I put the bedside lamp on, looking for something to read. There are a few children’s books that I used to read to Lucia, but she soon tired of those. I lift the pillow so I can lean against the bed comfortably. Underneath the pillow there’s a crumpled napkin, military green, made of rayon or something synthetic. Lucia must have stolen it from a restaurant. I think of her howling for it at the Sneha Centre, and Teacher looking at her without being able to help. ‘Which one, kanna? Aren’t they all here?’ A night, a day, and maybe then she would have stopped with her noise. I squash the napkin in a ball and crush it in my palm. When Kavitha brings me tea in the morning, she finds me splayed out on my stomach with the lamp on, the napkin in my fist.

A few days later we drive to a village fifteen minutes away. There’s a new roadside restaurant at the top of our street called Saravana Villas. A man in a ramshackle Mickey Mouse costume waves to cars speeding down the highway, trying to flag them down and direct them to the restaurant.

‘Poor little shit,’ Kavitha says. ‘What a job.’ She slows down as we pass by, and thrusts ten bucks into his paw. A group of men dressed in white are leaning against a white jeep drinking coffee from plastic cups. Even their sandals are white. Local politicians of some sort. They all have healthy moustaches and paunches. ‘Do you think the reason they’re so committed to white is because it’s so obvious they’re corrupt assholes?’ Kavitha says.

‘Stop staring at us,’ I want to shout. ‘Turn away and mind your own business.’ I don’t know what it is about seeing groups of men together, but it unsettles me. The way they hold their bodies, the ownership of space. Nothing they offer by way of their togetherness engenders a sense of safety. It is all gnarl and hair and ball sac and matted heel. The world needs softness. Not this.

There is dereliction all around. A gated community called Luxor lies in semi-finished abandon. Incongruous, trying to recall some kind of pharaonic glory here in Tamil Nadu. The builders must have run out of funds or neglected to pay off the right people. Already neem bushes are growing horizontally and wildly into the half-built foundations. The Sphinx-like statue in yellow stone, positioned as the centrepiece of the property, is covered in bird shit and has nothing of the grandeur of its Egyptian ancestor.

It’s only nine in the morning but my shirt is already damp. We pass the Marakkanam Lake to our right, which is flat and white in the heat. ‘There,’ I say. ‘That’s the road we need to take.’