In the beginning we overcame our shyness for each other by fussing over Raja. He surprised me – the way he stuck to Lucia on the beach, the manner in which he curled himself by her feet when we sat outside for meals, shifting his attentions in order to welcome her.

A month later he disappeared. I tried reassuring Lucia that he would be okay, that he had other friends to visit along this stretch of ocean. But she wouldn’t be placated.

Every few minutes she’d ask, ‘Where’s Raja?’ Her right hand flung out, jabbing at the air, her left hand softly beating her thigh. ‘Where’s Raja? Where’s Raja?’ And when this produced no results, she screamed in frustration, rocking backwards and forwards on her feet, hands still jabbing, finally flinging herself on the floor in desperation. ‘Where’s Raja? Where’s Raja?’ Until she wasn’t listening to anything I was saying, just repeating his name over my voice like an incantation. Raja. Raja. Raja.

Only after she had tired herself and gone off into a corner, subdued and hoarse, did the shouting stop. But all through the day she kept her eye hawked to the horizon for a sign of gold. After four nights even I began to worry. There were packs of dogs along this beach who could demolish and drown him in minutes. There were people who could be just as cruel for the sport of it. He had never stayed away so long.

On the fifth day, when he finally appeared, strutting up the garden path from the beach, Lucia ran towards him shouting, ‘Raja, Raja.’ Shadowing behind him was a black bitch – sleek and gorgeous, with a tikka of white in the fur of her forehead. This was Bagheera, Raja’s great love. And between the two of them they spun kingdoms.

9

Vik comes over when it’s dark and we fuck in the bedroom with the lights out and the door locked. We smoke a joint afterwards, our bodies slick and beautiful, and because he is young, we often go again.

The nights he’s here, Lucia is restless, pacing the corridor, switching the lights on and off. The dogs are restless too – setting off with their orchestra of howling every time some poor creature gets too close to the walls. Vik and I laugh at the madness of it, but he doesn’t stay long enough to really see it.

In the morning we rush to the sea in our bathing suits. The dogs chase after us. We ignore the shitters squatting further along the beach where the new constructions are rising up. All along the coast they are committed to cloning claustrophobic, ugly holiday homes, which will sit empty most of the year. Men have been hauled in from different parts of the country to work in this wasteland. Some have never seen the ocean. Some may even be terrified of it, although they don’t show it. There’s something dangerous about these men, the way they don’t avert their eyes.