The Passengers(8)

He didn’t get the opportunity to finish his sentence. The next voice to come from their speakers did not belong to either of them.





Chapter 5





SHABANA KHARTRI


‘I can do it, I can do it, I can do it …’

Shabana repeated the mantra under her breath over and over again as the car drove, leaving behind the only home she’d known for twenty years. This is really it, she thought. The unimaginable was becoming a reality.

Just thirty-minutes had passed since her son Reyansh had appeared at the front door of the family home, begging for her to listen to him. Although overjoyed to see him, her first concern had been for his safety.

‘What are you doing here?’ she’d replied, cupping his cheeks, her eyes flitting between her first born and the neighbours’ houses to check if anyone had clocked his return. He’d been breathless. ‘You know you cannot come here,’ Shabana had continued. ‘It’s not safe for you.’

‘It doesn’t matter anymore,’ he’d replied. ‘Please Mum, you have to listen to me. This is the chance you’ve been waiting for – to get out of here.’

‘What are you talking about, son? What has happened?’

‘It’s Dad. He’s been arrested.’

Shabana had taken a step back into the porch and shaken her head as if she had misunderstood him. ‘What do you mean he has been arrested? What for?’

‘I don’t know all the details; all I know is that his lawyer called asking you to post bail for dad. Because you don’t speak English, he phoned me. All his solicitor would say was that his arrest involved people trafficking.’

Shabana had heard the phrase before but hadn’t thought to ask its meaning.

‘It’s where people are illegally smuggled out of one country and into another,’ Reyansh had continued. ‘The men are often sold on for slave labour and the women forced into prostitution.’

She’d covered her mouth with her hands. ‘And they are saying your father has been doing this?’

‘It’s what they’re accusing him of, yes. Rohit and Sanjay were also arrested in the restaurant last night along with a bunch of other men at different addresses. The police say they’re part of a gang shipping children and beggars over from the Assan slums before selling them.’

Shabana recognised the other men’s names but couldn’t put faces to them. Whenever her husband Vihaan had brought friends back to the house, she had been ordered upstairs and out of sight until they left. Often, they had remained in the dining room getting drunk on Sekmai until the early hours of the morning. It was also not uncommon for him to stay out for days at a time, which is why she hadn’t missed him last night.

‘Mum, this is your chance to leave him,’ Reyansh had continued. ‘You are never going to get an opportunity like this again.’

Shabana had known that if what her son was saying was accurate, everything she had once dreamed of might be about to come true. But still she had hesitated. ‘I’m not ready,’ she’d whispered, her heart racing. ‘I would need to pack clothes, get the girls ready … What would I tell them? I have no money saved, how will we afford to eat? How will we live? Where will we go?’

‘I have two taxis waiting,’ Reyansh had told her, and turned to point to them behind him. ‘One to take you to a solicitor and the other to drive the girls to a shelter. Dad told his brief there’s money hidden in the shed, thousands of pounds that’ll pay for his bail. There’s nothing to stop you from taking it.’

‘But that’s theft.’

‘He has stolen two decades of your life.’

‘What kind of shelter?’

‘It’s for families like us and women like you; wives from the Indian community who’ve spent their whole lives being controlled by their husbands; women who are sick of being beaten and bullied and treated like dogs, and who need help in starting afresh.’

‘But … but …’ Shabana hadn’t known how to respond. For so many years, she had fantasised about escaping Vihaan. Nine years had passed since her last proper attempt when she had made plans to travel from their home in Leicester to Newcastle where a distant cousin lived. Mrs Patel, who ran the local supermarket, had been aiding her. Only when Mrs Patel’s husband had discovered the National Express coach tickets his wife had been hiding for Shabana and her children, he’d felt duty-bound to tell Vihaan of her plans. Her punishment had been a beating so severe that she still couldn’t place her full weight on her right ankle.

Since that day, her only hope was that an early death might rid the world of Vihaan. He smoked a pack of high-tar cigarettes a day and his fatty diet meant he was at least twenty kilos overweight. It could only be a matter of time before his heart gave out. Sometimes she fantasised watching him collapse on the kitchen floor, clutching his arm and chest and begging her to get help. ‘I can’t,’ she would tell him. ‘I only speak Bengali. You wouldn’t allow me to learn English, remember?’

‘Mum,’ Reyansh had said, bringing her back to the present. He’d taken his mother’s hands within his own. ‘This is what you want, isn’t it? The opportunity to get you all away from him? Because it’s actually happening now.’