These past few weeks in Venice I’ve been trying to recollect all the meaningful conversations I’ve had with Papi. Moments when he might have imparted something close to wisdom, or at least given me clues as to how I, his daughter, should live.

He was certainly the more active of my parents. Besides teaching me to swim and conquer algebra, besides music and constellations and poetry and whatever passing interest I may have in trees and the habits of birds, Papi was the parent who confided in me, who allowed me into his moods. My mother was always at a remove in that sense. Whenever I had questions she neatly deflected them to my father. He could be strict, forbidding even, sending me alone on errands to the bazaar saying, ‘Nothing will happen to you.’ And always I wanted to ask, ‘How do you know? Is it worth the risk?’ Nothing ever happened. The world mostly ignored me. He was the parent I understood as a child, the one I grew estranged from when I left home, but still, I cannot think of a single real thing that was ever said between us.

‘What are you doing here, Grazia? When did you arrive?’

‘I don’t know what to say to you.’ I leave him under a church awning with a melting ice-cream cone.

Later that evening I ring the bell of his apartment in the Calle del Fumo near the Fondamente Nove. I take my time walking up the four floors. Papi holds me for a long time at the door. His place is exactly as it had been since he moved here – crowded with books, a bust of Leonardo da Vinci that he’d bought at a flea market, boxes of records, the same heavy, dark furniture. Not a single object to signify that he’d spent twenty-five years in India.

He prepares spaghetti alle vongole for dinner, taking great care with the mussels, coating them in garlic and wine. Shirtsleeves rolled up to the elbows.

‘Who’s that singing?’ I ask.

‘Mariza. She’s a fado singer. Wonderful, isn’t she?’

We listen to this voice booming over us – sad and sweet. She’s singing about love, undoubtedly, but if she’d been singing about plastic carrier bags, she would still have had the same effect – of installing orchestras in our diaphragms, complete with an audience of cheering people, as if we were somehow responsible for the enchantment she alone was creating.

We listen and drink and eat, and after there is no more music, in the long silence of an October night, my father begins.

‘The baby was born a Mongoloid,’ he says. ‘It was 1973 in India, and no one knew what to do. You should have seen the hospital, Grazia. People on the floors. Dirty. Clueless people. Your mother and I were not equipped. The doctors gave us our options. They said there was a good chance she wouldn’t survive. We decided together. I want you to know that. Whatever your mother has made you believe, this was something we decided together.’