The House of Hidden Mothers Read Online Free

vitamin-pill bottles and a half-read newspaper until she found her mobile. A text from Toby. ‘All OK?’ She hesitated. She didn’t want to talk to him yet. She wasn’t quite sure what she was going to say or even how she felt … Doomed and defiant in alternating waves. Of course, she could call him back and quote him any number of women who had defied the odds and given birth way past their medical sell-by date: that woman who was a judge on some dancing talent show, she was forty-nine when she popped one out, wasn’t she? With a grown-up daughter, like Shyama herself. Probably all those years of pliés kept her fit and flexible. What was her name? Then, of course, there were all those OAPs who Zimmer-framed their way to that notorious Italian doctor who got them pregnant, though she recalled that one of them had died before her daughter’s fourth birthday. She had been a single parent, too. What had happened to that child, she wondered? Who would explain to her that Mummy had spent her savings having her in her sixties, had brought her into this world only to depart it soon after from cancer, rumoured to have been triggered by the amount of drugs and hormones she’d imbibed in order to create and sustain a life she would not see into double figures. Shyama’s finger hovered over Toby’s number. Why did she want to carry on with this?
    And then, on cue, because the universe sometimes works that way (or at least we like to think it does, so we create patterns from random collisions and see omens and signs in every coincidence, otherwise what’s the alternative? Accepting that we are merely random specks flicked around by the gnarly finger of indifference?), the apple-cheeked toddler returned. She was still in her buggy, but now holding an ice-cream cone triumphantly between her fat fists. It was already beginning to melt; vanilla tears were making their way down the rippled orange cone on to the little girl’s fingers. As her mother braved an approach with a wet wipe, the child looked up and smiled the way only children can – in the moment and with unadorned purity. Shyama’s guts clenched, holding on to nothing, muscles contracting around an empty space waiting to be filled. In a year’s time, she would look back at this moment and tell herself, there, that was the brief window when you could have recognized this yearning for what it really was, the ten seconds when you could have made a different choice and walked into a different future. But instead, she picked up her bag and wandered over to the playground, her phone to her ear, waiting for Toby to answer her call.
    â€˜Ew, sir! Sir! That pig’s dead, innit?’
    Toby looked up from the sty to face a row of schoolkids with their faces pressed against the iron railings, wild delight in their eyes at the prospect of seeing a real-live dead thing.
    â€˜There! In the corner! Can we touch it?’
    Toby whirled round, dry-mouthed. Christ, maybe he’d inadvertently stepped on one of the piglets – he had been so distracted since Shyama’s call. A quick glance at Priscilla confirmed she was still sprawled on her side, eyes shut, whilst her recent litter fought their squealing, desperate battle to find and hold on to a teat. It was an undignified scramble with piglets kicking each other’s snouts and climbing over each other’s heads to get to the milk. It reminded him of the buffet queue at a Punjabi wedding that Shyama had dragged him to, not long after they had first met.
    â€˜This,’ she had told him, ‘is what’s known as a trial by fire. Not unlike the one that Sita had to walk through in order to prove her purity to Ram. Don’t ask now, we’re doing Hinduism on Wednesday. Today is Meet the Family day – all of them in one place, plus all their friends, acquaintances, hangers-on, people we don’t like but have to invite because we went to their