‘You don’t know these rowdies. They go around with axes and knives. They want to sell all this land and make resorts and coal factories. You are too educated, so they can’t fool you. But so many others have already lost their land. Illiterate people who just put their thumbprint on any document. And the police – they are involved in all this. Don’t think they’re going to help you.’

‘So, then?’ I say. ‘I should just do nothing, is it?’

‘If you want your dogs to live, tie them up at night, simple.’

A mood settles over us all. Raja and Bagheera stretch out on the patio – morose and listless. The puppies are frantic for food. With the three mothers dead I don’t know what to do. I take mashed-up dog food over to where they’ve been hiding in the neem bushes, and they rush out, a flurry of black and white, setting upon the bowls with blind hunger.

‘Do you think they’ll make it?’ I ask Mallika.

‘We’ll have to see.’

Lucia doesn’t want to go on our evening walk. It’s the time of day we love best. To set out on the beach with the big dogs, to chase crabs and howl. All week we’ve been watching David Attenborough’s Planet Earth series, and I’ve been putting on my Attenborough voice to entertain Lucia.

But there’s going to be no walk today, or David Attenborough. At five in the evening, Lucia is still in her muddy pyjamas.

‘Get up, Lucy. It’s bath time, come on now, you can’t sit like this forever.’

She doesn’t look at me. She says nothing.

I go upstairs to run the water. ‘Lucy,’ I shout. ‘Come for your bath.’

Ten minutes later I have to come downstairs again. ‘Why aren’t you talking to me? Lucia! Lucia! I said speak to me. Look at me.’ I start pushing her shoulders, but she’s staring away from me obstinately.

Finally, I have to call Mallika to help. ‘Catch hold of her arms and I’ll get her legs.’

‘No, no,’ Lucia shouts, lying down like a sack of stones.

‘You have to, Lucia! You stink of dog, and you’re dirty and you’re not eating dinner in your pyjamas.’

But there’s no reasoning with her. So I pinch her ankles and catch hold of them, while Mallika grabs her underneath the arms. She’s kicking and screaming as we take her up the stairs, jerking her torso up and down to make it more difficult for us. We haul her onto the bed – the solid weight of her, and she’s still shouting, no no no.