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.

Ana looked around, twisting her hair on her finger. Her hair was as pale as combed flax, an unadulterated colour, and her fingers were long and thin, with raw, bitten-down nails. She still had her bag over her shoulder, and finally she dumped its dragging weight onto Dev’s couch. She was relieved that he didn’t try to entertain her. He offered her the bed but she opted to sleep in the main room, taking the foldout futon. When she rose the next morning, and on subsequent mornings, she packed the bedding away first thing, trying to keep the apartment neat.

She saw Dev in the evenings when he got home, usually late. He would pour himself some red wine, crank the air conditioning up to full, and settle on the couch in an expansive mood. He often spoke about his work and his colleagues at the bank.

‘This is consumer banking,’ he told her with a shrug. ‘It’s not a huge amount of money, a few million a branch. The technology is ancient. We’re talking 1998, 1999. I was a schoolboy then. When the system goes down, most times it’s the temperature. Some branches don’t have dedicated server rooms. The idiots don’t realise, they put their coffee cups on the servers, turn off the AC when they leave. These machines are like grandfathers. In the heat they fall asleep. Oof.’

He would also ask her opinion on all manner of things, such as whether it would hurt ‘a great deal’ if he waxed his chest. Eventually, though, his talk would turn to Sara, the Iranian beauty he had fallen for in college. He still spoke of her with wonder, and seemed compelled to go over the times he’d spent with her.