A Scandalous Secret Read Free Page B

in the back garden to accommodate the sixty-odd guests who had been invited, plus a live band. The planning had gone on for weeks and poor Mum had suffered terribly from varicose veins afterwards – the main reason why Sonya had insisted they didn’t go down the same route for her recent eighteenth which had consequently been a much quieter and more intimate affair. She’d spent the morning with Granny Shaw and later taken the train up to London with Mum and Dad to have dinner at their favourite Indian restaurant: Rasa on Charlotte Street, whose fish curries Dad described as ‘divine’ even as he went red in the face, his brow breaking out into a sweat because of the chillies that, despite all his protestations, he had never really grown accustomed to. Dinner had been followed by the new Alan Bennett play at the National Theatre and later, walking with armslinked, across Waterloo Bridge, all three of them had declared it one of Sonya’s best birthday celebrations ever.
    Sonya’s musings were interrupted by the ring of her mobile phone and the sight of Estella’s smiling face flashing on the screen. The customary half a dozen phone calls they exchanged every day had suddenly doubled because of the forthcoming party at Estella’s this weekend. It wasn’t quite a joint eighteenth birthday party as their birthdays were six months apart; the celebration was more about both of them getting into the colleges of their choice. The downer was that, with Sonya heading off to Oxford and Estella to Bristol, they were going to be physically separated for the first time in thirteen years. The trip around India was a last hurrah to all the years they had spent, if Sonya’s mum was to be believed, behaving like twins conjoined at the heart.
    Sonya pressed her thumb on the green talk button and put the phone to her ear. ‘Wassup?’ she queried, sitting up against her cushions and propping her feet up on the window frame.
    â€˜I think I’m suffering from party nerves,’ Estella said, in a loud hammed-up moan. ‘Nothing normally wakes me this early. Must be the nerves.’
    â€˜Nerves? What are you blethering on about, you don’t own any nerves, Stel! Even your mum says she’s never seen you lose your head over anything.’
    â€˜Not true! There must be something I agitate over,’ Estella replied, not sounding very sure of her capacity to agitate.
    â€˜Nope. Not a hint of a nerve. Or heart for that matter. Totally cold-hearted and unfazed, for instance by the fact that you and I are shortly due to be torn asunder for the first time in thirteen years.’
    â€˜Oh that! No cause for distress, Sonya darling. Oxford and Bristol are hardly at opposite ends of the earth, are they? And we’ll both be back home for Christmas before you know it!’
    Sonya briefly considered feeling hurt by Estella’s seeming lack of concern but it was typical of her best friend to face life-changing moments without so much as batting an eyelid. But she had to admit, Estella’s customary breezy insouciance had been oddly comforting on occasion. It sure was difficult to get too stressed around someone who was so laid-back she was almost horizontal. ‘You’re right, I guess,’ Sonya replied. ‘But don’t pretend to have nerves just because it’s what you think you should be having on the eve of a party. Everything’s well under control from what I can see.’
    â€˜It’s a bit weird, though, that everything’s been delegated and there’s no more to be done. Now I just want it to go well and for everyone to enjoy themselves.’
    â€˜Of course they’ll enjoy themselves, silly. I have to admit, though, that the party’s hardly topmost in my mind, given the holiday in India coming so soon after. Perhaps we should have spaced them out by a week so we could have planned both things properly. I can’t seem to get too