Chilli Heat Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  About the Author

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Copyright

  About the Book

  When her travelling companion lets her down at short notice, Nadia reluctantly agrees to take her recently divorced mother, Valerie, on her gap-year trip to India. However, her mother turns out to be anything but the conservative presence she had feared. As the two women explore India’s most exotic locations, it is Valerie who experiences a sexual reawakening with a succession of lovers and Nadia who is forced to wrestle with her own inhibitions and repressed desires. The landscape and the people ultimately work their transforming magic on both mother and daughter, causing Valerie to think again about her ex-husband and tempting Nadia with the possiblity of true love.

  About the Author

  Manchester-based writer Carrie Williams travels widely as a reviewer of hotels, restaurants and bars. She began writing for Black Lace’s Wicked Words short story collections before progressing to novels.

  She is the author of Chilli Heat, The Apprentice and The Blue Guide.

  To Nuala, eternal inspiration

  Prologue

  It’s sizzling outside, but the room is cool. I lie on the bed, listening to the regular clunk of the fan as it moves the air around the small space, and I try to sleep, worn out by the night’s activities. But before long I hear the squeak of the door on its hinges, and I know that one of them is back. In spite of my exhaustion, a throb starts up between my legs, and I become wet in seconds, spilling out onto the sheet like an overripe fruit. I can’t, it seems, get enough. This is like a disease.

  I don’t – can’t – open my eyes, although my ears are keen to the footsteps as they move across the room, to the flap of flip-flops against the stone floor. Who is it? I’m thinking, and of course I hope that it’s him. Little has been denied me, save what I want the most – him, to myself, just for a time at least.

  A hand grazes my bare hip, alights on it. I start, shudder with longing. The other hand moves between my legs, slides easily between the lips of my sex. Two fingers slip inside; the thumb stays on my clit, brushing at it, quickening, driving me half mad with the tantalising lightness of its caress. I arch my back as if in greeting, in welcome, in salutation. Already I can feel my climax building, threatening to overwhelm me.

  I’m stretched back over the bed, head over the side of it, hair trailing down to the floor, displayed like an offering. Unable, it seems, to act, to reciprocate, only to take, give myself over, abandon myself to this force … And then a mouth closes around one of my nipples, and teeth take the soft flesh and clamp down, till I cry out in surprise and joy. My eyes flash open, and I blink several times in the early afternoon sunlight filtering through the gauze curtains. Then I watch as he sits up and back on his haunches, takes his cock in his hand and proffers it to me like a gift. I smile, delirious, as he comes towards me; it’s now, only now, that I can react, reaching down and peeling myself open for him.

  And then suddenly he’s inside, and pleasure is coursing through me like the most powerful drug imaginable. But as I twist my head from side to side, wailing in ecstasy, I catch sight of her standing over by the door, watching us, a curious half-smile on her face. A half-smile of victory – that’s what I know it to be. And suddenly I understand, without any doubt, that I’ll never have him to myself.

  She peels off her bikini top and, with her hand down her bottoms, rubbing at her snatch, she walks towards us, eyes strangely bright, greedy for us.

  1

  I STIR AS we begin our approach to Mumbai, when the captain comes over the Tannoy to announce that the seatbelt sign is about to come on. I turn my face to the window and see nothing at first beyond my own reflection, my face still scrunched up and my hair mussed from sleep. Then I lean nearer to the window. Though we can’t be that close to the city yet, lights glimmer far below us, in isolated clusters, and I feel my excitement mount.

  I turn to my companion, and for a moment I feel surprise as well as a degree of disappointment, before it all comes back to me. I hadn’t planned to bring my mum along with me on my gap year, but when my best friend Katie dropped out at short notice and Mum suggested taking her place, I didn’t have an excuse ready. And besides, India is not the type of place an eighteen-year-old girl wants to travel around alone. With no other likely candidates presenting themselves, I had the stark choice between bringing my mum and cancelling the trip altogether. This trip I’ve been planning, saving for, dreaming about for so long. No, not coming to India was out of the question.

