PREETHI NAIR

The Colour of Love

To my Dad and Amma.

‘There are always flowers for those who want to see them.’

HENRI MATISSE

Contents

Cover

Title Page

The Colour of Love

By the same author

Copyright

About the Publisher

The Colour of Love

2nd December 1999

I know now that hurtling a saffron-stained coconut over London Bridge at six-thirty in the morning should have set some alarm bells off. The tramp peered up at me from his cardboard box as if to say that I would be joining him very soon. But the Guru had said that it would remove the stagnation from my life, me being represented by a hairy coconut and the water representing flow. The Thames did not glisten at me. Well, it couldn’t really as it was pitch black and probably frozen, but I believed it was glistening, shimmering even, and leading me to better things.

Looking back, the only bit the Guru got right was the symbolism. Brown woman thrown further into murky waters.

I had met this Guru the previous day. I’d like to say that I met him at the foothills of the Himalayas or somewhere exotic but I bumped into him outside Pound Savers on Croydon High Street. It was one of those really cold December days when everything comes at you from all directions; the wind, the rain, puddle-slush, the odd hailstone, and anything else nature can find to throw at you.

It had been a really hard day at work and almost unbearable to get through: my best friend, Kirelli, had died exactly a year earlier. Sorting out the contract of some egotistical artist and checking the provenance of a painting for a client seemed irrelevant, so I told my boss that I had a headache and was leaving early.

‘Two aspirins will clear it,’ he said.

‘Right, I’ll get some on my way home,’ I replied, with absolutely no intention of stopping off at the chemist’s. I was good at pretending; it had become second nature to me because of the distinct worlds I lived in.

Having said that, there were certain parallels between the art world and the Indian subcontinent ensconced within our semi: both worlds were seemingly very secure with an undercurrent of unspoken rules and codes of conduct that were made and manipulated by a dominant few. One set fixed the price of art and the other fixed up marriages. The main difference was that the ones in the art world didn’t have centre-parted hair and weren’t dressed in saris, grey woolly socks and sandals.

The only way I was able to make the cultural crossover from the Hindi songs wailing from the semi to the classical music played subtly at the reception area in the law firm where I worked as an artist’s representative was by pretending. Pretending to be someone I wasn’t.

‘Nina, Boo Williams is coming in tomorrow,’ my boss reiterated before I left. This was his coded way of saying, ‘Make sure you pull yourself together by the morning.’

Boo Williams was one of the artists we represented at the firm. Her sculpture of Venus de Milo made from dried fruit and vegetables had failed to win the Turner Prize so she would be needing much consolation and bullshit from me in the morning. Forget the sickie, forget grief; Boo and her heap of fruit and vegetables needed me more.

‘Right, see you tomorrow then,’ I muttered, grabbing my coat.

On the way back home there were no commuters hurling themselves onto the tube. The carriages were almost empty and I was relieved, because if I had had a group of wet strangers pushing against me, vying for space, that would have just about done it. I sat opposite an old lady with wispy white hair. She had the kind of eyes that made me want to tell her that my best friend had died in my arms at exactly this time – two-thirty, a year ago – and that since then I had been lost, truly lost. The old lady smiled at me and a lump began to form in my throat. I got up, moved seats and sat down beside a soggy copy of the Guardian. The page it was turned to showed the Turner Prize winner, Maximus Karlhein, trying desperately to pose seriously. He was standing next to one of his pieces exhibited at the Tate – an old wardrobe stuffed with his worldly possessions.

I pushed the paper away feeling exhausted. It was all nonsense; people posing in front of wardrobes, passing it off as art and making headlines. Where was the feeling? The passion? And that crap – that the relationship with his wardrobe was imbued on his soul and that he had no option but to express it – which PR person had thought of that line? Art was supposed to be passionate and full of emotion, not contrived, not like an Emperor’s-new-clothes scenario where a group of influential people said that the work was good and therefore people believed it was. What had happened to art? Paintings done by artists who didn’t even care if they weren’t known, not some hyped artist giving a convoluted explanation behind a pile of dried fruit or a heap of junk. A year on, and despite promising that I would be true to myself after Ki’s death, I still participated in the circus.

Tomorrow, no doubt I would have to console Boo. What kind of name was that anyway? Knock, knock, who’s there? Boo. Boo who? Don’t worry, love, your apricots didn’t win the Turner Prize this year but you can sell them for at least five grand. That’s what I would want to say, but what I would probably say was, ‘Ms Williams, Boo, it’s an injustice, I just can’t see how you didn’t win. Your concept, the use of colour is simply … simply inspirational.’

Was that what happened to you in life? You started off with such high hopes and ideals and then got sucked into all the bullshit and you pretended that that was reality. No, I didn’t think that was the case with me – I knew deep down that life was too short to be doing anything other than what I really wanted to do; Ki had shown me that. But that wasn’t the problem – there were the occupants living in the semi to consider. I had a duty to make sure that they were happy, and keeping my job as a lawyer was fundamental to their all-important list system.

Mum and Dad’s short list was devoid of any kind of love or passion. Thinking about it, the Turner Prize short list and my parents’ own were not that dissimilar: although the criteria was seemingly clear and transparent, the subject produced was, at times, truly baffling. In their case, the subject was a man and the objective of the list was to find me a husband. Like the art world, much went on behind the scenes that nobody really knew about. Favours were exchanged, backs were scratched and tactics employed so that the prospective candidate was over-hyped to an influential few in order to persuade them that he was the right man for the job.

The long list was drawn up by a group of well-connected elderly women in the community, whose demure presence betrayed what they were really capable of. The criteria that had been set to filter the candidates were that they had to come from a good family background, be well educated and have lots of money. One of my mum’s roles was to whittle down the long list, but her primary task was to set the PR machinery in motion; to cover up any negatives, then to promote and hype the candidates and make sure they were shown to me in a favourable light. This week she had managed to get the list down to three potentials whose vital statistics were presented in the form of handwritten CVs. There was a doctor, another lawyer and an accountant left on the dining-room table for me to look at. The hot favourite (who had been put to the top of the pile) was the accountant, because he had his own property: ‘Beta, this candidate was imbued on my soul.’ She wouldn’t use those words exactly, she would just draw my attention to his flat. So, although it was seemingly my decision to choose one, go on a few dates with him and agree to marriage, the system was clearly rigged.

However, the panel had overlooked one very important thing: an outsider was trying to infiltrate the system. A man of whom they had no knowledge had just asked me to marry him. The judges were going to have a problem. At best there would be an uproar: my dad would pretend to go into heart failure and my mum would do her wailing and beating on the chest routine. At worst I would suffer the same fate as my sister, who had run off with her boyfriend and who they had not spoken to since.

I didn’t know what to say to Jean Michel when he asked me to marry him. It wasn’t a question of not loving him enough; it was a question of making a decision and then facing all of the consequences, and I was too tired for all of that. So for a while I hadn’t been making any decisions; not even daring to venture slightly outside my routine. There was a certain sense of safety in catching the tube to work, dealing with clients, going back home to Mum and Dad and seeing the CVs on the table.

I hadn’t been thinking about anything too deeply except on days like that when I had been forced to. I mean, I knew Ki was dead, I had watched her disintegrate before me and then be scattered into the wind, but for me she was still there in some kind of shape or form. She had to be. Pretending that she was still there, looking out for me, was the only thing that had helped me hold it together, because otherwise … otherwise, everything was pointless.

Her death was senseless. Good people weren’t supposed to die young. I had bargained hard with God and promised to do all sorts of things if He let her live, and although He didn’t listen I held steadfast in my belief. It was the only thing that I could really cling to. I don’t know how best to describe what this belief was, but it’s the feeling that someone out there is listening and responding; that there’s a universal conversation going on where forces of nature conspire to look after you and give you strength. Occasionally you’d get a glimpse of the workings behind the scenes and these were termed by others as coincidences or luck. And then there were signs. Signs were things like accidentally finding a twenty-pound note when you most needed it; a song on the radio that comes from nowhere and that speaks to you directly; words or people that find their way to you at just the right time. Ki promised she would send me a sign. A year had passed and she hadn’t. Or maybe she had and I’d missed it. I had become far too busy to see any signs.

I got off the underground and waited for the train that would take me home.

The High Street looked tired and depressed, like it too had had enough of being battered by the rain. Among all the greyness, the windswept umbrellas and the shoppers scurrying home, I suddenly spotted colour, a vibrant bright orange. I walked in its direction to take a closer look. It was a Guru, standing calmly in the rain amid a flurry of activity. I stopped momentarily, thinking that the scene would have made a good painting, and stared at the strangeness of his presence. He was wearing a long, orange robe over some blue flarey trousers and over his robe he had a blue body-warmer. As they walked past, school children were pointing and laughing at the enormous red stain across his forehead. The red stain did not strike me as much as the open-toed sandals on his feet. It was freezing, and as I was thinking that he must be in desperate need of some socks, someone called out to me.

‘Nina, Nina,’ shouted the man as he came out of Pound Savers, clutching his bag. He knew my dad, I had met him a couple of times but I couldn’t remember his name.

‘Hello Uncle,’ I said, thankful that calling obscure friends of your parents ‘Uncle’ is an Indian thing. Any random person that you’ve only met once in your life has to be bestowed with this title. ‘How are you?’ I asked politely.

‘Just buying the socks for his Holiness,’ he said, looking at the Guru, ‘he’s finding the weather here a little colder than Mumbai. Guru Anuraj, this is Nina Savani. Nina, this is his Holiness, Guru Anuraj.’

The Guru put his hands together in a prayer pose. If I was a well-mannered Indian girl, such an introduction and the use of the word ‘Holiness’ would be my cue to bow down in the middle of Croydon High Street and touch his ‘Holiness’s’ icy feet, but instead I just smiled and nodded.

The Guru held out his hand. I thought he was angling for a handshake so I gave him mine. He took it, turned it palm up and muttered, ‘Been through much heartache. Don’t worry, it’s nearly over.’

‘He’s very good, you know. For years Auntie was becoming unable to have baby and now we are expecting our child,’ acquaintance man interrupted eagerly. ‘Guru Anuraj was responsible for sending child,’ he beamed.

The Guru’s warm smile spun out like a safety net as he told me my life would improve greatly in two weeks. Although his smile was warm I chose to ignore the fact that it was full of chipped and blackened teeth. If I had paid attention to his dental hygiene it could have given me some indication towards his character and all that was to follow without having to take his palm – ‘cleanliness being next to godliness’ and all that – but as he made promises of being able to remove the stagnant energy which was the cause of much maligned obstacles, I chose not to see the warning signs. I wanted him to tell me more but the Guru had his socks to put on. He’d also spotted the grocer roasting chestnuts, and indicated to acquaintance man that he might like some.

Before he left, he delved inside his robe and handed me a leaflet. ‘Call me,’ he said, staring intently into my eyes.

‘You must call him, his Holiness only gives out his number to the very special people,’ added acquaintance man. I took the leaflet and said goodbye to them both.

When I got home, Hindi music was blasting from the television set and both my parents were doing their normal activities. My mum was in the kitchen making rotis and my dad was in the sitting room, with a glass of whisky in one hand, newspaper in the other, looking like an Indian version of Father Christmas with his red shirt, white beard and big belly. He was the only person who was not engulfed by the enormous Land of Leather sofa.

‘Good day, Nina?’ he asked, turning back to his newspaper.

‘It was really crap. Crap day, crap client, just awful.’

‘Good, good,’ he replied. My dad had very selective hearing and only chose to hear the words he liked or words that were of some threat to him. ‘Home early, no?’

‘We were all made redundant.’

He put his glass down, threw his newspaper to the floor and looked at me. Redundancy was his worst nightmare. I had to be a lawyer; years of both time and money were invested in this and it was pivotal to the list system (the spin on candidates worked both ways so I too was lying on someone’s dining-room table). That was what he sold me on, the fact that I was a lawyer working for a reputable firm, and also that I was tall and quite fair-skinned, but he omitted the fact that I had one humungous scar down my left arm and that I couldn’t really cook.

By my parents’ standards, twenty-seven was far too late to be getting married, and my mum was truly baffled by it, saying to my father that I was one of the prettiest girls on the circuit and there was a queue of men waiting to marry me. But I had managed to fend them off so far by telling them that things were changing and men were looking for women who were settled in their careers; it wasn’t like the olden days when they just wanted to know your height, complexion, and if you had long hair down to your back. It was, however, getting to a stage where this argument was wearing thin. As my dad said, at this rate I would be heading towards retirement: hence more and more weekly CVs.

‘What?’ he shouted.

‘I said I had a headache.’

‘I thought you said redundant.’

‘No, just a headache.’

‘Thank Bhagavan,’ he sighed, glancing up to one of the many incarnated god statues.

My mum came out of the kitchen, rolling pin in one hand. ‘What headache, beta? It’s because you are not eating properly.’

‘I think I’ll just go to bed, I’ll be fine, Ma.’

