Page 62 of I Wish We Weren't Related

Reeva’s eyes widened and she burst into tears again.

“Shit,” muttered Sita. “I’m sorry, they’re just... the worst. Obviously, you don’t look like U-G-L-Y.”

But Reeva kept crying, and then before she knew it, she was simultaneously laughing. “It’s not... funny, but... U-G-L-Y? Really? I look like a Barbie that’s had its hair hacked off? A Barbie so ugly that it’s been namedUgly?”

Sita bit her lip then swallowed a smile. “I mean, it’s kind of a compliment. Barbies still have hot faces.”

“Its head looks like a toilet brush!” shrieked Reeva.

Amisha and Alisha jumped up and started bouncing up and down on the bed. “Auntie Wee is a toilet brush!” chanted Amisha, with Alisha joining in.

Reeva stared at them in appalled horror and then started laughing again. “Your children are horrible!”

Sita joined her in laughter. “The apples don’t fall far from the tree.”

“Can you try not to sound so proud of it? They’re calling me a toilet brush!”

The repetition of the phrase reignited the twins’ excitement, and they began jumping higher, screeching, “Toilet brush!” Amisha jumped on top of Reeva, who was now laughing helplessly as she tried to push her off. “Oh my god, get off, you terrible child!”

“I’mnota tewwible child!” cried Amisha.

“AmIa tewwible child?” asked Alisha.

“You’re both tewwible,” said Reeva. Then she remembered her hair—or lack thereof—and tears began sliding out of her eyes again. “Sita, Jaya’s having a child with Rakesh and I’m goingbald.What if I lose all my hair? How are things going so wrong? I don’t know how I’m going to get through this. Why did Dad have to dienow? Why couldn’t we have met him when he wanted to get in touch?” She sobbed. “Everything is just so bad.”

Her sister reached out a hand and pulled Reeva toward her. “Hey. Our family is fucked up, but you’re going to get through it. We all will. And if anyone can pull off baldness, it’s you.”

“But my features are too strong!” wailed Reeva. “I’ll look worse than U-G-L-Y. At least the rest of her features tick societal beauty standards. She basically invented them!”

“You’ll own it,” said Sita firmly. “You’d look great bald. And you live in London. Anything goes there. Just be glad you’re not going to try and pull off the bald look in Surrey. Or worse, Leicester.”

The door burst open to reveal an angry-looking Jaya. Her cream silk cami was sliding off her shoulders and her hair was pulled into a large, messy topknot with curly tendrils escaping it. “What is going on? It’s not even seven a.m. yet!”

The twins looked at her, then at each other.“Toilet brush!”they screamed. “Auntie Jaya’s hair is a toilet brush.”

Reeva and Sita broke into hysterical laughter and fell back on the bed together as Jaya fumed.

“To be fair,” Sita whispered to her older sister. “They’ve got a point.”

—

Two hours later,Reeva was standing in the living room with her family, clad in head-to-toe black, with a large fascinator clamped to the left side of her head. She looked like a badly dressed wedding guest, but with so many bald patches cropping up, she’d been left with no choice but to accept Jaya’s offer of spare headwear—though she’d drawn the line at the detachable black veil that came with it. Sita was next to her, wearing smart black trousers with a matching leather jacket and ankle boots, while Jaya was in huge YSL platform heels and a long-sleeved low-cut dress. The twins were in black leggings with multicolored jumpers. They all looked like they were going to completely different events.

“We have the sandalwood paste?” The priest standing in the center of the room looked at the three sisters. They stared at him blankly. He turned to Satya Auntie. She nodded, looking elegant in her loose white silk dress, and handed him a small pot.

All four of them, as well as Amisha and Alisha, who were firmly clutching U-G-L-Y, stood in silence around Hemant Mehta’s dead body. His coffin was in the center of the room, lid very firmly off, revealing his lifeless corpse. Reeva congratulated herself for bothering to put his trousers on properly. It was the least she could do for her departed father.

The priest began slathering a thick yellow paste over her dad’s hands and feet. Reeva watched in alarm. She understood only a smattering of his mixed Sanskrit and Gujarati and now had absolutely no idea what was going on. Judging from the expressions on her sister’s faces—Jaya was eyeing up the paste with barely disguised disgust, while Sita was trying not to yawn—they were just as lost. The only one who seemed to know what was going on was Satya Auntie.

“What’s he doing to Bapuji?” Alisha tugged her mum’s sleeve. “Why’s he making him yellow?”

Sita whispered back. “We can google it later, okay?”

“I want to see the dead man!” cried Amisha, ignoring the priest’s frowns. “Can we see him?”

Reeva looked at Sita, who shrugged. She picked up her niece so that she could see into the coffin. Amisha’s eyes widened. “He’s so gray.”

Reeva put a finger over her lips. “Ssh, beautifu— I mean, ssh, babycakes. Is that okay?”

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