I was excited at first because that meant Raghu would be around longer. Usually his visits were fleeting. Then I remembered the reason he was here in the first place and my face fell, but I rallied and made my own plans with him.

‘Still think baking is for sissies?’ I asked when he reached out and took another cookie.

He made a face and then smiled. ‘Can we forget I said that and bake something else tomorrow?’ he asked. I agreed happily.

When I returned from school the next day, Ma was in the living room with Aunty V and both of them looked at me rather annoyed.

‘What happened?’ I asked.

‘Go and look in the kitchen,’ Ma prompted.

I ran there and stopped when I saw Raghu, once again covered in flour. But he was humming something as he stood by the oven, waiting for the timer to go off.

‘What are you doing?’ I asked him and he turned to me in surprise.

‘Oh hey! You’re back! I wanted to surprise you,’ he said.

‘With what?’

‘I looked up some recipes on YouTube and decided to try the simplest of them all,’ he announced.

‘But why are Ma and Aunty V sitting outside?’

He shrugged. I realized he must have asked them to stay away because knowing Ma, she would have wanted to interfere in everything.

‘So how was school?’ he asked.

‘Good. The usual,’ I replied. And then I noticed that the inside of the oven was smoking. My eyes grew round and I rushed past him and hit the main switch on top. He turned around in surprise.

‘Oh . . . oh no! What happened?’ he asked as I opened the oven door and a thick cloud of bitter black smoke emerged. The cake he had baked was charred and even the pan was ruined.

Ma and Aunty V came rushing inside the kitchen when they smelled the smoke.

After some checking, I realized that he had set the timer for too long and obviously, the cake had burned.

Raghu looked extremely shamefaced. ‘I’m so sorry, Aunty Chitra,’ he mumbled to Ma and then ran away from there without any further explanation.

I was exasperated and annoyed, but I ran after him. I found him sitting in my room, looking out of the window at the garden below us.

‘Hey, these things happen. I burnt so many pans when I first started baking,’ I told him, nudging his shoulder lightly.

He didn’t reply.

I went to the bathroom to wash up. When I came out, he wasn’t there. I looked around and then saw from the window that he was sitting on the swing in the park.

I went after him, but as I was about to reach, I stopped short. Esha was sitting on the swing next to his and they were talking softly. Seeing them together made me feel like an unwanted outsider.