‘Ah yes, I’m sorry,’ she smiles apologetically, turning back to me. ‘Well, it was over thirty-five years ago, my auntie was only a young girl—’
‘She was twenty-one,’ interrupts her mother, then adds in explanation, ‘she’s my sister, we are only two years apart.’
I’m suddenly thrown for a loop. ‘But . . . but I don’t understand . . .’
‘It was back in the Seventies,’ she explains.
‘The Seventies?’ Now I’m really confused. This isn’t making any sense.
‘She met a young engineer from America. He was in India working on a three-month contract, and she was a secretary in the office.’ The daughter, who’s obviously enjoying regaling me with this story, quickly picks it up again. ‘It was love at first sight,’ she declares, ‘and for a few months everything was wonderful.’
‘Then my father found out and he was very angry.’ Her mother shakes her head. ‘He told her she had to stop seeing this man—’
‘But my auntie would not listen.’
‘My big sister was always very headstrong,’ nods the mother in agreement.
They’re talking over each other, finishing one another’s sentences.
‘Shortly afterwards, his contract finished and he had to go back to America, but he promised he would return—’ continues the daughter.
‘He promised to marry her,’ interrupts her mother. ‘She confided in me—’
‘And he said he would bring with him a ring—’
‘But he never came back—’
‘And she never heard from him again,’ finishes the daughter.
I’ve been listening to the story in a sort of stunned bewilderment, trying to make sense of it all. If this happened years ago, how on earth does Jack fit into all of this?’
‘So, what happened?’ I ask, finally.
‘No one knew,’ says the daughter, shaking her head.
‘She wrote letters,’ adds her mother. ‘I remember my sister always writing letters, but he never replied. Her heart was broken. My father told her she must never mention the American’s name again, that she had brought shame on the family . . .’ She breaks off and sighs. ‘She never married. I don’t think she felt she could ever love again.’
‘Gosh, that’s so sad,’ I say quietly, trying to imagine how she must have felt. ‘She must have been heartbroken.’
‘Mummyji said my auntie never spoke of it again,’ nods the daughter. ‘I only know this because I would always play at her house when I was younger, and one day I found some photographs of them together. She let me take them, she said she had no use for them anymore. Look, do you want to see?’ Without waiting for my answer, she digs out her purse. ‘It’s one of those strips from a photo booth, they must have torn it in half . . .’
My chest tightens. It’s the girl in the photograph. And Jack.
As she passes it to me, I realise it’s the other half of the strip of photographs I found in the rucksack. I stare at the two faces in the pictures, smiling for the camera, so happy and in love. Only now, looking at it more closely and in the daylight, I can see the man isn’t Jack at all, but someone who bears an uncanny resemblance to him.
Someone, perhaps, like his father.
‘All these years, she assumed he had broken his promise, that he didn’t love her, that he had gone back to America and forgotten about her—’
‘But he hadn’t, he had never forgotten, he told his son . . .’
I can hear my heart thudding loudly in my ears as it all starts to fall into place. This was the promise. This was why Jack was in India. It was his father’s promise, not his.
‘ . . .all about how he had fallen in love with a girl in India and promised to marry her, but that when he had returned to America he discovered something that would change everything—’
‘What?’ I demand, almost angrily. ‘What could stop him from being with the woman he loved?’
‘He’d had a girlfriend in college. They broke up before he left for India, but on his return she contacted him . . .’ The daughter breaks off, looking scandalised, then in a low voice adds, ‘She was pregnant.’
‘So he did the right thing by her and the child, and married her,’ nods her mother, shooting her daughter a look. ‘He felt it was his duty. Times were different then.’
As I listen, I feel an immense sense of sadness. ‘And he never told your sister the real reason why he didn’t come back to India?’
‘No.’ Her eyes meet mine and she shakes her head, sadly. ‘She never heard from him again. She thought it was because he had changed his mind, because he didn’t love her any more . . . yet it turns out he loved her all his life. He felt so ashamed and guilty that he ruined her life because he had promised to marry her . . . he thought it was better this way, that she would just forget him.’
