Rohini is obsessed with age. She tells me about all the women in the city who’ve had face fillers and boob jobs. Twice already, at the end of long nights, she’s asked me what it was like to be with a man so much younger than myself. ‘Divine,’ I said. ‘But really,’ she asked, ‘don’t you worry?’

I sneer at her, but I know exactly what she’s talking about because of course I fucking worry. I worry about Ms Bushy Brows and the bandage-dress women who are trying to make themselves so perfectly bland, how this has come to define what we call beautiful and this is what makes men raise their cocks up in the air, and so this is what women will do to themselves. ‘It’s only a thing of the moment,’ I tell her.

‘But get this,’ Samir interjects. ‘He’s learned about commitment from his dog.’

Praveen blushes and Rohini is shrieking now, ‘Bestiality, bestiality!’

‘Seriously,’ Praveen says. ‘I’ve been learning loyalty from Sphinx. He’s the only one who waits for me every day, you know? I never used to pay him much attention but now I’m like, Hey buddy, how’s it going? It’s an alien feeling for me. I’m trying to master it. I’ve been a bitch, a bastard.’

No one has asked how I’m coping with my recent dog tragedy because they’re not furry house animals. Because they’re a pack of wild things, the expectation is that wild things might happen to them, such as being poisoned en masse. Vik had said something to the effect of the numbers being under control now. Even Rohini, who proclaimed to be a canine freak, was only really interested in her two Poms. It feels silly to talk about grief, but I haven’t been able to sleep, and when I drove down here I cried most of the way. I am angry too, because there is such easy acceptance of death. The cheapness of it. Those beautiful animals gone. And we chatter here about things I don’t comprehend but am somehow part of.

‘You’ve got such a pretty face,’ Rohini says, turning to me all of a sudden. ‘You should marry her, Vik. Why don’t you just grow a pair of balls and marry her?’

I want to say that I’m already married and that it hadn’t worked out so well the first time. That I didn’t think monogamy was such a great idea. But I wanted to see how Vik would react.

‘She won’t have me,’ Vik says, taking my hand. ‘She keeps telling me it’s over, so what can a man do? Just keep trying, right?’

The waiter circles around us with a bottle of wine, pours into our glasses.

‘Boss,’ Praveen says, looking at the waiter kindly, ‘you need to take care of your body odour.’