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Those days, many, many lifetimes ago, when nightmares would wake up Koyal and Atharv, in his room across the street, would just know. And when he called, his soft voice would soothe her wildly beating heart and lull her back to sleep, feeling safe and loved.
She clasped her phone to her chest and for one mad minute allowed herself to imagine how it would feel like if it rang now.
She opened her contacts list.
Atharv Jayakrishna, it said next to a smiling, handsome face, a picture her phone had picked up from Facebook. She stared at his face and drank in the kindness in his eyes, feeling some sort of strength return to her.
And then came a fresh wave of sadness. The connection they had all those years ago was lost, never to return.
A heaviness engulfed her heart and for a few minutes, she allowed herself to droop. Then she forced herself to sit up straighter.
Two things, Koyal Raje, she mumbled to herself. One, never fear that man again. And two, never look for something that was never ever yours.
She switched on the telly and spent the rest of the night watching back-to-back episodes of Friends.
Not once, however, did she let go of her phone.
Hope, you wonderful, terrible thing.
A few miles away, in posh Chelsea, a doctor sat up on his bed. He had woken up with a start, breathless and sweaty, and was staring blankly at the phone in his hands.
He often got up like this in the middle of the night, scared out of his wits for her, desperate to speak to her but without any means of contacting her.
Tonight was different. His phonebook contained a name and a number that he could dial right away.
He stared at his phone for a few minutes, then shook his head, put down his phone and lay down.
‘Looks like he didn’t sleep a wink,’ the anaesthetist whispered to Dr Kimberly, gesturing towards Atharv.
‘This is a stressful ten-hour surgery – I didn’t sleep a wink either last night,’ Kimberly replied brightly, but her smile faded the moment the anaesthetist looked away. She didn’t need Atharv to tell her that the nightmares, which had drastically reduced in occurrence in the last year or so, were back with a vengeance.
Oh, Atharv, she thought, her heart sinking.
30
Koyal flicked away an imaginary speck of dust from her carefully chosen white shift dress and willed herself not to get nervous.
She was due to speak at a charity event for Women for Women, an NGO that provided emotional, financial and social support to women going through domestic abuse. Koyal took a deep breath, walked to the stage and began to speak.
‘You are told to believe only what you see. What about, then, the things that you can’t see? Things that can be invisible? Domestic abuse,’ she paused, her eyes scanning the audience. ‘The more invisible it is, the more painful it can be.’
‘Women facing domestic abuse often talk about a darkness in their lives that nothing can quite dispel, a darkness that sucks away life from them, a darkness they cannot fight. They are wrong simply because they don’t know the full magnitude of their own strength. They think they don’t deserve better, but they do.’
As words, chosen carefully, tumbled out of her, Koyal looked at the audience again and spotted Surya Aunty. Radiant in a simple black sari, she sat, elegant and demure. She was looking at Koyal, spellbound, pride writ large on her face. That’s my girl, up there, her eyes said.
‘Sometimes you just have to take a blind leap of faith when the only thing you no longer have is faith,’ Koyal continued.
Sitting next to Surya Aunty was Hema, listening open-mouthed.
‘While it may sound daunting, there is help. Our NGO actively seeks to help women who want to leave because…’
Words froze at the tip of her tongue because she had just spotted someone – the one person whom she had deliberately not invited to this event. Sitting next to Hema, dressed in a formal suit, was Atharv. It was not only his presence that had Koyal fumbling on stage, but more so the expression on his face.
Koyal had worked with Women for Women for a long time, camouflaging her deep personal interest in the NGO as something that had just happened to catch her fancy.
No one, she was adamant, could ever get to know her shameful secret. Her secret had to remain just that, a secret.
Only, she wasn’t sure that was the case any more.
