13. Chapter 13
The bus rattled through the darkening streets. The slender woman and the boy leaned on each other as the windows fogged from all the damp clothes and the warm bodies packed together inside. Outside, the temperature had dropped to sub-zero. Someone mentioned snow.
The boy remained silent, sharing body warmth. It was not the peaceful quiet of a sleepy child. This had become the new normal with her usually cheerful child and it worried her more and more these days.
Asha stared blindly at the passing lights for several moments before reaching slowly into her coat pocket. The folded paper inside crackled softly as she drew it out.
Tanay glanced over automatically.
“What’s that, Amma?”
She unfolded it carefully across both their laps.
It was an old and creased map of Britain. She had bought it over a year ago in London while she planned her escape. Today morning, she had slipped it into her pocket.
Immediately his apathy disappeared like smoke. Children could never resist maps.
His eyes widened slightly as he bent forward.
“What is this for, Amma?”
More and more, it was 'Amma' now and not 'Mummy' or 'Mum' anymore. Asha traced a finger across the paper slowly until the tip rested on Wakefield.
“We have lived here a while now,” she said hesitantly. “How would you feel about moving somewhere else? We can be two explorers. Like David Livingstone.”
The boy was fascinated with Africa.
He was thinking hard, as if rolling the idea in his head.
Then his face changed completely.
“Go?” he whispered.
Fear threaded instantly through his voice.
“Go where? What about school and my friends?”
Asha knew what he meant without him saying it.
He wondered if they were going back to London. Back to that house where his mother slept with a knife under her pillow to keep the bad man from coming in. Back to the cramped servant’s room beside the kitchen where she had spent days in fear with a chair wedged beneath the handle.
The son of the household had returned from university during her last year there.
He was educated and polished. And very much in love and engaged to a beautiful woman from a suitable, wealthy family.
None of that had stopped his eyes from lingering too long when she bent to clean.
Or his hands from wandering. At first, he tried charm.
Then, it had been brushing past her in the corridors. Things just got worse with him trapping her in the kitchen while his parents were out.
Questions murmured too close to her ear. He did not believe she meant it when she said 'no'. He did not care that her young son was watching with frightened eyes. Once, she had barely escaped him because his parents came home early.
One night they had woken to the sound of someone trying their bedroom door.
The next day she had managed to leave with all her belongings in the same worn suitcase she had brought from India about five years ago. The only difference was back then she was six months pregnant and hopeful. When she left, the boy was just over four years old.
She didn't have to tell her son anything. They both knew that London was no longer safe. So now when he heard that they were moving, terror flashed immediately across his face.
Asha touched his cheek gently with the back of her hand.
“Not London. I was thinking we will go north.”
He relaxed a fraction. She looked down at the map. A tiny smile tugged at the corner of her mouth despite the struggles ahead. Tanay studied the paper seriously, tracing the River Calder.
Asha leaned back against the rattling bus seat and rested her eyes briefly.
Beneath her sleeves she could feel the heavy gold bangles resting tight against her upper forearms. They were warm from her skin.
She never left home without them. They had belonged to her great-great-grandmother once, back when her family still had land and servants and dignity instead of debt and desperation.
Her mother had slipped them onto her arms silently the day she left after marriage with an admonition never to take them off. The last thing truly given only to her.
Asha swallowed hard at the thought of giving them away. She had hoped to gift them to her son's bride someday. Or to her daughter.
But her son mattered more.
Her sanity mattered more.
Tomorrow she would ask Mavis where gold could be sold discreetly, even if it broke her heart to part with this last bit of security.
She opened her eyes again and turned to watch her son looking more animated than he had been in weeks. Maybe a fresh start was what they both needed.
“Where would you like to go? Shall we spin a coin like the last time?” she asked softly.
Tanay considered the map with immense seriousness, slowly sounding out place names. Then suddenly his face lit up for the first time in days.
“I want to see the Loch Ness Monster.”
His teacher had told them a story about the monster in class. He had even drawn the monster and coloured it red, he said. The earnestness of it startled a real laugh out of her, small and rusty from disuse.
“We can try.”
He nodded eagerly now, all thoughts of bruises and bullies briefly forgotten.
