Stranger Than a Stranger

Emma sat at her desk sipping lukewarm coffee from a teacup. Rintu, the girl who kept the house for her, walked in with a tray full of vegetable fritters.
“Roy is not coming tonight, madam,” declared Rintu as she made space on Emma’s cluttered desk to place the snacks. “He is unwell.”
“I see,” said Emma, pressing a tissue paper against the oily fritters.
Emma had been waiting eagerly to meet Roy ever since she found out that his manuscript, “The Chariot” has been accepted by a British publishing house. The publishers knew nothing about the arrangement she had with Roy. He wrote engaging stories and Emma paid him handsomely to take credit for those.
But this time a reputed international publisher had shown interest in Roy’s work. Emma was elated, and also, a little frightened. What if he reneged at this point?
Emma scooped up a few fritters and walked out of the study, abandoning the rest of her coffee. She went to sit by the swimming pool. Staring at the rhythmic ripples of water she began to glide back through time to reach the vast, murkiness of her younger years in the bustling suburbs of the United Kingdom.
 

Emma’s father had left her even before she was born. Her mother Violet had waited until Emma was nineteen and working as a waitress at a city restaurant. Then Violet had moved to a town, two hundred miles away, to live with her newly acquired Greek boyfriend, Sebastian.
Surprisingly, her mother’s absence did not bother Emma as much as she had thought it would. For one thing, Violet called her daughter every night, and for another thing, Emma celebrated her freedom by going out with a new man every month, one distinctly different from the preceding one, in terms of both looks and manners. Her waitressing job did not pay her much and it remained like the droning background music of a monotonous movie, while her real expenses were borne by the men who fell for her in quick succession.
The restaurant where she worked would have always remained in the shadows had Gonza C, the world-famous footballer not walked in one day to seat himself at Emma’s table.
“Don’t hound him for pictures or autographs,” the maître d’ whispered into Emma’s ears. “No stepping into his personal space.”
Emma nodded and proceeded to calm the flutters in her heart while Gonza C scanned the menu for two long minutes.
“What would you recommend?” he asked, finally looking up at her.
As Emma rattled off their signature dishes with detailed side-notes on calories and nutrition, Gonza C felt himself wafting into the depth of her beauty. And he instinctively knew as he had known many times in his life, that he would have to sleep with the woman he was looking at. So, at the end of his meal when Emma came to present the bill-book, he whispered the proposition into her ears.
Emma slept with him, of course. And when the footballer left without waiting for the darkness outside to clear up, she did not mind one bit. She placed the precious memory in her mind, carefully squeezed between a couple of other happy ones, in each of which the details were too blurred and the only thing taking precedence was the high thumping of her own heart.
Six weeks later, Emma found out to her utter dismay that she was in the process of making the child of Gonza C in her womb. A quick call to a shady clinic and she had an abortion scheduled. That night, when for the first time Emma missed her mother sorely, Violet forgot to call her daughter. Over the next few days, Emma grew more desperate to talk to her mother but Violet’s phone was switched off. Then exactly one week later she appeared at Emma’s doorstep, shrivelled and completely devastated after breaking up with Sebastian.
Emma had to waste a month trying to fix the wrecked state of her mother. Then one night when Violet finally laughed at a joke, Emma mustered up some courage and confessed about her pregnancy. This immediately pushed Violet back into her depressed state of mind and she mentioned again and again how her bastard daughter had ended up just like her stupid mother. Emma hung about guiltily for the next few days, not daring to mention her plans of aborting the baby. Then one day, while walking home from work, it struck upon her that Gonza C was rich and famous. And such people were known to spend money to cover up all kinds of scandals. Happy with her plan of reaching out to the father of her child, Emma went home, feeling a lot more hopeful.
But it turned out that reaching Gonza C was not so easy. A month of research and two dozen phone calls later Emma was able to convey to Gonza C’s manager that the famous footballer had inadvertently impregnated her. The manager laughed and informed Emma that he had heard the same joke from at least ten other women in the same week. Then the phone line went cold.
Emma was now a little advanced in her pregnancy. She had lost her strength, hope and as she went on to discover on the following Monday, her job at the restaurant, as well. Eventually, she gave birth to the baby, perhaps only because she did not wish to wipe out the evidence of Gonza C having bedded her; for the sight of her squiggling little son did not give Emma any remote sense of joy.
Three weeks later on a particularly dreary day, Emma received a call from an unknown number at an early hour. She snapped at the caller. The baby had not let her sleep all night and a nasty headache pounded her brains. The caller turned out to be a man representing Gonza C.
Things moved quite fast after this. Two suited men came down to collect the baby’s cheek swab and after another month of silence, a team consisting of two stoic men and one congenial-looking lady visited Emma and her mother.
The lady smiled warmly as she informed Emma that Gonza C was offering to adopt the baby as his own.
“It is his son,” emphasized Emma.
“And he is going to accept him legally,” said the beaming lady.
Then before Emma got a chance to react, she hastily added that Emma would need to relocate to faraway India.
“Mr. Gonza C would set you up with a loaded bank account,” continued the lady. “But you cannot ever try to get in touch with Mr. Gonza C or his son.”
After the initial shock and disbelief subsided, it became easy for Emma to accept the offer. Soon after this, the baby was taken away while the kind lady drove Emma and her mother to the airport.
“Indian men are crazy about white-skinned women,” whispered the lady in her goodbye message. “You made the right decision, Emma.”
 

