I’m wearing one of Ma’s saris – the white Bangladeshi cotton with the red border. I hardly ever used to wear them, but Kavitha has been teaching me how to drape them so that my limbs aren’t inhibited. Strange how a piece of cloth can transform you, fool you into thinking you’re stronger than you are.

The compound wall is in such a damaged state, but it would cost a fortune to fix it up again. In a place like this, where decay is inevitable, it feels simpler to submit. I have wanted to belong to this world. I think this as I drive out. It’s sentimental, but how else are we to look at things? To move through life at a distance, without having participated, it seems wasteful somehow.

I drive past groves of trees. The flame trees we planted to cover the ugly orange house. Champaca, hibiscus, laburnum – all sprouting from the mud of our dead dogs. I feel peaceful driving into the city, even though I haven’t seen Lucia in five months. We had spoken on the phone a few times. Teacher held the phone to Lucy’s ear and I shouted, ‘Hello, Lucy, how are you? I miss you.’ And Lucy, after saying the first hello in her way, the h caught in the throat like a well, the long extended ooooo, would fall silent. ‘Huloooo.’

‘Golly misses you.’

‘That’s Lucy’s dog,’ she’d say.

Eventually, Teacher would get on the phone. ‘Okay, bye for now.’

‘Will you bring her back?’ Valluvan had asked when I went to see him.

He was an old man now but his face held no malice. He would not talk about what happened except to say that he had survived because of the grace of God. A rare man. Strident in his house and village, humble before the universe.

Nila did not meet my eye. She had revealed too much already. She was a loyal wife, a strict mother, no one could say a word against her. When Valluvan was in the hospital she had been in charge. She looked at her husband as if he were a saint. She brought him a shawl, she brought tea. When he said, ‘Leave us,’ she left. We both knew she was standing by the kitchen wall, listening. She would have to get used to standing on the sidelines again.

‘What shall I do?’ I asked.

He explained there were only two ways of living. The life we desire and the life we are born to. Sometimes these lives can be the same. Sometimes we must make them the same.

‘Are you scared?’ he asked.

‘I’m always scared.’