The House of Hidden Mothers Read Online Free Page A

kids’ weddings, and anyone else who will want to gossip about us, which is everyone. This is what’s known as the one-rip-and-it’s-off approach.’
    â€˜You’re not going to make me take my trousers off and pretend it’s some ancient Indian custom, are you?’ Toby was only half joking.
    â€˜No, though that’s tempting. When you have to take off a plaster, there are two ways, aren’t there? You can pick up a teeny corner and try to peel it off really slowly, wincing and hurting all the way. Or—’
    â€˜One rip and it’s off?’
    â€˜Exactly. Me and you becoming an item is possibly the biggest scandal on the Birmingham kitty-party circuit since Uncle Baseen’s son announced he was gay two days into his honeymoon and ran off with the cocktail waiter.’
    â€˜I’m not sure we could top that.’
    â€˜Well, you’re the wrong colour, you live in a bedsit, and wait till they find out how old you are.’
    â€˜You don’t have to tell them, do you?’
    â€˜No, I don’t have to. I just want to. Ready?’
    They were standing at the rear of a purpose-built banqueting suite, a low-roofed concrete building that from the back could have been a factory or a modest shopping mall, except for the garlands of fairy lights festooned over every available inch of outside wall. ‘The only man-made structure in the West Midlands visible from space,’ Shyama told him as they pulled into the car park, her ancient hatchback out of place amongst the Mercedes and Lexuses with their personalized number plates. Now they were standing outside the car, trying to ignore the slight drizzle that had just started, and Shyama was waiting for Toby to say yes. Or go home. Those were his choices. Toby had never liked an ultimatum; he reached decisions slowly, almost unconsciously, letting the seeds of the pros and cons settle into the primal mulch in his back brain whilst he got on with something physical like chopping logs or mucking out a sty. Then hours later, when he was thinking of nothing in particular, the answer would bud and unfold, and it was always the right one because it came to him. He didn’t chase it. He wasn’t prepared to chase this woman he had only known for six months either.
    Their meeting had been like one of those moments you read about or see in cheesy films but never think is actually going to happen to you. Not to someone like him, at least, who didn’t even like surprises. It had been six years ago, not long after his twenty-eighth birthday. He had been clearing out one of the stables. Then he had heard this voice, this guffaw, deep and full-throated enough to make him turn. She had been laughing at the rabbits, a child at either side of her. Not hers but Priya’s, he found out in due course. An hour later, she’d asked for his number and in a daze he’d given it. Dates followed swiftly, increasingly; she always suggested the venue or event: restaurants he had never heard of, bars he would never have gone into without her, films he would not have chosen but usually loved. She took the lead, but subtly, without ever making him feel he didn’t have a choice. And he kept choosing to say yes.
    And now here they were, in a car park in Birmingham, on the verge of their first and maybe last row. She stood, hands on hips, only a couple of inches shorter than him, but in this mood seeming feet taller. Her normally unruly hair was a straight sheet of dark brown with red streaks. (‘I nearly did the full Sharon Osborne after the divorce,’ she told him. ‘Short and traffic-light scarlet. But I haven’t got the guts. Or the cheekbones.’) She was wearing a sari, red and black shot through with gold thread, very dressy. He was used to seeing her in work clothes: casual suits, mannish jackets. It sounded stupid, but he hadn’t thought of her as Indian until now. The sari – what was it, just