On the bus home I press my nose against the glass and feel the vibrations of the engine through my whole body. I tune everything out. Tonight it’s antipasti. Ewan wants to celebrate the turn in the weather, to revisit memories of his gap year in Tuscany. One day we’ll go there, he says sometimes, I’ll take you on a tour. We’ll taste the wine from the vineyard where I picked grapes until my fingers bled. He’ll pick the stuff up from the deli on the way home from work. He’ll lay out the strips of ham and salami in contrasting stripes and I’ll try not think about what Baba would say if he could see me. Sliced bread and the coffee table filled with bowls of herby rice and grilled vegetables swimming in oil. He’ll put an olive onto my plate and remind me that some tastes are acquired. This one was grown on an ancient tree in the shadow of Mount Etna, he’ll say, or something like that. He’ll hold the fork out and watch my face as I bite it. He finds it funnier every time.

Past the roundabout, the retail park, the takeaways. A hot whiff of spices through the open window. I close my eyes.

The week after Mum died I couldn’t sleep. I crept downstairs. Dadi was in the kitchen pouring chickpeas into a bowl of salted water. The kitchen smelled different already. I wanted toast and jam or the special crisps with the separate pouch of salt to shake. Dadi had filled the cupboards with strange food with labels I couldn't read. Big packets of flour and sacks of onions. She told me to hush when she saw I was crying. She gave me a glass of water and turned me around.

‘Tomorrow you help me make chole,’ she said, pushing me back up the stairs, ‘busy hands are better than tears.’

In the morning she stood over me while I toasted cardamom, cumin seeds and cinnamon in a pan. She told me how many peppercorns were too much. We made the paste and the gravy, we simmered and stirred. It felt like hours standing over the heat and steam. I wondered how women like Dadi ever managed to do anything else.

My stomach rumbles but the sound is swallowed by the noise of the engine and the beat of a song escaping from someone’s headphones at the back of the bus. I didn’t like it then but I could eat it now. Imagine her putting the bowl in front of me again. The sauce and sliced onions, the puffed up bhatura, the warmth of the spices mixed with snot and tears. I could tell Ewan that somebody asked me to dance today and somebody died. I could leave the ham and olives on my plate.