  My mum’s name is Valerie, and she’s fine, she really is. Just not my ideal travelling companion. She’s led a pretty staid life, after marrying young and starting a family. Since then she’s been the dutiful doctor’s wife, never straying far from my father’s side, bringing up my brothers and me, uncomplaining in her self-sacrifice. Or perhaps she never saw it as a sacrifice. Perhaps we girls just automatically expect more of our lives these days.

  So it came as a real shock when Mum and Dad split up. There was no drama, no fighting or scenes – just an announcement, seemingly out of the blue, that they were going their own ways. Neither of them, to my knowledge, had had an affair, and throughout the whole divorce proceedings and afterwards they have remained on speaking terms. It would appear that they simply fell out of love. Or perhaps they hadn’t been in love for a long time, and with me, the youngest, preparing to fly the nest, had admitted to one another that there was nothing to hold them together any longer.

  Mum has never really travelled, except for our annual holidays in Tenerife or Spain, which don’t count. And even when we were abroad, she was content to lie and fry by the pool with the latest Dick Francis novel in her hand. Dad went back to India several times over the 25 years of their marriage, mainly to visit his family there, but she never accompanied him, said she ‘didn’t fancy it’. Which made it all the more surprising that she offered to come along with me on this trip, all the more surprising that she’s sitting next to me now.

  I smile at her, a little too cheerily perhaps. ‘Not getting cold feet?’ I say.

  She laughs. ‘No chance,’ she says. ‘Are you?’

  I shake my head and look quickly back out of the window.

  It’s getting late, and Mum insists on splashing out on a taxi into the centre. She’s not risking one of the lethal-looking buses, she says; she saw one of the drivers swigging something from a hip flask. I let her, telling myself there’ll be plenty of time for roughing it. I’ve booked us a hotel to ease us into our stay, but a budget one at that: the Aqua on Marine Drive. The taxi driver knows it and we’re there within about twenty minutes, all our attempts at conversation en route drowned out by the bhangra that he turns up loud and sings along to. He’s tone deaf, and soon I feel a headache coming on.

  As we step into the hotel
foyer, out of the light spray blowing in off the Arabian Sea, I’m satisfied with my choice. But when I get close to the reception desk, mouth already open to speak, I feel a tug at the sleeve of my jacket.

  ‘Nadia, we are not staying here,’ says Mum, and I turn to see her eyes full of threat. She’s serious. I look around again: it’s not that bad, all things considered. A little institutional, certainly – it looks like it might have been converted from an old hospital. And very basically furnished. But I don’t see any cockroaches, or not yet. For the price, it seems just fine. And we are only staying two or three nights, while we get our bearings and formulate an itinerary.

  Before I can argue back, however, Mum has turned on her heels and is disappearing out of the door. I run after her, cursing Katie and her stupid glandular fever. It wasn’t meant to be like this. I catch up with Mum just as she’s stepping from the pavement and hailing a taxi.

  2

  I SHOULD HAVE asked at the hotel before hailing that damn taxi. Then I would have known there were some five-stars within just a few minutes’ walk of the dreaded Hotel Aqua. As it was I felt a bit of a fool jumping into a taxi only to climb straight back out, with the driver laughing at me, convinced I was deranged. But I was in such a huff with my daughter. I know this is her trip, in many ways, and that I am only a fellow passenger – perhaps a nanny, of sorts, or maybe even a bodyguard – but sometimes she just goes too far. There was no way I was going to stay in that cesspit of a hotel she’d earmarked for us. Something she’d found on the internet, no doubt.

  We end up at the Intercontinental ten doors down, which is much more my cup of tea, although the prices are a little eye-opening. Still, Ravi was more than generous when it came to the terms of our divorce, and if I bung it on my credit card I won’t have to think about it for a while. And it has been a long trip. I could do with a good night’s sleep on a comfortable bed.