‘Not eating with us?’ she asked, looking over at the dining-room table and fixing her gaze on it. ‘Rajan Mehta. He’s thirty-one, an accountant. He’s got his own flat in Victoria …’

My heart sank. I turned my back and began walking up the stairs as she shouted, ‘… three bedrooms and two bathrooms.’

I couldn’t put off the inevitable. I had to tell them about Jean Michel, and tell them soon. He was away on a business trip in New York and as soon as he got back we had to sort something out. I picked up the phone to call him and put it down again; he was having back-to-back meetings so it probably wasn’t the best time to call. I flicked through my address book to see who else I could phone. I had friends, of course, but nobody I could open up to. Since Ki’s death I had kept all my other friendships on a superficial basis: nobody knew what was really going on inside my head as I refused to go through that kind of closeness again only for it to be snatched away. I flicked through the pages once more. No, there was no one, no one who had an inkling that anything was wrong. Anyway, where would I start? The fact that I did not allow myself to cry, that I was desperately missing Ki, that I hated going into work, or that I didn’t know whether to marry Jean Michel?

Suddenly, a thought occurred to me.

‘Did you send that Guru for me, Ki? Is that what you meant when you said you’d speak to me? Was he a sign?’

I pulled out the leaflet and read: ‘Guru Anuraj, Psychic Healer, Spiritual Counsellor and Friend.’

I dialled the number. He gave me an appointment to come and see him the very next morning. I had a shower and went to bed.

It was five-thirty in the morning when I drove to the address he had given me. I didn’t want to tell my parents that I was going to see the Guru as it would have sent my mother’s thoughts propelling into all kinds of directions and that was dangerous. So when she spotted me up and about very early in the morning I told her I was driving up to Leeds for a client meeting; the lie, believe me, was for her own protection.

I know it was an odd time but my mum always said that, supposedly, between four and seven in the morning are when prayers are most likely to be receptive – that’s when she annoyed all the neighbours with her howling and chanting.

‘Kavitha, why you can’t you learn to sing like the Cilla Black?’ my dad would ask her.

‘I am singing.’

‘This is not the singing, see, neighbours have written letters doing complaining,’ my dad said, producing letters that contained handwriting which appeared remarkably similar to that of his own.

‘This is all for Nina, so she will find a good man, coming from a good family,’ my mother replied.

‘No, only man who comes will be police.’

But she continued unabated by threats of the council charging her with noise pollution. Because, for her, if it produced the desired result it would all have been worth it.

When I arrived I knocked on the door as instructed. A short man opened it and took me to the dining room where he asked me to take a seat. He said that the Guru was with someone and would see me shortly. I was nervous and excited; seeing the Guru was the first positive step I had taken in a long while. Admittedly, I was also feeling slightly apprehensive, not about being in a stranger’s house but about what the Guru might say, so I focused on the decoration in the dining room and, like Lloyd Grossman, studied the clues and imagined what sort of family lived there. Half an hour later the man came back and led me to another room. I knocked on the door and went in.

Warm jasmine incense and soft music and candles filled the room, and on pieces of colourful silk stood statues of gods in all different sizes. The Guru acknowledged me by nodding his head and asked me to remove my shoes and take a seat opposite him on the floor. I did so nervously.

‘Date of birth?’ the Guru asked swiftly.

‘Fourth of September, 1972.’

He proceeded to draw boxes, do calculations, and then, like a bingo caller, he reeled off some numbers which, he said, were the key events that had marked my life: aged six, an accident with the element of fire which had left deep scarring. I looked at my right arm; it was well covered, how could he have known that? He continued: aged eighteen, a romantic liaison which did not end in marriage. At this point he raised his eyebrow. Aged twenty-five, another. I saw how this could look bad to a holy Guru who believed in traditional values and the sanctity of just one arranged marriage so I avoided eye contact.

‘A Western man?’ he questioned.

I nodded.

He shook his head. ‘It is being serious?’ he asked.

I nodded again.

‘Parents knowing?’

I shook my head.

‘Parents not arranging anything?’

Parents were very busy arranging things. Last week the hot favourite was a twenty-nine-year-old investment banker, this week it was thirty-one-year-old, five degrees accountant Raj, the letters behind his name rolling off the page.

The Guru stopped at age twenty-six, with the death of my best friend.

‘It will all change,’ he promised. I fought back the tears and then he touched the palms of my hands and they began to tingle, a warm glow that made his words feel safe.

‘Stagnant life now, unable to move forward, unable to take decision. See this,’ he said, nodding at my palms, ‘this is now flow but too much negativity in body for flow. Let it go. Let it all go.’ And that’s how the whole coconut-over-bridge routine came about.

It sounds bizarre now but he performed a ceremony that morning, asking permission from the gods to be able to treat me. The coconut he used in the ceremony was meant to represent me and he stained it with saffron. He did the same with my forehead so that the coconut and I were united. The river was supposed to represent new life. After mumbling a prayer, the Guru asked me to return after I’d thrown my coconut self off the bridge. I could have chosen anywhere where there was water, even the canal near where we lived, but I didn’t want the coconut to sink to the bottom and find a rusty bicycle, a portent of doom if ever there was one, so I chose London Bridge.

‘There will be a big change in you, Nina,’ he said as I left, coconut in hand. ‘Come and see me later this evening.’

After I hurled the coconut off the bridge I felt immensely relieved. I wiped the stain off my forehead and went to work, ready to caress Boo Williams’ ego. I got to work only to be told that Boo was too upset to get out of bed and would be in the following day instead. Still, I was unperturbed.

Richard, one of my colleagues, commented on how well I was looking.

‘I’m getting engaged,’ I replied.

When the coconut had left my hands all my decisions seemed so clear. I wanted to phone Jean Michel right away to tell him that I was going to marry him. I started to dial his mobile number but decided to wait for him to come back from his trip the next day and tell him in person. Everything that day at work was effortless. I knew I wouldn’t have to be there for long: once Jean and I were married I could think about other options. And my mum and dad? What would I do with them? If I looked at things optimistically, Jean could charm my mother – he could charm anyone, he was incredibly charismatic – and my mum, in turn, could work on my dad. Together we could make him come around.

Jean called me later that afternoon and I had to stop myself from blurting it all out.

‘I can’t wait to see you, ma cherie.’

‘Me too. When you’re back it’s all going to change. I love you, Jean.’

All I had to do was wait one more day and all the pretence could stop.

The Guru had given me the energy to make all obstacles appear surmountable and later that evening I returned to thank him for what he had done. He prescribed one more session for the following day, just to make sure I would keep on track. How I wish I had stopped there.

The next morning the Guru’s door was slightly ajar so I knocked on it and walked in. He had his back to me and was lighting his candles, humming away and swaying to Sting’s ‘Englishman in New York', which was playing loudly. It got to the alien bit when the Guru turned around. He looked startled when he saw me and immediately stopped the tape recorder, saying that he was sampling the music that was corrupting the youth of today, and promptly changed the cassette to a whinging sitar.

‘Sting is not a corrupting force,’ I said. ‘In fact, he’s against deforestation.’

The Guru glared at me when I said deforestation like he didn’t know what the word meant, but now I think about that look – eyes narrowing, brows furrowed – it was probably more that he remembered he had a job to do.

He signalled for me to sit on the floor and held my hands. They tingled with warmth again as he whispered kind words and then he began humming and chanting. Then the Guru asked me to lie down and he proceeded to touch me, moving slowly from my hands to other parts of my body, my neck, my feet; incantations and gods’ names being chanted all the while as he healed the negativity that shrouded me, asking me to let it go. As he unbuttoned my clothes and took off my top, his breath became rhythmic, his chanting louder, his beads pressed against my chest. I closed my eyes, wanting to believe that I was lost between the gods’ names and that none of this was really happening. It couldn’t happen; a holy man wouldn’t do this, he couldn’t do this, this wasn’t supposed to happen. His beard brushed against my skin, his fingers circled my mouth, I pretended that my trousers had not come down.

I have often asked myself why I didn’t get out of there sooner and how I had got myself into such a position. I didn’t want to believe what was really going on, because if I did, nothing whatsoever would make any sense – and the only thing at that point in time that I had left to hang on to was my belief. I didn’t want to believe what his dry, filthy hands were doing because I would have had to concede that whoever was responsible for sending me signs had sent this Guru, who was into an altogether different kind of spiritual feeling. Nobody could be that cruel.

As he placed his salivating mouth on my lips and pulled up his robe, I smelled him, and it was this that made something inside of me snap. He smelled of coffee. I kicked him, pushed him off me and managed to get out from under him before he used his magic wand.

‘No,’ I shouted.

‘You’re cursed,’ he screamed as I ran out of the door. ‘Cursed, and I will make sure of it.’

How I had sunk to such depths still remains a mystery but, essentially, that is where my journey began. I was confused and desperate, feeling wholly inadequate, riddled with self-doubt and dirty. I wanted to call Jean Michel and tell him but he would kill the Guru. So I tried to block it from my mind and pretend that nothing had happened.

The train I was on stopped. Some old man with the same rotten teeth as the Guru got on. It’s funny how that happens; reminders of the things you are trying most to forget. He smiled at me and I felt physically sick. My hands began to shake. ‘It didn’t happen,’ I kept saying to myself. ‘It’s all in the mind, it didn’t happen,’ and I reached into my handbag to get a mint. While I was fishing for it I found an envelope that was marked urgent.

It was a contract that I had looked over for a client, and which had been sitting in my handbag for the last two days. I had promised to send it back the next day and had completely forgotten. But today it was all going to change. I had to hold it together.

‘All change here,’ announced the driver. Although running late I was determined to buy a stamp, find a postbox, and personally post this letter. Posting it myself would be symbolic of my commitment to getting my life back on track. But, wouldn’t you know, there wasn’t a postbox in sight.

‘You’re cursed,’ I kept hearing, and the more I heard it, the more adamant I became that I would find a postbox and put everything behind me.

My boss, Simon, was slightly concerned when I arrived late. I was never late.

‘Is everything all right, Nina?’

‘Fine, just fine,’ I said, making my way to my desk.

I turned on the computer and looked out of the window. The buildings were grey and dreary and set against a grey winter sky. So many times I had sat looking out of this window, imagining the sky to be orange, wishing that I could soak up the rays of an orange sky, fly out of the window and have the courage to do something else, something that gave me meaning.

I had been working at Whitter and Lawson for the last three and a half years, representing all kinds of artists but mostly those who had issues over copyright or needed contractual agreements with galleries drawn up. I read somewhere that people work on the periphery of what they really want to do so that they don’t have to cope with rejection. So, someone who harboured desires to be a racing-car driver would be a mechanic on a racetrack but not actually drive the car. It was like this for me in a sense: I’d always wanted to be a painter and so I worked with artists. But my job wasn’t really about art, it was about making money, dealing with boosting egos. Feeling increasingly cynical and secretly thinking that I could do much better. But I couldn’t – it wasn’t really rejection I feared, it was disappointing my father and sabotaging his investment in the Encyclopaedia Britannica.

I’d known I wanted to be a painter since the age of six. My brain had always had difficulty engaging with my mouth and I was unable to fully articulate any emotion except on paper. So anything I felt, I produced in a swirl of finger-painted colours that nobody could quite manage to understand. When I found out that my sister wasn’t coming back I did more of the same. My parents didn’t hang the pictures on the fridge door with a magnet – they didn’t know that that is what you were supposed to do with the nonsensical pictures that your children produced. They didn’t even lie and tell me how good they were. Instead, the pictures were folded up and binned while my father would sit with me and read me bits from the Encyclopaedia Britannica, extracts that even he didn’t understand. He was preparing me for a career in law, or ‘love’ as he mispronounced it.

His career choice for me was not based on any longstanding family tradition. He was a bus driver and I think he just wanted to give me the best possible start, and make sure I would not have to face the instability that he had suffered. That’s why when the encyclopaedia man came round when I was young and sensed the aspirations my father had for me, he blatantly incorporated me into his sales pitch by saying that the books would set me on course for a high-flying career. My dad bought the whole set, which he could clearly not afford, taking on extra jobs like mending television sets so he could buy the entire set and receive the latest volume, year after year.

At sixteen, when I expressed a desire to go to art college he went ballistic and didn’t speak to me for weeks. When he did it was to say, ‘Nina, I have not sacrificed the life so you can do the hobby, the lawyer is a good profession. Not that I am pressurising you, not that I came to the England to give you the good education and work every hour and make sacrifices.’

Put that way I could clearly see his point. So I did an art A level without him knowing about it – just in case, by some miracle, he changed his mind. He didn’t and so I went to university to study law.

Whitter and Lawson was where I did my training, and I worked incredibly hard so that they would give me a job after I had finished; at least that way I could be around artists and connect with their world. Everyone around me said it was impossible, there were hardly any Indian lawyers representing artists and it was a place where contacts mattered. People said that I would need a miracle to be taken on by the firm but I busted my gut and worked every single hour I could, going out of my way to prove everyone wrong.

