Read Online A Scandalous Secret by Jaishree Misra - Free Book Online

curiosity (or, indeed, any desire at all to explore her roots) had been quelled many years ago.
    And then she had met Chelsea. Or rather, met her again, since Chelsea had gone away to board after primary school. Sonya had always known that, like her, Chelsea had been adopted as a child, but they had never talked about this in any detail until they had bumped into each other at another old schoolmate’s birthday party, just a couple of months ago. In the course of their conversation, Chelsea mentioned having traced her birth parents to a council estate in Merton, describing the sense of relief that had swept over her at knowing how lucky she had been to be adopted. For reasons she could not explain, the story had intrigued Sonya and led to her contacting the Registrar General after her own eighteenth birthday in order to have a look at her birth records. It had been a mere lark at first, some far-off niggling curiosity about her antecedents. She had even told Mum (and the adoption social worker who had provided the initial counselling) that, like Chelsea, it was only her medical history that she was interested in. But the information from the agencythat had arranged her adoption had taken Sonya completely by surprise, rattling her very foundations. Who would’ve imagined that her biological mother was a woman who lived in India, rather than Southall or Tooting, and – here was the really astonishing bit – that she had been a student at Oxford too, the very same university to which Sonya was due to go this autumn! It was not just the coincidence of this fact, but the idea that an educated woman had chosen to give her up that had been the really shocking thing to Sonya. Her birth mother was obviously one who’d had choices, not a suffering voiceless woman at all. Sonya could still recall the acrid taste in her mouth at that discovery, the shock and sudden hurt at the knowledge that she had not been prised away from her poor and defenceless mother’s care by overzealous social workers, as she had always imagined, but had, in fact, coolly been given away. That was the really galling bit: that the woman who was her natural mother had made such a cold and deliberate choice, never turning around once to look back at the baby she had abandoned in England.
    It was anger that was propelling Sonya on in this search, nothing else. Pure unadulterated anger. She had tried to reassure Mum and Dad of that fact but it seemed to bring them little comfort.
    â€˜Sonya darling!’ Sonya heard her mother’s high-pitched voice float up the stairs.
    Sonya opened her bedroom door to shout back. ‘Up here Mum. What’s up?’
    â€˜Dad’s on the phone. He’s in town and wants to know if you need one of those multi-plug thingies for your laptop.’
    â€˜Okay, coming!’ Sonya said, hastily pulling on a pair ofshorts before running down the stairs in long loping strides. It was best not to leave Mum with instructions on anything technical, Sonya thought as she took the handset off her mother. ‘Hey, Dad,’ she said, clicking the speaker phone on.
    â€˜Darling, you will need an adaptor to be able to use your laptop and hair dryer while you’re abroad,’ Richard Shaw’s voice floated into the room. ‘I’m in Boots and can see some in the travel section. The one I’m looking at here – a multi-way plug – says “Thailand”, “Singapore” and … oh here, “India” among the list of countries so it should be all right. Apparently they use round-pin plugs in India.’
    â€˜I hadn’t thought of all that,’ Sonya said, adding, ‘Thanks Dad.’
    â€˜No trouble, darling,’ Richard responded lightly. ‘Clever-looking thing, this, like a Rubik’s cube except with buttons and pop-out pins on all the sides.’
    â€˜Hope it’s not expensive,’ Sonya said, conscious of the fact that her parents