Page 22 of Behind Frenemy Lines

Kriya

After the photos, Loretta drew Charles away, and Hayley joined her family, leaving me vulnerable. Loretta’s mum pounced, like a lioness that had spotted a sickly wildebeest trailing behind the herd.

“So you’re Charles’s friend,” she said. In Cantonese.

Had Charles told her I spoke Cantonese? If so, he’d done me dirty. I understood it, mostly, which is a very different thing from speaking.

The problem was, I’d never really had to practise speaking it. In Malaysia it took a Herculean effort to convince the Chinese aunties and uncles I understood Cantonese. The mental dissonance caused by me being Indian—not even Chindian—was too much for them.

Even if they did by some miracle address me in Cantonese, there was no call for me to reply in the same language. I generally answered in Malay, a language I was actually fluent in, and which, crucially, has no tones.

Unfortunately, that was not an option here.

Loretta’s mum gazed at me, her eyes coolly assessing.

She was wearing a cheongsam in a royal blue brocade and had silvering hair in a razor-sharp bob.

She was about half my size, but three times as elegant, and I didn’t think I was merely imagining the air of menace around her.

“Er, yes, auntie,” I said.

The word “friend” in this context carried a lot of weight, as I well knew. Tom had been my “friend” to my extended family for the entire thirteen years we’d been together, and he would have stayed my “friend” unless and until we got married.

“I work with Charles,” I said. “At the same company.” I couldn’t remember the word for “colleague.”

“So you’re a lawyer?” said Loretta’s mum. “That’s very good. Your father and mother are from India?”

“Malaysia, auntie. But we are Indian, yes.”

“What do they do?”

“My father is not working anymore, but he was a—er— government servant. ” That was another term I didn’t know in Cantonese, so I said it in English. I added, “My mother looked after me.”

Auntie’s expression suggested she was not impressed. A pearl necklace was draped around the collar of her cheongsam, and she had sparkling bracelets on both wrists. I was no expert, but I had a feeling they were real diamonds.

Was Charles a Crazy Rich Asian? I’d known he was well-off, but there was “my dad had a good job and we could afford overseas holidays” kind of money, and then there was “our family travels to our overseas holidays by private jet” kind of money.

I made a mental note to check Charles’s LinkedIn profile to see if it said which school he’d gone to.

“Working for the government, that’s very decent.” Auntie made it sound like an insult. She raked me with a look, from top to toe. “You’re a big girl, aren’t you? Charles’s friend, the old one, she was very small-sized.”

That stung, but there was also something funny about it—the flash of the claws. As though this auntie could say anything worse to me than pretty much everyone around me had already said, multiple times in multiple languages, before I’d turned sixteen.

The most annoying thing I could do was make it clear I didn’t care what she thought.

“Yes,” I said peaceably.

Auntie’s gimlet stare drilled into me. “His mother and I, we were starting to think maybe Charles is not interested in getting married.”

I recognised this sideways language. My relatives spoke in a similar way about the LGBT people they knew. They didn’t have any of the vocabulary. Though given Auntie’s own daughter was gay, her refusal to learn had a stench of wilful ignorance to it.

“Nowadays many people don’t like to get married,” I agreed. “Auntie must be happy about Loretta getting married. Hayley is very pretty.”

Auntie’s face twitched. “Yes, she’s very pretty. I don’t know why she wants to marry Loretta. A pretty girl like her, she could marry any man. Even Loretta, even though she’s so fat, she could find a husband if she tried.”

I couldn’t tell if this was a deliberate jab—Loretta was notably smaller than me—but she couldn’t hurt me anyway. I’d already decided Auntie’s good opinion wasn’t one I valued.

“I told Loretta she just needs to look harder to find a husband. But she didn’t want to try,” said Auntie. Her mouth pulled into a disconsolate moue. “That’s how it is these days. Children don’t want to listen. You can say everything, but they don’t care about their parents.”

I thought of the absurd rigmarole that had led to me being here, at this wedding of two strangers, purely because Loretta wanted to please her mother. When I spoke, my voice was gentle—not for Auntie’s sake, but because I was thinking of Loretta and Charles.

“I don’t think that’s true,” I said. “Loretta’s so happy you came. It’s great you are accepting. Even if parents and children don’t agree, it’s not that they don’t love each other. Being together is important.”