  But before that, it’s time for a nightcap. Nadia and I leave the staff to take care of our bags and head straight to the Czar vodka lounge, where I offer to buy her a cocktail. Anything to take that frown off her face. I can tell, however, as we enter, that coming here is causing her mood to deteriorate further still. She’s a grungy kid, into Courtney Love and strange indie films and God knows what else, and the ornate drapes and live piano music just aren’t her scene. And sure enough, she’s barely over the threshold before she cries off with a headache, blaming the loud music in the cab.

  I settle on one of the squashy seats and peruse the scene. The place is not so busy. Aside from the handsome young waiters in their smart uniforms, I can make out only a handful of other guests: two white couples, both sitting silently over tall iced glasses and little bowls of nibbles, and a solitary man hidden away behind a newspaper. I note his well-polished shoes and the gold glinting on his fingers; he’s a businessman here alone, I decide.

  All at once one of the waiters is inclining towards me, asking what I’d like to drink, and I smile and say that I could murder a martini. It feels strange, being here in a bar all by myself. I can’t think of the last time I might have done such a thing. I’m not sure if I ever have done such a thing. But it also feels good. There a kind of fizzing in my veins, a pleasurable buzzing in my head. I think I might stay here a while.

  My drink arrives and, as I sip it and let the alcohol relax me, I think of Ravi and of how surprised, perhaps even shocked, he’d be to see me somewhere like this, alone. I wonder what he’s doing right now. He’s probably not long home from work – as a surgeon in casualty his hours have always been long. Perhaps he’s unwinding, as he often did, over a glass of whisky, as he waited for me to serve dinner. Only I won’t be serving dinner tonight, of course. I’m halfway around the world, and no longer his wife. I still have trouble getting my head round that one: that I’m no longer Ravi’s wife. That I’m no longer anyone’s wife. It was my role for so long, my raison d’être. Sure, it was I who decided I didn’t want to go on in that role, but it doesn’t mean I don’t miss it, the security of it, the reassurance of having a label, even if it wasn’t a very exciting one.

  I’m on my second martini, and feeling more than a little tipsy – I know I’m quite drunk because I’m holding up my glass and making a silent toast to Ravi and our 25 years of marriage – when the man behind the newspaper folds it, tucks it under his arm, and, rising to his feet, heads towards me. His eyes are trained on me, and for a moment his direct gaze leads me to think that I must know him. I study his salt-and-pepper hair, neatly cropped, and his pale-blue eyes, and I decide that no, I don’t know him, but I’d like to.

  He evidently feels the same, for he stops in front of me and waves an expensively clad arm towards the empty seat beside me. ‘Would you mind?’ he says, and I think I hear New York in his voice, although I’m not well travelled and my scant knowledge of accents is derived only from TV shows.

  ‘Not at all. Please, help yourself.’ There’s an assurance in my voice that comes more from the alcohol than from any self-confidence. It’s a long time since a man has paid me any attention, and although I can’t say I’m not enjoying it, I’ve forgotten how to act. Inside, I feel like a schoolgirl again.

  ‘Charles,’ he says, extending a hand. I shake it, and his grasp is firm, authoritative. It tells of a man who knows what he wants. And at this moment, it looks like what he wants might be me. I feel a pulse shoot up inside me. He’s undeniably attractive – what you might call suave, debonair. His clothes are well cut and elegant, and he smells of some exotic, faintly spicy, but manly fragrance. What catches my attention most of all, however, is his skin: for a man who must be in his mid-fifties, it has remarkable radiance and elasticity. I wouldn’t swear on it, but I’d guess he is no stranger to professional facials.

  ‘I’m Valerie,’ I manage at last.

  ‘Ah, a Brit,’ he says. ‘And what brings you to Mumbai, Valerie?’

