The Cambridge Curry Club Read Online Free

sought solace in work with fierce dedication, a quality DianaWellington-Smythe astutely exploited. It was on their anniversary that Heera’s husband Bob had told her of his terrible secret, unwittingly timing it to the day when she began her first course of hormone replacement therapy.

CHAPTER TWO
A trouble shared is a trouble halved
    I T WAS 15 A UGUST , the anniversary of India’s Independence and of their marriage. Heera Malkani Moore still celebrated the first of the two with pride. She looked at her husband, Bob; he was sprawled across the bed, his mouth slightly open in sleep. How thin his lips were, she thought, a gingery grey for a sunny day.
    ‘Adam!’ he had called out gruffly, and she awoke instantly. Who was Adam? she wondered.
    Heera’s transparent, bubbly exterior concealed an edgy sexuality; she was a forgotten kettle boiling over. Only once had she known real passion, at eighteen, with lithe Javed in his tight blue Terylene trousers. He had exuded an animal vigour, demonstrating clever stealth in their assignations. Heera cherished a velvet memory; they had watched the teen romance
Bobby
in the back row at the local cinema in Hyderabad, and Javed’s fingers had splayed interrogatively across her breasts while he popped peanuts into his mouth with his other hand. He had retained a last peanut for the moment when the lights came on, despatching it withstudied nonchalance as other couples leaped to their feet to shuffle demurely out of the hall.
    Bob’s contribution to the anniversary was a generous Marks & Spencer gift voucher. On the advice of his aunt he had presented Heera with English cookery books to mark the first, and Heera had dutifully noted the recipes for Yorkshire pudding and mince pies. On the second anniversary he took her to a caravan site in Cornwall. Heera now used the vouchers to buy white six-pack tummy control undergarments.
    On every anniversary and several times through the year, Heera entertained the local Asian community as well as Bob’s friends and colleagues in their spacious semi-detached house on Tenison Road. The front door was decorated with an Indian floral garland from which a green chili and lemon were suspended. The men huddled over the whisky and the women flocked to the large floral Chesterfield and overflowed onto the red Persian carpet. The guests departed at midnight with a lover’s lingering touch of Indian spice in their hair, coats and eyes. ‘I should call this house “Heera Hotel”, complained Heera. ‘I get absolutely knackered with all these people coming and not going.’ It never occurred to her that she had a choice.
    Once inside the door, her overnight guests succumbed to the languorous air, moving from one calorieladen meal to the next in a stupor, too soporific to consider the red Cambridge sightseeing bus that departed hourly from the station. Bob frequently returned to slipper-shod strangers wandering with easy familiarity in his home. Standing on his doorstep one evening a few years ago, he was welcomed by a large woman in a shimmering red salwar kameez. She giggledcoyly. Several perspiring strangers were executing various dance poses on his carpet, a large woman whacked a
dholak
with podgy fingers and her listless companion sang tunelessly to the strains of a wheezing harmonium.
    Another woman and her bowed daughter were straining over the guests’ outstretched palms, squeezing intricate mehndi patterns with weary flourish through tiny cones.
    ‘
Arre jaan
, where did you come from?’ cried Heera, aghast. ‘You had said you were coming home late. We are having a mehndi party. No men allowed.’
    The large woman gushed, ‘Poor man, let him be. He can be the gora Krishna, our white Krishna among the gopis. Come, come,
chalo
Bob, you must also dance!’ She dragged him into the circle of giggling women. A shrill Bollywood tune sprang to life on his stereo system operated by a hard-faced stranger with a diamond stud in her nose, and the large