‘We haven’t had any trouble.’

‘You could sell this place, you know? The land prices are insane. Find a place in the city. You could get a job, find a vocational centre for your sister.’

‘But we like it here.’

‘Okay. Sure. I’m just saying. It’s no place for a woman alone. Sorry, this is India. This is just how it is. You want to go all Little House on the Prairie or whatever, but that doesn’t work here. You want a garden, put it on the terrace of your city flat. You want a dog, get a Lhasa Apso.’

The sex that night is different. Something has been dismantled. Afterwards, he holds me in the usual way, arms enfolding, stomach to back. ‘What’s wrong?’ he whispers. I pretend to be asleep.

11

This morning, incessant cries from the brush. I shrug on a housecoat and go downstairs. The French doors are open. Lucia and Mallika are standing all the way down by the brick compound wall.

I find my slippers and a straw hat and walk over to them. They are examining Bagheera, who is lying on her side in the shade of a neem bush with six puppies suckling at her. Six splotches of black and white. Mallika and Lucia crouch beside her, grinning.

‘What’s going on?’

‘See how many, Grace,’ Lucia points.

Mallika yanks the pups one by one off Bagheera’s teats to check their sex. ‘Boy!’ she announces proudly when she sees a sliver of penis. The girls, of which there are three, she tosses aside, and they blindly grope their way back to their mother.

‘Good girl,’ I say to Bagheera, who looks as though she can’t wait to sequester herself from all these demanding tongues.

‘Do you hear?’ I say, pointing backwards. ‘There’s a sound coming from there?’

The three of us walk towards the house, trying not to get our legs caught in the bramble and thorn.

‘Why haven’t you worn your slippers?’ I scold Mallika, who’s bending over to disengage her leg from a creeper.

‘It’s time to do the weeding,’ she says, cutting across the brush, following the noise. She stoops, lifts up a stack of palmyra leaves, and underneath there’s a puppy sitting in the sand, crying violently. It’s mostly white, with two black patches around its eyes like a panda and a twirly black line above its mouth. There’s a piece of twine caught around its neck. Pink paws, bluish eyes, a mouth full of mud.

‘Pick it up!’ Lucia shrieks.

Mallika unties the twine from around the puppy’s neck, revealing a raw pink gash in the fur. It’s a fat thing, looks almost like a kitten.

‘How’d you get all the way out here? Let’s get you back to Mama.’

We trudge back to Bagheera and put the puppy down in the sand. She tries to lift herself but her hind legs give way, collapse under her weight. She sits there spread out like a miniature exotic rug, crying.