The boys stop their game and gather in a huddle as we pass. They are bare-chested, in shorts. They wave and holler. Further down the road, water is gushing uselessly out of a pipe, and there are new trenches on either side, freshly dug, but it’s as if they’ve been abandoned, people having forgotten what they needed them for in the first place.

‘Happy to come home?’ Kadar asks. And I say, ‘Yes, of course.’

There are new speed bumps in the road, tiny clumps of tar in groups of three. Kadar flies over the first set, and again I say, ‘Slow, slow.’ There are always things crossing a village road. Dogs, chickens, children. How to explain to Kadar that I want to take all these creatures home with me. Even the mean-spirited, superstitious adults. I want to belong to them, instead of this estrangement.

We stop at the gate and I open the car door. ‘I’ll get it,’ I say. I’m wearing the wrong clothes, aeroplane clothes. Jeans and sports shoes and a hoodie. The air so sweet and warm. I heave the gate to one side, the blue paint peeling in places. The long grasses down the centre of the driveway are unruly and parched. Kadar honks the horn twice. A signal to the dogs. As I climb back in and move towards the house, they start running towards us. Raja, Bagheera, Golly, Dimple and, flagging behind them, the new pups – racing madly, howling, tongues like pink sails trailing out of their heads. And so there is this, I am filled with it, a sweetness.

‘It’s not about thanking,’ Kavitha says, but I insist it is. ‘What would they have done without you? Papi or Ma. They were like children, completely clueless, and what would I have done without you?’

We are sitting on the veranda, watching the moon rise. The hush of sea. It’s the most peaceful sound in the world. Womb noise. I’m still in a place of two places. Venice, Madras. In a day or two, all that will be forgotten and it will just be this – the heat, the dogs. But for now it’s still in my body, that strange afternoon with Roberto in his professor’s quarters, the midnight walk with Papi and Marcella.

‘Papi is happy, you know? I haven’t seen him happier. He says coming back to Italy was the best thing for him. He found a kind of peace again. He told me it was about finding a level of hypocrisy you could deal with.’

‘And Lucia? What did he say about her?’

‘He is unmoveable. He listens but offers no advice. He has not changed his mind about anything, and in a way, I suppose, it’s a kind of relief. Imagine, if you were going to begin to feel guilt.’