Dried spit on my chin. ‘What time is it?’

‘Eleven. You should get up.’

Kavitha is pulling on the ropes of the blinds, allowing lashes of light to hit the floors.

‘Sorry, I must have gone back to sleep. It was a rough night. Is Golly back?’

‘Yes. She was on the patio this morning. I fed the dogs some rice and curd.’

‘I feel wrecked.’

‘I think you’ll have to go and visit Valluvan at some point. Praveen will go with you. I’ll talk to Sriram about what our options are legally.’

‘Have you been able to speak to Teacher?’

‘She’s not taking my calls.’

‘And Mallika. What’s her story?’

‘Nothing yet.’

There are two guards at the gates of the Sneha Centre. Men who wear uniforms, who are hired out by security companies on a part-time basis to lend a sense of propriety to establishments.

‘Entry not allowed,’ one of them says, in English.

Praveen is cajoling at first. ‘Listen,’ he says, ‘we just want to make sure that her sister is okay, that she’s here. We just need to go in and speak to Mrs Gayatri.’

‘Madam is out of station,’ the guard says. ‘Nobody is allowed inside. If you try, we will call the police.’

Kavitha pushes Praveen aside and leans over the gates. ‘Gayatri!’ she shouts. ‘Stop this nonsense, this is serious. At least, let us know she’s here.’

The guards try to wrest her off the gates and Praveen is on them, punching wildly. People emerge from houses along the street. Some run into the fray, shouting with authority even though they cannot know what the matter is. Others stand and watch, shielding their eyes from the sun. Kavitha is on the phone talking to someone who knows the Inspector General. I start screaming, Lucy Lucy Lucy.

The teachers at the Sneha Centre file out, creating a barricade behind the guards. There are five of them – women who have committed their lives to looking after these children. Nothing like this can have happened here before, because their eyes gleam with drama. Two of them have been with Mrs Gayatri since the beginning. They have known Kavitha since before they were married, and now they have children who are almost ready to be married themselves, but still, they look at her as though she were a stranger and tell her they don’t know where Lucy is.

‘You mean you’ve lost her?’ one of them says.

‘If you have nothing to hide, then let us in,’ Kavitha says. ‘What is this behaviour? I don’t understand.’

Finally Teacher barrels through the line. ‘That’s enough. What is your business here?’

‘I want to know if you have Lucy,’ I say. ‘I just need to know she’s okay.’