Dead Secret by Catherine Deveney Page A

bread.
    “Pass Rebecca some water, Shameena,” called Khadim from the other end of the table, and then turned back to some involved conversation with Da.
    “Didn’t they notice?” I asked.
    She shook her head, pouring water from a jug into my glass.
    “Mum did, but she just went along with it because she didn’t want any more arguments. Me and Dad are always fighting.”
    After dinner Shameena and I went up to her room, though to be honest, I was a bit reluctant to take my eyes off Tariq for one second more than I had to. Entering Shameena’s room was like walking into the very core of a jewel and being enveloped by the colour of it, the sparkle of it. It was warm and rich and intense, the walls a deep terracotta red, the bedspread purple with terracotta elephants marching round the edge. On the walls were gilt-framed pictures: a family photograph; an illustrated verse from the Koran… and a picture of Johnny Depp. Long gold chains and jewelled necklaces hung over the mirror on her dressing table. A purple salwar kameez etched with silver flowers hung on the outside door of the wardrobe, half-covering the mirror, and on the floor below, a discarded pair of Levi’s lay in a heap.
    It was the mix of cultures that made the room so exotic, though it didn’t occur to me at the time that Shameena’s life might be a clash rather than a fusion of influences. It took time for me to understand how difficult things were for her, how much of an outsider she was too. I do remember a glimpse of it that night as I rifled through her music collection and stared in amazement at the amount of opera in it. It was then Shameena first confided her dreams of being a singer. She wanted to audition for the opera school in London but Khadim wouldn’t hear of it. He wanted her to be a lawyer or a doctor. Or an accountant like Tariq.
    “He says it’s just a silly dream,” she said, and something in her voice upset me. Even back then I knew that dreams weren’t silly. Perhaps especially back then.
    “I don’t suppose there are many Pakistani opera singers…” I said hesitantly. How did a Pakistani girl get to like opera? But of course she wasn’t a Pakistani girl. She was as Glaswegian as me. There wasn’t any reason why she shouldn’t like opera as much as me. Except I hated it. All that bloody fa la la stuff.
    “There was this woman, right,” said Shameena, rolling onto her stomach and facing me, her feet banging off her headboard, “called Noor Jehan and she was a Pakistani singer and she was so good they called her the Melody Queen. That’s what I want to be. The new Melody Queen.”
    “What happened to her?”
    “She made all these films but in her very first film the young director fell madly in love with her and they eloped.”
    “Did they live happily ever after?”
    “Nah. They did what everyone who gets married does. Made each other miserable.”
    We both laughed, and Shameena jumped off the bed then and took the purple salwar kameez off the back of the door and told me to just shove it on over my jeans and top. I was so skinny I’d need some bulk anyway, she said. She took out a kohl pencil and outlined my eyes carefully.
    “You suit that,” she said, and then picked up the purple scarf that had slipped onto the floor from the hanger. “The dopatta,” she said, and threw it round my shoulders. Da was always askingwhy I didn’t wear dresses more, but this felt amazing. I felt regal and mysterious and exotic.
    “I feel like an Indian queen,” I told Shameena.
    “Aye right,” she said. “A Pakistani queen, if you don’t mind.”
    The purple was so intense that I felt richer and more alive, as if life had a colour switch like a television and someone had just turned it up full. I swivelled and twirled in front of the mirror and laughed self-consciously, and just then we heard Tariq calling us through the door to come for some tea.
    “Tariq,” called Shameena through the closed door. “Come here a