I listen wordlessly, taking all this in.
‘I think the saddest part is his marriage didn’t work out anyway,’ she continues, shaking her head. ‘They were divorced some years later.’
‘But why did he come back now to tell her?’ I ask in confusion. ‘Why now, all these years later?’
‘Because it was only on his father’s deathbed that his son learned of this secret.’
Of course, Jack’s father died. As I remember him telling me on the rooftop in Udaipur, my heart twists inside of me.
‘It was his father’s dying wish that my sister would know he never abandoned her, she was always in his heart, and that he loved her until the day he died.’ Her eyes welling up, the mother breaks off and begins dabbing her eyes with a tissue. ‘He wanted his son to find her, to give her the engagement ring he had bought for her all those years before, but that he’d never been able to give her . . . He wanted to keep his promise . . .’
‘Because a promise is a promise,’ they chorus together.
Hearing the words spoken by Jack, I feel a lump in my throat. Oh, Jack. I feel a wave of regret. It all makes sense now. His reluctance to share his secret, because it wasn’t his secret to share. His desire to keep a promise. Life’s complicated. That’s what he’d said to me. Yet I’d got it all wrong. I should have believed in love, like he did. I should have trusted him.
‘Isn’t it the most romantic story you have ever heard?’ asks the daughter, eagerly, misinterpreting my glistening eyes.
Instead I ran out. I left without even saying goodbye.
‘Did he leave you a number?’ Snapping back, I look at them both urgently.
Mother and daughter look back at me in confusion.
‘I mean, so you can get in touch with him again . . . if you need to,’ I fluster hopefully.
‘There was no need.’ The mother shakes her head, smiling. ‘He’d kept his promise, there was nothing else either one needed to say.’
I nod, feeling the tears pricking my eyelashes and, as the women turn to talk amongst themselves, I quickly brush them away.
‘Madam, would you like anything?’ I glance up to see the stewardess with her drinks trolley.
‘No . . . no thanks,’ I manage, shaking my head.
I don’t want anything now, I just want Jack. But it’s too late.
As the stewardess moves away, a tear rolls silently down my cheek, but this time I don’t wipe it away. And turning to look out of the window, I stare at the clouds as India and Jack and everything that’s happened recedes further and further into the distance.
Chapter 40
Four weeks later. London.
‘Incredible.’
Turning the last page, Diana reaches for a tissue and blows her nose loudly.
‘So do you like it?’
I’m sitting in my literary agency in London, tucked away in Diana’s corner office. She’s on the other side of a huge mahogany and leather desk that takes up most of the room, the rest of which is crowded with piles of paper that tower from floor to ceiling, filling every available inch. She’s just finished reading the manuscript of my latest book, which I finished late last nigh
t and emailed straight over.
‘Like it? I loved it,’ she sniffles, dabbing her eyes. ‘But, for the record, I’m not crying,’ she adds sternly. ‘I never cry; it’s just allergies . . . Hay fever.’
‘In February?’ I raise an eyebrow.
‘Global warming,’ she replies, shooting me a look.
I smile.
Since returning from India a month ago, I’ve been holed up in my flat, writing. And this time, I couldn’t stop. The writer’s block – or whatever it was that was preventing me from writing – just disappeared, and I was back to my old self again. People talk about coming back from holiday ‘a new person’, but for me, India had the opposite effect. It sounds such a cliché to say I found myself in India, but I did. Only I found the old me. The me I thought I’d lost through heartbreak and disappointment. The hopeless romantic and great believer I feared was gone forever. The journey to find my sister in the end became a journey to find myself.
But I’m not the only one who returned home different to when they left. Amy came back to London no longer a single unemployed graduate, but a fiancée with a fantastic new job that she loves. Even more, she loves the fact that on Shine’s recent visit, he secured a job at a prestigious yoga studio in Primrose Hill. Admittedly, she was a bit nervous about introducing him to Mum and Dad, but she needn’t have worried. At first they were a little surprised, but when he officially asked for her hand in marriage, Mum started crying, and Dad gave him a hug and called him ‘son’.
