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  Next, Seema was given a ring by Nikhil, who got down on one knee. The huge diamond represented a major investment from both him and the family and the crowd showed its appreciation by watching intently as the groom placed the ring on his bride-to-be’s finger and then applauding loudly.

  A priest was given information on the couple and their family, which he would then write out and read at the actual wedding. Once the details were written out, Seema and Nikhil would not be allowed at each other’s houses until they were officially wed.

  Neela breathed a sigh of relief when the official part of the event was over. It was finally time to eat and there was only one way to do that at an Asian gathering – take up a square plastic plate with small partitions for separating the food, and dig in.

  Neela had bad memories of wedding food however. When she was ten, she went to a family friends’ wedding, dressed her up in her best Indian outfit. She was sitting on a chair next to her mum and dad, plate in lap, because there were no seats left at any of the tables. Picking up a piece of deep fried poori bread, Neela went to collect some of the curry with it when suddenly the combination of the pressure of her hand and the soaked oil caused the plate to split completely in half and spill food all over a her clothes. She had begun to cry hysterically and her parents had no choice but to take her home. Humiliatingly for Neela, the goodbyes had taken a good hour, during which time her sorry state was shown to every guest as explanation for the early departure.

  Luckily, the food today was good and not at all oily, so the plates held together well. Usually, everyone uses the same few caterers because feeding the masses was expensive and it was possible to negotiate bulk rates by promising the same company loads of business. Sadly, this meant the food at every wedding tasted the same. Today, however, there was not a potato curry in sight – and the available food betrayed a food bill way in excess of the norm.

  In the slow moving line towards the food, Neela spotted a paan snack and chocolate coins laid out on a table near the food; something to snack on while waiting for the main course. The eyes of the small children widened, and each grabbed handfuls of the chocolate treats and shoved them in every available pocket.

  An hour later, and the eating over, Neela could finally leave without causing offence, but as she followed a long line of people doing the same, she spied a familiar face. The oil, the black teeth, and the podge around the middle said it all – it was Mr Trivedi.

  Oh no! What was he doing here?

  Sliding in beside a couple of larger girls, Neela peeked over at the woman he was with. A stunning creature with a beautiful and ultra-expensive sari. How on earth had he managed to win such a wife? He must have money, although from the battered Punto she had seen parked outside her parents’ home, it must be kept under his bed and used exclusively on this gorgeous creature’s wardrobe and jewellery.

  Hira appeared by Neela’s side.

  ‘I hear you two know each other,’ she cocked her head at Mr Trivedi.

  ‘Huh?’

  Her cousin revealed that somewhere along the line he was from Seema’s side of the family. ‘That’s where your parents found him. Or the Trivedi’s found you. Shame about what you said to him. I hear the son is hot.’

  Neela looked over at where Mrs Trivedi was gossiping with one of the many aunty-jis. Suddenly they all turned and stared at Neela, each wearing the sort of disapproving glare that was normally saved for Hira. Maybe they were staring at Hira?

  Hira grinned. ‘I know exactly what they are saying.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘He’s been on about it all day. Telling everyone just how BLOODY ROODE you were.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘On and on about how you are the rudest person he has ever met; that their family is too good for yours anyway; that the only reason he agreed to meet was because you were good looking and his son is something big in Mumbai so looks are important, but that you were far too badly brought up for people like them.’

  As Hira filled her in on all of the gory details, Neela felt the nastier of the aunties’ eyes roaming over every inch of her immaculate outfit. It seemed every conversation in the hall was about her, or was Hira just making her paranoid? No, there were definite nasty glances coming her way, and lots of whispering behind cupped hands, accompanied by accusing stares, too.

  Neela felt the usual arranged marriage related anger build – a combination of indignation for V, and for herself. She had lost her credit cards, car and possibly a place to live because of this man. Just who did Mr Trivedi think he was, spreading vicious rumours about her? So what if she rejected his son? Why did that make her the most hated person in the Gujarati community? As Neela watched, Mr Trivedi pointed directly at her and then said something to Seema’s mother, who was listening intently.

