Free The House of Hidden Mothers by Meera Syal Page A

brushed luminous orange crumbs from her front while avoiding any eye contact. ‘It’s called assisted marriage now, anyway. Only the really fundy families monitor the meetings. Usually people put their own profiles up, date as long as they want and only tell their families if they want it to go further.’
    â€˜ “Fundy”?’ Shyama enquired. She could feel Toby tightening up next to her, tensing beneath her touch.
    â€˜Fundamentalists.’ Tara finished her tidy-up, having simply moved the mess from her clothes to the floor.
    â€˜Didn’t realize you were so up on the Asian dating scene. So, anything you want to tell me?’ Shyama teased, hoping this would end the conversation on a truce, that Tara would remove herself so she could turn back to Toby and finish what they had been trying to begin.
    â€˜Not now. Not ever, actually.’
    Tara pushed past them and then leaned in to Shyama, exhaling a cloud of cheesy-smelling breath. ‘And next time you’re going to do it on the stairs, warn me first so I can shoot myself.’
    She stomped up every step to her room and slammed the door for good measure.
    As Shyama flew up the stairs after her, she barely registered Toby calling after her, ‘Shyama, leave it. Shyama!’
    She didn’t bother knocking. Tara stood facing the door, waiting for her. She knew exactly what she was doing, which enraged Shyama even more.
    â€˜How dare you?’ Shyama began.
    â€˜How dare I?’ Tara shot back. ‘Isn’t it bad enough you’ve been trying to get up the duff, without shagging like teenagers?’
    â€˜That is none of your business!’ Shyama sputtered. The sprint up to the attic had left her breathless. She wanted to roar fire instead of panting like a geriatric. The irony was, she felt as defiant and exposed as a sixteen-year-old caught on the sofa half undressed with her spotty tumescent consort. Everything she wanted to scream at her daughter would sound like adolescent whining: It’s not fair! You always ruin everything! What about me? If she had the oxygen and the patience, she would sit Tara down, take her hand and try to explain how those long years with Tara’s father had felt. How he would treat her with charming deference in front of their friends and family, who would comment on how lucky she was to have such an attentive husband – and how then, later on, he would lie on the very edge of the bed with a contortionist’s ease to avoid even an inch of their bodies touching. How many nights had Shyama spent smothered in supposedly irresistible perfume, squeezed into underwear which had holes and wires in all the wrong places, steadying her breathing so he wouldn’t guess how much she longed for just one look or caress that would make her feel wanted, or even noticed. She didn’t dare instigate anything herself; the one occasion she had attempted to ‘take the initiative in the bedroom’, as the magazine headline had screamed at her, she thought the poor man was going to leap out of the window. Later he’d said she had caught him by surprise. It had been on the tip of her tongue to shout, ‘Yes, that’s the bloody idea, isn’t it?’ But by that time she had eaten most of a tub of cookie-dough ice cream and had got back into her tracksuit, so it seemed the moment had indeed passed. She had thought she was an aberration, a freak. Men wanted sex all the time, didn’t they? It was the women who feigned headaches. What was so wrong with her that she managed to buck the trend like some accidental Medusa, shrivelling a man’s desire with one desperate look? It had not even occurred to her that this particular man was too tired to oblige as his sap was being expertly milked elsewhere. She would have liked to tell Tara that it does something to the soul, this benevolent and gradual amputation of affection, of touch. And that this kind of spontaneous