She knew he would read it over breakfast with his perfect lasered vision. His face was still dear to her, still tenderly familiar. Reclining by the pool, she pictured taking the flight he had planned for her visit: the two of them in helmets like a double-headed insect, lifting off from the small airfield of Fayence-Tourrettes, wafting over the orange roofs and all the patchwork fields, holding on for dear life and enjoying the joyride.

How is your great life?

At college, Dev Mishra had the room across from Ana’s. At that time a devout boy with a liking for overalls, he possessed an unfailing sense of what was ‘fishy’ or ‘fancy’, these being the words he used to express his disapproval. At their university, which catered to foreigners in Tokyo, they were both scholarship kids among wealthier students. But when she called her old friend, three years after they graduated, he was living the high life in ritzy Azabu. He worked in IT for a Japanese bank and rented an apartment which cost, he was proud to say, more than Priya Vajpayee’s whole monthly pay packet (Priya having been, at college, the benchmark for success).

It was a humid night in July, just past ten o’clock. ‘So, Ana,’ Dev boomed, ‘how is your great life?’ An hour and a half later, she fronted up to his building – a steel plate gave its name as the ‘Imperial Satellite’ – and took the lift up to the eighth floor. He opened the door in jeans and a T-shirt, his hair freshly combed back, and Ana was hit with a blast from the air-conditioning unit.

Inside, he gave her a key and a thick fold of yen. ‘For groceries or whatever,’ he said.

What could she do but take the money? She had no apartment and no job. She had fallen out with Shigeko, her former flatmate and friend, and was waiting to receive a renewed visa, without which she could not find gainful employment. She didn’t really want to go on hostessing, which was how she had made her living since her final year at college. She had never had a problem with the work, but on recent dates with clients she had felt her smile grow wan and feeble, like a bulb about to blow. Worse, the greater her disaffection, the more some clients pursued her, attracted by what they took for an air of melancholy.

Dev was too tactful to ask awkward questions; it made it easier that his manner was brusque and businesslike. Pushing his hair back, he ran her through his week: on Tuesdays he fasted, on Wednesday nights he met friends for dinner, and on Fridays he went to the Den, a strip club in Roppongi. At least, that was what he’d done last Friday, he added. It was actually the first time he’d been to a place like that. Previously he’d always kept Friday evenings for cleaning and ironing. Now he was thinking of hiring a maid, a Filipina woman who would wash and iron his clothes and vacuum the apartment’s fifteen tatami mats.