Saying that, it seems Amy isn’t the only one in our family with all the surprises. When she and Shine confessed that they’d originally eloped, we all expected Mum and Dad to be angry. Or, at the least, disappointed. But instead my parents looked at each other sheepishly and made a startling confession: they’d eloped too. To Gretna Green, of all places! Apparently their own parents had been furious and later made them do it properly – properly being at the local register office – and those are the only wedding pictures Amy and I had ever seen.
Until now. Crowding around the kitchen table, we pored over faded photographs of the two of them in Gretna Green . . . Dad in a bell-bottom corduroy suit and Mum in a white minidress – who would have ever believed it? Seems I got it wrong. But then I was wrong about a lot of things.
Like Jack.
I only have to think his name and my heart twists. So I try hard not to. After all, what’s the point? But late at night when I’m drifting off to sleep, or in the morning before I’m fully awake, my mind slips into its default setting and I dream about us together in the desert, on a rooftop in Udaipur, in a hotel room . . . And I can’t stop beating myself up for not believing in him, in us. That I ran out on him and on love. If only I could explain . . .
But I can’t. I have no idea where he is. I don’t even know his full name. I did try and find him, but typing ‘Jack, architect, American’, into my search engine brought up over nine million results. Sometimes Google just isn’t enough. And yet maybe it’s the hopeless romantic in me that I couldn’t keep down, or wanted to keep down, but there’s a part of me that can’t help thinking that love will find a way. Isn’t that what they say? All those sayings about all you need is love, or how the course of true love never did run smooth.
But there’s not running smooth and there’s two people in India meeting on a road trip, not swapping numbers, and one of them – an idiot English girl – running away in the dead of night. Forget being a hopeless romantic, the only thing that’s hopeless are my chances of seeing Jack again.
‘And the bit at the end when he’s waiting for her on her doorstep . . .’
I zone back in to see Diana dabbing her eyes.
‘He’s tracked her down from India to the other side of the world because he can’t live without her . . . and the line where he says, “Things happen that you don’t expect, like I never expected to fall in love with you”.’ She breaks off and starts crying again.
See. That’s what I love about my job. I get to write the ending I want to have, but never will. I get to live through my characters’ happy-ever-afters.
‘So is Steve Archer the guy?’ she sniffs. ‘The one you met in India. Is it him?’ She looks at me fervently.
‘Let’s just say I had some inspiration,’ I say vaguely.
‘So are you going to see him again? I gotta meet him!’
‘I don’t think so,’ I smile sadly.
‘Seriously?’ Diana looks at me aghast.
I nod. ‘I’m afraid I don’t get to write this ending.’
Diana blows her nose violently one more time. ‘Well, it’s nice to have you back,’ she says cheerfully, and gestures to the manuscript, ‘in more ways than one.’
‘Thanks,’ I smile gratefully.
‘I reckon it’s going to be your best seller yet.’
I feel a flush of pleasure. ‘You think so?’
‘I know so,’ she nods. ‘You wrote this one from the heart.’
There’s a pause and for a moment a look passes between us, before Diana suddenly notices the time.
‘Shoot, I gotta go.’ Jumping up, she begins randomly grabbing things from her messy desk and stuffing them into her huge handbag. ‘I’ve arranged to meet someone for a drink—’ She breaks off, as if remembering something. ‘Actually, it’s the same guy I asked you to meet, remember? But you said no.’ She shoots me a look and I blush. ‘Anyway, it’s a favour for a friend of a friend; this guy’s in town and doesn’t know anyone, so I said I’d meet up with him.’ She pauses to raise an eyebrow. ‘Why don’t you come along?’
‘I don’t think so,’ I shake my head hurriedly. Before, I didn’t want to meet anyone because I didn’t believe in love; now it’s for the very opposite reason. I do believe in love, I’m in love with Jack, and, even though it’s hopeless, I don’t want to meet another man.
