LITMIR.BIZ

      It was January and freezing. Rivulets of dirty snow ran along the pavements. The streetlights looked wan in the gloomy afternoon. Cold rampaged through the city, curling into a dragon tongue of ice that licked at every footstep. At home, icy rain slanted down on the cherry tree outside her window.

      ‘What happened, Goldie?’ shouted Mithu as Mia walked in. ‘No work today?’

      Goldie was Mithu’s name for her. It was a translation of the Bengali shona. It was a concession to England. It was an acknowledgement of the displacement of the family from India to Britain. It was an allusion to the cultural difference between mother and daughter. Only at the very bottom of this hierarchy of references, was it a grudging endearment.

      She raised sheepish eyes to her mother. Mithu was a graceful, excitable Bengali from Kolkata who had met and married her father Anand on a trip to the tea gardens of Darjeeling. Mithu’s family was now scattered over Canada and the United States; she despised Kolkata almost as much as she loved and missed it.

      ‘Not feeling too well.’

      ‘Skipping work?’

      ‘Only for today. It’s such an awful day.’

      ‘Every day is awful,’ sighed Mithu, getting up from the sofa and throwing her magazine to the floor. ‘Have some cha.’

      ‘Okay, thanks.’

      ‘At your age you shouldn’t be coming home to a mother,’ Mithu slammed the kettle on the stove. ‘You should be coming home to a husband.’

      ‘Ma,’ Mia replied at once. ‘Listen, I’ll move back to Putney if you like. Don’t want to cramp your style. Besides,’ she looked around, ‘this place is a bit strange to me now.’

      ‘I didn’t mean it like that, Goldie!’ Mithu cried. ‘You always misunderstand everything I say. You twist everything.’

      Mother and daughter looked away from each other in mutual exasperation. Without her father they were like a theatre company without an audience and had no reason to stay together in the same repertory.

      Then Mithu fluffed her newly trimmed hair and said: ‘I’ve decided to get married again. And move to America.’

      The man from the painting had stunned her. But normally marooned on her high wall of grief there was little that could touch Mia. Day-to-day life had been vital only in her father’s gaze. Without him, numbness came easily; a brain-dead state of robotic responses. ‘Great, Ma!’ she replied automatically. ‘Good news. Go for it. Is it Tiger?’

      ‘Who else? Tiger’s a very nice person. He’s easy-going and he doesn’t drink like your father used to. He always comes straight to the point. He’s being transferred to New York. He wants to take me with him. Lovely, no? The Statue of Liberty… It’s always so cold in London these days and see how dark it is outside.’

      ‘This is very good news, Ma, very good news,’ Mia said in the singsong that she and her mother sometimes spoke. ‘Everyone will be happy for you. Everyone will. No one will say, “Oh no she shouldn’t have, oh no she shouldn’t have.” No one will say that. Papa wouldn’t say it either. He’d say, “Go! Go on and make a life for yourself.”’

      ‘I don’t care about what your father would or wouldn’t say,’ snapped Mithu, shaking the teapot with menacing jerks. ‘I care about you. I can’t make a life for myself just like that. How can I make a life for myself when you are still unmarried?’

      There was another silence.

      ‘In India,’ declared Mithu, ‘at your age, you would have been a mother-in-law by now. Understand? A mother-in-law!’

      ‘A mother-in-law at twenty-eight? That sounds like a criminal offence.’

      ‘Why not? It used to happen in Bengal. If you married at seven, had your first child at ten, then you would have a twenty-year-old son who could be married by the time you’re thirty, which is almost your age!’ calculated Mithu.

      ‘A bit competitive,’ Mia said, draining the last of the tea. ‘Everyone fighting around in the same generation.’

      ‘Not at all,’ returned Mithu sharply. ‘There would be no generation gap.’

      She stared at her daughter. Not strictly beautiful but appealing. Definitely appealing with her crown of soft curls and her petite frame. Dark eyes and long eyelashes that blinked constantly with an excess of thought. The shy yet reaching-out quality of the only child in spite of her attempts at self reliance. Something sweet in the curve of her cheek. She spoke in an unusual and droll way and when she wept her whole being crumpled in silent sorrow. When she laughed (which, these days, was hardly ever) she looked as if she had never been happier in her life. Every emotion played out fully on her face, which looked fierce from some angles but innocent from others. She had her mother’s natural grace and her father’s black hair. If she dressed right, if she grew her nails or styled her hair, she might be quite attractive. But she was a discontent. As much of a grouch as Mithu was a blithe spirit.

      And nowadays, Mithu suspected, Mia had lost her mind.