She is as I imagined. Sitting on the single bed, positioned in the ray of light. Shoulders slightly sloped, legs splayed. Her eyes widen when she sees me. She shows me her jagged teeth.

‘Hey Lucy,’ I say. I sit on the bed and take her hand. ‘Give me a kiss, will you?’

‘Hi Grace,’ she says. She lets me kiss her cheek. She looks at me, not with suspicion or any kind of demand. Her look merely says, here you are.

‘Here I am.’

I open my handbag and take the military-green napkin out of it. ‘See what I found?’

She snatches it from me and practises feeling it in her fingers. Flip flip. Oh, it’s been so long, hasn’t it? Flip flip.

She looks paler, somewhat chubbier in the stomach. ‘Are you ready to come home, Lucy?’

Her bag is already packed in the corner of the room. She becomes something else when she travels. I don’t know how I know this for sure, but when she’s on the move all her idiosyncrasies are suspended. The rooms of her life collapse and open into something larger. ‘Are we going on a choo-choo train?’

‘We’re going in the car to see Raja and Golly and Dimple and Bagheera and all the new puppies.’

‘What about Hunter and Thompson and Flopsy?’

‘They’ve all gone to God, remember?’

Is she my child, then? My daughter, my sister. There is something pure about her fingers, the misshapen right index finger with the nubby nail, the deep brown lines in her palms. I take her hands and squeeze them between mine.

‘You’ll be coming here too, kanna, don’t worry. We’ll be seeing you soon,’ Teacher says, stepping out of the way as I take hold of Lucy’s suitcase.

We walk down the stairs. All the girls have lined up by the gates to say goodbye. Sugandhi, the albino, stands above them all, almost six feet tall. She’s waving her long arms from side to side. They are nobody’s treasures, these girls. It’s hard to look at them all together.

‘Will you be calling us for Lucy’s birthday party, akka?’ It’s Priya, Lucy’s old friend, who waddles up to us and puts her hands on her hips. ‘Will you?’

‘Of course she will,’ Teacher says. ‘Why don’t we take a photo?’