The Train by Sarah Bourne (fiction books to read txt) 📕

their house. In fact, she seemed quite disinterested in having anything to do with his parents, he now realised. She said they didn’t even need their approval for the marriage, them being adults and all, and she showed little inclination to meet them. And his mother was determined to arrange a match for him with a nice Indian girl, this evening being just another in a long line of introductions. He threw her a glance and didn’t respond to her self-satisfied smile before assuming the dutiful son demeanour as he turned to the women on the sofa. He greeted the mother and the daughter, who kept her eyes down but acknowledged his greeting with a small nod.

‘Now, sit, sit, everyone,’ said his mother as she swept out of the room only to return seconds later with a tray laden with food, plates, serviettes.

‘Sandeep, see to the drinks.’ She nodded towards their guest. ‘Mr Iyer’s glass is empty again.’

Sandeep, raised to respect his elders and make polite conversation with guests, played his role even as he fantasised about forcing all the samosas into his mother’s mouth at once.

As the minutes dragged by and Mr Iyer steadily lowered the contents of the Johnny Walker bottle, Sandeep found himself glancing more and more often at the quiet girl sitting with her mother. Even over dinner she hardly looked up, and never met Sandeep’s eye. He found her intriguing. She looked after her mother’s every need without being asked, answered when spoken to but otherwise remained silent. He wondered what she thought of it all, this awkward introduction, and wanted to ask her, wanted to take her away from these parents and their hopes and expectations and talk to her about what she actually wanted, what she dreamed of, what she thought of this charade.

‘I’ll clear the table, Mataji,’ he said when they’d eaten all they could of his mother’s excellent dinner. She’d pulled out all the stops and filled the table with several curries, a biryani, chutneys, raita, saffron rice, chapatis. For dessert there was kulfi and gulab jamun in sweet rose syrup. Sandeep needed to move after all the food.

‘I’ll help,’ said Abhi in her first spontaneous utterance.

Sandeep saw his mother and Mrs Iyer exchange a look of smug complicity that made his stomach clench. It made him want to tell Abhi to sit, that he didn’t need her help, but he stopped himself. This might be the only chance they got to speak alone so he ignored the excitement in his mother’s face, the expectant look in her eyes and took a breath to calm himself.

‘Thank you.’ Jaw clenched, he started stacking the plates.

‘We’ll have tea in the living room when you’ve finished.’ His mother gave him a knowing wink and then raised her eyebrows and glanced quickly at Abhi. Sandeep nodded but didn’t acknowledge her childish semaphore.

He rinsed the plates and stacked them in the dishwasher and started on the pans and glasses which his mother decreed had to be washed by hand. Abhi took a tea towel from where it hung over the handle of the oven and waited by the sink.

‘So, Abhi–’ He was suddenly nervous. He hadn’t noticed how beautiful she was until that moment. Now he was fascinated by the way the light lay across her cheek, shadowing it and making her lips seem fuller. Her hair, he now saw, was loose and thick, several strands lying over her shoulder, not plaited as he had assumed when it was pushed behind her back. Her hands holding the cloth were delicate with long fingers, the nails cut short.

She looked at him for the first time and her face broke into a wide smile. Laughter lines fanned out from her eyes.

‘Isn’t this the pits?’

Sandeep was caught off guard and said nothing.

‘I get hauled along to these things at least once a month. I’m surprised there are any single Indian men left to introduce me to but somehow Mataji finds them.’ She shook her head, a small smile on her lips.

Sandeep sucked in a deep breath. She looked at him. ‘Sorry – I didn’t mean to be rude – I assumed–’

‘No, it’s okay,’ he said. ‘I feel the same. My mother has to hoodwink me into coming home these days.’

They stood in silence for a while, Sandeep washing the dishes, Abhi drying them and putting them on the kitchen table. It wasn’t an awkward silence, one of those that stretches on with neither party able to think of anything to say. It was companionable. The parameters had been set – they would never meet again so there was no rush to know everything about each other, yet anything they did want to talk about would be dealt with on this one occasion only.

‘So, what do you do?’ asked Sandeep eventually.

‘I’m a pharmacist,’ said Abhi. ‘At University College Hospital. How about you?’

‘Accountant. Small but growing firm just round the corner from there.’ He sounded like a recruitment officer and gave a little laugh to show that he also had a sense of humour.

Abhi laughed. ‘So we’re both good Indian children who have gone into safe professions.’

Sandeep thought about that. He’d always been good at maths, but he’d preferred the pure sciences. He couldn’t remember his parents actively putting pressure on him to go into accountancy but there had been comments ever since he could remember about going into a profession offering stability and allowing him to earn enough money to look after his parents in their old age. He’d toyed with the idea of studying physics at university, but a quiet, insistent voice in his head had stayed his hand. What would he do with a physics degree? Join the ranks of the overqualified unemployed, it said.

He shrugged. ‘I suppose so, but I’m not unhappy, are you?’

‘Not at all.’

Sandeep noticed the way the light danced in her eyes when she smiled.

‘What else do you do – I mean when you’re not at work?’ he asked, more to stop himself gazing