  ‘I wanted a change of scene,’ I say. I don’t know why I don’t tell him I’m travelling with my teenage daughter, but I quite like the sense of mystery that being vague brings.

  It seems to work, for a light comes on in those piercing blue eyes. ‘A change of scene,’ he says with a wry smile. ‘And what line of work are you in, Val? You don’t mind if I call you Val?’

  I shake my head vehemently. In fact, I’ve always hated my name being shortened to Val and refused to answer to it, but I don’t want to discourage the intimacy this man is trying to create. Like I said, it’s a long time since I’ve been paid any attention of this kind and I’m not going to blow it.

  ‘I’m in fashion,’ I say, glancing coolly across the room, as if it’s the most normal thing in the world, as if it’s almost tedious for me to have to talk about it, so hardened am I to the glamour of it all. I feel a stab of guilt at lying, at temporarily disowning my family, and I say to myself that I’m not ashamed of having been a housewife for more than two decades. It’s just that I don’t think the phrase ‘housewife’ will light Charles’s fire. ‘Designer’, yes; ‘divorcee’, perhaps – it at least denotes a woman with some kind of past. But ‘housewife’, no.

  ‘Say,’ he says, shooting a glance at his watch: a Rolex, I notice. ‘You know, there’s a much nicer bar upstairs, if you fancied another drink?’ I must look a little dubious, for he quickly follows it up with, ‘Unless you’re too tired, that is?’

  ‘No, no,’ I say quickly. ‘Only I’ve literally just stepped off the plane. I’d like to pop back to my room to freshen up, if that’s OK?’

  ‘Sure.’ He smiles. ‘I’ll meet you in there in, say, fifteen minutes?’

  ‘Fine,’ I say, and I head for the lift. As I wait for its arrival, I mentally rifle through the lingerie I’ve brought with me, panicking that I don’t have anything suitable for such an occasion. The knickers I’m wearing, I realise now, are soaked through.

  3

  I’M JUST DOZING off when I hear the card pass through the swipe and the door open. Mum tiptoes in, but I don’t move. Although part of me i
s grateful for the good bed and the powerful air con after the long flight from London, I’m still mad at her for wimping out at the Hotel Aqua. If she thinks that’s bad, she’s going to have a shock when she sees some of the places I’ve highlighted in my copy of Lonely Planet. She’s come along on the condition that this is my trip, but already it seems she’s hijacking it, calling the shots. Perhaps she thinks it doesn’t matter to me, when it’s her money she’s shelling out. But it does. I’m half Indian, after all, and I came here to see the real India, not the tourist version.

  In the soundproofed quiet of the room, it sounds almost as if she’s panting, and I wonder if she’s been running, and if so, why? I continue to listen, holding my breath, and I hear her begin to mutter: ‘Bloody hell … damn … sure it was … shit … this will have to do.’

  Groaning as if in sleep, I roll over in the duvet and half open one eye. Mum is on her hands and knees on the floor, bent over her suitcase, holding up something for inspection in front of her. It’s a bra, I realise as I open my other eye for a clearer view. And then I see her stand up, strip off her slacks and sweater followed by her undies, and put on a fresh bra and pants. I frown: why on earth is she changing into new clothes, rather than her nightdress? What is she playing at?

  In the semi-darkness I see her step up to the full-length mirror, look herself up and down in her underwear, place her hand on her belly and pull a little face. I feel a pinch of guilt, spying on her like this, and also a touch of sadness, seeing how her body seems to embarrass her. It’s not a bad body at all, that’s the thing. She’s never made the most of herself; her clothes have tended to the frumpy, making her look older and more shapeless than she is. But for a 45-year-old woman, she’s doing good. It’s nothing a sharper haircut and more tailored clothes and a few sessions of Pilates wouldn’t fix. But listen to me! Who am I to talk, with my oversize combat trousers and manly boots? I am hardly the height of femininity and chic!