Chapter 21
Kalpana poured herself a glass of wine from the mini bar and stepped out into the balcony. She normally didn’t touch the mini bar because she knew it was expensive and old habits die hard, but right now, she needed it.
Looking down, she spotted the lone figure of Marcus, marching down to the beach. It was warm enough that most people were avoiding the open sand. He was lucky he didn’t get sunstroke. At least he’d remembered his hat.
He was on his own on the golden beach, with the blue and silver ocean gleaming beside him.
It would have made for a lovely photo if she could be bothered to take out her phone.
Marcus clearly didn’t want to even talk about postponing the wedding.
He rarely got angry with her, but when he did, he sulked.
Which meant he would come back and pretend their earlier conversation hadn’t even happened …
and she would just go along with it. Just like she always did.
She took another sip of her wine and felt defeated.
This holiday hadn’t turned out the way she’d thought it would.
The location was perfect. A soft breeze ruffled her hair, as though to illustrate her point.
These few days were supposed to have been relaxing.
A fun bonding time between her and Marcus before they went back to London, which held book launches and signings and deadlines for her and teaching and speaking gigs for him.
It was meant to be a celebration of why they were getting married.
Proof, almost, that the whirlwind romance was real.
Instead, she’d realised that Marcus the dream and Marcus the man were not the same thing at all.
That he’d been lying to her, in small, almost excusable ways, for months.
He said he wanted a perfect wedding for her, but now she knew that what she wanted counted for very little.
He wanted what he wanted. For some reason, he wanted the exoticism of Sri Lanka.
She was just a convenient excuse for that.
He didn’t want her. She just happened to be the right sort of person to take up the shape he needed filling.
Marriage to Marcus would be more of this. Exciting parties would become less of a thrill after a while. He always commented on how nice she looked – what happened when she aged? How would that work? No. Breaking up with him was the right thing to do.
Marcus had left his phone charging on the bed. It started to ring. The name ‘Nirmala’ flashed up. Kalpana stared at it. Then, carefully, she pressed ‘answer’. She hadn’t worked out what she was going to say. Probably ‘Marcus’s phone’.
But Nirmala beat her to it. ‘Hi, baby, can you talk?’
Baby?
Kalpana said, ‘Umm,’ in as deep a voice as she could manage.
‘Oh. Are you with her? Never mind. It’s nothing important. You left your charger in my room this morning. I’ll bring it round to you the next time I see you. Okay?’
What? This morning? Did that mean he’d been with Nirmala last night? Was he sleeping with her?
When she didn’t answer, Nirmala said, ‘Marcus? Hello?’
Kalpana killed the call and stared at the phone. All this time, while she’d been searching her soul to make sure she was making the right decision because she felt she wasn’t in love … Marcus had been sleeping with someone else. Wow.
She wasn’t sure how she felt. Numb. That was probably the best description.
She felt nothing because all the feelings had joined together to make a sort of white noise.
How stupid was she to not realise any of this sooner?
All the time that Marcus had been rude about her work – ‘oh, she’s so prolific’, ‘her books are so popular’, ‘people love her books’.
All perfectly true statements, but also, when directed at her from a certain perspective, insulting.
All those times he’d reassured her parents that he, with his money, would ‘look after her’.
Okay, she wasn’t making millions, but she was earning well enough from her books.
Between that and the editing side gigs, she could look after herself just fine.
What other signs had she missed? All that time he spent on the phone. All those supposed meetings. He had been hooking up with Nirmala. While she was shopping for her wedding sari! What an arsehole.
When she’d raised it with him, he had made her feel like a fool for even bringing it up. ‘I know a lot of beautiful and talented women and out of all of them, I chose you.’ Ha. He chose her, because she was naive enough to fall for his crap.
***
When Marcus returned, Kalpana was packing her bag, cold with fury.
To think she’d been beating herself up about being attracted to Sampath.
She hadn’t done anything about it. Not led him on.
Not flirted with him. Nothing. And all that time …
Marcus had been seeing Nirmala. No wonder he was so obsessed with his phone. And all those ‘meetings’. Ha!
‘What’s going on?’ Marcus asked.
Kalpana turned and put her hands on her hips. She wasn’t naturally this assertive, but these were not normal circumstances. ‘I’ve found your phone charger,’ she said.
‘You have? Where was it? I looked everywhere—’
‘You left it by the side of Nirmala’s bed when you left this morning.’ She lifted her chin and glared at him.
Panic flashed in his eyes for a moment, then he smiled. ‘Kalpana, babe. You’ve got completely the wrong idea—’
‘No,’ she said. ‘Please don’t lie to me. She called and didn’t realise it was me who answered the phone.’
‘You answered my phone?’
‘I’ve answered it before. You ask me to, sometimes.’ She shook her head. ‘Stop deflecting. How long have you been sleeping with her? Since we got here?’
Marcus’s eye twitched. ‘It wasn’t like that,’ he said. ‘She came on to me and—’
‘How long?’ Kalpana said, through gritted teeth. ‘I want the truth, Marcus. You owe me that much.’
Marcus rolled his eyes.
‘She said you slept at hers,’ Kalpana said. ‘She called you baby.’
‘Fine. It was only a couple of times in the last few days. It didn’t mean anything.’
‘How many other people have you been sleeping with behind my back?’
He didn’t reply. She stared at him. A lot then. Okay. The anger that had powered her guttered. ‘We definitely aren’t getting married,’ she said.
‘Kalpana, let’s talk about this.’
‘What is there to talk about, Marcus? I don’t ask for much, but I do expect my partner to be faithful. I would definitely expect that of my husband-to-be.’
‘What about you?’ he said. ‘Don’t think I haven’t noticed that you’ve been spending a lot of time with that wedding planner.’
‘Because you keep abandoning me with him! You ran off when we were supposed to be choosing the wedding sari together. You made me look at wedding venues alone!’ She knew she was going red now.
She reminded herself that she had nothing to feel guilty about.
Nothing had happened between her and Sampath and nothing would until this was sorted.
Marcus gave a long-suffering sigh and reached out towards her. ‘I think you should calm down and think about this.’
Now the tears came. ‘Don’t touch me. You … you humiliated me. In big ways and small ones. I don’t want to marry you. I just want to go home.’
He threw up his hands. ‘Go, then. I thought you were different to the other girls. Chilled out. Lower maintenance. Look. Call Sampath and get him to move your flight for you. Fuck off back to England. You don’t even know anything about being Sri Lankan. You are such a coconut.’
She recoiled as though he’d slapped her.
Coconut – brown on the outside, white on the inside.
It was the worst possible insult to level at her, given her insecurities.
He knew that. It was a barb calculated to hurt.
She was so horrified by that, she didn’t even know what to say.
She threw more clothes into the suitcase and stuffed them down.