I remember making promises that I would do a whole series of things if I got the job, like give away ten per cent of my future earnings to charity and buy a Big Issue weekly. To whom these promises were made I couldn’t really tell you; maybe just to myself. So I should have known that the first visible signs of wanting out was crossing the road, making out like I hadn’t seen the Big Issue man when he was blatantly waving at me. But I pretended, pretended that I was lucky to have a job and make lots of money and be in that world. My dad always said this was what life was about – working hard, being disciplined, making money, surviving in a ‘dog eating the cat’ world. But then my best friend Ki died and none of that made sense anymore. An uneasiness began to set in.

Felicity, the PA, called me to say that Boo Williams was waiting for me in reception.

Ki disintegrated rapidly at twenty-five. She had felt a lump in her leg while she was away travelling but decided it was nothing. By the time she came back it had spread throughout her whole body. There was nothing anyone could do. I pretended it would be fine; didn’t even see the head scarf and the dribbling mouth and the weight loss. She whispered lots of things to me and I made a whole heap of promises to her. I’m not sure exactly what I said, I wasn’t really there so couldn’t remember any of it. Not until that moment, the moment I sat at my computer thinking about how I’d not taken responsibility for anything.

What I had promised her was that I would live my life passionately and do all the things I really wanted to, not just for me but for her.

The day she told me about her condition she dropped it in like it was something she forgot to mention on a shopping list. Ki had got back from Thailand a couple of weeks earlier, and we had spent virtually every day together since. That day we were off to Brighton, and her dad was in the driveway cleaning his car.

‘It’s hot weather, na?’ he asked.

‘Good, isn’t it?’ I replied.

‘Makes me want to go and visit some bitches.’

I looked at him as Ki came out. He continued, ‘Na, beta, saying to Nina we must visit some bitches.’

‘It’s beaches, Dad, beaches. Yeah, we’ll visit loads and we’ll make sure we do it soon.’

I remember thinking that comment was strange as she normally took the piss out of his mispronunciations.

‘Yours is into bitches, mine thinks I’m into porn,’ I said walking back in with her.

‘What?’

‘I didn’t realise that the Sky box downstairs was linked to the one upstairs, and I was flicking through it and lingered on a few porn channels and this lesbian talk show.

She looked at me.

‘It was just out of interest, didn’t know I was interrupting Mum and Dad watching their Zee TV. Then in the morning I heard my dad tell my mum to talk to me, to have a word, maybe marriage would straighten that out. So she just left a couple more CVs on the table.’

‘When will you tell them about Jean?’

‘Soon,’ I said.

‘Tell them soon, Nina, it’s not worth the wait. Do what makes you happy. You’ll make sure you’re happy, won’t you?’

I looked at her. Where did that come from?

‘I’ve got cancer, Nina, and it’s bad. Phase three, that’s what they called it. Don’t think they can do much with chemo but they’ll give it a go.’

She said it just like that, like she had bought some new trousers from French Connection and had forgotten to tell me.

She hadn’t told her parents. Outside, her dad was blissfully ignorant; bucket in one hand, sponge in another, cleaning his shiny silver car and talking about bitches, unaware that shortly his life would change forever.

I deluded myself that chemo would sort it. I knew if I bargained hard and made a whole series of promises, it would be all right. Right until the last minute I believed that. Even when she died, I held on to her, not letting go. Her dad had to pull me off her.

The phone went again. ‘Ms Williams is waiting for you in reception, Nina.’

‘I heard you the first time,’ I snapped.

My colleagues turned and looked at me. I never lost it. No matter what, I was always calm. Calm and reliable Nina, who worked twelve hours a day if necessary. Calm and dependable Nina, who did what was asked of her; who went to the gallery openings that nobody else in the firm wanted to go to.

I got up and went to reception to meet Boo. She was dressed in black and wore bright red boots, the colour of the dried tomatoes she had put into Venus de Milo’s sockets.

‘Sorry to have kept you waiting.’

‘Quite,’ she replied.

And that was it, the word that tipped me over the edge.

‘Quite,’ I mumbled.

‘Yes, I’ve got better things to do with my time,’ she replied.

‘Like make apricot statues?’

Felicity looked up from behind the reception desk, shocked.

‘I don’t like your tone, Nina,’ Boo said.

‘I don’t like your work, but there’s nothing I can do about that, is there?’

‘Nessun dorma', which was playing in reception, seemed to be playing unusually loud in my head as Boo started ranting. I wasn’t really listening to what she was saying but just gazed blankly at her, watching her lips move and hearing the Guru’s words telling me again and again that I was cursed. The only thought I had was to get out of there.

‘Boo, Nina has been under the weather recently, haven’t you, Nina?’ Simon said, hearing her shouting and coming out of his office to try to placate her.

‘Yes, under the weather, under a cloud, a dirty grey sky. I have to go, I have to leave.’

There was silence: the kind of silence that is desperate to be filled.

And Simon didn’t stop me. Over three years at the firm, sweating blood, pampering over-inflated egos and making him money and he didn’t even say, ‘Come into my office, let’s talk about it.’

Maybe if he had I would have stayed, because all that I needed was some reassurance that I was worth something.

‘Right,’ I said, getting my coat. ‘I’ll come back for the rest of my things later.’

‘I’ll make sure Felicity sends them on to you,’ Simon replied.

I splashed through puddles, wandering aimlessly, feeling numb. I should have been elated, relieved at least that I had left work; but the way it had happened was out of my control, he was essentially showing me the door. After everything I had done, that’s how much I meant. What would I say to my parents? Not only would I crush them by saying that I was marrying Jean but now my dad’s biggest fear of me losing my job had come true. Perhaps it was better to break it to them all at once: if I didn’t have a job I couldn’t go through with their list system anyway so that didn’t matter, and at least I had Jean. Jean would be there no matter what. He would return home later that evening and between us we could find a way to break it to them so that it wouldn’t completely crush them. Things weren’t that bad, I tried to convince myself. I’d just attempted to put the whole Guru thing behind me – there were good things to look forward to. Jean and I could finally settle down. I felt excited at the thought of seeing him again, having him wrap his arms around me and reassure me that everything would work out. As I had time on my hands I decided to go to his flat, make us dinner and wait for him: he was due back around six.

A short time later, my shopping basket was bulging with colourful vegetables. I had no idea what I was going to do with them but anything that had any colour went into the basket. Jean liked chicken so I decided to throw one in and figure out how to cook it later. I picked up a recipe book, some wine, flowers and candles and made my way to his apartment.

I smiled at the concierge as I entered the building, but instead of smiling back he glanced down at his feet.

‘Busy morning, John?’

‘Yes, miss,’ he replied, calling for the lift. I could sense that he wasn’t in the mood for chatting so I waited in silence for the lift to come down.

The tiles and mirrors reflected the huge ceilings of the apartment block and the lift was rickety and had an old-style caged door. I had always thought I’d get stuck in it. Before Jean Michel went away on his trip he had stopped the lift as we were halfway down. I had panicked. ‘I’ll take care of you, cherie,’ he said. ‘Always, you know I will. Nina, I want you to marry me.’

And although I was overwhelmed the first word that came out of my mouth wasn’t ‘Yes’ but ‘Dad'. All I could see was my dad’s face, so absolutely crushed.

Jean tried not to appear disappointed. I asked for time to think about it. He said he understood, but now my head was clear I would have a chance to make it up to him.

We had met two years earlier at a party. The moment he walked in half the women in the room turned to look: he was six foot two, with blue eyes, jet-black hair and a big smile. I watched his every move from the corner of my eye and my heart jumped with disbelief as he made his way towards me.

‘Are you OK?’ he said in a deep, confident voice, as if he had always known me.

I turned to check that it was me he was talking to and that I wasn’t mistaken: out of all the women in the room, he had chosen to speak to me.

We talked for hours and as I left he said he’d call. The days seemed interminable as I waited and my stomach did all sorts of things each time the phone rang. He called two days later, said he had wanted to phone straightaway to see if I got home safely but had held out as long as he could. There was something very solid about him: he was confident yet also excitingly passionate and spontaneous. There was no routine in our lives, no planning; things just happened.

He whisked me away from the world of the semi, Croydon and list systems, away from practicality and duty, and made me feel beautiful. He had all the qualities I lacked and when I was around him I never felt inadequate. Ki said he was what I needed; that he made me see things differently, beyond the values and concepts that had been drummed into me.

She, like Jean, was also a risk-taker, but ended up with someone who seemed safe, reliable and predictable … although he didn’t turn out to be in the end. Ki was laid out in her coffin in her red bridal sari. Her boyfriend, who was supposedly madly in love with her, hadn’t wanted to marry her, but her mother insisted that that was the way that she wanted to be dressed. Had she known towards the end that her boyfriend’s visits had become more and more infrequent? He didn’t even manage to make it to the funeral and three months later he was seeing someone else.

Jean Michel saw me through that period. Although my way of coping was just to get on with life and try not to think about things too deeply, I knew if I needed to talk he would listen. He always listened; he always tried to understand.

I turned the key to Jean’s flat and it wasn’t double locked.

‘Careless as usual,’ I thought. ‘Goes away for four days and forgets to double-lock the door.’

I carried the shopping into the kitchen and thought I heard a noise. Maybe the cleaner was in, although it wasn’t her usual day.

‘Hello,’ I shouted. Nobody responded so I began unpacking the shopping. The fridge had half a bottle of champagne in it along with some pâté. There was another noise.

‘Hello, is anyone in?’ I said, going towards Jean’s room.

Jean suddenly came out, making me jump.

‘Jean, I didn’t know you were home. When did you get in? Didn’t you hear me? I’ve got so much to tell you.’

He looked very pale.

‘Are you ill? What’s wrong?’

His bedroom door clicked closed.

‘What’s going on? Who’s in there? Who is it, Jean?’

‘No one, Nina,’ his voice sounded odd. ‘Don’t go in there.’

I went in and saw this woman emerging like some weasel out of a hole. She had a mass of red curls and was half-dressed.

All I could think about was the concierge, party to as many secrets as he was keys. He could have said something like, ‘Miss, don’t go up there, the gas men are seeing to a leak, come back in a few hours.’ I would have listened.

I stood there, completely frozen, trying to comprehend an obvious situation. There were no clichés like, ‘It’s not what you think’ or ‘She’s not important.’ In a way I wish there had been because in those moments of silence I understood that he could not possibly love me and that he loved himself much more. He expected me to say something, to do something, but I just stood there in silence, staring at him. And then I walked away.

I ran down the stairs and out of the building, cars beeping as I flew recklessly across the road, not caring if they knocked me down. I ran like I never wanted to stop but when my sides began to ache I couldn’t go on any more. Stumbling on a bench in Green Park, catching my breath, the tears began to trickle down my face.

The only other person apart from Ki who knew me inside out was Jean. I had showed him who I truly was and he had rejected me. Was I not good enough? Was that it? Was I fooling myself that he loved me? Did he mean it when he asked me to marry him? Did I make that up too? Was it because since Ki’s death I had been distant, or was it because I made him wait? He said that he would wait for as long as it took.

My arm and my chest, the ugly blotchy creases – he had pretended that they didn’t matter? Did she have ugly blotchy creases that he ran his fingers down while whispering that he loved her, every single part of her? Was that it? Was he touching her, saying that he was there for her, while the Guru was touching me? Did he pretend to love me because he pitied me?

Tears streamed down my face.

‘Help me, Ki, please, I need you. Show me a sign if you’re around. You said you would. Please. Are you seeing all this? Are you?’ Nothing came. ‘You lied to me. You said you would always be with me but how can you be? If you were with me you wouldn’t let any of this happen. None of this. But you’re dead and dead people can’t do anything, can they? I trusted you and you lied. I let you give up because you promised you would always be with me, but you deceived me just like everyone else.’

The rain began falling. I sat on the park bench thinking that there was really no such thing as fate: imagining providence having a hand was just a way of not feeling alone, a way of making sense of a pointless journey. ‘I’ll give you one last chance. Speak to me like you said you would. Go on, I’m listening now. Do you want me to beg? I’ll beg if you want.’

I crawled down onto my hands and knees. ‘See, I’m begging you. Please.’

Still nothing came.

Clutching at the blades of grass I fell forward on my knees onto a patch of muddy wet grass and began sobbing my heart out, oblivious to who was watching me. I looked up at the grey, miserable sky and the bursting rain clouds. ‘Fall harder, go on, is that the best you can manage? I don’t care what else you throw at me, send someone else to feel me up, go on, I don’t care any more. You’ve taken everything, everything. Do you hear me? You probably don’t even exist, do you? All made up, all of it, lies.’

