I went home in the late afternoon knowing that the real days were ahead of us. Our dogs were strong. They did not leave us at nights and they no longer knew hunger, so they were less exposed to danger. There were tomatoes in the garden and chillis. All around the trees grew close and high, protecting us. Lucia would know all this again.

Teacher brings me a pair of scissors. Her eyes are limitless pools of authority. ‘Pastor will be joining you,’ she says. There must be a hundred people gathered. I recognise most of the girls, but there are a few new faces. They are dressed in long sequinned skirts and velvet blouses. I know not to expect to see Lucia there, but I look anyway. Someone has switched the fans off for the lamp-lighting ceremony, so there are armpits soft and wet all around. People from the neighbourhood have come. Shopkeepers, housewives, a judge who has been given a plastic chair to sit in. Everyone else stands. The staff are passing out plastic packets of water. Pastor and I are given tumblers of Fanta.

‘God bless you, child,’ Pastor says. We cut the ribbon together and are asked to move closer to smile for the camera. ‘Please,’ I say, ‘after you.’ We leave our footwear outside the building. It smells of fresh paint inside. I’m sad again. There is something hopeless about the window grilles.

After everyone gathers inside and sits down on jute mats, the girls are pushed into the centre of the room to sing ‘Vande Mataram’. I can hear the scraping of spoons against vessels from outside the building, where caterers are making large vessels of biryani. Teacher makes a speech where she thanks me for my generous contribution for completing the new wing. She speaks for a long time because she has prevailed. If others will not praise her, she will praise herself. Everyone praises her, though, even her husband, who had once seemed ferocious but now walks respectfully two paces behind her.

Later, in her office in the old building, after everyone has left, she cries. She tells me one of the girls had been having breathing problems. Valli. Did I remember her? Not really. She kept putting her fingers down her throat and nobody could understand what was wrong with her. She couldn’t say what was bothering her. They took her to a government hospital and kept her there overnight. Teacher called the parents to inform them. They were separated, she told me. Brahmin couple, she added. The husband lived downstairs and the wife lived upstairs. They couldn’t afford two separate houses. ‘They said they couldn’t pay for the hospital so we brought her back here, but she was still uncomfortable. She kept putting her fingers down her throat. I feel so bad that we can’t know what they’re thinking. After two days she expired.’