Dayal stood on her lap and jumped excitedly as the cot shuddered against the wall and the picture frames quivered on their screws. She held his hands to keep him upright and closed her eyes as the sound rattled through her, and only opened them when the train was far down the tracks.

When Richard divorced his wife, they wouldn’t have to live in a flat positioned right by the train tracks. They could have a house with a garden, and a car on the drive that didn’t stall at every junction. They were so close. By the time Dayal was older, he wouldn’t remember the smell of damp in his bedroom, or the knackered toys she bought him from the charity shop and sterilised in the sink in the kitchen.

Neena set him down on his feet and let him lead the way to the kitchen. The flat consisted of four rooms: one and a half bedrooms, a cramped bathroom speckled with damp, and one room for the kitchen, a breakfast table, and the second-hand sofa bed she had bought online before she moved in, heavily pregnant and alone. But they would be out of there before Dayal grew up and needed more space. She was sure of that.

Neena set him in his high chair and searched the fridge. Two eggs, half a beef tomato, and milk that smelt like it was on the turn. There were no leftovers. She would be lucky to buy enough food for them to eat, let alone leave for later. Whatever they had went to Dayal. She would get by.

She made him scrambled eggs with sliced tomato and fixed herself a black coffee with the last of the granules in the jar. She watched him eat in awe. He was the most beautiful creature that she had ever seen, and better yet, he was hers. There was no other love like it. If she could, she would hold him day and night to breathe in his sweet scent whenever she wanted, and feel the warm of his soft skin and wiry hair, a trait from his father.

It was hard to look at her son and ignore his father in him. His skin and eyes were darker than hers, and every time she looked at him, she remembered the betrayal: the way the love of her life had dropped her instantly at his family’s command, and the hatred from her own for shaming the family and breaking the engagement they had arranged before she had even been born, to a man she had never met. When Dayal had begun to appear, the couple were ripped apart, and she never saw him again. To this day, she refused to say his name, even in her head. But even after two years, she struggled not to think of her family.