I sat back on the bench and was aware that I was making an awful gut-wrenching sound. The wailing came from feeling cheated by the death of my closest friend, cheated by love and the injustice of being touched up and having my faith simultaneously taken away. Unable to fight any more, I let the rain pour down on me. It soaked through my coat as I sat there continuing to think. I thought about the nature of love and how that too was a lie. Ki’s boyfriend had left her to die. Jean Michel had fooled me into believing that it was possible to love. All along my parents had been right. Life wasn’t about emotion, emotion was for people who had nothing better to do with their time. It was about coping and easing the struggle, being practical and realistic, that was what my dad was trying to prepare me for. Their ideas about love were practical, they left no room for emotion and no room to be hurt, let down or disappointed. They were right: romantic airy-fairy notions of love did not exist, and if they did they were impractical and could only lead to disappointment. Life was all about survival. Trust no one as everyone was out for themselves, have no expectations: that way you could not be let down.

Eventually, when I could take the cold no longer, I made my way to the train station.

I was soaking wet so that each time I moved slightly the seat made a sloshing sound. Water ran down from my hair into my face and then dripped onto my coat, which was covered in mud. A scummy dark mess of brown on a brown coat; dirty on the outside, dirty on the inside. The commuters desperately avoided eye contact with me and tried not to look when I emitted that erratic sound; that noise when you can’t quite control your breathing. By the time I got to the High Street I had assimilated the day’s events. I managed to go into McDonalds and clean myself up a bit and by the time I reached our road I had tried to pull myself together. When I got to the blue front door of our semi, I even managed a fake smile.

My mother was in the kitchen making rotis and my father was in the sitting room, snoozing under his newspaper despite the Hindi music blasting out of the television. Their world rotated the same way it had done since 1972 when they came to London. In the evenings, Mum rolled out the rotis and made sure they were perfectly circular. During the day she worked at a tailor’s and sometimes took home extra work making Indian garments. My father had been on the same route for twenty years and wasn’t taking retirement until he saw me married; something else he succeeded in making me feel guilty about.

Although I could see the connection between retirement and marriage, he managed to find a connection between marriage and most things, and if it didn’t provoke a response in me he would bring out the death card. ‘Tell me, who will look after you, Nina, when I die?’ And if he wanted to provoke an extreme response he would say, ‘Are you going to do the same as your sister?’ This, however, was rare, as he did his very best not to mention her.

My sister Jana had left when she was eighteen. Her departure deeply wounded my parents as she had gone off to live with a ‘white boy'. They decided the best way to handle it was to pretend nothing had happened and not to talk about her, exiling her into the recesses of their minds. The jewellery my mother had saved for her wedding was safely packed away in the hope that at some stage it could be used for me. So I knew it was madness going out with Jean Michel because it couldn’t lead anywhere, but he convinced me that everything would work out and that he could win them round. Foolishly, I believed him.

Outwardly my parents hardly ever showed signs that Jana’s departure had affected them, and in those intervening years many things happened but their routine remained the same. At exactly seven o’clock they would eat and by eight they would both be in bed, flicking between Zee TV and ITV.

‘Didn’t you take your umbrella, beta? What has happened to your coat?’ my mother asked, putting down her rolling pin and handing me a multi-stained tea towel to wipe myself down with.

‘I fell over.’

‘Go and get changed,’ she said, picking up the rolling pin and pointing it at me.

‘Ma …’

‘Hmmm …’

‘About Raj, Ma, you know, the accountant man.’

She put down her rolling pin again and turned to look at me. Her eyes lit up like all her prayers had finally been answered.

‘I’ll see him. You can call his mother to arrange it.’

Why exactly these words came out of my mouth remains a mystery; perhaps it was easier than, ‘Ma, I’ve been touched up by a Guru, I’ve lost my job, found my boyfriend with someone else and have accepted that Ki is dead.’ Or maybe it was just that I was finally ready for the kind of stability they had: a gale-force wind could descend upon them, or an earthquake that measured eight on the Richter scale, and they would still be unaffected. In the words of my father, ‘This is what the routine and the discipline are both bringing.’

I went to have a shower, vigorously scrubbing every part the Guru had touched until it hurt while I began figuring out ways to break the news to my dad that I no longer had a job.

He was sitting there in the front row when I graduated. That’s when he really got into power dressing – wearing red and looking like Santa. It also gave him a certain amount of status in the community to say that his daughter was a lawyer and he would often get out the graduation photo and tears would form in his eyes.

That’s why I couldn’t tell them when I went back downstairs. He munched through his rotis asking if I had had a good day, not really stopping to listen for an answer but telling us about some rude passenger who had refused to pay full fare and how he ‘bullocked’ him and how he was tired of the ‘riff-raffies’ on his bus. Mum had put Raj’s CV safely to one side and kept looking over at it and touching her heart as if to tell me that it would break it if I went back on my word. I couldn’t eat anything so told them that I had had something after work, had had a long day and needed to go to bed.

Unable to sleep, I had lots of questions with no answers and an aching feeling of emptiness and solitude, compounded by the fact that I wanted to scream and scream out loud and not stop. But I couldn’t. The day had begun with the Guru’s hands touching me, his fingers circling my lips, and ended with me covering my mouth, making some pathetic, muffled sounds under the duvet so that nobody could hear.

That weekend I didn’t get out of bed. I was running a temperature and was in a state of complete delusion. I could hear my mum faintly in the background, pottering about, bringing food to me, mumbling something about not taking an umbrella, but I slept through it in a blissful state of illusion, imagining that I was married to Jean Michel, that everything had been a nightmare. It was only my dad’s voice that managed to penetrate through my dreamlike state.

‘You’ll be late, Nina. Don’t want to get the sack, get up, you’re better now, no?’

Waking up that morning, when every part of me wanted to remain in a heap, was hell.

‘You’ll be late, Nina,’ my dad shouted again, and then I heard him say to my mum, ‘When I was her age I had to get up at five o’clock every day, even when I was sick. And I was married.’ He said it like marriage had been a double punishment but my mum wasn’t listening. Her mind was still on her future son-in-law.

Dad married Mum under a fog of controversy. It was controversial in the sense that he felt he had been duped. The story goes that he had a chesty cough and went to a chemist, well not really a chemist as you would expect but a shop somewhere in Uganda and that this beautiful woman served him. He was, at the time, searching for a wife and was utterly taken with her. He made a few enquiries as to her eligibility but it turned out that she was already married to the man who owned the chemist’s. In true Indian style, not letting an opportunity go, the woman said she had a sister who lived with her parents in India who would be perfect for my father.

My dad, impetuous as ever, agreed to marry the sister without checking out the goods – if she was anything like her sister she would be snapped up pretty soon. When he saw my mother on the wedding day he tried to hide his disappointment but then I think he really grew to love her. That’s what arranged marriages were like; you learned to fall in love. ‘I was the fooled,’ he joked in front of her. ‘See, Nina, you’re lucky, you can meet these boys and see if you likes them: me, I had no choice.’ And despite the fact that he said he had no choice, they were really compatible and I could never imagine one without the other. It was hardly fireworks between them – more like a Catherine wheel which failed to ignite in the rain but then unexpectedly fizzed about a bit – but it worked for them.

I could barely open my eyes as they felt so sore. I dragged myself up, managed to have a shower, put on my suit and made out as if I was going to work, creeping down the stairs so they wouldn’t have to see me. Just before getting to the front door, I shouted, ‘Bye, Ma. Bye, Dad.’

‘You’ll be home early this evening, nah, beta? I’ve told Raj’s mother to get him to call you at seven-thirty,’ my mum said, pouncing on me from nowhere. ‘Oh, what’s happened to the eyes?’

‘Allergy,’ I replied. ‘Anyway, I’ll try not to be too late,’ I continued, thinking of all the places I could go to kill eight hours.

She handed me an umbrella and saw me out.

My head was throbbing and my body ached. I went to a café and sat there drinking endless cups of coffee, trying to make some kind of a decision as to what to do. What was going to happen to me without Jean – he was there to cushion all the blows. What was I going to do about work? Thank God my dad had drilled it into my head about being careful with money in an attempt to prepare me for ‘the days of the flooding'. Most of what I had earned was put aside. He was right: life was all about trying to make yourself as secure as possible so nobody could come along with any surprises. After hours of sitting there and thinking, I decided to drag myself to the Tate.

For a Monday morning it was busy, with people flocking to see the wardrobe stuffed with worldly possessions. Thankfully there was a Matisse exhibition on. I always liked Matisse. He also studied law and his father was furious when he said he wanted to give it up to paint. He was a great painter and didn’t begin to paint until after recovering from an illness. They say it was providence that sent him that illness to set him on a different path, that only looking back do we know exactly why things have happened.

It had been almost ten years since I’d picked up a paintbrush. I could have continued to paint as a ‘hobby’ after I began my law degree but it was always all or nothing with me. Even when I was angry or sad and had a desperate urge to splatter the emotion across a blank canvas, I resisted and picked up my books and studied instead. Studied and did what everyone else wanted me to do, and became who others wanted me to be.

The rooms where Matisse’s pictures were displayed were not as busy as downstairs. But as soon as I walked in I could feel the warmth. His pictures gave me energy, their raw emotions expressed with an explosion of pure, intense colours. There was no option but to stare at the paintings, to feel them: violets to stir feelings placed next to sunny, optimistic yellows, vibrant oranges against laconic blues and sober greens floating among a sea of passionate cerulean red. When I stared into Matisse’s colours I could see other colours that weren’t really there; realities that were invented; somewhere I could escape.

Matisse’s paintings carried me into his world without me even realising, making me forget who or where I was. He painted windows that let you fly in and out; bold strips of colour like the green that ran along his wife’s nose and made you feel you could balance on it, look at her every feature and see what he saw; hues of reality next to splashes of imagination. I wandered around for hours, drawn into his world, lost in the depths of his colour, soaking up every ray, searching for the shadows that he had skilfully eliminated. In every painting, I found peace.

I went to have lunch in the cafeteria and found that my thoughts had become calmer, and because I didn’t want to think any more deeply I concentrated on the noise that the cutlery and crockery were making, watching the tourists, many of whom had pulled out their guidebooks to see which exhibitions they would visit next.

Before leaving the Tate I visited the shop and picked up a book on Matisse. I randomly flicked through the pages and stopped at one of his quotes:

‘In art, truth and reality begin when one no longer understands what one is doing or what one knows, and when there remains an energy that is all the stronger for being constrained, controlled and compressed.’

I put the book back. It wasn’t a sign – dead people were unable to speak.

With a few more hours to kill before going back home, I decided to take a walk in Green Park. Jean Michel didn’t live too far from there and sometimes we had gone walking together. It was an effort to drag him out as he really didn’t like walking. He didn’t really enjoy staying in and watching videos, either, as I did. He liked finding new restaurants and eating out; he would drive halfway across the country to find a good restaurant. He loved going to the casino and betting all his money on one number. I was intrigued by his boldness, but looking back I should have known then that I would never have been enough – life with me was probably boring, with my constant refusal to go away with him and rushing off home to my parents instead. But he said we were good together, that I brought calmness to his life; but then he said many things, most of which probably weren’t even true.

I switched my phone back on and the message box was full. All of them were from him, frantic messages, every one saying how much he loved me. I so desperately wanted to believe him, to speak to him and have him put his arms around me and tell me that there had been some terrible mistake, that he could explain it all, but instead I made myself delete the messages one by one. Time, that was what I needed, time to sort out my head. I bought a coffee, sat on the park bench and thought more about the quote before setting off for home.

No sooner had I turned the key, my mum was waiting anxiously, rolling pin in one hand, telling me that Raj would be calling at seven-thirty.

‘You already told me that before I left,’ I said.

‘Good day?’ my dad asked, turning back to watch the television before I had replied.

What was I supposed to say? That Henri Matisse had given me some much-needed peace.

‘Yes, good day.’

I went upstairs, quickly had a shower, and bang on time the phone rang. No unpredictability there, then.

‘Hi Nina, it’s Raj.’

‘Hello.’

There was a moment’s hesitation and then he took control.

‘I hear you’re a lawyer and working in the city?’

‘Yes, and you?’ I asked in a half-hearted attempt to deflect the conversation away from myself.

‘No, I’m not a lawyer,’ he laughed. Well, it was more of a grunting sound. And why did he laugh? I mean, if the man thought that was humour we might as well put the phone down now.

‘No,’ he said, gathering himself together, ‘I work for a consultancy firm as an accountant.’

There wasn’t much to say to that.

‘So what do you like doing?’ he began again.

There was no stopping this man; he careered straight past the silences and kept on going.

Be kind to him, Nina, talk. It’s not his fault, none of it is his fault. What did I like doing? Suddenly I felt a sense of panic. It was the realisation that my life up until that moment had revolved solely around Jean and work. I had to say something, and so, like an eight-year-old, reeled off a list of hobbies. ‘Reading, cinema, watching TV, painting.’

‘Oh, painting? What do you paint with?’

‘A paintbrush,’ I replied.

He laughed again. ‘Very good, that’s very good, I see you too have got a sense of humour. I’ve dabbled in watercolours but I’m not very good,’ he added.

Then there was another silence.

‘Seen any good films?’ he asked.

