‘You’re repeating the question, child. Mothers can’t just bundle up their babies and toss them into the trash as easily as acrobats do tricks. Their determination is not like the roar of a beast. It is like the footsteps of soldiers who march onward, well aware that they are marching to their doom.’

Gita feels another chill. Suddenly, she hears those footsteps, growing ever clearer, racing as bombs explode in the distance. Dust and grit mingle and obscure her vision, bringing blinding pain.

‘There are tears in your eyes,’ says the old woman. ‘May be slivers of glass got in. War destroys everything.’

‘And then?’

‘Then, imagine. You are in a white room, simple, doorless. You don’t know where the room ends, but you have been sucked inside. You can hear nothing beyond it. Your body is light and you can’t set your feet down. You drift, you fall, empty, massless. You open your mouth, but you can’t scream. Yet, while there, you are still considered to exist. It is difficult, child. Difficult. That is why I prepare a bottle for each mother.’

‘A bottle?’

She offers her thin hands, inviting Gita to follow. Something has drawn them closer; Gita no longer fears her. The two are like bats, relying on each other because the rays of the sun have penetrated their cave. They have to understand each other.

Sumarni leads her to a room inside the house. A normal room, containing a bed with dull beige sheets. Beside it stands a timber wardrobe. The wardrobe isn’t especially wide, but it reaches to the ceiling. How odd. All it contains is empty sauce bottles, perhaps hundreds. Gita asks why she keeps so many.

The old woman shakes her head. ‘These bottles are not empty. Each one holds a scream.’

‘A scream?’

‘Yes.’

‘Why do the screams need to be kept safe?’

‘A mother’s scream dies with her baby. They are no longer able to speak. No one will want to hear. They are troublemakers, pariahs. What I do, child, is offer a home for the screams. If I didn’t, the scream would evaporate and leave the woman mute for ever.’ Sumarni takes a bottle from the bottom shelf and cradles it. ‘This one belonged to a woman from my village. She came to me fifteen years ago, when she was very young. She’s dead now, so the bottle can be opened. Do you want to hear it?’