‘What was the point of all this?’ I say, my hands moving incoherently. ‘Why come back? Why not send me a Dear Grace letter? I’m fucking used to those, you know.’

‘I wanted to see you. I wanted to see the life you were living and know it, so that when we write and speak to each other I can imagine it.’

‘Now you know. Good.’

‘I missed you so much, I missed our life, but three years, I mean, you gave no sign you wanted to return. Life pushed me on.’

‘I suppose she’s dying to have children.’

‘We’ve talked about it, yes.’

I looked at him and he was a stranger again. The days we’d just spent together were already beginning to crack and slip through the windows. That body I’d once known and had been relearning. Those toes. ‘You should have said something earlier.’

‘I tried. I did try. I’m sorry.’

Kadar comes to pick him up the next afternoon. He has brought a champaca tree.

‘Where will you put it?’ he asks.

There is none of the jubilation of the arrival. The dogs are out somewhere on the beach. Lucia is on the floor of the sitting room, flapping away with her socks. ‘I’ll put it in front of the house, so I can look at the flowers while I’m drinking tea.’

‘No no,’ Kadar says nervously, ‘the sea air will kill it. Put it somewhere behind the house.’

Mallika and I stand at the steps and wave goodbye. Clutched in the centre of her palm are two 500-rupee notes, slipped to her by Blake as he was leaving. ‘Nice boy,’ she says, as the taxi disappears around the corner.

I go upstairs and wait for it, but the grief is lying coiled tight under my skin. It will roll out in waves. It will come from that faraway sea wall and hit me in the face when I’ve stopped expecting it.

I plant the champaca in front of the house. I want to see if it will survive. If it will bring forth flowers of salt.

Chapter 25

25

Lucia wants to wear a ghagra choli for the new temple’s inauguration. It is one of those bejewelled things she brought with her from the Sneha Centre – red velvet with gold sequins on the skirt, worn with great aplomb for Diwali and Christmas shows. Mallika has brought frangipani flowers from the trees. She makes a crown and places it gently on Lucy’s head, saying, ‘Now you’re looking super.’ Mallika herself is in a new sari – bright pink with gold checks – and a big red pottu in the middle of her head. Only I look like a faded nun in my beige salwar kameez.