“They say it’s big, with sharp teeth like needles."
“It probably eats naughty boys.”
His eyes widened, then narrowed suspiciously.
“You’re lying, Amma.”
“Maybe. Should you be worried if you’re good?”
He bent over the map immediately, ignoring that.
“Where is it?”
Asha searched slowly until she found the place.
“How about Inverness? We can take the bus to see Nessie,” she murmured.
The place sounded magical like it was made from silver and shimmered in the dark. Like a land of magical things like fairies and elves...and lake monsters. It also sounded unknown and perfect. They could just disappear and start over.
Tanay grinned at the map on the promised adventure.
And Asha realised suddenly that perhaps this was the first time in days that she had thought about something beyond surviving the next day without James. The pain was still there.
James’s face was still clear in her mind. The things they did together. How gentle he was, how kind. The promises she had dreamt of though she had no right. Her mum used to say, you can gift a person an elephant but you shouldn't ever give them hope.
A ball of thorns sat permanently beneath her ribs, making her bleed.
No, her agony still lived inside her. But she had clawed her way out of two disasters. She was not going to let a third one destroy all her hard work. She had a child to care for. She had to keep moving forward.
Tomorrow she would speak to Mavis and make a plan. Mavis would give her a letter of recommendation. Mavis had a soft heart.
Tanay traced one grubby finger across Scotland before suddenly asking—
“Amma?”
“Yes?”
“What’s a bastard?”
For a second, the sounds of the bus seemed to disappear. Asha turned slowly toward him. Tanay kept staring at the map as if it was a throwaway question. But with a sinking heart, she took in the tension in his shoulders and the way he drew his lips in.
Her heartbeat had become deafening.
“Why are you asking that?”
She was surprised her voice came out steady. He shrugged.
“Danny said it.” His small finger continued tracing roads absently. “He said I’m one because I don't have a father. He heard his mum tell his dad that.”
Asha felt physically sick.
For one terrible moment she thought she was going to faint.
“You are not a bastard.”
“But he said—”
“I don’t care what he said. YOU ARE NOT.”
The sharpness in her tone startled him into silence. Immediately guilt flooded her. This was her fault. She should have been more careful of her reputation. They stood out like a sore thumb and she had made it worse. She pulled him gently closer until his head rested against her shoulder.
“You listen to me carefully. You are loved more than anything in this world,” she whispered into his hair.
“And your father was a very brave man,” she lied. “He would have been so proud of you. It's just that he died.”
Tanay nodded slowly against her coat.
But after a moment he asked quietly—
“Then why don’t they like us? Danny and his friends?”
"Well, we fear things which are different from us, don't we? Like that caterpillar with all those hairs. Or the bee that almost stung you. But caterpillars turn into butterflies and bees make honey. It's just that we fear what we don't know."
Tanay chewed on that all the way home.
***
Asha was standing by the stove stirring vegetable curry when she heard the steps like thunder on the staircase outside.
There was nothing stealthy about them.
It was almost a relief when the knock finally came. Asha told herself it was best to get this over with. Maybe then he would leave them alone.
He had abandoned the silent prowling way he usually climbed the stairs at night. No, this sounded like a herd of wild elephants descending on a field of sugarcane.
The old staircase groaned beneath his weight.
Tanay looked up from his homework like he too was expecting this.
Asha’s stomach dropped despite expecting it when a fist beat loudly against the door.
BANG.
The entire building seemed to shake.
“James!” Mrs. Burton shrieked from somewhere below. “Keep it down afore I call yer mother!”
Then James’s voice roared back down the stairwell, his accent thicker than usual.
“She already bloody knows!”
Asha stared frozen at the door as another bang rattled it.
A wild pulse hammered in her neck. Without realising it she began chewing anxiously at a torn hangnail.
“What do you want?” she muttered to herself under her breath.
BANG.
Finally, she yanked the door open. And there he was. He looked more massive than ever in his anger. And he was raging. He filled the narrow landing so completely it felt impossible there was enough air left for anyone else.
Asha planted herself squarely in the doorway. Suddenly, she was angry, so angry. She wanted to kill him. It was all his fault.
“What do you want, James?”
Her expression was militant. She looked prepared for war.