Gnawing at her thumbnail, she waits. This new grief stirs the still-fresh loss she has been holding, adding hail to the storm, raising water levels. Soon the flood overtakes her and tears slip down her cheeks. She wipes them away on the sleeve of her pyjamas before Nirav has a chance to see them.

When he hangs up the phone several minutes later, she approaches him carefully and wraps her arms around his torso, squeezing him tightly to shield him from the amputating pain of loss, the haemorrhaging. “I’m so sorry,” she whispers.

“I knew it was going to happen sooner or later, you know?” he says, toneless. “We all knew she was terminal. But still, it’s a shock, isn’t it? It happened fast. Bloody hell, the last I’d heard, she was working a couple of days a week at the shop on Eling Road. She’d sit on a stool behind the register with her little oxygen tank beside her and chat with costumers.”

Kavita loosens her embrace and takes a step back to see him better. “What happened?”

“Complications. She couldn’t breathe. Her lungs finally gave out.”

“I’m so sorry, Niru. What can I do?”

He stares at the floor for a long moment. “There’s nothing anyone can do now. She should have stopped smoking decades ago. It’s her own bloody fault.”

She blinks. “You don’t mean that.”

“I do, actually. Filthy fucking habit. People need to take responsibility for their own lives. If you really want to do something, you just do it, don’t you?”

Her eyes narrow on him. She suspects he has vaulted over shock to anger, knowing that anger is easier for him to manage than sadness. “Maybe she tried.”

“Well, not nearly hard enough, obviously.”

She presses her lips together and pauses for a second. “How’s your mum handling things?”

“By the sound of it, she’s pretty out of it, actually. She’s sleeping now. Dad said she’ll ring a bit later.”

“Have they started making plans? Is there any news about the service?”

“The cremation’s at the end of the week. They want me to make a speech.”

“What an honour.”

“Easy for you to say. You won’t have to stand up and speak in front of two hundred people. I don’t want to do it.”

“I know it must feel overwhelming right now. But you’ll probably feel differently once you’re there. Trust me, Niru, you don’t want to have any regrets about this.” Kavita remembers the pantomime of Sunil’s memorial service. “You only get one chance to do things right when it comes to saying goodbye.”

“Regrets? Why should I have any? She’s the one who got cancer and didn’t fight hard enough to get better.”