Sometimes, as we sat together watching television on those spring nights, I’d think about Papi, how if he were here, he’d be skulking around in the garden. I wanted to walk out and smoke a cigarette with him. I’d tell him I had looked through his diaries once, and seen naked sketches of Mother – her face always turned towards a window, her small, perfect breasts holding the light to ransom. It had been beautiful for me to think I’d come from this.

Ma wore baggy slacks with long shapeless tunics. She had learned to dress like a woman who always has something to hide. But there was no dissatisfaction about her. She was as limpid and happy as I’d ever seen her. In the mornings after Blake left for work, she and I would preen in deckchairs in the garden. Lemonade in a jug on the table between us, books folded on our stomachs.

‘Can you really take all this time off? I can entertain myself, you know. And what’s happening with your job? How long are you going to work in that place?’

She had grown interrogative, coaxing almost, and I wanted to ask, where have you been all these years? Who is this new person so concerned about my life? Everything about her now emanated a kind of openness. Even her hair – once long and rope-like, hanging uselessly down her back – had been etched into a spunky bob. She cared immensely for her nails, hair, skin – things she could still control. At the mall we leaned over counters, examining expensive products made in France, the sales reps daubing Ma’s neck with regenerating creams and wonder gels. ‘Guess how old I am?’ she’d say. ‘Ma’am, they should get you to endorse their product,’ one of them said, and Ma loved it. Threw back her choppy little head and laughed. Even her laugh was changed, less guarded. Now she boomed. ‘Yes, yes. Me the fashion model.’

The last time she visited she complained I was becoming a hoarder. ‘Typically American,’ she scolded. ‘All this stuff you don’t need.’

We spent a morning in the attic going through boxes. There were things I’d brought with me from India over the years – brass animals, bird feathers, report cards, a doll with a key in its back that had once been able to cry. Ma sat cross-legged on the floor, swatting away cobwebs, her elbows deep in my childhood. ‘Look at this,’ she said, opening a box of clothes. ‘Oh, Gracey, remember these?’