Gehna took the doll into her lap and gingerly undid its diaper. The whole of its butt and crotch area, all the way up to the belly button, was smeared in thick, brown goo.

‘Ew.’ She made a face. ‘Firstly, nothing human poops that much. And secondly, what the hell—’

The Yam scooped up a bit of the goo with a finger and stuck it in her mouth. ‘Mmm. This shit tastes just like Nutella. Go on, get you some.’

That gave Gehna the giggles. Waves of laughter hit her until she was red in the face and couldn’t breathe. Every time she calmed down, the Yam ate some more chocolate poo, setting Gehna off again.

‘Stoppit, retard. I can’t take any more. It hurts.’ Gehna took a deep breath. ‘Dead.’

The Yam punched her lightly on the shoulder. ‘Hey. We gonna have fun with this baby, or what? Bring her up the way a girl should be brought up. Like a goddamn warrior.’

Gehna squeezed the other girl’s hand. They stayed like that until she felt able to go into the party and at least pretend to have a good time.

19

This feels, thought Gehna, so much better than sex.

She was lying on the couch in what used to be her room, but which Nina Rai and Druhi had now transformed into a nursery. The floor was covered in two-inch-thick foam padding of the type you sometimes saw in yoga studios. The freshly rolled wallpaper was a serene blue peppered with bright pictures of hot-air balloons, monkeys on bicycles and fat pelicans. Gehna’s queen-size bed had been replaced with a single bed to make room for the baby’s crib, complete with hanging mobile.

The couch she was lying on was basically the only thing still familiar that remained. She shifted, with some difficulty, towards her side so Eram could access her heels.

‘Have you given a lot of foot massages?’ she asked him, all innocence. Privately, she was wondering whether his technique had been perfected over hours spent fondling other girls’ feet. It felt so good that she didn’t even care that much. It was just a mild curiosity.

‘“Don’t be tellin’ me about foot massages, I’m the foot-fuckin-master”,’ Eram said.

Gehna blinked at him. ‘Is that why you even offered the massage? So you could quote some old movie at me?’

‘Hard to find spots in real life where you can say foot-fuckin-master like that. And it’s not “some old movie”, it’s Pulp.’

Gehna grabbed her phone and googled it. ‘1994. You were, like, minus eight years old when it was made.’

‘Whatever. It was genre-defining. All these films Guy Ritchie and everyone make now with multiple storylines intersecting and coinciding started with Pulp Fiction. Don’t look at me like that—I know I’m a freak.’

Maybe, thought Gehna, but you’re my freak.

It wasn’t being a movie buff that made Eram different; it was the care he took with her. Foot massages aside, he had refused to go to Sikkim for an important World Poker Tour satellite tournament because it would have meant missing Gehna’s thirty-fifth week ultrasound (they had had a big fight over that). He had made a giant playlist for her to listen to so she wouldn’t get bored while the baby nursed (ten to twelve times a day for half an hour each time) and upgraded her Kindle to one that had a backlight so she could read in the dark as the baby slept. The one time Gehna had had a weird craving—for cola-flavoured ice lollies—he had driven all over Carter Road at 1 a.m. until he found a guy who sold them. He also persuaded a woman who worked at a local salon to go over to Gehna’s and give her a pedicure. And when she discovered the first stretch marks appearing on her body, Eram kissed her stomach and told her that the stripes were a major turn-on. Gehna didn’t believe him, of course, but it was still nice to hear it.