“Mum!” Reeva cried out, forgetting her own therapist’s advice to avoid raising her voice when dealing with members of her family. “What about Dad?”
Saraswati started twirling her diamond around her ring finger again. She held her hand up to the light and gave it an admiring glance before turning her attention back to the phone screen. “Look, it’s all very complicated. I don’t want to explain it on the phone. My lawyers will give you and your sisters a call later to talk you through the details. Your dad used the same lawyers, which makes it all less complicated. That’s one thing he did right, I’ll give him that.”
“What details?” demanded Reeva. “Why do I need to speak to lawyers?”
“Well, it’s just . . . your dad’s last wishes were for you and your sisters to be at his funeral and perform the Hindu prayers for him,” explained Saraswati. “Seeing as he couldn’t spend time with you in life and all, he thought he’d do it in death. I suppose it’s quite poetic, really. I get you when I’m alive; he gets you when he’s dead. Perhaps more families should do things this way.”
“I’m sorry, what prayers? When is his funeral? And—and where did he even live?!” Reeva felt her breath constricting again. “Mum, I need answers!”
“Oh, he’s just a couple of hours away from London. In Leicester. You’ll need to go for the full two weeks, I’m afraid.” Saraswati looked somewhat apologetically at her daughter. “It’s written in his will. You girls are inheriting everything so long as you turn up for all the prayers—oh, you know, they happen every night after someone dies? We did it for your ba, remember? Oh, yes, you girls were at school . . . Well, it’s not as big an ask as it sounds. You won’t have to organize it all; you just need to be there, clean his stuff out and sing for an hour every evening. He wants the prayers all the way up until the kriya ceremony, though, when he finally goes.”
Reeva blinked in total incomprehension. “Goes? What’s a kriya ceremony?”
Saraswati sighed in impatience. “Darling, you really should know more about your culture and all our traditions. It’s when the soul leaves the body. On the thirteenth day. Look, Reeva, my lawyers will call you to explain it because I really am needed elsewhere. Hemant was only an optometrist, so I doubt the house will be all that, but he never spent much, so there’s probably a pile of cash for you all to inherit. It’ll be helpful, I’m sure. Anyway, it was his last wish! You can do that for a dead man, can’t you? And you never seem to take any holiday, so I’m sure your job won’t mind. Perhaps you could take some extra time off and come visit me afterward? Oh, it would be so fun; we could go to a retreat in Kerala.”
Reeva shook her head rapidly. She knew she had only a matter of seconds before her mum did what she did best and disappeared on her. “Wait. Mum. Why did you tell us he was dead when he wasn’t? What’s going on?”
There was an awkward silence before her mum’s face started to blur. “Reeva? Reeva?”
Reeva leaned in closer to the screen. It looked like her mum was deliberately moving the phone herself.
“Sorry, the connection’s failing again! I’ll explain everything soon, I promise. Just do what the lawyers say, go to his house and spend thirteen days there with your sisters. Your aunt Satya—that’s your dad’s sister—will be there to sort it all out. And I’ll be back before you know it.”
Reeva’s mouth dropped open in shock. She didn’t have time to register the fact she had an aunt she’d never known existed; she was still reeling from her mum’s revelation that she was expected to spend thirteen days with her sisters. Not to mention the Dad news. “Wait, they’re going to be there too? No, no, no. I’m definitely not going if they’re there. No. You can’t make me. Nope.”
Saraswati’s arched eyebrows made a valiant effort to narrow. “Reeva. You’re an adult woman. Grow up and stop acting like a child. They’re your sisters. Go and spend time with them. It’ll be good for you. You can bond over all this business with your dad.” She paused thoughtfully. “You know, he’s probably left some letters for you that will explain everything better than I ever could—that’s just the sort of sentimental thing he’d do.”
“No, Mum, no.” Reeva’s face tightened. “You can’t just tell me Dad’s dead—again—and then disappear. You need to come home and explain it all. Right now! And you cannot expect me to spend thirteen entire days with Jaya and Sita after everything that’s happened. You can’t.”
Her mum’s face started to blur suspiciously again. “Sorry! It’s the connection. I’ll call to check in on you soon. Love you! Mwah.”
CHAPTER 2
Day 1
Reeva stared in silence at the blank screen on her phone. This was bad. Really, really bad. Her mum was no stranger to dramatic life-changing announcements: “I’ve got a job as a playback singer in Bollywood!” “I’ve bought a house in Mumbai!” “You’ll love boarding school!” And most recently, “Come over and meet your new stepdad!” But this was next level, even for her.
All Reeva’s life, she’d known her dad was dead. It was what she’d been told by her mum, and it was what she’d read on Wikipedia. She practically knew the entry by heart.
Her mum, Saraswati Acharya (known to her fans simply as “Saraswati”), had been born in Mumbai to a wealthy family in the music business and had impressed them all with her acclaimed voice. She’d been expected to go on to have a successful classical singing career, but at the age of nineteen she’d ruined everything by running off to have a love marriage with a Gujarati man studying in London. She’d gone on to have three daughters with Hemant Mehta, but when they were just five, three, and two years old, he’d tragically died.
Following a few years as a single mum in London, Saraswati had decided to make peace with her family, which resulted in reverting to her maiden name and her parents helping her launch a career singing in Bollywood films. Fast-track a few years and Saraswati had become a household name in India, while her daughters had become accustomed to spending all their time at boarding school. Saraswati’s voice had featured in dozens of box-office hits and she was now so famous she’d occasionally been asked to actually appear in the films as an actress. Four years ago, Saraswati had remarried, and her wedding to film star MJ Shah had been so major that it had made British headlines as well as Indian ones. The happy couple now lived between Mumbai and London, where Saraswati’s three daughters—Reevanshi Mehta, thirty-four; Sita Parmar, thirty-two, wife of entrepreneur Nitin Parmar and mother to twin daughters; and Jaya Mehta, thirty-one, lifestyle influencer—were still based.
This was the family history that Reeva had been brought up with and occasionally tried to amend online so it included her job title and omitted the nine-letter horror she’d been burdened with at birth (one that had been discarded when her kindergarten teacher had decided it was too complicated to pronounce). It was everything she knew; it was her life as much as it was her mother’s. She was the five-year-old in the story, the teenager who’d been chucked into Wycombe Abbey, and the thirty-year-old who’d taken a week off work to awkwardly hover in a sari at her mum’s five-day celeb wedding. A wedding that had subsequently ruined Reeva’s life and destroyed her relationship with her sisters forever.