The next morning Teacher calls to say, ‘Lucy wants to try. If it’s okay with you, we’ll come next weekend to spend the night.’

6

How often I dream of going back to sit on one of those cold, hard benches at PPCG just to listen to the heavens crashing down, even if it means being in the presence of those cretinous nuns for a few hours.

There is nothing in the world like hill rain – epic, torrential – all drum rolls and whiplash. The smell of the earth, potent and warm like mud in your nostrils. It is the smell of sex, of a lover returning. And the nuns, knowing it, fearing it, herded us into the chapel for safekeeping, lit candles and incense, prayed and prayed for the storms to pass.

My parents would come for me in the Ambassador. Ma at the wheel, tiny and bug-eyed; Papi with a raincoat and an umbrella, running to fetch me from the chapel. There was always hot chocolate and Miles Davis in Mahalakshmi when it rained. Papi would light a fire, and Ma and I would bring out blankets so we could huddle around the drawing-room table and play rummy. Outside, eucalyptus trees shook nervously in the gale, and stray dogs took shelter in the portico. Those were probably our closest moments as a family, and still, I would have given anything to be with Queenie and the other girls in the dorm.

I wonder where it comes from? That strange foreboding of childhood? That the universe is conspiring to keep secrets from you. Did it begin in Kodai? Or earlier?

I remember little of my early life in Madras. It was always a place of exits and entries – a dreamy, transitional city, where time was either expanding or closing in. In Madras I had not felt lonely. Ma told me I had two friends at Rosary Metric, the school I attended from standard one through to five, although I have no recollection of them or the things we might have played. Savitri and Ayesha: two pigtailed, smiling girls. There are photographs of the three of us at successive annual days at school, dressed as peacocks and flower sellers and the Three Kings. There’s one taken of us at sports day in chaste, knee-length shorts. We are holding hands and smirking as if we’d just shared a joke. All the photographs of our years in Madras are as drained of colour and out of focus as my memories.

I know for sure, though, that when I lived in Madras I had not felt the acute need for a witness in my life. When we moved to Kodai I began to have a real yearning for someone who shared my memories. Someone other than my parents.

My friend Queenie always used to say, ‘You’re so lucky, Grace. You never have to fight for attention or have two brats constantly slobbering all over your things.’ She was the eldest of three girls, the star of the family. Pressure was always on her. But I watched when Queenie’s mother and sisters came to pick her up for holidays. The history she shared with her sisters bound them together from birth. How could she ever be truly alone? Sure, you could grow up in the same house and experience everything differently, but there would always be certain episodes that either brought laughter in the remembrance of them, or clots of purple bruising. Long after Queenie and I drifted apart, she would still have her sisters. They would call each other on the phone, their families would meet. And perhaps they would complain in secret, as all families do. But blood prevails. Sisters outlast friends. For me, this was something.