‘“We”,’ Gehna said.

‘Excuse me?’

‘We’ll need one eventually.’

‘I’m not following you, darling. How am I in the picture?’

Gehna exchanged a tense look with Eram. They had talked about this moment at the coffee shop. The moment when Ajay Rai would either come through for Gehna or crush her hopes into fairy dust.

‘For this plan to work,’ she said, ‘I need at least 10,000 square feet of space, spread over two floors. And since I can’t afford it right now, I was hoping you would sort of, uh, give it to me? Just two floors in any building project your company owns. It won’t be forever, just until I start making enough to rent my own place.’

Ajay Rai leaned back in his chair and looked at his daughter thoughtfully. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I could never justify that to the other partners. I’m sorry, Gehna.’

She took the blow like a champ, without pleading or whining. She just nodded and gave her father a smile. ‘Okay. I knew it was a long shot. Thanks for listening anyway.’

They had reached the door when Ajay Rai spoke again. ‘Unless you’re willing to give me a stake in your business.’

Gehna turned to him. ‘What?’

‘For 51 per cent equity in your business, including assets and earnings, you can have the space for free.’

Eram saw the smile start to blossom over Gehna’s face. He hurriedly pulled her to one side. They huddled for a minute, speaking in urgent whispers.

‘20 per cent for five years, and you reinvest all of it back into the business for the first three years,’ she said to her father.

Ajay Rai gave Eram a sharp look. ‘You have good people in your corner,’ he said to his daughter. ‘35 per cent. And you pay rent from the third year on. Final offer.’

Gehna raised a questioning eyebrow at Eram. He nodded. Gehna marched across to her father and shook his hand. ‘Deal,’ she said solemnly.

‘Deal,’ Ajay Rai said. He watched the two of them run through the quiet corridors, laughing and falling over each other in their excitement. He was going to have one hell of a time explaining to Nina how he had come to be business partners with their seventeen-year-old kid.

10

Gehna was a big fan of birthdays, especially her own. She had been dropping hints about it in casual conversation for a month, but the time for subtlety was long past.

‘It is now officially the start of birthday week,’ she announced to her mother on the morning of 8 September.

Nina Rai, with Druhi’s help, was wholly engaged in sorting through her children’s old baby things that she had stored away in two giant aluminium trunks. She barely even noticed that her daughter had joined them in the master bedroom.

‘I said,’ Gehna said, louder this time, ‘it’s my birthday in one week.’

‘Mm? I’m your mother, Gehna, I know when your birthday is. There’s no need to shout it from the rooftops. You’re only turning seventeen, it’s not a major milestone or anything.’