At least, that was what I tried to say. Given the longest conversation I’d previously had in Cantonese had been about how many sar kok liew I wanted to purchase, and whether I wanted a second bag for them or not, I wasn’t sure how much of my intended message I’d succeeded in conveying.

“Hmm,” said Auntie, which didn’t tell me much. She looked around the room.

Charles and Loretta were whispering together. Auntie’s husband was talking to Hayley and her parents. Auntie raised an imperious hand and flagged down one of the bridesmaids, a white woman in a suit, with an undercut.

“Em, can you take a photo of me and Charles’s friend on my phone?” said Auntie, in perfect English. “I must send it to his mother. She wants to see what does Kriya look like.”

Once my image had been captured (it felt like my soul had gone with it), I was graciously dismissed, with another wave of that beringed hand. Charles came up to me, looking worried.

“Sorry, Loretta wanted to speak to me about—uh, about wedding stuff. Was it all right, with her mum?”

“I might take a while to recover,” I said. “I have to say, Loretta is incredibly well adjusted, all things considered.”

“That bad?” Charles grimaced. “What did my aunt say?”

“Nothing that terrible,” I said. “I now know your last girlfriend was much thinner than me, though.”

Charles looked horrified. “I’m so sorry. That’s obviously not—I don’t—I mean, it’s completely unacceptable. I’ll talk to her.”

“Honestly, don’t worry about it. I’ve experienced worse,” I said. “It’s not like she’s my first Asian auntie. But you should know she does think I’m your girlfriend, and she’s sending a picture of me to your mum.”

Charles waved this away. “I’ll handle things with my mum. She’s the easy one. That’s what Loretta says—she got the good dad and the nightmare mum, and I got the good mum.”

I noticed the fact he didn’t mention his dad. Either absent or nightmare, then. Probably both, but perhaps he was sensitive about it.

“We should be making our way down,” said Charles. “Loretta says you can leave your stuff here, if you want. She’s passed me a spare keycard, so we can get back in if you need anything.”

“Great,” I said. “I’ll hang on to my clutch, but the tote can stay here. Shall we go?”

The wedding ceremony took place in a pretty Georgian room, with a pink, seafoam green, and lilac ceiling, ornate ivory plaster moulding, and a grand crystal chandelier. The celebrant stood by a table at the front of the room, heaped with pink and white roses and dark greenery.

The brides were each escorted down the aisle by both parents.

A girl in a rockabilly dress, with impressive full sleeve tattoos, did a reading from the Song of Solomon.

Charles read Wendy Cope’s “The Orange,” gravely and without affectation.

When he was done, Hayley and Loretta got up and hugged him.

Charles was red-eyed. He patted Loretta’s back a few times before letting her go. I swallowed down a lump in my throat.

The brides read vows they had written themselves—except for the quotes from The Duke of Badminton, which were as overwrought as Charles had led me to expect, and made everyone laugh. Then the couple proceeded out to a rousing Japanese rock anthem, with half the room cheering and singing along.

I was about to join the flow of people streaming out of the room when Charles appeared at my elbow.

“Hey,” I said. “Good job with the reading.”

Charles ducked his head. “Thanks. Do you know where you’re going?”

I gestured at the door. “We’ve been promised drinks and canapés if we head that way.”

“I’ve got to stay with Loretta and Hayley,” said Charles. “They’re going to do the tea ceremony now, just with family. It shouldn’t take long. Will you be all right on your own?”

I smiled. “Yeah. Don’t worry about me. I’m having fun.”

“Great,” said Charles. “That’s good. I, uh, I’ll see you later, then.”

He was standing close enough that I could smell his cologne—a woody, peppery scent, rising off warm skin. I wondered what it was.

“Looking forward to it,” I said inanely.

Charles blushed. For some reason my cheeks were hot, too.

“All right,” he said, and then he was gone.

I followed the other guests out of the room, pressing my hand absently against the side of my face. The room had been on the chilly side, and my fingers were cool on my cheek.

I wasn’t upset to be by myself. I didn’t know anyone there, but there was plenty to keep me entertained. In my satin cocktail dress, I fit right in with half the guests—at least in terms of what I was wearing. The crowd was predominantly white and East Asian.

But I’d expected that. It was the other half of the attendees I hadn’t expected.

They had hair—and wigs—in every colour of the rainbow, as well as piercings, tattoos, quirky glasses, and mobility aids, and they were dressed in everything from badminton gear to giant sparkly ballgowns paired with elaborate headdresses to full kimono, complete with obi and geta.

