The Unlikely Adventures of the Shergill Sisters. Balli Kaur Jaswal. Читать онлайн. Newlib. NEWLIB.NET

Автор: Balli Kaur Jaswal
Издательство: HarperCollins
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Год издания: 0
isbn: 9780008325459
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       Copyright

      Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

      1 London Bridge Street

      London SE1 9GF

       www.harpercollins.co.uk

      First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2019

      Copyright © Balli Kaur Jaswal 2019

      Jacket design: Holly MacDonald © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2019

      Jacket illustration © Shutterstock.com

      Balli Kaur Jaswal asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

      A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

      This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

      All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

      Source ISBN: 9780008209933

      Ebook Edition © June 2019 ISBN: 9780008325459

      Version: 2019-04-05

       Dedication

      For Asher

      Contents

       Cover

       Title Page

      Copyright

      Dedication

      Prologue

      Chapter One

      Chapter Two

      Chapter Three

      Chapter Four

      Chapter Five

       Chapter Six

       Chapter Seven

       Chapter Eight

       Chapter Nine

       Chapter Ten

       Chapter Eleven

       Chapter Twelve

       Chapter Thirteen

       Chapter Fourteen

       Chapter Fifteen

       Chapter Sixteen

       Chapter Seventeen

       Chapter Eighteen

       Chapter Nineteen

       Chapter Twenty

       Chapter Twenty-One

       Chapter Twenty-Two

       Chapter Twenty-Three

       Chapter Twenty-Four

       Chapter Twenty-Five

       Epilogue

       Acknowledgements

       About the Author

       Also by Balli Kaur Jaswal

       About the Publisher

       Prologue

       My dearest children,

       If you are reading this, you know the end has finally come for me. I hope that our final moments together were peaceful and that I had a chance to tell each of you how much I love you. If not, I hope that you know how much you have enriched my life. I am so very proud of each of you and the individual paths you have trekked in this world. I am blessed to have been witness to your triumphs and challenges, your heartaches and your successes. Guiding you from infancy to adulthood allowed me to live life over and over again, and in this way, I feel that I have stepped into so many worlds in the course of my brief stay in this universe.

       There are matters to be discussed of course, involving the will and my estate, but these will come later. I trust that the lawyers will discuss the inheritance and the division of property and assets with you after the other formalities are taken care of. If you would like to be informed ahead of time, please see the attached.

       Please take care of yourselves and each other. Make time, not just on special occasions, to come together and enrich your bond as a family. I have learned that the most important thing in life is that we show appreciation to our loved ones. Remember that nothing matters more than this.

      This was the letter that Sita Kaur Shergill overheard the old woman in the next bed dictating over the phone. A few times, her voice quavered and she had to pause to sigh and sniffle. Sita had turned down the volume on her television to listen to the part about the lawyers – she was most interested in what this woman was leaving to her children, but ‘the attached’ was not available on this side of the partition. She had seen the children on their visits – two middle-aged sons who were possibly twins with vastly different diets and a handsome blonde woman who always repeated the same soothing words, ‘We’re here, Mum. We’re here.’ They often arrived separately but left together, squeezing each other’s shoulders and making light conversation about parking spaces or the declining quality of the hospital canteen’s coffee.

      Sita pressed the buzzer on her remote control and when the nurse arrived, she requested a pen and piece of paper. These were the earliest hours of the morning, before visitors were allowed. It was the best time to think about dying. The pain encompassed her entire body, radiating from her toes to her temples and vibrating in her bones. Despite the morphine, the pain was always visible – she saw it edging in the shadows of her vision on the best days and wringing her frail body like a towel on the worst. Today she was feeling strong enough to sit up; the letter from the woman in the next bed had motivated her, and by some miracle, the nurses attended to her request within the minute.

      My dearest daughters, she began. She stopped and frowned. When had she ever addressed her children as dears? She crossed out the line and began again. To Rajni, Jezmeen and Shirina. There – a command for their attention. She used to stand at the foot of the stairs and shout all three names even if she only wanted one of them to come down; she could always find something for the other two to do once they arrived. It only worked for a while, then Jezmeen started calling back: ‘WHICH ONE OF US SPECIFICALLY?’

       To Rajni,