicemail service. The number you are trying to reach is currently switched off. Please leave a message after the tone’ .

Why did they always use such annoyingly nasal voices for automated messages, she thought illogically, and where on earth was Bubbles; she had usually risen by midday. Sam looked at her watch and guessed that her friend was either in the sauna or having a massage, or aromatherapy, or whatever she was on these days. Bubbles hardly ever turned her mobile phone off, the damn thing usually an ever-present appendage to her left hand or ear, but now Sam had no option but to call Anita. She was normally most reluctant to bother anyone who had an actual career on a weekday morning, but this was important.

‘Sam,’ she heard Anita’s habitually brisk voice a mere second after the phone rang, ‘can it wait, darling? It’s coming up to the hour and the bulletin…’

‘I know, I know, I wouldn’t have, but I just wanted to know if you’ve had the letter too.’

‘Letter?’

‘I’ve just had a letter from Lamboo.’

She heard the silence before Anita spoke, her voice incredulous.

‘Lamboo? After all these years! Whatever for?’

‘Oh God, I’m so sorry, Anita, I know I shouldn’t have rung when you have to be on air in…what is it, ten minutes? Shall I call back later?’

‘Yes…no…Sam, wait! Just quickly, what sort of letter is it?’

‘It’s an invitation to some kind of reunion at the school, I think. Doesn’t say very much…’

Anita let out a long breath. ‘Fuuuck,’ she whispered.

‘I know. I haven’t stopped shaking since opening it,’ Sam replied.

‘Look, shall I come around this evening? Or, if you can, would you pick me up from work? Five-ish? We’ll get a drink around here somewhere.’

‘Okay, I’ll get Bubbles too. Speak later…and don’t think about it if you can help it.’

She heard Anita emit a short laugh before hanging up. Sam marvelled when, ten minutes later, she heard her friend’s clipped and measured accent deliver the lunchtime news on her kitchen radio as though it were just another day.

At exactly three minutes past the hour, Anita Roy pulled down the faders on her newsroom console and clicked the button that would transfer listeners to the continuity announcer. Luckily she knew the routine so well that she no longer had to concentrate on what she was doing. She pushed her headphones off and they lay against her neck, crackling with the tinny faraway voice of the girl who did the programme trails as Anita sank her head into her hands. Fifteen years on and the memories still lacerated her on certain days. Not, oddly, when she’d had a bad day and was tired and tense, but the very reverse. It was invariably whenever something tremendous happened: a promotion, a new man, even the day she got the keys to her first flat. It was exactly in those brilliant, luminous moments, when life seemed filled with the sweetest prospects, that Lily unfailingly returned. Not just a passing memory of her, but the sight—as clear as anything—of her pale face and the way she had looked at her that night in the rose garden, moments before she had died.