It was as though a carnival had crashed a reception at Buckingham Palace.

People were laughing and squealing and grabbing each other to pose for photographs in their costumes. A mysterious towering figure shrouded in black, with a ghostly white mask, silently offered me chocolate coins.

I accepted two and watched him? her? turn to another guest, a red-haired woman in a floral dress. She smiled and shook her head, but she looked a little sorry when the masked figure wandered off without saying anything. Like me, she didn’t seem to know anyone else there.

I said, “Do you think they’re on stilts under the costume, or do you think they’re really that tall?”

“I was wondering that,” said Redhead. She had an American accent. “I’ve been trying to remember where I’ve seen that character before. I’m sure it’s from a movie.” She laughed. “This wedding is so Hayley. Everything about it is totally her.”

“You’re a friend of Hayley’s?”

“Oh yeah. Me and Hayley go way back. We met in first grade. When she said she was moving to England for a girl, I thought, you know, when else am I going to get to fly over to London for a wedding? My partner’s English, but this is my first time visiting.

” Redhead smiled at me. “How do you know Hayley and Loretta?”

“I’m here with Charles,” I said. “He’s the best man.”

“Oh, Loretta’s cousin Charles?”

I nodded. “I only met Loretta and Hayley today, for the first time.”

Redhead pulled a face. “Oh my God! In at the deep end. I’m going to see my partner’s family for the first time too.”

I was about to explain that I wasn’t with Charles in that sense, and there was nothing inherently intimidating about being introduced to his family. Apart from the fact I’d been expected to speak Cantonese to his frightening aunt.

But Redhead went on, “We’re headed to Norwich tomorrow to visit his parents.”

“Oh, Norwich is lovely. My ex was from there.” But talking about Tom felt like pressing a bruise. I said, “Is London living up to expectations?”

It was amazing, said Redhead. “We’ve been saying, maybe we should move here. My partner was living in London when we met, so he knows it well.”

“You guys met online?”

Redhead nodded. “We did the long-distance thing for a while at first, before he moved over. How did you meet Charles?”

“We work at the same firm,” I said. “We actually share an office.”

“Oh wow,” said Redhead. “My partner works at the same company as me too. But he joined after we got together. It can be a lot, right?”

“Oh, Charles and I are just friends.” It was the first time I’d said it out loud: that we were friends. It was comforting to feel it was true.

Redhead turned pink. “Oh, sorry. I just assumed.”

“It’s fine. You’re not the only one,” I said lightly. “What’s it like, working with your partner? It must be challenging to navigate. Have you guys been together for long?”

“A year and half,” said Redhead. “But we’ve only been in the same country for, like, a year. I worried about it when he first got hired, but we’re in different departments, so that definitely helps. And getting the job enabled him to move over. We’re making it work so far.”

“That’s great.” I looked at her wistfully. She had such a glow of optimism, of new love. Would I ever feel that way again about someone?

Redhead glanced around and brightened. “Oh, hey, there he is. Babe!” She dived into the crowd and extracted a tall, lean white man in a slightly dishevelled suit.

“Come and say hello to—” She cut herself off, turning to me. “Oh, I don’t think I got your name! I’m Alexis. And you are…?”

I didn’t answer. For a moment I couldn’t speak.

Redhead’s boyfriend had a mop of curly brown hair—it grew with unnatural rapidity, and I knew its exact texture, what it felt like as it slipped through the fingers.

The last time I’d seen him was on a video call, six months ago.

He’d seemed off, distracted, but I’d assumed it was tiredness, or stress, or that I’d caught him at a bad time.

Though all the times I spoke to him seemed to be bad times, since he moved.

When people show you what they are, believe them, my friends had told me, when we got stuck into overanalysing Tom’s behaviour. But I didn’t want to believe what he was showing me. He’d had to tell me, in so many words. That probably hadn’t been any nicer for him than it had been for me.

On the other hand, I hadn’t been cheating on him.

All that time, while we were living together, while he was applying for the big job in the States, while I was encouraging him and making sure I only cried in the shower, because I didn’t want my fears to hold him back from his dreams. All that time.

“Kriya,” said Tom. He was white to the lips.

I turned, pushing blindly through the crowd, ignoring Redhead’s wide eyes and the exclamations of concern springing up in my wake. I didn’t know where I was going. All I knew was that I needed to be alone.