Nothing Like Love Read Online Free Page B

silhouettes—so close, they were almost one—disappeared into a forest of leafy mangrove trees, Sangita felt the injustice of her dull marriage rise and gorge itself on the last of her common sense.
    “Jammette!” she shrieked. “Jaaaammmeeettteee!”
    The sound of Sangita’s sharp insults roused the dogs from their slumber. They sat up, startled, and began to bark wildly, gnashing their teeth at the darkness and joining in a harmony of fearsome growls and distressed barks. They pawed at the gates to be let out, paced back and forth at the prospect of tackling an intruder. They made such a commotion that somewheredown the road a neighbour yelled, “Allyuh shut your dogs up, nuh? A man trying to catch some blasted sleep here!” Other neighbours began lighting lamps and peering out of their homes. “Sangita! Allyuh all right?” Faizal Mohammed hollered from next door. Sangita saw him push an empty Coca-Cola crate up against the window and perch on top to get a better look at the fuss below. She tried to hush the panicked dogs and hurry back to bed before Rajesh awoke, but he met her on the steps, shirtless, cutlass in hand.
    “What happened?” He pushed past her; the dogs barked at his heels.
    Sangita whisked her heavy hair out of her face and plaited it skilfully. She didn’t hesitate: “I see Vimla Narine go in the ravine.” She crossed her arms over her heaving bosom, hoping Rajesh wouldn’t notice her bare body trembling beneath the nightgown.
    “Vimla? What she gone there for at this hour?”
    “Rajesh, I look like a seer woman to you?” Sangita shoved the lamp at her husband and steered him toward his bike, which was leaning against a concrete post. “I ain’t know why she run away, but I know I see she and I know who I see she with.”
    Rajesh stopped wheeling his bike toward the gates and held the lamp up so that the glow of light fell directly on Sangita’s face. “What you mean? Who she with?”
    Sangita fixed her husband with a grave stare. “Krishna,” she said, “the pundit’s son!”
    “Krishna?” Confusion tugged at Rajesh’s square face. “The two of them alone?”
    Sangita nodded, a terse incline of her chin. She bit down on the tip of her tongue, waiting for her husband to process theseverity of the situation. The seconds dragged on. Sangita tasted coppery blood in her mouth.
    “Shits, man!” Rajesh fitted the sharp cutlass into the elastic waist of his shorts so that it jutted out the bottom. Then he climbed on his bicycle and shifted the flat blade onto his thigh before pushing off the ground with his left foot. “Open the gates, Sangita, I going to fetch them.”
    When her husband had pedalled away, Sangita wrung the end of her braid in her hands and shuffled up the stairs to change into something more appropriate, grateful Vimla’s scandal had eclipsed her own unsavoury intentions. She mounted the steps and peeked into Minty’s room, where she found her daughter sitting upright in bed. Sangita moved closer, suddenly wanting to touch the youthful skin on Minty’s face, to climb into bed with her and be a good respectable mother; the sort of mother who soothes her child from the din of angry dogs, not the sort who steals from her husband’s bed in search of passion.
    Minty sat with her knees pulled up to her chest and Sangita could see she was shaking. “The dogs frighten you,
beti
?” She moved to the bed, stroked a tendril of damp hair from her daughter’s forehead. As Minty flinched, a cloud scudded past the moon, allowing a few beams of light to slice through the window and cut across her face. Reproach sparkled in her eyes.
    “Who you call a ‘jammette,’ Mammy?” Minty asked.
    Sangita pressed her full lips together in a firm line. She didn’t like her daughter using such crude language and she told her as much.
    Minty sprang from bed and dashed barefoot to the window. In the distance torchlights blazed bright against an inky sky and five figures trudged from