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Reeva had had enough. She stood up and walked into the kitchen. “You’re the one being rude. We were in the middle of the biggest conversation of my entire life when you answered your phone. And we need to go back to it.”
Her mum sighed theatrically. “MJ. Reeva needs me. I’d better go. I love you, baby. Call me when your flight lands at Heathrow—I hate that I must spend a night without you... I know, at least it’s only one night. Hmm, yes.” Reeva cleared her throat loudly.Saraswati rolled her eyes. “Okay. Reeva’s making me go. Yes, I’ll tell her you send your love. Bye, baby.Mwah-mwah.” She hung up the phone. “There. Happy now?”
“Not really. I’ve just found out my dad almost killed me.”
Saraswati’s eyes softened with something that looked like sympathy. “He didn’t mean to, Reeva. He hated himself for it. But I hated him for it too.”
“Mum, I’m so confused. I need to understand what happened. You need to talk me through it all.”
Her mum fidgeted with her shawl. “I know. I just... Be patient with me, please. It was the worst night of my life.”
Reeva closed her eyes. “Okay. I get it. But, Mum, please try. I really need to know what happened. This is mylife.”
“You’re right.” Saraswati turned around and started opening cupboards at random. “I’ll just make us some chai and then I’ll tell you everything.”
“You’llmake us chai? Do you even know how?”
“Of course I can make chai. Well, I could if you could show me how to turn this ridiculous cooker on—I can’t use these electric things.”
“You press the on button. Yep, that one. The one that says ‘On.’ ”
Ten minutes later, Reeva and Saraswati were sitting across the kitchen table, blowing on steaming, freshly brewed sugar-free chai with oat milk. Reeva had to admit it tasted a lot better than simply adding masala to her mug. But that wasn’t the point. The point was that her mum was about to finally tell her everything.
“So...?”
“So let me have a sip and I’ll tell you!” Saraswati took a long, slow, deep sip of her tea. And then another. When she tried to take another, Reeva’s glare stopped her. “All right! So, okay, what do you want to know?”
“Um, what happened the night Dad almost killed me?!”
Saraswati looked taken aback. “Right. Yes. There’s no need to shout. Well. Okay. Your... your dad had been out. To the pub. Which was the problem.”
Reeva’s brow furrowed, and then she gasped. “He had an alcohol problem?”
Her mum nodded. “Yes. A bad one. When your dad wasn’t drinking, he was the kind, lovely, annoying, but thoughtful man I fell for. Only, when he was drinking...” Her mum’s face took on a dark expression. “Reeva, he was very, very difficult.”
Reeva thought back to all the alcoholics she’d met in her line of work and the stories she’d heard. She felt a wave of sorrow enter her body. “Oh, Mum. I... I’m so sorry. That must have been so hard to live with. I can’t imagine.” She bit her lip as she thought of the flippant comments her sisters had made about her mum calling their dad difficult—they’d been so wrong.
“Yes, well...” Saraswati looked down at her tea. “It wasn’t easy. He’d become a different person when he drank, and toward the end, well, he was drinking every day.”
“Had he always had a problem with alcohol?”
Her mum shook her head. “Oh, no. Well, actually, that’s not true. I suppose he could always get quite angry when he was drunk—even in the early days. But back then, he hardly ever drank, so it just wasn’t an issue. It was only when things got difficult that he started drinking. And it got worse and worse. The amount of whiskey he’d drink...”
Reeva closed her eyes. It had never occurred to her that her dad was an alcoholic. But he’d been drinking whiskey every night while he had three small kids and a wife in the house. It was... seriously depressing. “Did anything spark the drinking?” asked Reeva, opening her eyes to look at her mum.
Saraswati shifted uncomfortably, wrapping her shawl around her shoulders. “Well. I suppose the money problems were a big issue. But to be honest, Reeva, I always think the real reason was because he missed his family. I don’t think he ever really realized how hard it would be to leave them behind forever, and as the reality of our life set in—never having enough money, three young kids, a disappointed wife—he probably came to regret his choice. Only by then it was too late. So he drank.”
Reeva thought back to how she and her sisters hadn’t found any alcohol in the house—at all. “Did he ever stop? Or get help? He wasn’t drinking when he died, was he?”
Saraswati hesitated. “I don’t think so. I haven’t seen him for decades, Reeva. But he never could stop when we were together. He’d try to give it up—and then he’d always go back to it. And when he did, it was worse than before.”
Reeva leaned back in her chair. There was so much to absorb. She sighed loudly. “I can’t believe it all. I’m sorry, Mum. But... tell me about the night he hurt me. What happened?”
Saraswati fidgeted with her shawl again. “Well, we were arguing.”
“About what? I’m going to need full details.”
Saraswati winced visibly. “Okay. All right. Well... we were arguing about the usual. Money. There was never enough of it. We both blamed each other. And I... well, Reeva, I’d grown up in privilege. It was hard to adjust.”
