That night we found dogs in the shrine room. Uncle Sundar’s dachshund, Boogie, was now consigned to a bed of blankets with three puppies sucking at her teats – two black and one white. Boogie growled when we came close, but she allowed Uncle Sundar to pick up the little white pup and plop it in my lap. He had pale eyes and a huge, wrinkled forehead and when his little body shivered in my hands, my heart corresponded metronomically.

‘Do you want him, Champ?’

Ma gave me one of her glares when I said yes. ‘We have to ask your father,’ she started. ‘And what happens when we go visit Grandma and Grandpa?’

I didn’t care. I wasn’t about to let go of that pup.

‘You know what?’ Uncle Sundar said. ‘Keep him for a couple of weeks. If it doesn’t work out, you can always bring him back, and if you need me to look after him when you’re away, I’m happy to do that too.’

In that instant I loved Uncle Sundar. All the irritation I felt towards him because he dyed his hair black from a bottle and wore too-tight pants and most probably put his teapot into the backsides of other men flatlined.

It was past midnight by the time we got home. Not a single light had been left on to welcome us. The puppy quaked in my lap – a pale, white, whimpering sausage.

‘Salsicciotto,’ I said. ‘That’s what I’m going to call you.’

‘He’s your responsibility, Grace,’ my mother said, dragging her feet wearily. ‘You have to clean up his crap and feed him and walk him. Understand? And no letting him sleep on the bed.’

I don’t know what time it was when the lights in my parents’ room were turned on. My father would have waited for my mother to fall asleep. I can see him patiently flexing his toes in his striped pyjamas. The anger inside him churning. He would have waited till her face softened, till that little ridge between her eyebrows eased and the corners of her mouth relaxed. He would have let her flip onto her stomach, as she always did before falling into the deep. And then he would have flicked on the lamp.

‘Sleeping? You can sleep through everything, can’t you?’

‘Put the light out, Giacinto, we can talk in the morning. You’re going to wake everyone up.’

‘But everyone is already awake.’

There was that usual tightness that entered my body when they began. A slow pummelling in my stomach. If I tried to cover my ears, the menace would be there too, saying, Listen, this is important – all the disappointment they seemed to carry for each other rolled like waves out of them, one accusation after the other.

‘What the hell is wrong with you? Why do you behave like this?’

‘Maybe because I like when my wife goes around town without me. Maybe because I like being like a little castrated thing, crying that my wife is carrying on with mister so and so …’