Custody Read Online Free PDF Page A

bonus handsome. He was responsible for ensuring customers remained satisfied, converting even the uncertain into the firm’s loyal clients. As Raman talked, Mrs Sabharwal’s understanding skipped away from his words and made straight for his heart. Clearly he was a sincere company worker, hard-working, ambitious, obviously talented. The man radiated dependability.
    The more she got to know Raman, the more secure she felt. He was punctual to the minute, coming over with fruit, chocolate, biscuits, cake, cheeses, just small things, he claimed, but she knew how much time and effort they must have cost, especially since he preferred foreign brands. When he took Shagun to see a film he always bought a ticket for her as well, to assure her that she was not losing a daughter, but gaining a son. His words were backed by actions that shone in her imagination as large as he had intended.
    Once the couple were engaged, Raman became even more indispensable. ‘Now you have me,’ he told Mrs Sabharwal, as he took care of her bills, as he dealt with recalcitrant plumbers and electricians, as he replaced her carpenter with a better one, as he helped with the wedding arrangements, talked to the caterer, talked to the pandit, beat the prices down. Everything he did was an indication of the great joys to come once he was properly part of the family.
    The years of struggle and misery that had followed Mr Sabharwal’s death were drawing to a close. A man was coming into the house, he would be the buffer between them and the world.
    ‘Beta, such a good match,’ the mother couldn’t help repeating, ‘so reliable he is, you will never have to worry about a thing. Your life will be comfortable, secure and safe.’
    Shagun smiled prettily, happy to be the cause of so much solicitude. She graduated from Jesus and Mary College and put away her books with relief. She hadn’t really liked studying though she had done reasonably well. She was looking forward to the freedom marriage would provide.
    *
    During her eleven years of marriage, many men had looked at Shagun, looked and looked, but none had ventured across the boundary line of matrimony. She had a settled air about her, weighed down as she was by her home, her son and eventually her daughter.
    Later she decided she must have been unhappier than she realised. She had been brought up to marry, to be wife, mother and daughter-in-law. She had never questioned this destiny, it was the one pursued by everyone she knew.
    Soon after she met Ashok Khanna she grew certain that he was trying to seduce her. It was when she told her first lie, a lie of omission concerning the cup of coffee, that she became complicit in those efforts. From then on, a curtain was drawn between her normal life and another secret one, more charged than anything she had previously known.
    In the beginning it was wonderful, her sense of power experienced differently now that she was thirty-two. She was the mature one, he the child, helpless with passion.
    ‘Why do you want me?’ she asked at times, puzzled by his certainty when things were so complicated.
    ‘Don’t ask, I just do.’
    ‘Is it that simple?’
    His fingers twisted the lock of hair falling over her cheek, his arm circled her body. She felt more real to him than any woman he had known; why that was, he could not say, but she was his other half, the half he had been seeking all his adult life.
    ‘That’s what happens when you don’t marry till middle age,’ she teased. ‘You’ll get over it – just like you got over all the others.’
    ‘Never.’
    She half wished he wasn’t so sure.
    ‘What are you thinking?’ he asked, trying to penetrate the gaze that went beyond him.
    Of Roo.
    He was jealous. He tried to participate in all her concerns, but his experience with children was negligible and he could offer little of substance.
    What about Roo?
    I know it’s a bit early, but it will be easier for me to meet you if I admit her in playschool. There