Someone came and sat on the swing he had just vacated and Raghu and I moved away. But Raghu turned back to look at Esha, who was laughing as one of her friends pushed her high into the air. Her laughter was almost like music.

‘Who’s that?’ he asked as we walked around the garden and sat down at one of the benches.

‘New family in the building. They’ve been here for a couple of months,’ I said.

He turned to me. ‘I don’t know what’s going to happen if my parents get divorced,’ he said, his attention focused on me once more.

I didn’t know what to tell him. He looked sad and worried. I squeezed his hand lightly.

Evening came upon us suddenly and the lights in the garden switched on. From somewhere, I could hear Esha’s tinkling laughter and I felt a weird sort of happy-sad feeling run through me. I was really happy Raghu was here. And sad because he was feeling sad.

‘I learnt a new recipe! Peanut butter and chocolate chip cookies! Want to bake them with me?’ I asked suddenly.

He turned to me and made a face.

‘Oh come on. It will be fun.’

‘Baking is for sissies,’ he said, rolling his eyes.

‘What nonsense! Who said that to you?’ I asked, genuinely annoyed.

He looked away. ‘Fine. I’m not going to actually do any of the baking though. I’m going to watch and eat the cookies as soon as they come out of the oven,’ he said.

‘We’ll see,’ I told him.

And, indeed, a couple of hours later, when Aunty V and Ma came to the kitchen for something, they stopped short.

‘Who made this mess?’ Ma asked sharply. The culprit was easy to discover. After all, Raghu was the one covered in flour and bits of egg. The idiot didn’t know how to crack an egg and ended up crushing it in his fist because he held it too tightly. Before that, he had enthusiastically offered to sieve the flour, and most of it ended up on his t-shirt. For someone who hadn’t been too keen on baking, there had been a light in his eyes that hadn’t been there before. I think both Ma and Aunty V noticed it.

‘We were just baking,’ I explained, offering both of them warm cookies from the tray that I had pulled out from the oven.

Aunty V looked a bit dubious but her expression changed when she bit into it. All four of us ended up sitting at the kitchen island, eating the remaining cookies, licking melted peanut butter and chocolate from our fingers. It was good to see Raghu laugh and even Aunty V seemed to have momentarily forgotten her problems as she made plans to stay in Bangalore for the weekend with us.