Chapter 23
Kalpana had barely been back for forty-eight hours when Nyssa turned up with a bottle of wine and a bag full of snacks.
‘Look at the state of you,’ Nyssa said.
Kalpana looked down at herself. She was in her pyjamas, hair unwashed. She didn’t need a mirror to know that her face was puffy and eyes red-rimmed. All the tears she had held back during the long flight had unleashed themselves over the last two days. Even her throat felt swollen with tears.
‘I … I’ve not felt up to much.’
Nyssa sniffed. ‘I can see that.’
The suitcases were still in the living room, where she’d left them when she stumbled into the flat two nights before.
Her coat was in a heap on the floor where she’d dropped it.
She wasn’t normally this messy, but when she’d got home, all she’d had the energy to do was to curl up on her bed and cry.
Kalpana picked up her coat and hung it up.
‘Uh …’ Moving around seemed like a lot of hard work.
Nyssa put her head to one side and studied her. ‘No,’ she said. ‘This will never do. When did you last eat?’
‘I had some toast—’
Her friend pulled out her phone. ‘You go and have a shower and get changed. I will order us food.’ She put her bags on the kitchenette surface with a clink. ‘We have all this drink and I’m not allowed alcohol.’ She pointed to her small bump. ‘And you cannot drink all this on an empty stomach.’
Kalpana started to object that she wanted to be left alone to wallow in her misery, but Nyssa snapped. ‘No. No arguing. Shower. Now.’
She gave up and shuffled off to do as she was told.
A shower and a change of clothes helped Kalpana to feel much better.
She gathered up her pyjamas and shoved them in her wash basket.
Nyssa had a point. She needed to pull herself together.
She gathered her hair up into a messy bun and moisturised her skin.
While she was in Sri Lanka her skin had taken on a warm, dewy glow.
Now it just looked dry and ashy. She had tanned several shades darker in the time she’d spent there, too.
Her mother would probably tell her off for not taking care to stay out of the sun.
She sighed and went into the living room, where Nyssa had a cup of coffee waiting for her.
‘Feeling better?’ Nyssa said, when they were sitting on the sofa. She had a decaf coffee for herself.
‘Yes, thank you,’ Kalpana said. She did feel physically better for being clean and taken care of, but emotionally … it felt like her insides had been scooped out and replaced with barbed wire. She pointed to the suitcase. ‘I should unpack and do some washing …’
‘Go ahead,’ said Nyssa. ‘No time like the present.’
Kalpana groaned. Nyssa’s approach to comforting people tended to be that of a regimental sergeant.
‘Or you could look at it for a few days and feel guilty for not doing it … and then have to do it anyway,’ said Nyssa. ‘You know it’ll only take ten minutes if you just tackle it.’ She put her coffee down. ‘Come on. I’ll help you.’
Kalpana groaned again and stood up. ‘I hate you.’ But Nyssa was also right, so Kalpana laid the suitcase down and opened it.
A waft of smells passed her as she flipped the lid open and, for a second, she was transported back to a late evening in Mrs Peiris’s garden, where she’d ruined everything by kissing Sampath.
‘Oh.’ Tears sprang back into her eyes.
Nyssa came over and knelt beside her. ‘Are you okay?’
Kalpana shook her head. ‘Everything reminds me of him.’ That was the dress she’d worn on the beach, when she’d talked to Sampath about getting cold feet before the wedding, that was the top she’d worn the evening at the villa …
She pulled them out and put them in a pile to wash.
And this … this was the top she’d worn that day when she went to the temple with Sampath and Lal.
She picked it up and stared at it through a film of tears. ‘Everything reminds me of him.’
‘Marcus?’ said Nyssa.
Kalpana shook her head. ‘I can’t believe I got it all so wrong. I feel so stupid.’
‘Don’t feel stupid,’ Nyssa said. ‘Marcus was wrong for you; it just took some time for you to work that out. It happens to everyone.’ She patted her sympathetically on the shoulder. ‘It’s been a difficult holiday for you.’
That was an understatement. She had gone out a happy, or at least content, bride-to-be.
In her time there, she had realised that she’d sleepwalked into a manipulative relationship, found out that her fiancé had been cheating on her and fallen in love with someone whose professionalism she’d mistaken for love.
It certainly had been a terrible couple of weeks.
As she pulled clothes out of the bag, she revealed the parcel that contained the wedding sari she’d bought.
She wouldn’t be needing that now, but she couldn’t bear to leave it behind.
Something heavy lodged in her chest. Something like grief.
She genuinely loved the way that sari made her feel.
At that moment, when she’d tried on the wedding jewellery, she had looked in the mirror and, for the first time, felt beautiful.
