‘It helps people, Mum,’ she muttered, dragging the tote off of her bed and onto the floor. ‘Besides. It’s not like I’m taking calls about someone’s Freeview not working.’
Her mother was so angry the barbed comment didn’t even land. Her Uncle Shonal ran a huge call centre in Calcutta and, by all reports, lived rather well off of it.
Her mum’s hands and voice pitched upwards again. ‘Who? Who is it helping? People who aren’t clever enough to make a doctor’s appointment? People unable to find a chemist? People who want your permission to have a slice of cake?’
Raven frowned. She knew she shouldn’t have told her parents about the cake call. Whatever. It’s not like they understood anything about real life in the real world anyway. How could they? They’d been entirely programmed from the day they were born. Her mother’s parents had endured the hardship of immigration and racism and poverty (and selling countless copies of the Daily Mail and Fruit and Nut bars) so that their children could live lives untouched by dust storms and brown outs and civil unrest. Her father’s parents hadn’t been too different. Substitute the corner shop for civil servants in the foreign office and Ghandiji was your uncle. AKA the man, the myth the legend that her parents had chosen for her to aspire to be like when she failed to live up to their expectations. (Unlike her dutiful older siblings who, in order of birth, had to live up to Alexander Fleming – why merely practice medicine when you can change it – and, for her sister, International Monetary Fund legend, Christine Lagarde – why manage other people’s money when you can oversee the world’s?) Her own ‘motivational speeches’ seemed to dig deeper into her psyche than they ever had with her brother and sister. Or maybe they’d been better at hiding it.
Do you think Gandhiji changed India by not doing his homework?
Would Gandhiji have eaten biscuits in his bedroom during his fast?
Gandhiji loved the law. And look where that got him. On all of India’s legal tender!
No pressure, then.
Funny how any mention of Gandhiji making a roaring success of himself by living his life against the grain didn’t go down a storm. Gandhiji, apparently, could only be used to point out a child’s reluctance to do exactly what her parents told her to.
‘Mum,’ Raven hoinked her bags up, faced her mother, her arms straining against the weight of her belongings (books, make-up and her entire collection of black clothes). This was a make or break moment. Every fibre in her body was vibrating with fear but she knew if she didn’t say it now, she never would. ‘I love you. I want to make you proud. But I don’t want to be an ambulance chaser. It is not, nor will it ever be, anything I want to do with my life. I don’t know exactly what it is I do want to do and the whole point of this year was for me to explore options so as not to waste anyone’s money when I finally do go to university. If I go at all.’
She swallowed. Gosh. She couldn’t believe she’d added that last part. Of course she was going to university. She wasn’t completely mental, but … crikey. She’d actually said it. To her mother. She didn’t know what she wanted to do when she grew up.
It felt scary. As scary as deleting her Facebook page. Her Snapchat account. Her Insta site. Her twitter handle.
Her whole entire cyber identity eradicated with a few taps and swipes of her index finger.
Her mother’s face went puce. Maybe the no uni thing had been a step too far.
‘Your Uncle Ravi is not an ambulance chaser,’ her mother bit out. ‘He is the Vice … PRESIDENT … of The Society of Clinical Injuries Lawyers.’
Oh, for fuck’s sake. Seriously? Hadn’t she, for one solitary second, fought becoming a pharmacist? Wanted to … she didn’t know … become a life model or a singer or food truck owner (she made uh-mazing pakoras).
Her mother gave her the You Better Apologise Now face.
Nope. Apparently not.
‘Mum.’ Raven suddenly felt very, very grown up. As if she were finally, after years of biting her tongue, delivering a long-overdue home truth. ‘Uncle Ravi isn’t a bad man.’ He wasn’t a particularly nice man either, but she wasn’t going to push it. ‘But I think you would agree, he isn’t the best of mentors. And even Gandhiji wasn’t perfect.’ Her mother’s lips thinned, but Raven continued, ‘He was forty-five when he went to India and began to do his work there. I’m nineteen. I have some elbow room to work things out.’
Raven turned sideways, eased herself past her mother, then walked down the corridor and out of her parents’ house to an entirely uncertain future.
Chapter Nineteen
‘It looks as though this trip of Kath’s is going to have to happen now!’ Kev wouldn’t meet Kath’s eye despite the fact she was sitting just a few inches away from him. ‘Fifteen grand to ride across the country? She’s got a lot of generous fans out there.’
Kev was particularly rankled by this. As if the donations that had been pouring in for the LifeTime Coast to Coast ride were approval ratings for Kath alone. Which, in a way, they kind of were. Making it so much more fun to rub it in.
‘I’m still in shock,’ Kath gushed to camera three which she knew cut Kev out of the shot. ‘Forty-five thousand pounds for something that hasn’t even happened yet!’ She blew a kiss to camera one which was always set to a two shot. ‘Thank you all. Truly. From the very bottom of my heart. LifeTime does some amazing work. Who else out there wants to join me?’ She crooked her arm and arced it, ‘C’mon. Fit or not – we can do this. One hundred and seventy-four miles from the Lake District, all the way across Hadrian’s Wall to
