Gehna went to bed at 2 a.m. after it became clear that the game was well and truly on, and nobody was interested in sampling the hotel’s buttered garlic prawns any more. Much later, when she felt someone crawl under the sheets beside her, she opened an eye. A shaft of sunlight had found a narrow gap through the curtains and slanted its way across the bed.

‘What time is it?’

Eram cozied up and hooked an arm across her stomach. ‘It’s a little past twenty-six o’clock in the morning.’

‘Twenty-six?’

‘Lakh. Plus change.’

Gehna twisted around in his arms so they were bumping noses. ‘Oh my god . . . but that’s crazy! How’d you manage to win that much? I need to lie down.’

‘You’re already lying down,’ he said. And then he kissed her.

‘Mmm, stoppit. I have gruesome morning breath.’

Eram went right on kissing her. He didn’t care about her morning breath. A short while later, neither did Gehna.

17

Gehna swatted the Yam’s hand away for the billionth time. ‘No. What is wrong with you?’

‘Me? What’s wrong with you? This isn’t normal, y’know. Like something out of Alien. Or that other one . . . what was it? . . . Oh yeah. The Astronaut’s Wife.’

Gehna sighed. The Yam’s fascination with her, Gehna’s, belly was irritating as all hell. Granted, the first few times the baby had kicked inside of her Gehna had been totally into it too. She would keep her hands resting on her middle for hours, just in case something stirred in there. But as the movements came more frequently, Gehna got used to them, privately smiling at a kick or head-bump as she went about her day.

The thing that had got the Yam all exercised was that sometimes you could see the baby on the surface.

‘That’s an elbow sticking out of your stomach. An actual human elbow. You’re not just fucking with me?’

‘Wait till you see a hand,’ Gehna said. ‘You can count the fingers and everything. Oh, hell no, what’s he doing?’

She charged—or, now midway through the eighth month of her pregnancy, waddled really fast—towards an electrician installing a hanging Edison lamp in the ceiling, who had left inky smudges on the freshly painted wall as he worked. Ajay Rai had made good on his promise by leasing to her two floors of a commercial building in a trendy part of Lower Parel as soon as she returned from Goa. Nina Rai had, predictably, lost her mind, ranting for days that her husband was rewarding their daughter’s bad behaviour, and why was she always the villain who had to do any actual parenting?

‘It’s a business decision, Nina,’ Ajay had said.

‘Yeah, Nina,’ Gehna had piped in, ‘it’s a business decision.’

Nina Rai hadn’t been impressed. ‘It’s rubbish is what it is. All I can say is, don’t either of you come running to me when this ends in tears.’