  That was it! Neela snapped, and marched over to the oily freak.

  ‘How dare you?’ she yelled. ‘Who the hell do you think you are?’ Once she got started, it seemed Neela couldn’t stop screaming. Those heads in the vicinity that weren’t already staring at her turned, including Seema’s mum. ‘Do you think that you really are something so amazing that my rejection of your idiot son deserves to spread to the whole world?’

  More and more eyes turned to observe them.

  ‘Does it make you feel good to try and ruin me? Does it?’

  Louder and louder, the words rolled out of her mouth, voluminous enough for her mother to hear her from the other side of the hall and come rushing over as fast as a middle-aged woman could in a sari. There was still enough time for Neela to expel a few more choice words, during which time every single wedding guest gaped in shock.

  Neela shouted at him over and over again. She insulted his son and accused him of stalking her so that he could ruin her life.

  Finally, Rishi put a stop to it. Her father rushed over, picked her up like a toddler and dragged her to the front door, where he had the car waiting. In the backseat, as white as a sheet, sat Daadi-ji, clutching her chest.

  ‘Oh Bhagwan,’ her grandmother called out to God. ‘What have I done to deserve this in my life?’

  ‘I was just asking myself that very question,’ Neela told her, slumping down in the seat of Mercedes.

  She fully expected Soorbhi and Rishi to say something to that, but her parents were ominously silent on the way home.

  Even when Daadi-ji announced she would move back to India because of the shame, if it wasn’t for her deep vein thrombosis.

  Chapter Nine

  THE SILENCE in the Solanki household was deafening, and the silent treatment continued the next morning, too. It was as if her parents were in shock, and had lost the ability to speak. The expected scolding failed to materialise and instead no one looked at her, or spoke to her, with the exception of Daadi-ji, who kept asking her if she was mental in the head. Neela sensed that if her grandmother could insist that the outburst was a result of early-onset dementia, the family’s reputation could be saved.

  Rishi went to work, and at 10 a.m. Neela went down to the kitchen to see if she could make amends.

  But PAL was on, and she knew better than to interrupt the one thing that might put her mother in a better mood.

  Ishika and the evil cousin Navin mixed the poison, or zeher, right before Navin and Lohit went out to work in the family business, The Ramchand Business Group. There was a big project with a great deadline was looming, so it was imperative they leave early.

  It was important to Navin the deadline was met, because the fulfilment of the business contract would mean more money for him, Ishika and their child, when the company was finally his.

  Meanwhile, the imposter Payal was preparing breakfast when there was a knock at the door. A hooded homeless woman was standing outside in the rain. She was looking for work and asked the mother-in-law of the house whether she could work for them. She would cook, clean, take care of the elders. They would not need to pay her much; she just needed somewhere to stay because her hus
band’s family had thrown her out after he had died. Her only condition was that she had to keep her face covered because this was not her family. The offer was accepted. Navin and Lohit’s grandfather was old and needed full time care. She would start tomorrow.

  Now if her parents could arrange a marriage with that Navin, Neela was fairly certain she wouldn’t say no. She wondered whether to reveal the joke to her mother and grandmother, but they were doing anything they could not to acknowledge Neela’s presence, so she called V and arranged to be picked up later than evening.

  A few hours later, Neela hopped into V’s Ka. There was an awkward silence, V had obviously heard about the outburst at Seema and Nikhil’s wedding, and was waiting for Neela to speak. When she didn’t, V burst out with, ‘You are in serious trouble’.

  Neela fiddled with the buckle on the seatbelt. ‘He deserved it.’

  ‘But what about your parents?’

  ‘V, I hate all this arranged marriage stuff. Why am I the bad person, because I say no to a man who, given how his father looks, is probably the foulest specimen available? And look at your predicament. It’s not fair.’

