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Chapter Twenty-Two

Shantal

M y heart flutters when Darien drives by the fences, and it doesn’t stop all the way to the podium, beneath which our team stands as the national anthems are played: first that of Brazil, and then Germany, Heidelberg’s mother country. It doesn’t stop when Darien lifts the first trophy of the season, the first win of the season, when he sprays Miguel and Diana with champagne – a predictable top three, I am being told. Even when he gets down from the podium and runs straight to the team with his arms wide, it keeps on fluttering.

I head towards my room in the hotel at the end of it all. But prior to so much as opening my door, I realize I’ve got a guest. Someone new is sitting outside my door in a basket filled with chocolates and tinsel.

I slowly approach the doorframe, where my intruder has made himself comfortable by the threshold. He is a fuzzy white teddy bear with happy eyes and a little smile, sitting in a wicker basket. He holds a plastic heart full of Jolly Rancher sweets in a rainbow of colours. Written across the heart in white cursive are three words: ‘Thank you, Shantal.’

I pick up a little card that sits beside the bear. Written inside in messy but bubbly handwriting is a short explanation for my visitor.

Shantal,

Like I said. I hope you remember. You deserve your flowers. This isn’t nearly enough but this was the best bear I could find. I hope you like him, and give him a good name.

Yours,

Darien

It is a silly, na?ve gift from a silly, na?ve boy. But it is the kind of thing no one does any more. I love the bear the minute I see him.

I reach over and lift him up. I have to do a quick glance down the halls to make sure no one gets to see me in my moment of weakness before I bring the basket into my room. Like a total idiot, I grin stupidly and hug the bear tight. My heart skips a beat as I take in the smell, a hint of Darien’s sandalwood imbued in the teddy’s fur.

What name will I give him?

Oh, of course. André .

‘I haven’t been completely truthful. My marks slipped last session, Ma found out, and then it was all …’

Anjali goes on talking on the screen of my phone, gesturing wildly as she recounts the entire saga of her feud with her parents. She’s still a Year 12 – she hasn’t even got to university yet, and in the grand scheme of things, her parents will not care what she’s done with her marks in a couple of years. But she’s also my cousin, which means that her brown family, like mine, puts a bit too much emphasis on our performance in school. Just a bit.

‘… said I’d have to get married if I don’t get my grades up! I’m never getting married, didi ,’ she goes on. ‘Not ever, now. Look at my parents! They’re so mad all the time, all snippy and shi … stuff.’

I laugh at her momentary correction, a slip-up she’s only got to cover because her mum and dad are somewhere in the house. If it were just me, she’d have nothing to hide. Anjali may be my cousin, but she, Sonia, and I were all brought up together, in a joint household in Clapham, before Ma and Babu got the money to move out, all of five minutes away. Anjali would call both of us didi , the Hindi term of endearment for an elder sister, owing to her Indian father – our uncle. We’ve been thick as thieves all my life, which is why seeing her back to normal like this, back to her usual endless rants and five-paragraph-essays of chatter, is almost disconcerting to me. She bounced back so quickly after Sonia. But she also didn’t see what I did – hear what I did.

‘You’re off somewhere else,’ Anjali jabs me mid-conversation (one-sided as it is).

That gets me out of my own head. ‘What?’ I jerk back to life.

‘You’re somewhere else,’ she repeats. A smile creeps into her eyes and onto her face as she pokes at the camera. ‘You little troublemaker, what are you doing over there in Bahrain?’

‘Nothing,’ I say far too quickly and far too defensively. Anjali is five years younger than me – she’ll never know anything unless I crack. The problem? I tend to crack easily.

My cousin just cocks her head, giving me an uncannily well-honed ‘disappointed aunty’ glare. She holds it for all of five seconds before a mischievous grin takes over. ‘Who is he?’

‘Who is who ?’ I try, but she points an accusing finger my way.

I furrow my eyebrows.

‘Behind you, didi .’

I do a quick turn, and the sigh that leaves my lips is one of resignation. My keen-eyed cousin has caught me red-handed. I’m sitting on my bed in the hotel room, and behind me, on the dresser, is André the bear.

‘Someone bought you that.’ She beams, all proud of her detective skills. ‘Someone bought you that bear. Tell me everything .’

The wave of delusion that sweeps over me at those words is stronger than what I’d thought was possible. I want to. More than anything, I want to tell her everything. I want to be a carefree young woman like I should be. It only lasts a second. The thoughts return in a wall that crashes over me as hard as a ton of bricks.

‘You know I can’t.’ I’m not sure if my voice is emotionally detached or ashamed. ‘I don’t think I can.’

‘God, didi !’ Anjali flops backward onto her own bed with a groan, bringing her phone with her so I can see just how disappointed she is. ‘Don’t you ever dream, huh? Before it happened, of all the things you could have had? You can still have them. You’re the only person keeping those things from yourself.’

I can’t help but smile sadly at the amount of optimism my cousin exudes, all the time. Even now, even in this situation. ‘Anjali … doing whatever I want … that would wreck your aunty and uncle. I’m their only daughter, I have to stay close to them. I have to …’

Anjali is quiet for a moment. I don’t love the lack of sound coming from her end of the call – it’s exceedingly unnatural. The guilt in my chest is immediate.

Then she says, ‘Tell me about him anyway.’

I break.

I tell her about how it’s as if I have to hold my hand over a lit candle every time I so much as interact with him.

I tell her how much I cannot stand him.

And then that turns into something else.