A Scandalous Secret Read Online Free PDF Page A

cupboard upstairs had taken on some kind of ghostly form that had been floating about all night, creeping up on her at unexpected moments to mock and taunt her as she tried to engage with her guests. Neha stopped with one foot on the broad marble step that led up to the veranda, taking in great gulps of the heady scent of the creeper that hung abundantly over the roof. The fragrance of jasmine was meant to have a calming effect, according to her yoga instructor who sometimes held her sessions out here on the veranda, but nothing short of a strong tranquillizer would work today.
    Sounds of merrymaking still filtered through the doorways as Neha’s raw silk curtains drifted in the breeze: chatter and laughter and the clink of china and cutlery as guests helped themselves at the lavish buffet tables in the dining room. From the pergola at the far end of the eastern garden, the Divakar Brothers’ live performance was just audible: thin strains of the sitar playing a melancholy raga over the more robust notes of a harmonium.
    â€˜Please, please help me stay strong and calm,’ Neha thought in desperation, imagining what all the people who were currently enjoying her hospitality would think if they read that letter right now. Not having any children of theirown, the scandal of a secret child would rock Neha and Sharat’s world and destroy Sharat’s political ambitions and, surely, their marriage too. It was too terrifying to bear thinking about.
    Neha looked up at the moon, large and heavy, rising through the gulmohar trees. Such a perfect night. Delhi had seen off the last of the monsoon rains and was now starting to cool in readiness for the winter. But Neha could not derive any of her customary pleasure from the soothing breezes that were carrying in lush smells from her garden. Instead, for the hundredth time since the letter came, she imagined the emergence in her near-flawless world of the secret that she had managed to hold on to for eighteen years. Public knowledge that she’d not only had a child before marrying Sharat, but had gone on to abandon it, would tear their lives apart on so many different levels. Not merely because everyone would discover what a hypocrite she really was, but also because Sharat would no longer be able to present their marriage in the manner he loved: a gracious young couple who were pillars of the establishment and could always be relied on to help all their friends and acquaintances progress with their own hopes and ambitions.
    Neha clutched her stomach as it twisted in a painful spasm again. It had been doing that all evening – it could be due either to hunger or anxiety, she couldn’t tell. She usually ate a bowl of daal with a chapatti before any of her parties; a bit of useful ‘hostessing’ advice that Jasmeet had imparted years ago. Today the letter had caused her to forget this useful ritual. She tried to massage the pain away and, with one hand still resting on her flat stomach, Neha considered the painful question of her childless marriage suddenly: a thought she had not dwelt on forsome time now. Of course, she remembered it off and on but not with the kind of anguish that was assailing her right now …
    Standing in the shadows of the flower-bedecked pillars, Neha bent over and let out a long, low moan. She had not felt sadder in a long, long time than she did tonight. Although Sharat seemed to have come to terms with their childlessness in his own way over the past few years, for Neha it had remained the biggest irony of her life. For one, he knew nothing of the child she had already had. But Neha had lived with that anomaly mocking her all these years: how, indeed, could it be anything but fair that Neha should be punished with a childless marriage for having given away the baby that had been born to her all those years ago?
    She saw again the untidy handwriting in the letter, the girlish signature that ended in a flamboyantly curling