Secrets and Lies

JAISHREE MISRA

Secrets and Lies

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

AVON

A division of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by

HarperCollinsPublishers 2009

Copyright © Jaishree Misra 2009

Jaishree Misra asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

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Source ISBN: 9781847561688

Ebook Edition © 2009 ISBN: 9780007331642 Version: 2018-06-18

This book is dedicated to all my girlfriends, but most

especially Qubra, who never minded that I regularly swiped her lunch back at school…

With rue my heart is laden For golden friends I had, For many a rose-lipt maiden And many a lightfoot lad. By brooks too broad for leaping The lightfoot lads are laid; The rose-lipt girls are sleeping In fields where roses fade.

A.E. Housman

Title Page

Copyright

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Epilogue

Acknowledgments

About the Author

About the Publisher

DELHI, 2008

Victoria Lamb sealed the last of her letters and placed it on top of the small pile. Then, steadying herself on the arms of her wooden swivel chair, she eased herself up from the writing bureau where she had been sitting since dawn and walked across to the French windows. Flexing her stiff hand, Victoria parted the old curtains at their faded central strip and blinked as Delhi’s sharp summer sunshine flooded in. The rose garden, denuded of flowers, lay thorny and colourless, dust stubbornly clinging to everything: the leaves, the trees, Lily’s stone grave at the bottom of the garden. Beyond the hedge and through the smog haze, the mansard roof of the school building with its squat clock tower was just visible. Emptied of its student population, the old Edwardian building had lain silent for the last six weeks, with only the occasional flitting figure of a nun disturbing the dark peace of the convent’s corridors.

Tomorrow the new term would start in its usual clamorous manner, beginning with the distant rumble of school buses approaching the gates. A pleasant enough sound, but one that unfailingly lapsed into belligerence as the bus drivers competed with the private cars that brought the more affluent pupils to school. That was when the ear-shattering revving and grinding of engines invariably began. The bus drivers were mindful of Miss Lamb’s strict ‘No Horns’ policy but, despite the occasional sternly worded home-circular, there was little she had been able to do about the strident car horns, the expression of self-importance that flowed from Delhi’s wealthy to their chauffeurs.

Far more forgiveable were the children’s shrieks that would assail Victoria’s ears at precisely half past seven, when the first of the school buses would disgorge its passengers just as she was sitting down to her breakfast of one poached egg and a slice of unbuttered toast. But the girls knew well enough to keep their voices hushed once they were inside the school building, or when they saw Miss Lamb passing through the grounds from the cottage at the edge of the school. That was indeed the best time of the day for Victoria—and had been for many years—the moment at which she cut across the quadrangle, saying hello and sometimes stopping to speak to a passing student, while the aroma of coffee wafted in the air alongside muffled laughter from the staff room. Victoria felt a small rush of gratification at the thought that she would be experiencing that familiar glow at roughly this time tomorrow. And then she reminded herself that tomorrow was to be the very last time she would be at St Jude’s to see the start of term.