‘No. It is my mission. A journey by myself will be safer. I’ll come back here. Don’t move. Wait and keep that door barred. Just don’t open to any knock.’

Alice stepped out, treading softly, warily on her bare feet. It would be easier that way. No sound of any footfall. She closed the door behind her very quietly. She peered into the darkness with yet its hint of light. Her nerves felt on edge. Her instincts alert, she must let herself be guided, by odours—unusual odours of gunshot, of blood, borne by the slight, chill tremors of wind. There would be that human odour too, of fear, that rank smell of bodies through whose pores fear had breathed.

The sky began to lighten very faintly. Pale innocent streaks of colour appeared before the darker, reddened contusions that bruised the clouds. She walked along in a half-blind, almost groping way, feeling the roughness of tussocks of grass and dislodged stones that trembled beneath her feet.

She still felt her flesh raw, hurt by the events of the night. That sense of peace which came with late evening and the dusk which settled over the river, the trees, the road and their little hamlet had been deceptive. The bathers had returned from the river, they did not linger very long these days. The water, silver shot with ripples of gold, soon turned dark and opaque, vanishing into the dense clumps of trees. The woodsmoke curled up from the huts, spiralling into the sky, a pale wreathing grey.

She had been busy preparing the evening meal. The pot of rice was still on the fire, the fish and vegetables simmering in their pots. Seela, her daughter, was talking to Sena, the young man whom she was going to marry. Alice wanted this marriage for Seela. Her own man had deserted her when she was pregnant, leaving her to bring up the child alone. She had been a servant in so many houses, cooking, minding children, washing piles of linen, dressing her child in the clothes outgrown by other peoples’ children—her mistress’s daughter’s clothes and those of her friends’ children. No more of that for Seela. She had been a bright, intelligent child, had gone to school, passed examinations. She had a future before her. All that was through the efforts, undoubtedly, that Alice had made.