I looked up at him finally, tried not to let the surprised pleasure become evident on my face on actually seeing him properly. At the door, I had been too shocked to look at him intently. He looked different and, yet, there were hints of the boy I’d known, the boy who had played with me.

‘I just want to get home,’ I told him, trying not to take in how his face had become leaner, how his shoulders had become broader. Or even the fact that he was so tall that I had to look up to see him. It was a bit like staring at the sun – disorienting and bright and with a feeling of warmth spreading through me that I didn’t like. Liar, I chided myself.

‘Okay, we’re going home,’ he said, stepping aside and we started walking back.

My mind crowded with many different things. Raghu had been like the brother I’d never had and yet, I could never really think of him as a brother. And those thoughts confused me as much now as they did then.

‘It’s been years since we had a proper chat,’ he said, matching his steps with mine.

We walked up to my house. I put my hand out to push open the gate when Raghu’s hand landed on my arm.

‘Ananya, please,’ he pleaded, his voice low.

‘Please what?’ I asked him, looking into his brown eyes that irritatingly reminded me of caramel.

He took a deep breath but before he could speak, I shook off his hand and walked inside the house.

My bout of self-righteous anger lasted until I reached the kitchen. Why was I angry with Raghu? Because he dated Esha four years ago? When we were kids? What did that mean to him? Not much, I surmised.

To be fair to him, he had tried to reach out to me a few times after his parents’ divorce. He had contacted me on Facebook, but I swiftly blocked him. He had tried to reach out to me on Whatsapp but since I didn’t have my own phone back then, he would message my mother and ask to speak to me and I would ignore his messages. He had given up trying and I had been sad at the friendship I had lost but relieved that I wouldn’t have to see him again. Even after all these years, I would have liked to hold on to that anger, but in the face of his very physical charm, it was hard to remember why I had been angry with him.

I took the butter out of its cardboard box, weighed out the amount I needed and dropped it into a mixing bowl.