Jubilee by Shelley Harris Read Free Book Online

when he first started at Central Children’s. He remembers the smell of leather, Maya running her fingers down its brown flank: ‘Butter-soft’, she’d said. It’s not what they have now, the younger doctors with their messenger bags slung over their shoulders; this is a proper briefcase. Satish feels the seam of the handle pressing against his fingers when he carries it. There’s room inside for all his papers, leather loops for his pens, a buckled front pouch for his wallet. The briefcase also has an inner pocket, discreet enough for his needs. He unzips it.
    There’s the current bottle, in a plastic bag sealed with a clip in case of spillages. There’s a spoon in another bag next to it. He pulls them both out, aware now of the time, of the need to get upstairs before Maya remarks on his absence.
    Satish pours the liquid into the spoon: a precisely calibrated dose. He watches the white solution roll out of the bottle and waits until the spoon is full, over-full, the dome of the meniscus held in tension, then he takes it. There’s a second measure, then he flips the spoon upside down and licks it clean, child-like. The medicine leaves a membrane of sweetness, designed for younger palates, clinging to his mouth. He sweeps his tongue around his gums to rid them of it. In a minute, he’ll wash it down with some water. He fears the smell of it giving him away.
    Maya will be getting into bed now. The memory of her skin is on his fingers. He slips out of the garage, and goes upstairs.

Chapter 5
    Somewhere in the nebulous hours of the night, Satish is still looking for a convincing origin story. Surely that was the start of it, he tells himself: me and Mandy in the bedroom; that was how it began. It’s a comforting formulation, but he’s not such a fool as to believe it. He knows that by the time Jubilee morning came, things had already been set in motion. The signs were there in the way Sarah’s mum treated him, in Satish’s solitary playtimes at school. They were there in the way people talked to his parents.
    Satish can look back now to those endless meetings about the party: the Entertainment Meeting, the Decoration Meeting, the Food Meeting. He could have seen the signs, if he’d known where to look: there was trouble on the way.
    The Food Meeting was an all-female affair held one Sunday afternoon in the Millers’ sitting room. Satish, at twelve, the weight of impending manhood upon him, felt discomfited by his presence among the women. But, he reasoned, Cai would come too, and Mandy might be round to see Sarah, and they could all go up to her room, so it was OK, really.
    In the event it had not been OK at all, and he had wished himself scrubbed out of the place entirely, because his mother’s contribution to the Food Meeting had been mortifying. In the beginning the discussion had been organised and focused. Mrs Miller had a clipboard. She took notes as the women talked, and was soon able to present them with a provisional menu. Satish, banished with Sima to a corner of the room, spent his time depleting the supply of chocolate digestives and eyeing the door. Where was Cai? The only moment of controversy so far had been Mrs Brecon’s suggestion that, with coronation chicken on offer for the adults, the children should have hamburgers, grilled on a barbecue in her garden. Miss Bissett demurred:
    ‘That seems somewhat American, doesn’t it? Shouldn’t we be celebrating our own food on that day, of all days?’ She frowned at her skirt, picking some unwanted detritus – fluff or cat hair – from her knee while the group took this in. When Mrs Chandler intervened, it was with the same effortless batting-away of obstructions that Satish had witnessed in her dealings with her sons.
    ‘We’re having coronation chicken, aren’t we? Think about it: spices from India. Everybody loved that, first time round.’
    ‘That was a tribute from the Empire – quite different,’ retorted Miss Bissett. ‘We have