‘Call Mallika,’ I told her. ‘Go get her.’ Lucia started shoving me in the small of my back, as if to push me out of bed. ‘Cornflakes, cornflakes,’ she shouted, agitated that I wasn’t moving. An hour later Mallika finally came upstairs. She stood at the doorway, hand at hip. ‘What happened? You didn’t come down to eat?’

‘I need to go to the bathroom,’ I said. ‘Come here and help. I can’t move.’

Mallika managed to sit me up in bed. ‘You have a fever,’ she said worriedly, pressing her palm against my forehead. ‘What do you want me to do?’

‘Help me to stand and walk me to the bathroom,’ I said.

We shuffled over. Each step a mutilation. ‘You’ll have to take me all the way in.’

I lifted my nightie and sat on the pot. ‘Stay here, Mallika, otherwise I might fall over.’ I pissed with relief, feeling none of the humiliation I thought I would. ‘Lift me up now,’ I said. ‘That’s it. Wait, let me wash my face.’

Lucia followed, looking at us. ‘Cornflakes, cornflakes,’ she was saying, hand jabbing the air.

‘Wait, idiot,’ Mallika snapped. ‘Can’t you see your sister’s not well? I’ll feed you after.’

Hours later I looked up to see Auntie Kavitha in my reading chair. ‘Do you want me to close the blinds?’ she asked. ‘Yes,’ I said, staring out at the wrought-iron bars of the balcony grille, the sea framed between the curlicues. I was content with my sickness the way all guilty people feel when they are struck down. It felt deserving.

Auntie Kavitha was wearing a man’s shirt and a long cotton skirt with mirrors sewn into the hem. Her short grey hair stood like bristle on her head. ‘You’ve gone and got this vile chikungunya thing that’s going around,’ she said, allowing the blinds to hurtle down. ‘Bloody mosquitoes.’

‘Have you eaten?’ I asked.

‘Not hungry,’ she said, standing with her feet apart as if to steady herself.

I could see the outline of her breasts in the half-light. Slight, elfin.

‘I’ve stopped wearing underwear,’ she’d told me the last time we were together. I can’t think how the topic came up, but she’d said, ‘What’s the point? I don’t need it any more.’ I told her I felt the same, living out here, giving in to primitivism. Why not wear mismatched clothes, why bother with all the harnessing and holstering? ‘I’ve never liked my breasts in any case,’ I’d said. ‘Ponderous fleshy things.’ She laughed. ‘Name me a woman who’s satisfied with her breasts.’

Now she walked towards the bed and crept on to it with hands and knees. ‘You’re going to need help,’ she said, lying beside me, hand on my forehead, fingertips soft and cool. ‘I’ve brought my things.’