04 Bend It Like Beckham

Ex­tract from Chap­ter 1 from Bend It Like Be­ck­ham



“To be hon­est, the en­ga­ge­ment party wasn’t that bad. The house loo­ked fan­ta­stic with all the lights shim­me­ring in the dark, and there was enough food to feed the whole of Sout­hall. All the re­la­ti­ves had tur­ned out, and the living-​room was pa­cked with people. The men were in suits and ties, in­clu­ding Tony, and the women were dres­sed up like Christ­mas trees. Mo­ni­ca, Bub­b­ly and Meena were there, eye­ing up all the girls’ out­fits and de­ci­ding how much they’d cost. I bet they didn’t spend very long dis­cus­sing mine. My blue shal­waar ka­meez was the plai­nest Mum would let me get away with.

Pinky loo­ked ner­vous but happy as she sat next to Teetu, play­ing the part of the quiet, shy bride-​to-​be. She’d been see­ing Teets for years, even going be­hind Mum and Dad’s back at first. He was nice enough, but a bit of a whee­ler dea­ler. I didn’t re­al­ly have a clue what Pinky saw in him, but she was mad about the guy.

None of us were mad about his fa­mi­ly, though. His sis­ter was loo­king so smug in her baby pink, that I was a bit wor­ried Pinky would get up and punch her on the nose. And Teetu’s mum was scary. I was being a good, hel­pful daugh­ter, car­ry­ing round a large plate of In­di­an sweets, and I of­fe­red it to them. Teetu’s dad went to take one, and she ac­tu­al­ly slap­ped his hand and told him off. I didn’t envy Pinky ha­ving that mi­se­ra­ble old bag for a mother-​in-​law.

There was a long row of beady-​eyed aun­ties sit­ting on the sofa, wat­ching ever­y­thing that was going on. I took the sweets over to them, fi­xing a smile on my face.

‘It’ll be your turn soon, Jes­min­der,’ one of them said glee­ful­ly. ‘Do you want a clean-​shaven boy like your sis­ter, or a pro­per Sikh with full beard and tur­ban?’

I didn’t want to ans­wer that. Not that I’d even thought about it. I don’t want to get mar­ri­ed, I said si­lent­ly. Not until I’ve done so­me­thing with my life, an­y­way. I didn’t want what Pinky wan­ted. I was loo­king for so­me­thing dif­fe­rent, alt­hough I didn’t know what. And an­y­way, there was more to life than get­ting mar­ri­ed.

Like foot­ball, for in­s­tance.“