I said the first thing that came into my head. ‘The Matrix.’

‘I saw that on the plane to Japan.’

For the first time he had my attention. Japan? What was he doing in Japan?

‘Japan?’ I enquired.

‘Yes, I have to travel for work and so I extend my stay wherever possible. I love to find out about other cultures. It’s important to expand the mind.’

‘Where else have you been?’

He listed practically half the countries in the atlas but not in a pretentious way. I stopped him at Chile and asked what it was like, and for the first time I sensed he was being himself.

‘I’ve always wanted to go there,’ I said, and to my surprise he did not come out with a cheesy line like, ‘I’ll take you’ or ‘Maybe you’ll go there soon.’ Instead, he said it was beautiful.

There was a pause but now it wasn’t awkward.

‘Perhaps you’d like to meet up?’ he asked.

I had images of my mother, a protagonist in an Indian film, wailing and beating her chest in despair at the thought of me saying no, so I said ‘Yes'. It would be just one meeting and then I could say it didn’t work out.

‘For dinner or a movie?’ he asked.

Movie? Before I made a comment on his use of the word ‘movie’ I thought twice. It was only the Croydon multiplex and I wouldn’t have to talk to him that much if we were seeing a film. ‘Yes, a movie sounds good.’

‘Great, I’ll pick you up on Saturday, about three?’

‘All right.’

‘See you then, Nina.’

My mother was downstairs, eagerly waiting for me. I could hear her pacing. As soon as I came down she pretended to look disinterested, resuming the rolling-pin position. She turned around for a second and her right eyebrow signalled as if to say, ‘Dish the dirt.’ The other eyebrow said, ‘He’s a good boy, got a good job, coming from a very good family, now tell me you have arranged to meet him.’

‘Three o’clock on Saturday,’ I said.

‘OK, OK,’ she muttered as if she wasn’t bothered, but when she turned back to her perfectly circular rotis I could feel her beaming.

Knowing that my parents were distracted with the whole Raj scenario, I felt less guilty the next morning about putting on a suit and pretending to go to work. Jean Michel had left three more messages. I wanted to listen to them but again deleted them one by one. Then I went back to see Matisse, the only person who I could turn to at that moment in time.

I bought the book I had seen the day before. It told me about his life and each of the paintings. It also included a commentary by critics on what he was trying to achieve, saying something about his search for chromatic equilibrium. How did they know that anyway? Maybe he wasn’t trying to achieve anything except to express his feelings? Did it matter what they thought he was trying to do? What mattered was how the paintings left you feeling, not a skewed interpretation on what he did or didn’t want to do. I searched the book for his own words and came across another quote: ‘There are always flowers for those who want to see them.’

‘Are there, Matisse?’ I wondered aloud.

The cafeteria was full again at lunchtime and I found myself having to ask if I could sit next to a girl with long, mousy-blonde hair.

‘Sure,’ she replied in an Australian accent, smiling away. When she spotted that I had bought the same book on Matisse as her and commented on it, I nodded and kept my head down. I wasn’t in the mood for chitchat.

But she continued. ‘He’s just great, isn’t he? And I love the quote on flowers.’

Ordinarily I might have taken this to be a sign, having just read the exact same quote, but in my jaded state I took it to be some lonely traveller who probably had no money and was trying to strike up a friendship so she could ask if she could sleep on my sofa. I imagined my dad finding her on his Land of Leather sofa in the morning.

‘“There are always flowers for those who want to see them,”’ she continued out loud, just in case I wasn’t familiar with it.

‘And weeds,’ I wanted to say, but remained looking down, eating in silence.

‘Nice meeting you,’ she got up to leave.

‘Yes,’ I replied as she went off.

I sat there for a while reading. Some Japanese tourists signalled to the seats next to me to ask if they could sit there. They seemed really grateful that I said yes. I nodded, relieved that they couldn’t speak any English and turned the page.

The last bit I read before heading off to Green Park was about the nature of creativity. Matisse said that creativity took courage. My dad would say creativity took a lot of lazy people who had nothing better to do all day except to waste time. The Turner Prize did nothing except confirm his perception: ‘See, they fooling people and making the money. Maybe I should get Kavitha to make some patterns with her samosas and send them in.’ I closed the book and caught the tube to Green Park.

Creativity takes courage.

Does it? I don’t think I can take a leap of faith, not on my own, anyway. I don’t trust myself. Does that make sense? I’ve never really done anything on my own. I’m used to doing things for other people, that’s what makes me feel secure. I’m used to being someone’s daughter, someone’s girlfriend, someone’s lawyer. I’m not used to being me. I don’t believe that I am big enough to make this all better. If I’m myself, I don’t think I’ll survive. Don’t worry, I’m talking to myself, not you, Ki. Wouldn’t want you to think that I’m asking you or anything. Wouldn’t want you to rise from the dead or do something complicated like that.

I sat on the bench for a little while longer, then wandered around the back of Mayfair looking in gallery windows before going home.

‘Good day, Nina?’ my dad asked.

‘We got an important client today.’

‘Very good,’ he said as he delved back into his newspaper. He didn’t really need to know the ins and outs of ‘love’, just to be occasionally reassured that I wouldn’t unexpectedly be made redundant; hence the addition of new clients every now and then.

It’s not my natural inclination to bend the truth. I wasn’t one of those types who went to school with a long skirt and rolled it up on the way there. Truth-bending is something I have learned to do out of necessity, and not necessarily to protect myself but my parents. When I was with Jean Michel I always said I was seeing Jean or staying there, but they jumped to the conclusion that he was a she and I let them believe it.

‘Bring this Jeannie round,’ my dad would say.

‘Yes, we would like to meet her. I’ll make roti and paneer,’ my mum would add. It went on like this till I couldn’t make any more excuses, so I got Susan, one of my friends, to stand in as her.

My dad liked ‘the Jeannie’ as he referred to her. After ascertaining what Susan’s parents did and estimating their combined annual income, he thought she was a good person to mix with.

Now I looked at my dad, took a deep breath and said, ‘Dad, the office is experiencing some difficulties with the phone, so if there is an emergency ring me on my mobile.’ They never rang the office, but just in case.

‘Hmmm.’

‘Did you hear me, Dad? Fire, flood, office, call me on my mobile.’

‘What fire in the office, it’s not burned down, no?’

Now I had his attention. ‘No, I’m just saying, in case of an emergency or if you need to speak to me, call me on my mobile.’

‘Nothing is wrong, no, Nina?’

That was the moment to confess and, believe me, I wanted to, but he looked at me like he wanted reassurance that everything was OK and I just didn’t have the strength to tell him.

‘Everything is fine.’

‘They need someone to come and fix it?’

‘Fix what?’

‘The phones. I can come and sort out problem.’

‘No, Dad, but thank you.’

My mother was in rolling-pin position and asked me the standard questions: what I’d eaten for lunch, was I ready to have dinner, if I was going to go up and have a shower. As she returned to her rotis, I stared at her. Where was that other person she had unleashed when she raged at my sister? Did she ever think of Jana? Did she worry about what she ate and what time she was going to take her shower? She must have, I know she must have. Once I caught her unpacking the jewellery box she had packed safely away, emptying its contents and crying, but she never said anything to us, me or my dad. Instead she kept it all inside and carried on with her routine. And many times when I tried to speak to her about my sister she would turn her back to me and walk away.

After I came out of the shower, the phone rang. It was Raj.

‘Hi Nina, I know we’re meeting on Saturday but I just thought I’d give you a call and see how you are.’

‘I’m fine,’ I heard myself reply politely. It was quite a relief to talk to someone who didn’t really know me, who wanted to talk about superficial things like what films I watched; someone who was unable to affect me in any way and didn’t require any depth of conversation.

‘How are you?’ I asked.

‘Good. Had a busy day. I am just going to read now.’

‘What are you reading?’

‘Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.’

‘Right. And is it working? Are you being effective?’

‘Hope so. What are you going to do?’

‘Going down to eat and then hopefully get to sleep early. I haven’t been sleeping well.’

‘Don’t eat too late,’ he said. ‘I’ve heard that causes insomnia because the food isn’t digested properly.’

‘It’s not the food,’ I heard myself saying. ‘It’s just there are lots of things going on at the moment … lots of … lots of …’ I searched desperately for the word I was looking for but the best I could come up with was ‘… contracts.’

‘Are you busy at work, then?’ he enquired.

‘Yes. Very busy.’

‘I’ll leave you to it, Nina. I just wanted to say hello, that was all.’

‘Thank you,’ I said as I put the phone down.

And that was the first time that I really warmed to him, because practicality brought a certain amount of stability that did not require much of me.

It was time to get a new mobile phone as I was finding it increasingly hard not to listen to the daily messages from Jean. After buying the phone I went back to the Tate and back to Matisse.

The blonde girl from the cafeteria was there again, studying the paintings. She smiled when she saw me. I smiled back and wandered off into the next room before she could ask me for the sofa. She followed swiftly behind me.

‘Excuse me,’ she whispered.

I pretended not to hear her.

‘Excuse me,’ she repeated.

I turned around.

‘You dropped this.’ She handed me my Matisse book.

‘Thank you,’ I said, taking it. ‘I didn’t even hear it drop.’

‘It’s what Matisse does to you. Sometimes you can just be lost in his colours.’

That’s exactly what I had thought. ‘I know what you mean,’ I replied. ‘Is he one of your favourite artists?’ I found myself asking.

She nodded.

‘Mine too,’ I said, wanting her to ask me another question.

But she didn’t ask me anything else, just smiled politely and left.

My feet took me effortlessly around the room as I tried to see the flowers in his paintings. Even in his down-times he painted light, he painted with bold colours. Maybe that’s what he meant when he said ‘Creativity takes courage', that every day he showed up and painted no matter what else was happening in his life.

The cafeteria wasn’t that busy as it was late afternoon. I could see the blonde girl sitting and eating a sandwich and although there were other empty seats I could have sat at, I went up to her and asked if the seat beside her was taken.

‘No,’ she smiled. ‘My name’s Gina by the way.’

‘I’m Nina.’

‘Nina, Gina,’ she laughed. ‘Pleased to meet you, Nina,’ she said, shaking my hand.

‘I liked that quote too,’ I found myself saying out of nowhere, trying to make up for my previous unfriendliness.

‘The one about seeing flowers?’ she asked. ‘It’s beautiful, isn’t it? It reminds me of my mum.’

‘Is she in Australia?’

‘No, she’s dead.’

I put my own sandwich down. ‘I’m so sorry, I really am, I didn’t mean to –’

‘No, it’s OK, really. That’s why that quote means so much.’

I wanted to ask her if she spoke to her, if her mother responded, if she looked for signs.

Instead, I asked, ‘Are you on holiday?’

‘No, I live here now. I’m an artist. How about you?’

‘I am – was – a lawyer but I’m thinking about painting again.’

‘Well, if you need a studio, I know of one going. Or if you know of anyone who needs one, let me know. I’m desperate to find someone who’ll take mine for three months so I can go back to Australia.’

She said she wanted to surprise her family and escape the winter months but hadn’t managed to find anyone who was interested in subletting her studio despite placing several ads. We talked some more, mainly about Matisse, and I took her number just in case I came across anyone who needed a studio.

Later, I sat in Green Park trying to convince myself that it was not meant for me.

‘Ki, Matisse talks about seeing flowers when there are none. I want to see them. Even if you’re not there and you’re not listening it doesn’t matter. I want to believe you are. Sorry about what I said to you the other day. There’s a studio that has become free. Do you think it’s meant for me?’

Silence.

‘That’s what I thought too. What if I just tried it out for three months tops? Haven’t really got anything else to lose.’

I began to feel almost excited when I thought about the possibility of having my own studio and being able to paint. The only problem with having a studio was that the level of deceit would escalate even further. I had never intended to lie so blatantly to my parents. I didn’t want to, the days I was going to the Tate were just to get my head straight. Perhaps I would try broaching the subject of renting a studio with my dad. I would say that the firm had given me a three-month sabbatical so I could understand the work of my artists better. It wasn’t that far from the truth, really.

My dad was upstairs in the spare room, fiddling with one of the many television sets he had, when I arrived home.

‘Can sell this one for fifty pounds. Newsagent wants it for tomorrow.’

‘Right. That’s great.’ I thought the best way of bringing up the studio subject was by telling him what Matisse said and then at least I could start talking about painting and lead on from there. ‘Dad, what do you think of this quote?’

‘What?’ he shouted.

I had to rephrase the sentence. ‘An artist who is worth a lot of money said that there are always flowers for those who want to see them. What do you think about that?’

‘He’s your client?’

‘Sort of.’

‘Very good quote.’

‘Really, do you think so?’

‘Yes, that is why he is the rich. Wastes no money buying the expensive flowers from the petrol shops and saves the money that the flowers are taking. Not giving the peoples the flowers every time he is seeing them.’

I wanted to bury my head in my hands in despair. He would never understand. Even if I sat down with him and explained in great detail why it was so important to me, he just wouldn’t get it.