In India the weather was warm, the people servile and the cost of living affordable. Violet was happy. For Emma the days were bearable. The nights, not so much. Her little boy kept invading her dreams, crying for something and she woke up feeling disoriented and oddly depressed. A basic internet search reassured her that the baby was in good health and under good care. Yet, it could not ease the dull ache in the middle of her chest.
It was while looking at the pictures of her son’s first birthday that Emma made up her mind. She had to be famous too. So famous that it would be possible for her to be hobnobbing with her son at some kind of glitzy, celebs-only event. That is when Emma began her hunt for indigent, talented, and hence desperate artists. She finally zeroed down on Roy, a polite writer who had agreed to ghost-write stories for Emma in return of a modest salary.
 

And now, biting into the fritters, Emma wondered how Roy would react when she told him about the British publisher and their interest in his work.
Roy walked in early in the next morning while Emma was doing yoga in the patio. She requested Roy to sit down on the bamboo-wood armchair.
“Ms. Emma, I’m sorry I couldn’t come yesterday,” began Roy as he sat down.
“That’s alright, we can talk now,” said Emma. “I have important questions to ask.”
Roy clasped his hands and leaned ahead.
“Are you terminating my contract?” he asked, his brows creased in deep worry.
“Not at all,” reassured Emma. “Your work is great.”
“I can’t afford to lose this job,” continued Roy. “My divorce left me penniless. I can’t-”
He fell back on the chair and began to take deep breaths.
“Roy, I have no intention to let you go,” reiterated Emma. “Please calm down. In fact, I wanted to discuss my own apprehensions with you.”
Roy looked puzzled.
“You don’t get any recognition for your work,” mumbled Emma.
“A ghost-writer isn’t supposed to get recognition,” said Roy, shrugging his shoulders.
“Don’t you long for fame?” asked Emma. “If your books earn global fame, won’t you feel like claiming your share?”
Roy appeared startled.
“Miss Emma, I’d never betray you,” Roy said after a quiet moment. “You have been quite a messiah to me.”
“Messiah!” laughed Emma.
She stood up and began to sponge her face and arms with a wet towel.
“My wife filed a fake dowry case against me,” Roy explained. “The verdict depleted me of all my money and goodwill. I lost my job. Our son was just three when his mother was putting his father through all this drama. When you hired me, you literally saved me from doom.”
“I suppose you can’t see your son anymore?” asked Emma.
“I’m not sure if I should disclose everything,” said Roy after a pause.
“Roy, I wouldn’t take away your job,” assured Emma. “Even if you tell me that you have choked your ex-wife to death.”
“I didn’t kill her,” exclaimed Roy. “I just took what is mine and left one day without telling anyone.”
“You stole some of your money back from your ex-wife?” guessed Emma.
“Worse,” whispered Roy, looking down. “I took our son and ran away.”
Roy was licking his lips. Little beads of perspiration were forming on his forehead.
“That’s all?” Emma looked strange.
“Yes,” he replied. “I was shattered emotionally, financially. No one will understand the pain-”
“I understand,” cut in Emma. “I perfectly understand why you felt that way.”
“Thank you,” Roy said feebly. “As you can see, I’d love to remain as inconspicuous as I can. If I make enough money to support my child and myself, I’d be happy.”
Emma smiled.
“Don’t you want to know why I want to be famous?” she asked.
“I have been curious,” answered Roy truthfully. “But I didn’t wish to overstep my boundary.”
“A man took my heart and left me,” Emma said, choosing her words carefully. “I want my heart back.”
“Someone abandoned you?” Roy’s countenance was laced with disbelief. “How? Why? You are so perfect in your beauty and kindness!”
Roy regretted his words the second they left his lips and looked away, his cheeks burning with embarrassment. Emma warmed up deep down but quickly changed the topic to save Roy from further mortification.
“A British publishing house has accepted your novel,” she revealed. “Congratulations!”
Roy looked blank for a second and then he smiled.
“It’s all yours,” said Roy. “You always believed in me.”
Rintu brought in breakfast at this point. Emma and Roy ate in silence; sometimes glancing shyly at each other. They felt safe and content after a long time. They had finally managed to put the strangeness of their past behind themselves.