  ‘But screaming it out at an engagement? It’s not sensible.’

  Neela admitted her judgement had been impaired by the nasty look on Mr Trivedi’s face. ‘He hates me, and was just sprouting all these lies about how rude I was.’

  ‘You were rude,’ V reminded her.

  ‘I just said no. That’s my human right, to say no.’

  They stared at each other, both refusing to give in. Neela was more than a little peeved that her best friend was taking her family’s side. And that she had already heard about Neela’s behaviour, less than 24 hours after the event.

  Finally, V changed the subject. ‘Anyway, you need to get back to worrying about my situation. Yesterday, Girish said that he could not wait to eat from my hands.’

  ‘As in, he still likes you? But you poisoned his parents?’

  ‘No. You don’t understand,’ V said slowly, ‘It wasn’t just a general statement of love – he wants me to put curry in my hands and he is going to eat from them. Instead of a plate. Not all the time, just once in a while apparently. And besides, he said again my curry was delicious.’

  ‘But you poisoned the food!’ Neela repeated. ‘Is he used to eating his meals laced with laxatives?’

  ‘Well, his mother keeps talking about her husband’s bowels. Maybe she wants a family with clean colons.’

  Pulling a face, Neela told V to drive towards Kingsbury. ‘I think we need some drinks.’

  Fifteen minutes later they were signalling to the staff of the Bazaar for two vodka and cranberries, on ice.

  ‘Who eats curry out of someone else’s hands?’ Neela continued the conversation after taking a great slug of her drink.

  ‘Girish, apparently.’

  ‘How can your parents set you up with him? Especially if, as you say, he actually let rip at the table.’

  ‘Because it completes the picture perfect of true family friends - marrying the kids off to each other. And it gets worse.’

  ‘How?’ Neela couldn’t imagine what was worse than that.

  V, however, could well imagine. She explained, how, while Neela was at Nikhil’s engagement, her family went around to the Patels.

  ‘The mother tells me to go upstairs to call Girish down. I drag myself up the stairs, while the oldies continue to talk happily about the match and how we were made for each other, and by getting married we would be ensuring that we would stay together for seven lifetimes. Seven! I can’t even handle the thought of one!’

  Neela drank steadily, glad to be able to think about something other than Mr Trivedi.

  ‘So the parents are talking loudly about everyone living together as one big happy extended family and about all the grandchildren they are going to have. My whole life and afterlife are being planned out before we’ve even had the engagement!’

  ‘And yet you criticise me about what I said to Mr Trivedi.’

  Ignoring her, V continued. ‘So I knock once on Girish’s door, but there is no answer. So his mum shouts from downstairs that they don’t knock in their household, that they were a family with no secrets. Because she insists, I open Girish’s door without knocking again, looked in, and . . .’

  V paused and called for more vodka.

  ‘What,’ Neela was almost holding her breath. ‘What did you see.’ She almost couldn’t bear the tension.

  The drink quickly arrived and V downed it in one go.

  ‘What I saw almost made me throw up.’

  ‘What, what?’

  ‘Well, the whole bed was covered in breadcrumbs. He obviously has breakfast in bed and doesn’t bother cleaning the sheets more than once a month. But that wasn’t the worst of it. There was Girish, sitting in the breadcrumbs, in this dingy room with green walls and a poster of some Asian model on the wall with big boobs–‘

  ‘Ugh,’ Neela interrupted.

  ‘Oh, I still haven’t got to the bad bit. Surprisingly, it wasn’t even the sight of his hairy feet and yellow toes that really shocked me.’

  Drink now back on the table, Neela was decidedly queasy. ‘That’s disgusting, what can be worse than that?’ she breathed.

  V took a breath. ‘The yellow toes were in his mouth, and he was biting his toenails to trim them down.’

  ‘HE WAS BITING HIS TOENAILS?’ Neela repeated much too loudly, and a bunch of young Asians nearby looked around. She lowered her voice, feeling more than a little ill. ‘How is that even possible?’

