Love and Other Luxuries

Chapter 1: The Art of Being Broke

The electricity bill arrived on a Tuesday, which Camilla Baxter thought was unnecessarily cruel. Tuesdays were already bleak enough without the universe piling on.

She stood in the narrow hallway of her Peckham flat, holding the envelope between two fingers like it might bite her. The flat itself was a generous description for what was essentially a bedroom with ambitions—a kitchenette wedged into one corner, a bathroom so small she had to exit to change her mind, and a persistent damp patch on the ceiling that she'd named Gerald. Gerald was expanding.

"Right then," she said to no one, because talking to yourself was free and therefore her primary form of entertainment.

She opened the bill. She closed the bill. She opened it again in case the numbers had rearranged themselves into something more forgiving.

They had not.

Camilla dropped the envelope onto the kitchen counter—which was also her desk, dining table, and ironing board—and pulled up her laptop. The screen flickered twice before committing to consciousness, a habit it had developed around the same time as Gerald. Her inbox contained three items: a rejection from a food magazine that had sat on her piece about Borough Market for four months before deciding it wasn't "quite the right fit," a promotional email from a cheese subscription service she could not afford, and a message from her editor at London Eats Online.

She opened the editor's email first.

*Hi Camilla, Loved the piece on fermented kimchi but we're pivoting to video content this quarter. Can you do a TikTok series? Budget: £0 but great exposure!*

Camilla closed the laptop. She opened the fridge. Inside: half a lemon, a jar of Dijon mustard, and something wrapped in foil that she was afraid to investigate. She unwrapped it anyway. It was cheese, technically, though it had evolved beyond its original form into something with more personality than most people she'd dated.

Her phone buzzed.

"Priya" flashed across the screen, accompanied by a photo of her best friend mid-laugh at their university graduation eight years ago, back when Camilla still believed a degree in English Literature was a viable financial strategy.

"Tell me you're sitting down," Priya said, before Camilla had finished saying hello.

"I'm standing in my kitchen, which is also my living room, so technically I could be sitting down if I leaned slightly to the left."

"Camilla. Focus. I need you."

"If this is about the seating chart again—"

"It's bigger than the seating chart. Although the seating chart is also a disaster, Vikram's aunt has declared she won't sit within fifteen feet of his uncle's second wife, and the second wife has demanded to be at the head table, and I think Vikram's mother might actually be enjoying the chaos, which is somehow worse."

Camilla smiled despite herself. Priya Mehra had been her anchor since their first week at Edinburgh, when they'd bonded over a shared horror of the boy in their tutorial who kept comparing everything to Nietzsche. Priya was warm, brilliant, occasionally neurotic, and engaged to Vikram Deshpande, whose family owned a hotel-and-textile empire that sprawled across three continents.

"What do you need?" Camilla asked.

"I need you to come to Jaipur."

Silence.

"Camilla?"

"I'm sorry, I think my phone is broken. It sounded like you said Jaipur."

"I did say Jaipur. The wedding celebrations start a week before the ceremony. There's a sangeet, a mehendi, a welcome dinner, a polo match—don't ask—and about fourteen other events that Vikram's mother has planned with the precision of a military campaign. I need my best friend there. I need someone who will tell me I'm not insane when his aunt asks me for the third time whether I'm sure I want to wear white at the reception because it's 'a bit funereal, darling.'"

"Priya, I can't afford a train ticket to Brighton right now, let alone a flight to India."

"The flight is covered. Accommodation is at the estate. You literally just need to show up and be yourself."

"Being myself is what got me uninvited from that supper club in Shoreditch."

"That man deserved to be told his deconstructed fish and chips was pretentious nonsense. Camilla, please. I'm drowning in Deshpandes. There are so many of them. They multiply. Every time I turn around there's a new cousin or a great-aunt or someone's business partner who's 'basically family.' I need one person in that house who is unambiguously on my side."

Camilla looked around her flat. At Gerald on the ceiling. At the electricity bill on the counter. At the cheese that was staging a slow revolution in her fridge.

"I could pitch a travel piece," she said slowly. "Indian wedding, Rajasthan, the whole spectacle. That might actually sell."

"See? It's practically a business trip."

"When do I need to be there?"

"Friday."

"This Friday? Priya, that's in three days."

"I know. Is that a yes?"

Camilla looked at the electricity bill one more time.

"That's a yes."

---

The next three days passed in a blur of frantic preparation. Camilla owned exactly one dress suitable for a billionaire's estate, and it had a small wine stain near the hem that she'd been pretending was a design feature for two years. She packed it anyway, along with everything else in her wardrobe that wasn't actively falling apart, which left her with a suitcase that looked like it had been packed by someone fleeing a natural disaster.

She spent an evening researching the Deshpande family, which was like falling down a Wikipedia rabbit hole except every link led to another wing of an empire. Hotels in Mumbai, Jaipur, Dubai, and London. Textile factories across Rajasthan and Gujarat. A charitable foundation. A cricket team. A vineyard in Tuscany that seemed to exist purely so Vikram's father could tell people at parties that he owned a vineyard in Tuscany.

Vikram's parents were Sunita and Rajesh Deshpande. Rajesh appeared in photos as a genial, round-faced man who looked like he'd rather be playing golf. Sunita was another matter entirely. Every photograph showed a woman of immaculate composure—silk saris, statement jewelry, a smile that suggested she knew exactly what you were thinking and found it mildly amusing. She ran the charitable foundation, sat on the boards of three companies, and had been profiled in Vogue India twice.

There were two sons. Vikram, the younger, who Camilla had met several times and liked enormously—he was funny and self-deprecating and looked at Priya like she'd invented sunshine. And Rohit, the older brother, about whom the internet offered less. An architecture degree from Cambridge. A practice in London that specialized in sustainable design. A few photos at charity events where he looked like he'd rather be anywhere else. No social media presence. No tabloid appearances. No girlfriend, at least not one Google could find.

Camilla pitched the travel piece to three publications. One said no. One didn't respond. The third, a weekend supplement for a broadsheet, said they'd consider it if she could deliver something with "authentic texture and emotional resonance," which Camilla translated as "make us cry or make us laugh, preferably both, and we'll pay you four hundred pounds."

Four hundred pounds wouldn't fix her life, but it might appease Gerald's electricity bill.

On Friday morning, she locked her flat, apologized to Gerald for leaving him unsupervised, and took the Tube to Heathrow with a suitcase, a notebook, and the persistent feeling that she was about to step into a world that operated by entirely different rules than her own.