Free A Sahib's Daughter by Nina Harkness

little of Rachel that it was impossible to be too hard on her. When they first took her home to Aberdeen when she was three, she had shocked their relations by not being able to speak English, having spent so much time with her ayah and the servants.
    After tea, everyone moved indoors, the men heading straight to the bar or to the billiard tables. Some of the ladies retreated to the card room to play bridge, while others went to the library to stock up on books for the following week. When the girls emerged furtively a little later, they were surprised when Charles offered to buy them both cokes, and no one seemed annoyed. Growing up was confusing.
    During the journey home that night, Samira asked Charles when they planned to go ‘home’ to England.
    “I don’t want to go right now, of course, Daddy, but maybe after Rachel leaves?”
    Opportunities for ‘home leave’ had come and gone over the years. Charles showed no inclination to return to England. He preferred to spend his vacations on safari with the men, hunting wild boar and deer, while Ramona visited Prava in Darjeeling with the children. One year, they visited the Taj Mahal and the Red Fort in Agra, and they frequently went to Calcutta.
    Eventually, it was accepted that Charles had no intention of going back, although trips to Britain among both Britishers and Indians were prized.
    “You really should go,” Ramona’s friends would urge her. “even if only for the shopping! My, the shops over there! You simply can’t imagine how huge they are, even bigger than your bungalow. Some of them are five stories. Oxford Street is almost an entire mile of department stores, on both sides of the street. You should make Charles take you at least once.”
    But Ramona had no desire to go. She would smile and say,
    “England is much too cold for me. The journey is too long. But someday, we’ll send Samira, when she’s old enough, and Mark, too. They can make up their own minds about where they want to live.” She said it almost as though it didn’t matter what they decided, though in her heart she hoped they would stay in India, close to her and Charles as they grew older.
    They were both brought up with the knowledge that when they were older they would go to England. They would visit Aunt Pauline in Hertfordshire and see the sights of London. The prospect loomed like a giant milestone in their lives. Samira would weave intricate fantasies in her mind about an England with drizzly gray streets, falling snow and narrow, squashed-up houses. She was not quite sure what she would do when she got there, but somewhere in her dreams would be a fresh-faced English gentleman and herself, richly dressed like the lady on the Quality Street Chocolate tins.
    Now, Samira at thirteen was already asking about going ‘home.’ Charles glanced at Ramona,
    “Sammy, this is our home. You can go when you’re a little older, if you do well in school.”
    Ramona sighed. They were already setting stipulations. But she knew they’d been relatively fortunate. She and Charles had been able to sidestep most of the problems that stemmed from “mixed” marriages.
    “Mummy, what are we?” the question came suddenly from Mark, sitting beside Samira in the backseat.
    “What do you mean?” asked Charles.
    “Are we Indian or English?”
    “We’re both, silly,” said Charles. “You know that.”
    “Then why haven’t we been to England?” Samira asked.
    “Well, I don’t want to go to England,” announced Mark. He was parroting what he’d heard his mother say a hundred times.
    “I don’t want to go,” mimicked Samira, giving him a shove.
    “Stop it.” He glared at her as the car sped home on the deserted road. She had stopped fighting him with her fists, realizing with a shock that he was suddenly bigger and stronger than she.
    “You’ll both go there when you grow up,” said Ramona. “Then there’ll be no more questions.”
    A few days later, Mark ran into the house in