‘I don’t know any such thing,’ Varun said. ‘The truth will out, shrimp. When that kid arrives with curly hair clutching a deck of cards, the game will be up.’

At 9 a.m. in the waiting room of the clinic, Gehna told Eram what Varun had said. She thought it would be a funny story that they could laugh over, but it didn’t turn out that way. A shadow passed across Eram’s face and the moment became pregnant with meaning.

‘What?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Oh, please Rat, don’t gimme that. Something happened to your face just now. Whatizzit, whatizzit, whatizzit, whatizzit whatizzit . . . I’m never going to stop . . . whatizzit whatizzit whatizzit whatizzit whatizzit—’

‘I was just thinking: in a perfect world.’

Gehna didn’t know how to react to that. In her head, of course, thoughts galloped off in about half a dozen directions at once. In a perfect world, what, this baby would be his as well? And then, what, we would get married and raise her together? How would that work? And since the baby isn’t his, does that mean he thinks this thing between us . . . whatever it is . . . has a limited shelf life? Obviously he wants to have his own kids someday. But why? Was it a rule with guys that they couldn’t love a baby unless their sperm was personally involved in making it? This is why the adoption rates in India are so shit. In a perfect world, more people would adopt kids so there wouldn’t be so many homeless orphans. In a perfect world, I wouldn’t get married or anything, just fill up my home with a bunch of adopted babies and street dogs.

She snapped out of her fantasy to find Eram watching her intently. To head off a conversation about an uncertain future, which would make her head hurt, she said, ‘Do you think they have anything to eat?’

‘Skipped breakfast?’

‘Yeah. No. But I only had time for two eggs, toast, a bowl of muesli and papaya. I’m hungry.’

That made Eram laugh. One of the nicer things about him, from Gehna’s point of view, was that he was charmed as all hell by her whopping appetite for food. But before they could go off in search of some, the ob-gyn called her in.

‘I’ve looked at the tests,’ she said without preamble. ‘Your BP is 140 over 90.’

‘Score.’ Gehna offered her fist for the doctor to bump. ‘Best BP ever, amirite.’

The doctor didn’t even crack a smile. Neither did Eram, who knew about this stuff from being around his dad. ‘That’s not good, is it?’ he asked.

‘It’s high.’

‘It’s high, it’s low, I wish my blood would make up its—’

‘Hypertension,’ the ob-gyn interrupted Gehna, ‘this late during term can be worrying. By itself it doesn’t mean much, but it can sometimes be a sign of other complications. We’ll need to monitor it regularly. I want you to leave a urine sample now, and then come back and see me again in two days.’