Diana, who’s busily buttoning up her duvet coat, pulls a face. ‘Fair enough, I’m sure he’s no Steve Archer anyway.’
I smile, despite myself, and together we take the lift downstairs.
‘So what are your plans now?’
‘Oh, I’ve got a long list of things to do,’ I hear myself saying, though in actual fact my long list consists of 1) pick up dog food and 2) buy flowers for Mrs Flannegan, as it’s her birthday. I’ve been so busy working that I haven’t stopped to think about much else for weeks, but now I do, I feel at a bit of a loss.
‘OK, well, bye, sweetie, I’ll be in touch.’ Giving me one of her rib-squeezing hugs, Diana flags down a taxi and jumps inside. ‘And congratulations on the book again,’ she hollers out of the window. ‘Go celebrate!’
Standing on the street I wave her off, watching as the cab disappears around the corner. Diana’s right, this calls for a celebration. Plus, I haven’t had a chance to see anyone since I’ve been back. I emailed the gang when I returned from India, but I’ve been so busy with work, now’s a good opportunity to finally catch up. I could text Rachel and see if she’s free, invite Milly to a Skype drink, or even take the Eurostar to Paris for the weekend and visit Harriet . . . I pull out my phone, then pause.
And yet, to be honest, I don’t feel much like celebrating. Because if the truth be told, the only person I want to celebrate with is Jack.
Slipping my phone back into my pocket, I set off walking towards the Tube, my breath making little white clouds in the evening dusk. The forecast is snow and, pulling up my collar, I wrap my scarf around me, trying to stuff the gaps to keep out the frozen air. Regent Street is bustling with traffic and people and my eyes flick over the droves of men and women in smart business suits, glossy designer stores, fashionable restaurants . . .
Plunged into the fast pace of modern London, it’s hard now to imagine Rajasthan exists. The ancient land of fortresses, maharajas, sweeping deserts and holy lakes seems almost like a fairy tale. Yet it exists inside of me. People bring back souvenirs to remember their holiday, but I brought back something else – something less tangible, but something much more profound.
/>
Before I went to India, I felt as if I was sleepwalking through life. After Sam, it wasn’t just my heart that was bruised, it was my soul that was shaken. I lost my faith in love and the joy from my life. Oh, I did all the things you’re supposed to do. I drank wine, I bought a new lipstick, I partied with friends. But there was no quick fix. It wasn’t like in the movies – there was no fast-forwarding to the I-will-survive moment of rebirth. Instead, I had to plod slowly through the days until, eventually, my eyes stopped welling up, I stopped hoping for some miracle that could put it all right, and I just got on with it.
Getting on with it is a way of life for so many people. People you see every day, pinning on smiles and saying they’re fine, are actually really lost, deep down inside. But life moves so fast there’s no time to be lost, so you’ve got to push it down, square your shoulders and get on with it.
So that’s what I did. And I was good at it. In fact, I was so good at it I convinced myself that that’s how life should be. How I should be. But India changed everything. It awakened my senses, lifted my soul and brought joy and beauty back into my life. It brought me back to life. But, most importantly of all, it opened my heart and gave me back my belief in the one thing none of us can do without.
Love.
‘Hello luv, can I help you?’
I stop by a flower stall on a busy street corner, the bright blooms an explosion of colour on a dark grey wintery day.
‘Yes, please,’ I nod, casting my eyes across long-stemmed red roses, fluffy yellow chrysanthemums and bold bunches of purple hyacinths, and wondering what kind of flowers Mrs Flannegan would like. I go with the hyacinths: they always smell so wonderful.
‘That’ll be seven pounds fifty,’ nods the stallholder, briskly wrapping them up in paper.
I reach into my bag for my wallet, but it’s not there. It must be in a different pocket. I start rummaging . . . Hang on, where is it? My phone begins to ring, but I ignore it. OK, I’m not going to panic, it must be here somewhere. Doubts start to mushroom. When did I last have it? Oh, I know, I used it to top up my Oyster card, then I went straight to Diana’s office.