I remember trying to find amongst one of my many cousins a sister, brother, friend, but it was useless. I was always the bastard at the wedding, the stranger at the feast. If I could have forged at least one connection, it might have proved to me that we were of the same tribe, but the more family reunions I went to, the more I realised it had been my parents’ intention all along to create a life that had nothing to do with their own beginnings. All my aunts and uncles on both sides had chosen to live within a two-kilometre radius of their parents, while my parents had taken the first opportunity to flee. I struggled with the forced intimacy of our family gatherings as much as my parents did, and so it was always a relief to return home, the three of us – to fall into our usual patterns of subterfuge and bickering, to be away from the particular politics we had temporarily been thrust into.

Now that I have Lucia in my life, that sense of loss has lifted, but other heavy things have come to settle on my shoulders.

*

Lucia’s nightmares have subsided, but one afternoon she screams so loudly all the dogs start howling. I run into her room, and she is standing on the bed hopping about. ‘Mouse, mouse,’ she shrieks. Golly is curled up uselessly in her basket, peering out with no intention of moving. I go to the bathroom and grab a mop with a wooden handle. ‘Where is it?’ I say, and she points under the linen cupboard. I start jumping about too, whacking the end of the mop on the concrete floor, shouting, ‘Get out of there!’ and when the mouse runs – Jesus, it’s huge – I try to beat it but it’s quick, and soon it’s jumping up the blinds. Who knew mice could jump so high? I whack the blinds madly, and the mouse falls on the floor, scrabbling away until I get it. I hit it, a dull thud in the centre of its body. I keep beating it. It’s as though I’m standing outside myself as I do this. Lucia is screaming, the dogs are barking. Mallika has run upstairs to see what the commotion is about. When she sees it’s a mouse, she laughs and picks the dead thing up by its tail. ‘Looks like it was pregnant,’ she says. ‘Good thing you caught it.’

I am shaking and sweating. ‘I’ve never killed an animal before,’ I say.

Mallika grunts. ‘Maybe you should get rid of all these dogs and get some cats instead.’