‘Thought about what you are going to wear to see Raj?’ my mother asked later at dinner.

‘No, I have had other things on my mind.’

She made some suggestions that I pretended to listen to. The only way I could possibly escape it all was to paint. My decision was made.

The next morning I phoned Gina to tell her that I was interested in looking at her studio. She told me to come by whenever I could that day.

It was located at the back of London Bridge, in an alley with cobbled stones that led nowhere in particular. The sign read ‘Forget the dog, just beware if you disturb the artist at work'. I knocked on the door and Gina pulled it open.

‘Good to see you again, Nina. Well, this is it.’

The studio was a converted garage, bright and airy as it had a skylight. There was an enormous table in the centre of the room and a smaller one on the side which had a kettle, a toaster and a blow heater that were all attached to one adapter.

‘It’s safe,’ Gina said as she saw my eyes rest on that spot.

The walls were covered with pictures of Sydney Harbour in different sizes and forms.

‘Homesick?’ I asked.

‘I don’t think there’s anywhere more beautiful than that view.’

The floor was concrete grey, splattered with colours that had managed to jump off Sydney Harbour.

‘What do you paint?’

Where was I supposed to start? I couldn’t say I didn’t know so I said, ‘Birds.’

‘Any particular kind?’

‘Just the flying ones.’

She laughed and moved towards her easel, remarking that that was where the light fell best. ‘I’m leaving that here but if you’ve got your own and you want me to put it away then that’s fine.’

‘You mean I can really rent this studio from you?’ I asked.

‘If you want it, it’s yours. The only thing is can you give me cash instead of a cheque. Other than that, you can have it from Monday. That gives me time to pack up my stuff but if you want to drop your things by before then, just give me a call.’

When I got home there was complete chaos. The garments my mum had made were stuffed into black binliners and there were about twenty television sets on the landing. My dad was up a ladder, screaming at my mum, telling her to pass the sets to him quicker so he could put them in the attic. She was huffing and puffing and looking as though she was going to pass out.

‘What’s going on?’ I asked.

‘Inland Revenue man is outside. He’s been watching the house for the last two hours. Fukkus, Kavitha, fukkus.’

‘It’s focus, Dad, focus.’

‘Yes, I know this, this is what I am saying to her. Why you telling me, tell Kavitha, she is almost dropping the television. She doesn’t know what a big problem this is.’

I looked outside the window and to my horror saw Jean’s car. Jean was making his way towards our house.

‘Oh God,’ I muttered.

‘I know, I know, that’s what I thought. Help us, Bhagavan. Hurry up, hurry up, Kavitha,’ he shouted.

‘I’ll get rid of him, Dad,’ I said, running down the stairs.

As I opened the door, Jean was standing on the doorstep. I closed the door behind me and pulled him away from the house.

‘What the hell are you doing here?’

‘Nina, I had to see you, your phone is dead and you haven’t answered any of my letters.’

‘There’s nothing to say except it’s over.’

‘Can’t we at least talk about it?’

‘No, not here, not now.’

‘When, then?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Tomorrow,’ he said. ‘Come round to the flat.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘Just go, Jean.’

‘I won’t let you go,’ he said, ‘not like this. I love you.’

‘OK, OK, I’ll call, please just leave.’

I went back into the house.

‘I’ve got rid of him, Dad.’

‘Thank Bhagavan.’

‘I told him he wasn’t within his rights to wait in his car and watch out for illegal activity as there was nothing illegal going on, and if he continued to wait in his car I would make an official complaint. I don’t think he’ll be coming back.’ The lies were getting bigger, and the frightening thing was they were getting easier to tell.

‘See, Kavitha, all those years to make Nina study “the love”, all worth it,’ he said coming down from his ladder. Then he hugged me.

Dad never hugged me. I could count the times he had on one hand. When I went to hold him he would do this ninety-degree rotation so I got the back of him and then he would walk out of my embrace. My mum never knew how to respond when I held her and would stand there like a statue, waiting for the hug to pass like it was some massive tidal-wave that would knock her over.

The next morning, I went to the bank. My dad took £300 a month from me as part of my wedding contribution. I always thought that if I married Jean this fund would cushion the blow slightly as he could keep the amount he had built up and console himself and my mother with a holiday or a new car. Mind you, they never went on holiday, but they would have had to go somewhere for a couple of weeks until the scandal died down. When my Uncle Amit’s daughter began living with Roy who was black, ‘the honchos’ had endless rounds of secret talks to confer so they could sort out the situation. Pressure was put on my Uncle Amit and his wife; they were bombarded with CVs of every single male specimen on the planet who could be a possible replacement. When this didn’t work, one of the honchos leaked the news to the wider community. I thought Uncle Amit and Auntie Asha would have to emigrate but they stood firm, attending family functions, ignoring the whispering and gossip and being shunned by certain members of the community; but they never managed to live it down. But Uncle Amit was different from my father, he didn’t need the approval of the community or that sense of belonging.

‘Parents taking modern approach, what can you expect?’ had been my dad’s first reaction to the news. Though in my dad’s case this wasn’t strictly true: he hadn’t had a modern approach but my sister had still left. I didn’t correct him. ‘This is not looking after the children. What will happen to this girl? He will leave her, she will have baby, nobody will want her. Parents will die, she will live alone, nobody wants her or baby.’

So a happy life, then. ‘He might not ever leave, Dad, they probably really love each other,’ I replied.

‘Two years I gives them. The love is not enough, Nina, you must understand this. Everyday living with someone is hard. See your mother and me, she knows me, I knows her. She is not thinking that she will one day wake up and find the Bra Pitt.’

‘Brad?’

‘Yah, yah, him. I knows I will not wake up and find the Cilla Black. This is life. Kavitha understands me, I understands her. We have the family, the culture, the traditions, the security. This is what is making the marriage. This is why I am working for you, I want you to have what I have with Kavitha.’

Thinking about him doing two jobs for me made me feel incredibly guilty for taking money from the bank to pay for the studio. It would only be for a month or two, just to sort my head out, just to get it out of my system. The man at the art shop was of no help to me as I stood looking at the rows and rows of brushes and paints, and the different types of paper and canvases. When I used to paint I painted in oils best, so I went over to the oils section only to be confronted by more tubes in different colours and sizes. I hesitated for a moment. Painting with oils was not going to be practical. My mum had a nose like a bloodhound and she would smell the linseed and turpentine on me. I walked over to the acrylic section and chose the paints that I needed, and bought a dozen primed, stretched canvases and brushes. I called Gina to see if the material could be delivered to the studio later that day. She told me to come by whenever I wanted.

When I arrived she was taking down her paintings and wrapping them in brown paper.

‘So have you been painting long, Nina?’

‘No. I’m just experimenting. I’m not an artist or anything. I used to paint when I was younger and then I had to stop.’

‘Why?’

‘Family stuff,’ I replied. ‘But I’m taking time off just to find out what it is I’m supposed to be doing.’ I didn’t know why I was divulging such information but she had something about her that made you want to tell her things.

I desperately wanted to ask her about her mother. ‘How long have you been here?’ I asked instead.

‘Eight months. I went to art school in Sydney, did a few exhibitions over there and have been going to college here, but it’s hard to break into the circuit, unless you know someone or you get spotted. I do love London but sometimes it can be a really cold and lonely place.’

‘I know what you mean.’

‘You got family here?’ Gina asked.

I nodded.

‘See, that makes all the difference,’ she said. ‘You’ve always got them to fall back on if things don’t work out.’

‘Not if you have a family like mine,’ I said. ‘What about you?’

‘My dad is back home with my little sister. I want to surprise them for Christmas.’

‘Do you believe in signs?’ I suddenly blurted.

Instead of giving me the strange look of incomprehension I expected, she answered, ‘Why do you think I said the quote aloud?’

There was an instant understanding that passed between us at that moment, and we didn’t even have to say what it was.

‘How did she die?’ I asked.

‘Skin cancer,’ Gina replied.

‘I’m sorry. My best friend died of cancer too.’

‘It’s the pits, isn’t it? I promised my mum that I’d come to England. What did you promise?’

‘That I’d paint again and everything I did I would do passionately.’

‘This would be the work of my mum, you know.’

‘What?’ I asked.

‘Getting you and me together. It’s got her name all over it. Maybe your friend and my mum have got together up there and said, “These two, they need to meet.” What’s your friend’s name?’

‘Ki.’

She looked up at her skylight. ‘Ki… Mum … Thank you.’

And when she did that it was the first time that I thought I wasn’t losing my mind. There was someone else in the world as crazy as I was.

Gina told me she had been teaching English in Japan before her mother had fallen ill. She wasn’t told how bad it was so didn’t hurry home until the final stages, and then when she got home she couldn’t bring herself to leave Australia again. It had taken a huge leap of faith to come to England, and she said with leaps of faith came the call to adventure. I wouldn’t know about that – the biggest leap of faith before my foray into painting was going out with Jean Michel and look where that had landed me.

She said she wasn’t giving up on England, just needed a rest from the rain and from trying so hard to make things work. I understood this: if I had had an Australia to go to, I would have gone there too.

The delivery men came with my paints and canvases later that day and as Gina helped me unpack we talked about death, not in a morbid way but in a way that both of us understood. I didn’t want to leave the warmth of her studio. I wanted to tell her more, tell her about the Guru and what had happened, but it was getting late and she still had lots to do.

‘Nearly done,’ she said, unwrapping the last canvas.

‘Thank you, thank you so much.’

‘I’ve hardly done anything. If you need to use any of my stuff, like brushes or whatever else you need, just go through those boxes.’

And though I hardly knew Gina it felt as if she had always been my friend. I wanted to hug her and tell her that it would all be all right, and that she would come back to London and find that it wasn’t such a lonely place. As I was thinking this she wrapped her arms around me and told me that she was sure I would find what I wanted through my paintings. She was as generous as Ki was and I desperately wanted to believe that our meeting had been orchestrated by the two people we loved.

On the way back home, I thought of the money spent on renting the studio and buying canvases and paint, of how one thing had led to another. Then I thought about managing the deceit. Perhaps it was better to say nothing, to stop adding new clients and blatantly lying.

As I walked in the door, my dad put down his paper and pointed to a box.

‘Nina, why your work send you this big box?’

Oh God, it was my things, work had sent me all my things. Don’t panic, breathe deeply, remain silent, say nothing, do not lie.

He looked at me, waiting for a response. ‘Why they doing this?’

‘Didn’t I tell you, Dad, we’re moving offices.’

‘No problem in the company?’ he asked, putting down his glass.

‘No, no problem. Actually, we’ve got more clients, we’re expanding so we need to move to bigger premises.’ That would account for the change in telephone numbers and the technical difficulties we were experiencing.

‘Doesn’t make sense to me.’

‘What, Dad?’

‘Why they’re not sending box to the new office? Why they’re sending it here?’

‘Feng shui.’ I said the first thing that came into my head.

He looked at me, puzzled.

‘Because they want us to have a clear-out of our files and our personal belongings so we don’t bring old things into the new office. It’s feng shui.’

‘He’s the office manager?’

‘No, feng shui is an idea about clearing space and bringing new energies in. When you get rid of something old, something new comes in its place.’

‘I always know this,’ my mother shouted out from the kitchen. ‘I’m telling you, since we tidy television sets and put them all in attic there is change, maybe energy will bring Nina’s marriage. To bring them down, it’s unlucky. Bhagavan will tell you.’ See, even she was prone to a bit of truth bending; nowhere in the Gita did it say ‘Thou shalt keep broken television sets in the attic’ or ‘Broken television sets left in attic will lead to daughter’s marriage.’

Dad mumbled that they wouldn’t stay in the attic long, just for enough time to stop the taxman snooping around, and then he muttered, ‘I have to fix the television sets and drive the bus for a living, but Fongi Shu, he tells the peoples any rubbish and he makes the money. He’s not Indian, no?’

‘No, it’s Chinese, I think.’

‘The Chinese peoples, they are the clever, very clever.’

My resolve not to tell lies was obviously not working, and seeing as I’d just told one, another one wasn’t going to be so bad.

‘It’s been a really busy day at work. That new client is very demanding and I might have to be a bit more hands-on.’

As I heard myself saying the words I knew he wouldn’t understand, but these were the only words he latched on to. He put his newspaper down again and looked at me, probably imagining me hugging my clients and them doing ninety-degree rotations away from me too.

‘What I mean by hands-on, Dad, is helping the client a bit more: so, say if he is organising an exhibition in Mayfair, I might go and help him in his studio.’

I knew it made no sense but my dad only chose to hear words that he liked, hence Mayfair.

‘Good, good,’ he mumbled.

My mother was listening from the kitchen. ‘Ma, I was just saying to Dad that one of my clients is going to want me to help with an important exhibition he has so I might have to help him a bit in his studio.’

I knew it was volunteering far too much information but I had to get her bloodhound nose off the trail.

‘Has Raj called?’ she replied.

