And we did, several times. Moved on to the rest of the album, listened to it for a couple of hours.

Eventually, I had to say, ‘Hey, so I lied at home about going for a tuition class, but there’s no way anyone’s going to buy that I’ve been sitting through it for over two hours. I should get going.’

‘Okay, thanks for listening.’

‘Are you kidding me? Totally my pleasure, dude.’

‘Oh hey, I forgot—I nicked this for you from the trophy room.’

He lobbed something at me and miraculously, I caught it. ‘Shamiana 2008’ inscribed on a dull gold medal.

‘Did you steal someone else’s medal?’

He laughed. ‘No, goose, you won. I told the prefect that I know you and you’d said you wouldn’t be able to go to the prize distribution thing tomorrow.’

That burst of joy, then. It’s unavoidable.

‘How did you know I’m not going to the prize distribution tomorrow?’

‘You know that girl Sudeshna on your dance team? We used to be in Kalu’s choir together. She called right before I came over and told me that that Dr Roshan of yours is banning all of you from returning to St Jude’s after those guys were caught making out in the toilets.’

‘I mean, at least go to a secluded classroom or something, you know?’

He laughed again. ‘Yeah.’

I rubbed the medal like a lucky coin. Some of the surface shimmered on to my fingers.

‘Ha, I can’t get over this. There must have been students, or at least very young teachers on the judging panel, because I didn’t even write, like, two hundred words.’

It worked.

‘Must have been two hundred really good words, yeah? Congratulations.’ He smiled and drove away.

He called me later that night, and we talked till three in the morning. The next night, till sunlight. This went on for a while. By the end of a couple of weeks, it had become a delicious habit. And even as I berated myself against that pathetic superficiality, hating myself for the almost-grateful thought, I found it incredible that Kage, the Kage, spent his nights talking to a plain Jane like me.

‘Have you heard ‘Don’t Cry’ by Guns N’ Roses? I’m obsessed with it.’

I could hear him drumming a beat, probably that song’s, on some surface. A table or his headboard or, if he was lying in bed like me, his thigh. I felt very close to him.

‘No. Can you play it for me?’

‘I could sing it to you.’