At the brewery, they were seated at a table spread with a white cloth and gleaming silver. Soberly, Dev asked if she had noticed a change in him. It was true he looked different, as though his face was smoother, the set of his jaw more confident, but she couldn’t put her finger on what it was.

‘I had my tooth fixed today,’ he said. ‘See.’ He bared his teeth at her. ‘I can now afford to care about such shallow things.’

‘Oh, yeah.’

Behind them, on the harbour, the rain was coming down heavily. It was the night when the typhoon was almost upon them, and it was there at the restaurant table that Dev told Ana what really happened with Sara.

‘Her parents sent her to meet a man, a family friend in Tokyo. He was too old, she told them afterwards. Old and short. But they chatted online, all smiles. All flattery, you know? I had to go away for a while, I was working out of town. When I got back she called me. She was married, she announced. To the older guy, just like that.’

The lights of the harbour struggled bravely through the weather. Dev kept on with his story, how he had returned to India after finishing his degree. Deciding he needed to become proficient in IT, with more hard skills than he’d acquired in his undergraduate studies, he had hired four computing experts to teach him one on one, in tailored sessions. He described rising early to work out before his first classes. Eating the lunch his worried mother prepared for him. Stopping for a nap and then studying again. For three months he had worked like this.

‘Ana, do you know, my parents told me once that they’d rather I marry an Indian. But they said I was free to choose. I could bring home a Japanese girl, a Chinese girl, any girl as my wife. They would still be happy, they said, we would all be friends.

‘Ana, Sara called me once. She was drunk. She slurred her speech. It was three months into her marriage. She told me her husband was sleeping with prostitutes. “He thinks he can do what he wants,” she said. “I’ve caught him countless times but he doesn’t care. I’ve made a mistake, I’m getting a divorce. I’ll call you tomorrow.” Yet the next day no call came. I called her parents, they hung up. I talked to her brother, who I’d met when he visited. I said I could fly to Tehran to talk to his parents. No, he told me, don’t. He said Sara never thought of me as a possible husband. He said his family was broad-minded, they would have considered a foreigner if she had talked to them, if that was what she’d wanted.’