We’ve been different together after the poisoning and the distemper. The trip to Kodai helped, but I think both Lucia and I believed that when we returned, all our dogs would be magically restored. I do my duties of feeding, bathing, dressing, but I no longer reach for her hand at the dining table so she can give my fingers a squeeze. Our walks are desultory. After fifteen minutes, just as we approach the ashram arches, she presses her knees and says, ‘Legs are broken down,’ and demands we turn around.

Blake sleeps in the room downstairs. He wakes at six and goes running. I keep staring at his feet. We are always barefoot. In the house, on the beach. It’s as if I’ve only just noticed that he has the most beautiful toes. Long, elegant, unmarred by hairs. When he sits in the cane chair reading, one leg crossed over the other, his toes open and spread like the swish of a shapely fan.

I consider what it might mean to fall in love with him again even though I’ve never believed in the return journey.

We sit out every evening after dinner. Lucia lies inside on the sofa watching Tom and Jerry on my iPad. We drink Cuba Libres or small sharp shots of Patrón. I try to explain what it means to live two lives, to inhabit two different spaces. ‘It’s genetic. My parents did it. I do it too. Except I think I’m being more open about it.’

‘What will you do?’

He asks the question everyone eventually asks.

There are evenings here when you can’t believe you’re of this world. Everything is silent except for the sea’s measured hush. Stars hang low. The moon is always rising. You think of the city far away – its harsh lights, its sodden ambitions. You feel excluded from everything that is alive.

He had written to announce his arrival. It hadn’t been a request. I miss India. I have meetings in Delhi about a waste-management project, which could be an exciting development, and afterwards, I’ll go to Kodai, do a few lectures at the school and reconnect with some people. I land in Chennai on the 15th. Let me know if you could organise a cab for me, and if there’s anything you need from here.

‘It makes you dizzy, doesn’t it?’ he said, when he first arrived. ‘I had forgotten what it’s about. The complete mania of it. It gets in your blood. Wakes you up. Kicks you in the balls.’

‘It’s why we stay here. Far away from all that.’