To think that after this exchange they had just kept lying there, side by side, drinking wine and saying nothing, watching golfers hit golf balls on a golf course somewhere.

‘Do you like men?’ Priya asked as they drove. She swivelled to look at Ana, who was sitting in the back seat. Priya’s likeable colleague Ken was driving them to a mountain onsen. By ‘men’ Priya meant noodles, but her tone was deliberately teasing. ‘I love them,’ she went on. ‘Especially cool men, in the summer.’

Priya worked with Ken in the office of a big energy company, and she had organised the day trip, inviting Ana along. Priya was sociable and pretty, with glossy hair and a tinkly laugh. She flirted out of habit, even though she was now engaged. When they got to the spa and went through to the women’s section, leaving Ken to go to the men’s, her voice lost its sparkle, becoming flatter, merely pleasant. As they soaked in the outside pool she spoke about her fiancé.

She and Sanjeev had fallen in love while travelling in Europe – which was the storyline, as she said, of many Indian films. But then he had gone to Princeton and she had come to Tokyo. They had gradually grown distant, and Priya started dating Japanese men. After graduation and several failed relationships, she had gone home to ask her parents to start looking for a match. Deeply bemused, they had reasoned with her, ‘Dear Priya, how do you expect us to find anyone better than Sanjeev?’

‘I had to admit they were right,’ she told Ana with a laugh.

They found Ken afterwards reading a newspaper on a bench. He was wearing the onsen’s plastic slippers, and his hair, washed clean of styling wax, had gone silky and flat. They had to dash to the Nissan because of the pouring rain. They drove back through the wet, stopping off once at a service area for Ken to buy a can of coffee from a dispensing machine. Nearby, a stumbling drunk was startled to see Ana. ‘Ara!’ he said, staring. ‘Ningyo ka na to omotta. I thought it was a doll!’

‘You know what he said?’ Ken asked.

‘Yeah,’ Ana said and they both laughed sheepishly. When Ken dropped her back at Dev’s, she kissed each of his clean bright cheeks, causing him to blush.

Early the next morning, Ana met Takuya for breakfast. Walking through the fish market on their way to a sushi bar, he pointed out the best specimens on offer. Ana hurried past the shellfish, which were so mauve, so vagina-like they might give Takuya ideas. But he was busy explaining a new rule in the market, requiring visitors to keep a certain distance from the fish.

‘There was an incident,’ he said with a disappointed look. ‘There were some foreigners. They tried to hug the tuna.’