The afternoon drags towards evening and still there is no sign of Abhi. Should K be worried? He is. Increasingly, he is desperate with fear and self-pity. He goes downstairs and paces the street, uselessly. He buys cigarettes and a bottle of Campa Cola from a little cart. He gives a relatively large amount of money to a man with no legs. Then he goes back upstairs again and resumes his watch at the window. The day is overcast, oppressive, polluted.

It is almost dark when Abhi finally arrives. He is buoyant as usual. Things have gone well, it seems, it just took much longer than he expected. He apologises, although he doesn’t explain. He claps his hands and smiles. He has a secret, that much is clear, but the secret seems, somehow, to include K.

‘Lets get something to eat,’ he says. ‘I’m starving!’

Despite K’s intense irritation, Abhi’s good mood begins to rub off on him as they sit drinking beer at the Leopold Café. It is strange to be here again, the place where they met. It seems like another life, like a thousand years ago. Abhi orders another round and soon they are wandering through the hot night together, drunk and amazed to be alive on earth, right now, in Bombay. The energy of the city surges through them.

The airport, when they arrive the next evening, is small, makeshift, and surrounded by an aura of intense chaos; an almost impenetrable crowd seethes with travellers and taxi-drivers and beggars and police, with rickshaws, cows, dogs, children. A strange procession winds its way along the footpath and disappears around the corner. There is singing. There are people cooking dinner. There are people lying on the ground, seemingly asleep.

Inside the terminal, it’s filthy and unbelievably muggy. The smell of piss and incense is overwhelming. Bent in half, men in white uniforms are carrying huge bags back and forth on their backs. The night outside is like something living, an enormous entity beating at the doors.

‘So,’ K says. ‘This is it. Come visit sometime.’ He steps forward to embrace Abhi.

But Abhi pushes him away. ‘Not so fast,’ he says. ‘I’m coming with you.’

‘What are you talking about?’

That’s what he was doing yesterday, he explains. It wasn’t drugs. He was arranging a plane ticket, a visa. ‘Amazing what money can do,’ he laughs.

Abhi has always wanted to see Australia, he claims. The outback, the dangerous animals.

‘I don’t know what to say,’ K says, genuinely shocked. ‘I don’t know any dangerous animals.’

And yet, it seems that with this gesture, something has been sealed between them.