“You don’t believe me, Danny,” he said, placing a hand on my shoulder again. I swatted it away. “But it’s true. She was simply a beggar child from somewhere. No one knows. Why do you think her complexion is so dark? Beautiful to you and me, perhaps. But you know how these Indians are. Fair skin is the ideal. Poor Mita. She was teased for it in school. Even by one of the matrons.”

I felt a tear roll down my cheek. Not for me. Not for my broken heart, but for that little girl. Raped by her guardian, then teased for her beauty.

“Can I ask you a question?” I said, refusing to look him in the eye.

“Of course.”

“When did you find out about Sush and me?”

Willy drew a deep breath and frowned. He pressed his palms against both eyes and rubbed slowly, as if massaging away a headache.

“It was the day you two arrived in Poona the first time,” he said. “At least I suspected. I wanted to be wrong.”

Christ, he’d known from the start.

“How?” I asked.

“Mita said you’d had a puncture before climbing the ghats. And then it was too late to continue once you’d changed the tire.”

“So?”

“She also said you were trying to reach the top of the ghats before dark. If her story had been true, and you’d had a puncture at the foot of the ghats, you two would have gone to sleep well before eight o’clock.”

He was right. As practiced as Sushmita was at lying, she’d miscalculated. She never should have mentioned that Ramu had overheard her talking about the ghats and sunset.

I had to know more. “Why, then? Why didn’t you say anything? Do anything?”

He gave my question some thought before answering.

“I love her,” he said finally. “I didn’t want to lose her.”

Jacques Brel’s weeping supplication, “Ne me quitte pas,” came to me, like one of the songs you can’t get out of your head. And, like that, the great songwriter and Willy merged into one in my mind. They would always be one for the rest of my life, however long that might be. Minutes or, if I was miraculously lucky, many long, lonely years. But I would never listen to Jacques Brel sing again. Jamais.

“Mita is a special soul with needs more complex than you or I will ever understand,” he continued. “I wanted to give her time. And I’m also very fond of you, Danny Boy. Don’t ask me why. I can’t explain.”

“Where is she now?” I asked.

“She’s safe. In England. But you won’t see her again.”

A knock came at the door. Willy took the candle and went to open it. Chhotu stood there.