  V put a finger to her lips. ‘Shhhh. Everyone will hear. The toe was actually in his mouth.’

  ‘How?’ Neela asked again.

  ‘I don’t know, maybe he does yoga or something – who the hell cares? Get me out of this arrangement now. I paid you good money, do something!’

  ‘Why can’t you just say no to your parents?’ Neela asked. ‘This is seriously bad.’

  ‘Because I am not like you, Neela. Look what has happened between you and the Trivedis. I don’t want to be the talk of the community. Besides, I did tell my mum about the toe nail thing.’

  ‘Really? What did she say?’

  V replied in an accent: ‘You think I injoy vhen your papa eats vith his mouth opin? No beti, you lurn to get yused to it. I will not have you drag my family through the muds by saying no right after you agreed to marriage.’

  ‘Get used to that?’

  ‘It’s what they all say. They don’t care about whether I like the son or not. Even though I am marrying him, it’s about the whole family. If the family is good then so is the son, toenail chewing or not.’

  They ordered more drinks, even though Neela’s head was beginning to thud. It crossed her mind that her parents might actually lose it if she arrived home drunk, but she’d already had too much to care.

  ‘You need to come up with a better plan immediately,’ V said. ‘Unless Girish leaves me for some reason, I am in this for life.’

  ‘I will, I will. Give me a few days. Foolproof plans take time.’

  ‘I don’t have time, Neela. The longer this goes on, the more likely it is that I will be married to a toenail biter. God, what if he wants me to do it for him?’

  Another round arrived, and the girls drank in silence. As they did, a cocky Asian guy, about their age, looked in their direction from the next table. He was tall, quite well built and had hair that was definitely a sign of someone who spent far too much time in front of a mirror. He was dressed in a black T-shirt and slightly faded jeans, and wore a large silver chain around his neck. He inhaled his shisha pipe deeply and blew it in their direction. Red Bull flavour.

  ‘Are you girls trying to break up the sanctity of the arranged marriage?’ he called out.

  How loudly had they been talking? Neela and V answered ‘no’ in unison.

  ‘You were, I heard you,’ the cocky guy said.

  ‘Then you’re hearing things,’ V replied quickly, blushing furiously. />
  The guy slipped into the seat beside them. ‘Calm down, I don’t care. I’m just interested.’

  ‘Why?’ Neela openly considered him. Quite good looking, if not a little slimy.

  ‘Because I may be willing to pay a good price to someone who can help me with a similar problem.’

  V pointed to Neela. ‘She does it for a business. It’s a thousand quid.’

  ‘V!’ Neela couldn’t believe what she was hearing, particularly as she had failed to get rid of Girish to date. And a thousand pounds? Who would pay that?

  This guy, apparently.

  ‘Sounds reasonable. Can I pay in instalments?’

  Unable to believe what she was witnessing, Neela looked on in horror as V shook hands on Neela’s behalf. ‘Sure.’

  Neela grabbed her friend and whispered in her ear. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘After the Trivedi business, you are going to need to support yourself. This is the way to start.’

  Recalling the looks on the faces of her family, Neela had to admit she had a point.

  ‘Okay, let’s hear it,’ she said to the boy.

  Chapter Ten

  HIS NAME WAS JAI SHARMA, he was 30, and a good catch, at least in his own head. He made money in I.T., and lots of it, by the look of his clothes. He liked the way he dressed. He took care of himself by going to the gym regularly – any woman would be lucky just to look, let alone touch. He didn’t have many female friends - according to him they were too intimidated to approach him. That’s why it was important to flirt: it gave girls a chance to show him what they had. He was one of those guys who knew all the best jokes and was a clear alpha male. Even when sitting by himself, he radiated popularity and women flocked to him. No one could tell him what to do, except his mum and dad. And that was the problem. His parents wanted him to settle down. Insisted on it, in fact.