Sampath’s thunderstruck expression had confirmed it.
The way he had looked at her then … like she was the most incredible thing in the world.
‘He was just doing his job,’ she said. ‘I thought he liked me back, but he was just doing his job.’
Nyssa frowned. ‘You’re not talking about Marcus … are you?’
Of course, she hadn’t told Nyssa about any of the stuff that had happened with Sampath.
All she’d told Nyssa was that she’d decided that Marcus was wrong for her.
Afterwards, when it all fell apart, she’d sent a text to say that she’d found Marcus cheating on her and that she was coming home.
She hadn’t told her about meeting Sampath in Colombo.
‘You’re talking about hot wedding planner guy,’ said Nyssa. ‘What happened there? Did you tell him how you felt about him? Did he turn you down?’
Kalpana sighed. ‘I guess it was too good to be true. He’s kind and confident and respectful and he likes my books. It’s too much to ask for him to be interested in me as well.’
‘He’s clearly an idiot if he doesn’t fancy you,’ said Nyssa. ‘I mean, I’d fancy you and I’m straight.’
This made Kalpana sniff a laugh. ‘Thanks.’ She put her head on her friend’s shoulder.
‘I don’t think he’s an idiot though. He was right.
He was my wedding planner. His job was to keep the wedding on track.
I was engaged to someone else. I’d only just split up with Marcus.
Those are all good reasons.’ She closed her eyes and sighed.
‘But for just a few seconds … when I kissed him, I swear he kissed me back.’
‘Wait, what?’ Nyssa spun her head round so fast that she jolted Kalpana off her shoulder. ‘What kiss? You’ve been holding out on me. What kiss is this?’
She had left that bit out because it really didn’t make her look good. ‘I … I kissed him. A few hours before I left for the airport. I kissed him and he turned me down.’
‘But you just said—’
Kalpana raised her shoulders and dropped them. ‘There were a few seconds there … he didn’t jump back immediately and for a tiny, tiny length of time it felt like he was kissing me back.’
‘And?’
Kalpana let out a long breath. ‘And it was great. But then … he drew back and said he couldn’t …
’ She swallowed. ‘Couldn’t be with me because I was his client.
Which I should have remembered. Honestly.
’ She buried her face in her hands. ‘Falling for the wedding planner guy, just because he was being nice to me. How embarrassingly needy.’
Nyssa sighed. ‘It is a more complicated breakup than normal, I guess. You’ve managed to break up with two guys in the space of a day.’
‘You know what the real kicker is? Everyone’s going to think I’m upset about Marcus. I’m really not. The main thing I feel when I think about him is that I dodged a bullet by not marrying him. He just wanted a wife that made him look good.’
‘Yeah. That guy has a serious fetish for the exotic, I tell you.’ Nyssa got to her feet and headed over to the kitchen.
‘What?’ This was the first time she’d heard that.
‘Have you looked at his ex-girlfriends?’
‘No. I mean, I know he went out with that news anchor who’s Indian, but …’
‘Well, I looked.’ Nyssa took a chocolate cake out of the bag. ‘They are all Asian: Indian, Korean, Chinese … Asian of one sort or another. The man has a type and, I’m afraid, you’re it.’
She hadn’t known about that. The thought made her feel a little icky. It explained Marcus’s obsession with ‘authentic Sri Lankan’ things. It was all about the exoticism of it. If she had gone through with the wedding, what would she have had to do to be ‘Asian’ enough for him?
‘Why didn’t you tell me this before?’
Nyssa shrugged. ‘You seemed okay with it. It seemed a pointless thing to say. Besides, just because he has a type doesn’t mean he couldn’t fall in love with you for real.
So I figured it was just me who had misgivings about him and didn’t want to ruin a good thing for you.
’ She returned to the floor with two plates, each containing a substantial slice of chocolate fudge cake and a fork.
‘Here you go. Breakup food. I’m sorry things didn’t work out with Marcus. ’
‘I’m not.’ Kalpana gouged out a big piece of cake and put it in her mouth. ‘I’m more upset about Sampath,’ she said, through the chocolate.
‘You could just think of it as a mixed-up rebound thing. He’s probably had to deal with that from brides before.’ Nyssa frowned, thoughtfully. ‘Grooms too, probably.’
Kalpana ate her chocolate cake and feared that Nyssa was right.
***
Sampath took his coffee into the meeting room early, so that he was there before anyone else.
This was going to be bad, so he needed a moment to gather himself before Grant came in and shouted at him.
Or fired him. He sat down and slid the envelope he had brought with him underneath the iPad. He hoped he was doing the right thing.