Free The Stolen Girl by Renita D'Silva

that.
    Yours,
    Mum

Accusatory Finger
Aarti
    B reakfast : Cereal: Bran Flakes – 30g, with a dash of skimmed milk
    Mid-morning snack: Why hasn’t she come to meet me? Why?
    Don’t you want to meet your mother, eh, daughter? Why aren’t you here?
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    A arti has taken to sitting downstairs in the lobby with her food diary for company. She does not want to go out, walk down to the High Street. It is too cold, for one, the chilly air that tastes of ice permeated with the smell of frying chips and junk food, making her nauseous. And much as she likes the feeling of being sick, she’d rather do it in the comfort of her own bathroom or the bathroom of her hotel room as is currently the case, and not in a public loo reeking of other people’s urine.
    And two, well… ‘Please do try and stay away from crowds. If it happens again, I won’t be able to get you out as easily.’ Her lawyer’s voice resounding in her ears.
    And so she sits in the sofa in the lobby, breathing in the creamy scent of vanilla air freshener mixed in with a faint whiff of orange cleaning liquid, the crinkly leather squeaking in complaint every time she moves. From behind the cover of her diary, she peruses every face that enters: the tired families, the old couples, the new lovers. Hoping to find her daughter’s face amongst them. Hoping to recognise her instantly, even though all she has in her mind’s eye are hazy snapshots of a wispy-haired, dimple-cheeked, almond-skinned baby and fantasies of how her daughter might look now.
    She needs to be careful, she knows; it is all too easy to slip into depression like she did after…those dark, ceaseless days after her daughter disappeared. It is monotonous, this waiting, this ache to see her child. Anger wars with hopelessness and she is tired of feeling out of control. At least before, when she was looking for her child, she was in charge, doing something. Now, she is waiting. And waiting. An interminable stretch of empty time gaping bleakly until she meets her child.
    She had imagined that once Vani was in prison, she would be reunited – immediately – with her daughter. She had actually entertained the hope that she might be involved in the arrest, had imagined driving up in a police van, accusatory finger aimed at Vani’s chest, the look of utter shock on Vani’s face before it disintegrated into fear. She had pictured Vani begging her for mercy and she, Aarti, ignoring her, turning instead towards her daughter. She had imagined opening her arms and her daughter falling into them, their reunion as effortless as their separation had seemed endless. She would pat her daughter’s back and say, ‘There, there, everything is all right now,’ and they would walk away, arm in arm into a new life while a protesting Vani was led away in shackles.
    She has to admit that Bollywood movies have had a big part to play in the origin and nurture of these fantasies.
    Frustrating, this waiting. How bloody long is her daughter going to take?
    A woman walks in the door; small, slightly stooping, weighted down by bags. Watching from the corner of her eye, Aarti does a double take. No, it cannot be. Vani is in prison, isn’t she?
    She stands up, dropping the diary. Walks towards the woman. The woman looks up. Petite, wary, her eyes not the deep brown of pools of water sparkling in potholes after the rains that Aarti was expecting, but the stormy blue-black of the sky besieged by heavily pregnant monsoon clouds.
    ‘Sorry,’ Aarti mumbles, cheeks burning, and backs off from the woman’s puzzled gaze.
    ‘Excuse me,’ someone says and Aarti turns. A young man, holding out her diary. She thanks him, sits back down.
    The years have a habit of folding back like the pages of a book, she thinks, chewing the end of her pencil. She blinks and she has lost her bearing, the book of her memories has opened out to another page; she is back in the days before. When she was a young girl living with her parents. Fawned over