‘What!’ Here I was trying to set her off the track and she was going on about the accountant. As I went back into the hall to take off my coat she followed me.

‘Why don’t you call him? You are seeing him tomorrow, no?’ she said before giving me a chance to reply.

‘I’m not calling him, why should I?’

‘We don’t want him to forget you, Nina. A boy like that probably has a hundred girls to choose from.’

I wanted to ask her if she was ever disappointed; disappointed at the way her life had turned out, if she ever felt passionate about anything other then her circular rotis. But instead I said that I was seeing Raj in twenty-four hours and I was sure that if he wanted to speak to me before then, he would call.

No sooner had I said that, the phone rang.

‘Hello Nina, it’s Raj.’

‘Just a moment.’ I turned to my mum. ‘Ma, is that burning I can smell in the kitchen?’

‘No, beta, I switched off the gas.’

‘I think Dad’s calling you.’

‘I’m not,’ he shouted.

‘Ma, can I speak to Raj on my own?’

‘Sorry about that Raj,’ I sighed as my mother reluctantly shuffled back to the kitchen.

‘That’s OK. Nina, I just wanted to know if you were still all right to meet tomorrow?’

‘Do you feel like going to a gallery instead?’ I asked. There was a pause. ‘I mean it’s all right if you don’t want to, we can go to the cinema, it’s just that I was thinking that …’

‘No, no, a gallery is fine. Shall we meet at the Tate?’ he suggested.

I liked the fact that he suggested the Tate. Maybe he wasn’t so bad after all. ‘There’s a Matisse exhibition on at the moment.’

‘I know,’ he replied.

I was impressed. ‘Around three o’clock?’

‘Three o’clock is fine, Nina. Shall we meet in the café?’

And he knew about the café.

I told him I’d meet him there.

I went upstairs to call Jean.

‘Thank God, Nina, I have to see you to explain.’

‘Do you know that there’s a Matisse exhibition on at the Tate?’ I asked.

‘What?’

‘There’s a Matisse exhibition on at the Tate.’

‘Is that where you want to meet me?’

‘No. I just wanted to know if you knew that?’

‘No. Will you meet me, Nina, just to talk and listen to what I have to say?’

‘Will you promise to leave me alone if I do?’

He said he would and so we agreed to meet the next day at seven.

I woke up very late the next morning. It must have seemed like an eternity to my mum who was hanging about outside my bedroom door.

‘Yes, before you ask, I’m going to see some paintings with him.’

‘Paintings?’ she repeated.

‘Paintings?’ my father interrupted as he was passing. ‘If you want to see paintings you can see the paintings here …’ He indicated the numerous pictures of incarnated gods on the landing, hung on Seventies retro wallpaper.

These were the moments when I wanted so desperately not to be related to him.

As I got ready to leave for the Tate, my mother stopped me.

‘You can’t go like that,’ she said, thinking about the hundreds of girls dancing before Raj – the competition. I was wearing a pale blue polo-neck, jeans, a long black coat and had no make-up on.

‘What will he think when he sees you?’

‘He will think he hasn’t been the fooled. Fooled, I tell you,’ my dad shouted from the sitting room.

‘Put at least a bit of colour on your lips. I know you don’t need the make-up. I know that Bhagavan has given you a very pretty face, but it is to show you have made some effort.’

‘It’s not about looks, Ma, it’s about what’s on the inside.’ This was half the problem with the list system; for me it was all too superficial. Everything was to do with the outward appearance – what you looked like, how much money you had, what job you did. Also, it wasn’t as if you could go on hundreds of dates with a guy to get to know him and then say no, you didn’t like him. This would be another red mark against your family name.

‘But please, beta, do this for me.’

‘It’s the weekend, Ma,’ I said and then, feeling a little guilty, I went back up and put some lipstick on.

Raj was already sitting at a table waiting for me when I got to the cafeteria. I knew it was him by the way he was fidgeting with his cup. As he looked up I didn’t think ‘wow’ but it wasn’t a heart-sinking disappointment either like it could have been, and I could see how the other ninety-nine women would find him attractive. As I walked closer to him his aftershave smelled stronger and stronger. He got up to greet me and it was slightly awkward as we didn’t know whether to shake hands or kiss each other.

‘Hello, Nina, how are you?’ he asked, missing my cheek and kissing my ear.

‘I’m fine, thank you.’

His height at over six foot had been greatly exaggerated. He was slightly smaller than me and had a gap in between his front teeth, which I was sure that my mother would say was symbolic of good fortune. He’d also overdone it with the gel in his hair and it made it look greasy.

‘You’re very tall,’ he commented.

I didn’t know what to say to that so I smiled.

‘I’m always nervous about doing this,’ he said.

And then he went on at great lengths about how he felt. I caught the first part of it which was that he had now got a system in place when meeting the prospective date but then after that I wasn’t really listening to what he was saying, and I knew it wasn’t right but I was comparing him to Jean. Jean’s eyes sparkled, Raj’s didn’t. Raj’s lips were much thinner; Ki said she never trusted a man with thin lips. It was the occasional grunting laugh that brought me back to the conversation.

‘So how about you?’ he asked.

How about me what? I had missed that first part of the conversation. ‘Well, as you know, I’m a lawyer, as you know …’

‘You’re funny, Nina. I meant how many times have you done this?’

‘Done what?’

‘Meeting, on the arranged system?’

‘Ohh, this?’ I wanted to tell him about all the weirdos I had to see before meeting Jean, and about Jean, but I didn’t as I knew if word got back to the honchos who were responsible for matching up the CVs, mine would be marked with a red pen and my mother’s reputation tarnished forever. ‘A few,’ I replied.

‘You’re very beautiful, Nina, I would have thought you would have been snapped up just like that,’ he clicked his fingers.

There it was; cheesy line number one. Only one person in the world had ever made me feel truly beautiful on the inside and out; what did he know? Raj sensed my irritation. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it like that. It came out wrong … nerves ….’

Feeling guilty at taking my frustration out on Raj, I replied, ‘No, it’s OK. Thank you.’

It transpired that he really had no need to be nervous as he had been on about twenty dates, had got as far as two engagements, but for one reason or another, neither of them worked out. His perseverance was commendable.

‘Third time lucky,’ I said like a fool.

‘Indeed,’ he replied, smiling.

We talked about each other’s jobs, families and interests, and on paper the honchos seemed to have done their job well – he was a suitable match in the eyes of my parents at least. Raj then asked if I wanted to see the Matisse exhibition. I didn’t want to say that I had visited it all week.

‘I would love to. Do you like Matisse?’ I asked, surprised.

He nodded.

As he got up I was distracted by the T-shirt underneath his blue jumper. It was on inside out so that the label was showing. It was probably nerves, haste or just clumsiness, but I found it almost endearing. I was definitely warming towards him, almost despite myself.

‘“Creativity takes courage,”’ Raj said as we entered the room.

‘How did you know he said that?’ I replied, astounded. Was this a sign? No signs all year and then a bloody shower of them.

He laughed and this time I didn’t hear the grunting sound. ‘There’s a lot about me you don’t know, Nina,’ he said confidently.

‘Can I ask you a question?’

‘Ask as many as you like,’ he replied.

‘If you went to a casino, would you put all your money on one number?’

‘I wouldn’t go to a casino.’

‘But if you had to, what would you do?’

‘I would cover all eventualities – put as many chips on as many numbers – that way you can’t lose.’

We looked at the paintings together and his favourite was The Red Studio, the same as mine. To my surprise I found I could have spent much more time with him, but I was aware that Jean Michel would be waiting for me and that I was already running late.

‘Is there somewhere you have to be, Nina?’ he asked, spotting me checking my watch.

‘Yes, I’m really sorry. But I’m sure we’ll meet again.’

‘Look, Nina, I’ve met lots of people and I know that I like you and I’d really like to see you again. Tomorrow?’ he asked, pinning me down with a date.

I took a moment to think about it: I did want someone who was calm, who knew what they wanted, someone who was practical yet could understand me on some level. Above all, someone who was the total opposite of Jean. And how did he know that about Matisse?

‘Is it OK if I call you and let you know this evening?’

‘You can call me whenever you like,’ he replied.

I had said I’d meet Jean at seven but it was seven-thirty when I got to his apartment building. The concierge opened the door for me and smiled. I took the lift up and rang the buzzer.

Jean answered the door. He looked tired and just for one fleeting moment I wanted to forgive him and tell him that I had really, really missed him.

‘I thought you weren’t coming. I’m so happy to see you, Nina.’

Be strong, I kept telling myself.

‘Come in, cherie, come in,’ he said, coming to kiss me. ‘Cherie’ sounded stupid. I turned away so he caught part of my ear.

The lights were dimmed, candles were lit and he had made dinner.

‘Why didn’t you use your key?’ he asked.

‘Well, I don’t know, let me think … because I might find someone else here?’

‘Nina, I’m sorry, I was drunk. We got a deal with …’

I couldn’t believe what he was telling me. ‘Drunk …? Drunk …?’ If he had said he was angry with me and wanted to hurt me, maybe then I could listen, but drunk?

His eyes searched mine for something he could tell me that would make it better but they couldn’t find anything. He reached out his hand to touch me.

I wanted to tell him about my week, giving up work, finding a studio, but didn’t know where to begin and, besides, I felt I couldn’t pour my heart out to him any more.

‘Do you know that it takes courage to be creative?’

‘What?’ he replied, perplexed.

‘Creativity takes courage.’

‘Does it?’

‘I don’t know.’

He grabbed my hand, told me that he loved me, that he was sorry and would do whatever it took to make it up to me, that it would never, ever happen again. That we could start over. He said he would do absolutely anything to make me happy. And I wanted to believe every word of it, I wanted to believe it was all going to be all right, but I couldn’t because it wasn’t all right. And what if my dad was correct? What if love was fleeting and understanding was what was really important. If Jean understood me, I mean really understood me, he wouldn’t have done that. What if in a few years he found someone else again? I took a deep breath, moved my hand away from his.

‘You’ll need these back,’ I said, handing him his keys and then heading towards the door.

‘Nina, I love you,’ he shouted.

I closed the door behind me, fighting back the tears. The sad thing was I loved him too, but it wasn’t enough any more.

When I got home my mum was sitting downstairs with the contents of the jewellery box sprawled across the floor.

‘All for you, when you get married,’ she said glancing up at me. ‘Raj’s mother called to tell me it had gone very well.’

‘Yes, it went well, Ma.’

I didn’t need love, I decided then, I needed understanding; so I called Raj and asked him if he wanted to go for a walk in the park with me.

I wished I had had the luxury of a whole string of dates with Raj before having to make a decision but arranged introductions didn’t always work like that; well, especially in our family they didn’t. So if you see someone twice, especially in the space of two days, it’s a given that you’ll be walking around a fire with them and feeding each other sickly sweets on your wedding day, unless, that is, you want to deal with a distraught mother who says you have brought shame and disrepute on the family.

But how exactly events precipitated themselves that Sunday is beyond me. The walk in the park had gone well and by the end of the afternoon Raj wanted to know if there was possibly a future for us. At that time I couldn’t answer the question but by the evening I was somehow engaged to him.

It started in my absence when my dad was going through my things looking for my car insurance papers. He had taken my car out and bumped it, and true to his impatient nature couldn’t wait a couple of hours for me to get back and sort it out. While rummaging through my things, he came across letters from Jean. Letters that had been sent earlier that week, telling me how sorry he was and how much he loved me.

Putting together the fact that I wasn’t married at twenty-seven, the Zee TV lesbian talk-show incident, and believing Jean to be a woman, he almost had a heart attack as he finished reading how much Jean loved me.

He screamed at my mother, calling her to witness the evidence, and told her it was all her fault, that she had spoiled me and let me get away with ‘the murder'. They were both pacing the house, waiting for me to get home.

Raj had given me a lift back and, thank God, I hadn’t asked him in. My dad opened the door before I had even had a chance to put the key in the lock.

‘We’ve found out about you and the Jeannie,’ he shouted. ‘It is shameful. How will I hold my head in the community if anyone finds out?’ he ranted as I walked in.

My mother was weeping in the corner, refusing to look at me.

‘You don’t understand, Dad …’

‘No, Nina, you can not deny it,’ he said, pulling out the letters from his pocket and throwing them at me.

‘It’s not what you think, it’s …’

‘How can you do this to us, after everything we have done for you, it’s … it’s …’

‘It’s a man, Dad. Jean is a man. You met Susan, my friend Susan, who was pretending to be Jean who’s a man.’

My mother wailed even louder, the wedding sari ripped to shreds in her mind.

‘Don’t worry, it’s finished, and anyway, if it wasn’t why would I be seeing Raj?’

As they took a moment to think about this the doorbell went.

My dad answered it.

‘Hello Mr Savani.’

‘Oh Bhagavan, what more today? My daughter told you I have paid all my tax bills.’

Oh God, Jean, I thought.

‘Nina,’ Jean said seeing me by the door. ‘Who was that man who dropped you off?’

