‘Shall we go in here, Lucy? You love Benetton, don’t you?’

We look through the racks of clothing. Everything I choose is somehow too dull, too tailored, not to Lucia’s liking.

I find a long red dress made of jersey and spandex with a square-cut top, three-quarter sleeves and slits up the sides that end demurely at the knee.

‘What about this? Come, let’s go try it on.’

In the changing room we peel the jeans off. ‘I told you, we should have put you in something else. This is such a pain to do, Lucy.’

I put the dress over her head and it is too tight. I call to the salesgirl, ‘Can we get this in a size forty-four, please?’

A few minutes later I make Lucia walk out of the changing room to look at herself in the full-length mirror. The dress catches over all her fat bits, but the colour is strong and makes her look healthy. ‘I like it,’ I say.

Lucia tugs at the material around her waist and pulls at it, irritated. ‘No,’ she says.

‘Okay. We’ll keep looking.’

The mall is packed. Two weeks from Christmas, so there are carols on loop, a giant artificial tree in the centre of the ground floor, flecked with bits of cotton and tinsel. In one corner a scary-looking mechanical Santa with a sleigh filled with presents waves his hand up and down. Blue-eyed elves nod maniacally with him. Around this winter wonderland runs a toy train making high-pitched choo-choo noises. Families gather around this installation and take photographs. College kids in skinny jeans pout in groups. Clusters of men, always clusters of men – hands in their pockets, fingers chocked to balls.

It is nothing like the expeditions Ma and I used to make to Spencer’s before it burned down. Such a dearth of stuff in those pre-liberalisation days. Christmas had still been about presents, but they used to be such meagre everyday things, like an orange or an apple in your stocking, a pair of plastic earrings. Rarely something extravagant like a new bicycle or a Walkman. This is new India – crazy, glitzy, spending India.

Lucia and I manoeuvre through the crowds. We stop for an ice cream at Baskin-Robbins. My toes are sore and my head hurts. I’m lugging around a bunch of things I’ve bought for the house already – wooden hangers, towels, ceramic knives. Still no dress.

We wander past a place called the Big Bazaar. Lucia drifts in. ‘Not here, Lucy, come on. It’s a mess.’ But she is already flicking through the racks, pleased with what she sees. I spy the dress before she sees it. It is a sequinned pink thing, tiered, with a full skirt and an unflatteringly tight bodice. Sparkles everywhere. No point telling her it will make her look like a giant ball of candyfloss. We tussle in the changing room to squeeze her arms in, but once it’s on, she flounces about on her toes and grins widely.