Free The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel by Deborah Moggach

This time she bumped against the bulk of a water buffalo; she grabbed onto it and heaved herself up. Now she seemed to be sitting astride its head. It reared up from the water, lifting her with it, the water falling off her in streams. And then it shrugged her off and she was drowning.
    She woke, drenched with sweat. It was three o’clock. She waited for the images to dissolve and leave her safe. “It’ll all come out in the wash,” her mother had said, though it didn’t, did it? Her mother had lied. Dorothy willed herself to think of humdrum things: tea at Patisserie Valerie in Marylebone High Street; the Today program with Jim Naughtie’s soothing Scots voice. This slowed her fluttering heart.
    Her throat was dry. She pushed back the duvet and carefully, achingly, got out of bed. Her bones felt like chalk, dry and squeaky as they rubbed together; one day they must break. Even walking to the kitchen made her breathless. She leaned against the fridge. Outside a taxi passed, its sign illuminated. She thought: I should tell Adam about India. He’s closer to me than anyone.
    This thought depressed her. Adam was a busy young man; weeks went by without his phoning her. Oh, he sometimes dropped in for a cup of tea when he was editing down in Soho, but Dorothy knew, in her heart, that she came first with nobody.
    The kitchen was dark. Dorothy hadn’t switched on the lamp; it would be too much of a jolt. She stood there, drinking a glass of water. Across the Marylebone Road stood an office block. Its lobby was illuminated. At night a security guard sat there, a young Indian man. He talked for hours on the phone, swirling around on his swivel chair. When she wore her spectacles she could see him quite clearly. Every night he sat there, her unwitting companion during the small hours. But she, in the darkness, remained invisible.
    P auline had crippling period pains. She was going through the menopause, a journey that neither of the men in her life could share. It was a tumultuous voyage. She bled, heavily and erratically. The cramps were fierce, as if nature was kicking her in the stomach as a final punishment: Even if you COULD have had children, now you can’t . She had hot flushes, her face turning brick-red like her father’s. At work people looked at her curiously as she pulled at the neck of her blouse, fanning herself. Nights were the worst. She woke drenched in sweat, her heart pounding with nameless dread. She feared her own mortality. Fasten your seat belts, it’s going to be a bumpy ride . For this flight was taking her to a destination that filled her with foreboding: old age, a foreign country from which nobody returned.
    She couldn’t confide in Ravi. Like many doctors he was breezily dismissive of the ailments, unless life-threatening, of those he loved. They were drifting apart—literally, in fact, when her night sweats forced him to abandon their bed and sleep in his study. Pauline suspected that he went back to work; sometimes, when she got up to get a drink of water, she saw a strip of light beneath the door. She was an outcast, she and her fluttering heart; she was alone among the insomniacs in this huge city.
    It was early September. Ravi’s study was being taken over by Ravison business—a new filing cabinet, piles of folders, Post-it notes stuck to the framed photo of his class at St. Ignatius Boys’ School, Delhi. There had been a lot of inquiries, not just about The Marigold but about the possibilities of other homes around the world—South Africa, Cyprus—prospects mentioned in the publicity material.
    Ravi said: “See—people want to get the hell out of this country.”
    “Don’t put it like that!” Britain was like her father; only she was allowed to slag either of them off. Underneath it all, Ravi was still a foreigner.
    Ravi was sorting through “Fitness to Fly” doctors’ certificates. Eighteen clients, so far, had signed up for The Marigold. The rooms were nearly filled. Pauline