For you probably, I thought, but didn’t say anything. Papa had always wanted to live in a house and when he could finally afford it, he bought this land and built this house the way he’d wanted to. While Ma seemed to miss friendly neighbours, I was delighted. No one should waste time talking to neighbours, I believed.

We had been living in this house for a little over three years now and I felt like I had come into my own. We even had a garden and it was all ours. It was perfect.

‘Didn’t you have all those friends there?’ Ma asked, her forehead creasing. ‘That girl Esha and . . .’

I wondered how parents could be so obtuse. ‘I didn’t have any friends there,’ I told her and got up. Even if I had never told her about what had happened with Esha and Tara, it was just weird that she would think Esha had been my friend. She had never visited home and I had never been to hers.

I didn’t want to think of perfect Esha and ruin the last evening I had with my parents before Aunty V came in like a whirlwind.

9

‘How much you’ve grown!’ Aunty V said, looking at me when I joined them after taking a shower on my return from college. She looked me up and down and smiled. ‘You look nice.’

I frowned but I muttered a ‘thanks’ under my breath.

She cocked her head to study me but didn’t say anything. I don’t think she noticed the weight loss. It wasn’t very obvious unless you were looking for it, unless I wore something form fitting or revealing. Even then, it wasn’t like my body had changed in a life-altering way, it had changed over time. There was still fat that I was fighting all the time.

‘At least her college isn’t like ours was. They let them wear all this,’ she said to Ma.

I raised my eyebrow. All this was jeans and a cropped top.

‘Er, I’m studying in the same college you and Ma went to and if I ever went there wearing this, I’d be kicked out!’ I told her.

‘What?’ she turned to Ma in mock outrage. ‘Those idiots haven’t changed the rules in more than two decades?’

Ma shook her head. They started talking about their ‘good old’ college days then. I tuned them out until Aunty V shrieked. I sat up on the sofa, startled. Even Papa came running to the living room from the bedroom.

‘What happened? What happened?’ he asked, looking at Ma in concern. He sat down beside her and then I realized that she and Aunty V were laughing!