The House of Hidden Mothers Read Free Page A

assumed Toby’s surname when they had begun this whole process four years ago. She had hurriedly reassured Toby that this was not some devious feminine wile to trap him into marriage, as she was pretty sure she never wanted to marry again – nothing personal. But she had to admit that some part of her felt, well, embarrassed to be publicly declaring their fertility issues as a co-habiting couple. She knew it was one of the few traditional tics she had left, stemming from the part of her which she always imagined to be a middle-aged Indian woman in an overtight sari blouse and bad perm, standing at her shoulder clucking, ‘Chi chi chi! Sex and babies and no wedding ring? And none of your clever-schever arguments about Indians doing it all the time and everywhere and look at population and old naughty statues. Kama Sutra was always meant for married peoples only!’
    Shyama often wished her Punjabi Jiminy Cricket wasn’t so lippy. And spoke better English. Besides, Toby had pointed out several times that declaring themselves to be a married couple wouldn’t guarantee them a faster or better result.
    â€˜I mean, look at who gets knocked up the quickest. Pissed teenagers under a pile of coats at a party. I’m pretty sure marriage is the last thing on their minds …’
    â€˜That’s because they’re teenagers, Toby. Youth is the one thing we can’t put on the overdraft.’
    The elephant in the room had woken up and scratched itself, sending a few ornaments crashing to the floor. There, she had said it out loud. They both knew that it didn’t matter how many sit-ups and seaweed wraps and nips and tucks a woman went through to pass herself off as a decade younger. In an age where you could cougar your way around town with a wrinkle-free smile, inside you were not as old as you felt, but as old as you actually were.
    â€˜Mrs Shaw?’
    Shyama rose unsteadily, the room swimming into focus. She gathered herself, layer by layer, each one hardening into a protective skin. She and her inhospitable womb left the building.
    Outside the world still turned, the sky a torn grey rag pulled apart by a restless wind, behind each jagged seam a glimpse of blue so bright that Shyama had to look away. She walked blindly past the gracious four-storey mansions, like rows of faded wedding cakes with their tiered creamy façades and stucco doorways flanked with pillars, once rich family homes with servants in the basement and attic. Now the airy drawing rooms welcomed international medical tourists and the locals who could afford to pay, the basement kitchens where floury-armed women used to dice carrots and stuff chickens now given over to hi-tech equipment and strobing green screens, where bodies were tested and assessed.
    The wind buffeted Shyama across the A40, the main arterial road running east to west, always pulsing with traffic, the steady drum and bass of London throbbing in time to her own heartbeat. She found herself in Regent’s Park as a weak sun finally broke through, starkly yellow against the heavy clouds, the light so fluid in the breeze she wanted to open her mouth and take great gulps of it, willing it deep into her body, the body that had let her down.
    Shyama found a space on a bench, next to a mother trying to persuade her apple-cheeked toddler to take a sip from a fluorescent plastic beaker. The child, almost rigid in her quilted snowsuit, all four limbs starfish-spread, shook her head slowly and gravely from side to side, as if she was frankly disappointed with her mother for even trying this on. Everywhere there were children swaddled in warm layers, being wheeled in buggies, trotted after on tricycles and scooters or waddling along like demented ducklings, giddy with freedom, entranced by their own feet and shadows, squealing with joy, all the pre-schoolers whose carers needed to exercise them like puppies to avoid tantrums at bedtime. Shyama could just about