Chapter 8 #2
‘Is this because I left you to do the sari shopping on your own?’ he asked. ‘I’m sorry about that, but you know how hard it is to get any kind of book publicity. I had an opportunity, so I had to jump on it. It’s not like the publisher does much marketing for the book these days.’
Part of her wanted to leave it at that, but … ‘It’s not that.’ She grabbed a tissue and dabbed at her eyes. ‘It’s that you’ve been so keen to get all the details just right for this wedding but when I showed you the sari, you barely looked at it.’
‘Come on, Kalpana, don’t be absurd. I already knew how lovely you looked in it. You sent me a photo, remember?’ He tilted her chin up so that she was looking at him. ‘Had you forgotten?’ He gave her a hug. ‘You’re such a silly goose sometimes.’
She leaned into his chest and let herself be hugged. A tiny voice in her head said At least Sampath appreciated how I looked in the sari. Which was a weird thing to think because appreciating all things wedding was pretty much the man’s job. It didn’t mean anything at all.
***
The B&B Sampath was staying at wasn’t far from the hotel Kalpana and Marcus were in.
If he wanted to, he could walk between the two places in twenty sweltering minutes, but he often took a tuk-tuk.
The house wasn’t big or glamorous, but it was clean and presentable.
If, in the morning, you told Mrs Peiris, the landlady, you were going to be back for dinner, she set a place for you at the table in the evening, which Sampath really liked.
The other clientele were young travellers.
So far, he’d met a German couple, three Brits and a Canadian.
He normally worked – emailing new contacts and updating his spreadsheet of bridal shops and interesting venues – before he went down for dinner, but today he couldn’t focus.
Images of Kalpana kept floating into his mind.
Not just of her dressed as a bride, but of her face when Marcus had announced that he was going to leave her to go shopping by herself.
He wasn’t sure whether his own presence had been a good thing or not.
On the one hand, Kalpana seemed to take some comfort in his being there – but she really should have had a maid of honour with her …
or her husband-to-be, not just the wedding planner.
It wasn’t right for a bride to have to do that on her own.
Sampath was all too aware that the woman in the shop had assumed he was the groom, and a certain amount of awkwardness had ensued. Luckily, Kalpana had chosen to ignore it, and he had managed to keep it professional.
He closed his laptop. This was not helping.
He looked out of the window. It was late evening now, and the air was cooling down. Maybe he could go for a walk to clear his head.
He locked up his room and headed out. He walked down the hill until he came out by the main road that ran along the seafront.
With dusk settling in, most of the street sellers had already turned on the lights on their carts.
He walked past a peanut vendor and smelled the smoky aroma of the nuts being toasted in a pan with hot sand in it.
It took a while to be able to cross the road, but after that, he was on the beach.
It was relatively busy with families walking by the water.
He took off his shoes and settled into a steady walk along the beach, close enough to the water that the occasional wave lapped over his feet. The light drained out of the day.
It worried him that he seemed to be feeling something towards Kalpana. It wasn’t right. She was a client and a wedding planner who fell for the bride or groom was just unthinkable. Obviously, he had to deal with his feelings and not let them get in the way of his job.
He stopped to pick up a shell, pale enough to be visible in the last of the light. He rolled it around in his palm. As he often did at times like these, he thought of his sister, Lihini.
He didn’t believe in heaven or hell. He wasn’t even sure he believed in reincarnation, but he believed in the memory of his sister. She had been only eighteen months older than him, but in those final weeks she had seemed decades older.
‘What should I do, Akka?’ he said to the sea.
He knew what she would say. What would you regret?
He knew the answer to that already. He loved his job.
He was good at it. He would regret giving in to this stupid, momentary attraction and making his job prospects implode.
Besides, his acting oddly around Marcus and Kalpana would make them uncomfortable, which would mess up their wedding and he would never be that unprofessional.
Kalpana was off limits. He thought she liked him well enough, but he always got on well with ‘his’ brides. It was an essential skill for a wedding planner.
No. He was secure in the knowledge that nothing would come of this little crush. It would pass. He just had to be sure he didn’t let it affect his work.
Feeling much better now that he’d worked it out in his head, Sampath bounced the shell in his hand and threw it out to sea. ‘Thanks, Akka.’
Putting his hands in his pockets he watched the sun sink until it was only a line of light on the horizon before he turned around and went back, using the lights from the road to guide him.
Now that he had a bit more clarity, Marcus’s behaviour bothered him more than it had done before.
Why would a man who was so obsessed with getting into every detail of his wedding suddenly drop everything like that?
Sampath understood that Marcus loved his writing career, but he was supposed to be on holiday, with Kalpana, planning their wedding.
It seemed out of character that he would bail for a whole afternoon.
Perhaps it wasn’t that odd. Perhaps, he was just projecting his own discomfort around Kalpana onto the couple’s relationship.
He had to be careful that he didn’t let it colour his judgement.
This wedding was important to the agency, and it was even more important to Kalpana and Marcus.
A wedding planner who got involved and ruined a client’s wedding was a liability.
If he let that happen, his career was toast.