Читать книгу The Disappearance - Annabel Kantaria - Страница 19

Audrey’s grateful that the driver Ralph’s sent to pick her up for her birthday dinner isn’t one of the chatty ones. The drive to the Taj Mahal Palace is a long one and she turns her head and stares out of the window, watching as the car passes through the teeming street life of Bombay.

She watches beggars, cripples, cyclists, cars driving four abreast on what should be a three-lane road; sees pedestrians throwing themselves into the teeming traffic with little regard for life or limb. Whenever the car stops – which it does frequently given the road is permanently choked with traffic – filthy children swarm the windows, their hands tapping at the glass, thumbs rubbing against fingers as they beg for a coin, a bite to eat, something, anything. It’s rained heavily and the car cleaves through standing water; the beggars are up to their ankles in it, but Audrey shakes her head at them and looks away, as she’s learned to do. It’s not that she doesn’t see the scrum of life outside the car; it’s not that she doesn’t feel sorry for the beggars – rather that she accepts it, understands that it’s part and parcel of life here. England seems so very distant these days. She can barely remember what life was like there. Cold. Ordered. Lots of rules and a place for everything.

She can barely remember life before Ralph, either. Audrey sits back in her seat and smiles to herself as she thinks about the nights she’s started spending in his sprawling villa on Juhu Beach – nights in which she’s slept with his arms wrapped tightly around her, her heart brimming with a love like she’s never known as the rain drums down on the roof. It’s as if heaven has sent the perfect man for her and, again, she wonders if her dad somehow had a hand in it.

‘I’m so glad you found me,’ she tells Ralph in bed as she strokes her fingers across his chest and drops butterfly kisses on his arm. ‘That day – when you saw me. You came over to Janet and me so decisively. It was as if you knew what you wanted.’ She shivers at the memory. ‘Did you just “know”?’

‘Yes,’ Ralph says. ‘I watched you for a while. I watched you talking to your friend and I saw something in you that made me want to protect you forever.’

Audrey wonders where it’s all heading. She’s allowed herself to dream about a future with Ralph; about carving a permanent life in Bombay, and she’s surprised to find she’s happy at the thought of it. Here, in India, there’s a contentment in her soul that she doesn’t remember feeling in England. Part of it, she’s sure, comes from her regular trips to the church, where she sits silently in a pew and holds silent conversations with her father.

The driver pulls into the hotel’s driveway and the car comes to a standstill adjacent to the front steps. Audrey pulls some notes from her purse and offers them a tip. The driver steeples his hands to his chest, nodding his thanks to her, and the hotel’s doorman opens the car door and wafts Audrey up the steps to the Taj’s impressive interior.

‘I’ve something to tell you.’ Ralph reaches across the table and takes Audrey’s hand in his.

‘Yes?’ She looks expectantly at him. The waiter’s taken their orders and they’re sitting with their drinks. Ralph looks down at Audrey’s hand and strokes it. Then he looks up at her with such a depth of emotion behind his eyes that she has to swallow.

‘Red. I care about you very much. I need you. I need you in my life.’ He pauses. ‘But there’s something I have to tell you.’

Audrey’s blood runs cold. If her hand wasn’t clasped in Ralph’s she’d snatch it back. Janet’s words come back to her: he’s married, she thinks, and tears prick behind her eyes. With her free hand, she dabs at her eyelashes, her lips trembling as she tries not to cry. What a chump she’s been to think a man like him would be seriously interested in the likes of her.

‘No, don’t. Don’t tell me,’ she whispers. ‘I don’t want to know.’

‘Please. I have to tell you.’

Is that the beginning of a smile on Ralph’s lips? Audrey stares at the tablecloth and waits. Waits to hear what a fool she’s been. Waits to hear about the delicate wife he doesn’t love but can’t leave; waits to have her birthday dinner ruined.

‘You don’t know who I am, do you?’ Ralph asks. He doesn’t wait for a reply. ‘You didn’t see the story in the papers?’

Audrey shakes her head.

‘I used to be married,’ says Ralph. Used to! Audrey looks up, barely daring to meet his eyes but he carries on before she can say anything. She watches his lips – those lips she loves to kiss – as he speaks. ‘Alice – my wife – died.’

Audrey’s gasp is too loud. There’s a stir in the restaurant as other diners look over. ‘I’m so sorry!’

Ralph, oblivious to the attention, looks at the tablecloth for a minute, takes a deep breath; continues. ‘She … she was swept out to sea. They think it was a suicide. It looked like suicide. She couldn’t swim. She walked into the sea deliberately. She left her clothes on the shore – as a clue, perhaps, because … why else would she take them off if she was planning …’ His voice falters.

‘I’m so, so sorry.’

Ralph lowers his eyes and nods his acceptance of her sympathy. He sits back and breathes deeply and Audrey has the sense that the world is tilting. ‘They think she had postnatal depression,’ Ralph says. ‘We had children, Audrey. Twins. John and Alexandra. They were three months old at the time.’ Audrey covers her mouth with her hand.

‘No, no! Those poor babies.’ She shakes her head vigorously, feeling pain for the babies she doesn’t know. And then a thought strikes her: ‘But where do they live, the twins? When I stay over at your house, where are they?’

‘They live with me in the house. But I’m often out so they have an ayah – a nanny. Their nursery is close to the ayah’s room. You won’t have heard anything from upstairs.’

‘I had no idea,’ Audrey breathes, suddenly reimagining Ralph’s huge house as a family home. ‘But I suppose it makes sense. Why have such a large house just for you?’

Ralph nods. ‘Indeed. But there’s a reason for me telling you all this. Look, Red. I’m a single father to nine-month-old twins and, hand on heart …’ As he says this, he presses his free hand to his chest and looks deeply into Audrey’s eyes, ‘I’m struggling. They need a mother. Normally I wouldn’t move this fast but … well, I think you know me quite well now, and … what I wanted to ask you tonight was: will you marry me?’

Audrey lets out an audible squeal. In the last thirty seconds she’s gone from thinking she’s lost the man she loves to a proposal of marriage. In the last heartbeat, she’s been offered something she’d thought might elude her forever: the possibility of a husband and children – a family to call her own – and, in this moment, she realises how desperately she wants it. She flaps her hand up and down, fanning her face. She can’t stop herself from grinning.

Ralph gets up from his seat, reaches into his pocket and pulls out a red velvet box. He clicks it open and turns it to face her. Inside, there’s a brilliant diamond solitaire. He gets down on one knee, takes Audrey’s hand in his and asks her again: ‘Audrey Bailey. I love you and I need you. Will you do me the honour of being my wife?’

‘Yes,’ breathes Audrey. ‘Yes, yes, yes!’ And Ralph takes her left hand and slides the engagement ring onto her fourth finger, kissing it as he returns the hand to her.

‘Waiter!’ he calls. ‘Champagne!’