In Bed With Lord Byron

always fluttered slightly of reach.
    ‘It all seems so horribly pointless,’ I said in a doleful voice. ‘I mean, if we’re just doomed to repeat our mistakes over and over, stuck in this karmic trap,
doesn’t it make life ultimately meaningless?’
    ‘I think the idea is that we all have lessons to learn. So we find ourselves in the same situation until we work out how to deal with it and get it right.’
    ‘A bit like
Groundhog Day
?’ I said, grinning.
    ‘A bit like
Groundhog Day
,’ he echoed, but a sigh escaped from his lips.
    I came out of my own worries, realising he needed sympathy too.
    ‘Do you feel you’re stuck in some karmic trap, then?’ I asked.
    ‘Oh yes,’ he replied heavily, rubbing his stubbled chin.
    ‘Care to talk about it?’
    We were interrupted by Adam’s cries – Tony was trying to set fire to him with an incense stick.
    ‘I think we’d better go,’ said Peter.
    Outside, I noticed that the woman in white who had been in the temple was lying on a makeshift wooden pyre.
    ‘Daddy, what’s she doing?’ Tony asked.
    ‘We have to get out of here,’ said Peter quickly, but it was too late. The pyre had already gone up in flames.
    Peter tried to shield my face, but I wrenched away with a horrible curiosity to confirm what I had dreaded. I couldn’t see
her,
for the pyre was now surrounded by women in white,
their screams hitting the sky like daggers.
Sati:
the ancient Indian practice whereby a woman who loses her husband takes her own life in devotion. The flames roared up in jets of cerulean
blue and saffron yellow, incongruously beautiful. The smoke carried the scents of flesh and death; I choked on it, coughing.
    The crowd had made no move to stop her. They watched with pale, sober, stupid faces. I stumbled forward, ready to push through them, to do something, anything. I was vaguely aware of Peter
rounding up Adam and Tony, ordering them not to look. He caught me, cradling me in his arms, crying that it was no use, it wasn’t our place to interfere. I collapsed against him, lost in his
embrace. Everything became blurry; smoke billowed around us, bitter in the back of my throat. I looked up at him and through my tears I saw his face in its true expression, with all the charm
stripped away. His eyes were heavy with anguish; not just the pain evoked by today’s tragedy, but something lodged deep in his heart that he had been carrying for years. We leaned together,
desperate to cling and console. We ached to kiss, to find, in the black death swirling about us, a memory of love, of life.
    ‘DADDY!’ Tony suddenly screamed, bursting into tears.
    Peter scooped his son up in his arms, holding him tight. Adam, bewildered and unable to digest what was happening, copied Tony and began to cry too. I held him tightly, and we all hurried away.
When I looked back, the fire was still licking tall tongues against the sky, smoke blistering the clouds.
    ‘I’m so sorry,’ Peter kept apologising as he dropped us off, as though the whole tragedy had been his fault.
    ‘It’s OK. I’m fine . . . well, a bit shaken . . . ’ I broke off, still choked with emotion.
    ‘Perhaps – perhaps you could have dinner with us tonight, at our house. With me and . . . my wife,’ he said awkwardly.
    I lowered my eyes.
    ‘I’d love to,’ I said quietly. ‘Thank you very much.’
    Back in the hotel room, I hugged Adam tight and fell into a deep, nightmare-filled sleep.
    iv) The dinner
    I was woken by a violent banging on the door. A taxi driver had come to collect us and take us to Peter’s house. I hastily put on the new sari I’d bought in the
market, fumbling with a thousand safetypins to keep it in place.
    As we hurried downstairs to the taxi, however, Adam suddenly got cold feet.
    ‘I don’t want to go, Auntie Lucy,’ he moaned. ‘I want to watch
Postman Pat
. I want some orange juice.’
    This was a first.
    ‘Oh Adam . . . ’ I stroked his hair. ‘Look – just one dinner and that’s it. I promise.’
    ‘But I’ll have to play with horrible Tony.’
    ‘Well – look – when we get back home, I’ll buy you a new
Postman Pat
video, OK?’
    ‘And a Power Rangers video?’ Adam bartered. ‘Two Power Rangers.’
    Finally, we compromised on one of each.
    The taxi journey was rather fraught. The wind breezed through the windows, cruelly flapping open the various bits of my sari which hadn’t been pinned, and I kept having
to slap them down in embarrassment. I was