Dad looked confused as my world caved in around me.

‘Nina, I love you,’ Jean shouted.

My dad looked over at my mum who had gathered herself together. ‘Kavitha, the taxman is saying he is in love with Nina.’

‘He’s not the taxman, Dad, he’s Jean, “the Jeannie”.’ I turned to Jean. ‘What will it take for you to leave me alone, Jean?’

‘I won’t, not until you tell me that –’

‘I’m marrying someone else,’ I blurted.

My mother looked at me, wiping her tears with the end of her sari.

‘His name is Raj and he’s an accountant,’ I continued.

Jean looked at me, incredulous. ‘The man in the car?’

I nodded. And then he walked away. And soon after I’d said it, I wanted to shout out, ‘Don’t go, Jean, it’s not true.’ But my mother had somehow managed to wrap herself around me and was weeping with delight.

Dad thankfully thought that Jean had fallen in love with me the day he had met me at the door. It was understandable, he said, as I got my looks from his side of the family. Mum said that we’d have to keep it all quiet so as not to disrupt the wedding plans. But then she would say that as she kept a lot of things quiet. And me, I called up Raj later that evening to ask him if he felt he might be lucky the third time around.

My dad was right: in life you can’t have everything you want – it was better to make it as pain-free as possible.

The next morning I woke up feeling very dazed, and for one moment I breathed a sigh of relief thinking that agreeing to marry an accountant and being an unemployed owner of a studio had been a nightmare. The moment I realised it was true, I wanted to smother myself with the pillow.

‘What a bloody mess, Ki, suppose you’re unable to help me out here?’

She would be laughing at the mess, telling me to get out of it and give Jean another chance, but it was too late – wedding plans were already being put into action.

My mum was like a contestant on The Price is Right who had just found out that her name had been called and was running down the steps in a state of delirious excitement. ‘Get up, beta, and go to work and then you can come home early,’ she said bouncing into my room. ‘We have so many plans to discuss, so many things to do. Come on, beta, we’ve done it, we’ve done it.’

She pulled back the duvet and I dragged myself into the shower. Part of my job was getting artists out of contracts that appeared watertight, but this was something else: verbal agreements in the semi were binding.

I got changed into my suit, pulled out my sports bag and packed a change of clothes, a few jumpers, a dirty pair of trainers, towels and an old bed-sheet. Should I be caught I was prepared with the answer of the forthcoming charity jumble sale that the firm were holding.

‘So you’ll try to come home early? We have the engagement party to think about.’

‘I don’t know, I might go to the gym after work,’ I replied as she was eyeing my sports bag.

‘But the party …?’

‘You just decide, Ma, call whoever you want. I’m running late.’

‘Thank you, beta, thank you. You have made me the happiest woman on this earth and you know –’

I left before she could finish.

It was freezing cold but it wasn’t raining. All the units adjacent to the studio were closed. Just outside the studio door was a grubby pair of boots. I put them to one side, unlocked the padlock and went in. The studio looked bare with no Sydney Harbours looking down over it and the emptiness heightened the absurdity of what I was planning to do. Blank canvases were stacked against the wall and one hung on the easel with a note. ‘Good luck with the birds – play the tape if you get stuck.’

I stood in the centre of the room looking up at the skylight. ‘You crazy, crazy woman, Nina, what have you gone and done? What are you thinking of?’ I said to myself. I changed out of my suit and into my jeans and jumper, tied my hair back and put the suit on the suit hanger. The heater was already turned on full blast. What was I supposed to paint?

Tubes of paint had been laid on the table in an orderly fashion. It wasn’t my natural inclination to be orderly but I had to be that way at the firm. I had to be a lot of things at the firm. I stared at the blank canvas for what seemed like hours, thinking about my family, Jean Michel, about Ki and the deep insecurities the Guru had touched. It was as if I were looking at myself in the mirror and seeing all the parts that hurt. I picked up the paintbrush with my right hand. I wasn’t even really right-handed but from being a child my dad had insisted on me using it, as in our culture it was considered bad manners to do anything with the left hand.

‘Chi, Chi, Chi, dirty girl. Not with that hand, Nina, what will the peoples say if they see you?’

But now I rolled up my sleeve and put the paintbrush in my left hand. All down my left arm was scarring, blotchy skin that revealed my deepest inadequacies. I could have had the prettiest face in the world but it wouldn’t have mattered; inside I felt ugly and worthless; inside was a gaping hole that had been left by the people I had loved the most. The Guru had found his way into that place and confirmed what I already believed. I heard his words again: ‘You’re cursed.’

This was the arm that I hid from everyone, that I tended not to look at. This was the arm I covered, pretending that everything was fine, but here in the confines of this space there was no deceiving myself – this was the arm I wanted to paint with. Nobody here was telling me what to do or how to do it; I could reveal everything about myself and nobody would judge me. I stared some more at the canvas and started to see black. The optical illusion of colour was like the optical illusion of life: stare at something hard enough and eventually you see what you want to see.

Blacks, that’s all I saw: black hole, black deceit, burning black, black at the funeral, empty black nights waiting for my sister to tuck me into bed, the Guru’s black teeth, his dirty black fingernails. Thick ivory black squirted from the tube directly onto the canvas. But there wasn’t a hint of ivory in this black, not one shade of another colour, and with the thickest, hairiest brush I frantically covered the entire canvas with this black.

I swept my hand across the meticulously placed paints and went to get the pair of grubby boots that I had seen outside. They looked so miserable – maybe they belonged to a tramp who had rejected them. They had no laces just holes as if they had been deeply wounded. I hurled them onto the table and watched them land defeated. One fell on its sole, the other on its side.

While the paint was still wet I took another black and smeared the paint on with my fingers. I could not stop. Molten anger bubbled to the surface as I pounded the canvas with my hand and fingers, smearing black onto black, trying to find the shape of the boots on the canvas. My hand and my arm ached but I kept on pounding frantically, finding the ugly creases and the lacklustre holes where laces didn’t even want to go through, until eventually I had to stop and sit on the floor.

When Ki left she took a huge part of myself with her, the part that made me believe I could be anyone or do anything, Jean Michel took away a bit more and what was on the canvas was the part that had stayed with me.

As I hoisted myself up to go and knock the boots off the table, a shaft of light reflected back from them, wanting to tell me something else.

I stared at the boots in this light. They had walked for miles and miles and had been bought at a time when people saved up to buy things for special occasions. Maybe a man had saved up for weeks to buy them for his wedding and had proudly walked down the aisle. He’d also kicked a football in them with his son. When they had been chucked out years later, he searched all over the house and every subsequent pair he bought was in a vain attempt to replicate those cherished boots.

Perhaps a woman in a charity shop had picked them out just before they were put on display for the customers. She felt that they would fit her husband and had bought new laces that matched. Polishing and wrapping them up in newspaper, she had handed the boots to her husband, swearing it was a stroke of luck that she had found them as it wasn’t her turn to empty the bags that day. Shortly after that he was promoted. He would have wanted to be buried in his boots when he died but his son hadn’t known that and they were discarded along with the rest of his belongings.

Finally, a tramp had come across the boots quite recently after rummaging through some bin liners. He had also come across a decent suit. In a drunken state, he had taken them off and forgotten where they were. It became his mission to find them and every day he would search a different street.

Putting the canvas I had been working on to the side, along with the dirty black brush, I cleaned my hands, took a new brush and another canvas. Without mixing the colours I thinned paint with water and washed the canvas in a sea of cerulean blue. While I waited for the paint to dry, I put on the tape Gina had left me. It was Puccini’s Madame Butterfly. Opera wasn’t really my thing but I listened to it anyway. Carried away by the waves of emotion, I sat staring at the blue and then I suddenly saw something.

Dampening a rag with water, I looked at the spot two-thirds of the way down and wiped the space. I picked up an ochre yellow from the floor and oozed a buttery mass onto the empty space. The bristles on the paintbrush swirled the pigment into two rotund shapes that resembled the shape of the boots. I didn’t feel as if I were the one who was painting as the strokes were rhythmic and disconnected me from all my thoughts.

Pockets of green came through where the blue paint hadn’t come off, and these were effortlessly worked into the painting. Confident red-iron laces were added and where the yellow met the red a hopeful orange shone, the same orange as the soles; the same orange as the sky I had envisaged while sitting at my office window.

The bright colours made the painting look vibrant and full of life. For the first time in a very long time, it made me feel optimistic. Is this what Matisse meant by seeing flowers when there were clearly none? If painting could create an illusion, if it could make you feel things or see things that weren’t there, then this was what I wanted. At that moment I was certain of only one thing; that this was what I wanted to do with my paintings. I wanted to see magic and paint it even if it couldn’t tangibly be seen. I wanted to put bold colours together, see colours that hadn’t been painted and bring inanimate objects back to life.

I took white paint, squirted some onto the palette, thinned it with water and in the left-hand corner I painted the words ‘For Ki’. Looking at the space in between the words and sensing that there was a great distance between them, a distance that shouldn’t have been there, I inserted the letter ‘u’ so it read, ‘Foruki’.

I cleaned the boots with a damp rag so that most of the grime disappeared. There was string in the cupboard along with brown paper, both of which I placed on the table. I cut two long pieces of string and put each of the strings through the lace holes, and when I had finished I packed them both in brown paper.

I washed my hands with soap and water but couldn’t get my nails clean and kept scrubbing my fingers until they felt raw. After my brushes were cleaned and the paints neatly organised on the table again, I got changed into my suit, sprayed myself with perfume, glanced at the canvas one last time and smiled. I picked up the boots, switched off the lights and locked up the studio.

The boots were left where I had found them and then I switched my phone back on. There were two messages from my mum and one from Raj asking how I was and to give him a call back whenever I could.

On the journey back home I prepared to condense my world back into Croydon, to squeeze it back into the semi. No sooner had I walked through the door than my mum cornered me.

I panicked, thinking that she could smell the paint or would spot the state of my fingernails, and so I tried to get away from her.

‘Where have you been, beta, you’re very late? Have lots of things to tell you,’ she beamed.

‘Let me have a shower first, Ma, I’ve had a really busy day,’ I said quickly.

She followed me upstairs and talked nonstop through the bathroom door but I didn’t want to hear a word of it.

‘So it’s OK, then? Two weeks’ time, so December twenty-sixth and second of April?’ she asked, shouting through the door.

‘What’s OK?’

‘The engagement and the wedding.’

I opened the bathroom door in disbelief. The second of April was less than four months away – what was she thinking. I hardly knew this man. ‘What?’

‘I spoke to the priest today and he said that was a good date and then I called up Raj’s mother and she too agreed. We’re all so happy.’

‘It’s too soon,’ I shouted.

‘Soon, soon,’ I heard my dad shout from downstairs. ‘We have waited twenty-seven years.’

‘But I’ve phoned people and made arrangements now, beta.’

‘Unmake them.’

She took out her sari-end from her midriff and before she even began sobbing, I left her there.

How could she just do that? Engagement, priest, wedding, all within four months.

There was nobody I could talk to about it except Raj so I returned his call.

‘Am I glad you called, Nina. I’ve just heard about the engagement and the wedding date, and I didn’t want you to think that it was me pushing you. Far from it, we don’t even really know each other.’

‘That’s exactly what I was thinking.’ This man was growing on me more and more.

‘Anyway, when you get to find out some of my really bad habits you might want to delay it indefinitely.’

‘And they are?’

‘Well you’ll just have to find out, won’t you?’ he flirted.

I giggled pathetically. This was what happened when you spent hours in a room full of paint and had no one to converse with.

We talked about his day at work, his colleagues, his friends, he asked me lots of questions but I diverted the conversation so we spoke mainly about him. I didn’t want to lie so I tried to find a way of broaching the painting-by-day subject.

‘Do you believe in magic?’

‘Black magic?’ he replied.

‘No, things like coincidences. Coincidences, and also when you take a leap of faith that other things happen almost as if you have no control over them, as if someone is helping out.’ I was thinking about my transition into the art world but he took it to mean us.

‘I never thought about it but I suppose in a way I do. I took a leap of faith with you and it feels right and it’s all moving along almost like we have no control over it.’

Did I feel that way about him? Well, no. But there had been a sign.

‘What about signs?’ I asked.

‘What do you mean?’

‘A sign is an indication that you are doing the right thing.’

He didn’t say anything.

‘The sign between us,’ I continued, ‘was that for days, even before I met you, I was thinking about the Matisse quote – you know, the one about creativity – and then you said it to me. Out of all the things you could have said, you gave me that quote.’

‘I can see how that could be a sign,’ he answered diplomatically. ‘It’s nice to think about things that way but I work on gut feeling, Nina, and I know I’m sure about you.’

Yes, that’s what I liked about him. His certainty and practicality: there was no spontaneous, impetuous behaviour, no way on earth that I would ever find him with a red-headed woman.

‘So what do you think?’ he asked.

‘About what?’

‘About getting engaged in two weeks?’

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