‘Don’t cry, Nala, I’m here,’ he said. Somewhere nearby she heard a plane land. ‘I’m here,’ he whispered firmly, as she relaxed into him.

•

Nala stepped over the threshold with her right foot. She couldn’t remember where she’d learned that superstition, it could have been her mother decades ago, or it could have been Chun Hei, the Korean beautician who plucked her eyebrows in a fluorescently luminous salon in Burwood last week. She had made sure her eyebrows were immaculately groomed and her hair dyed Midnight Black before she boarded the plane for Colombo.

Nala prayed to all gods and she observed all superstitions. She spat three times quietly as she looked around, relieved that the house had not changed very much. Nandan’s in-laws had of course brought some of their own furniture to replace the pieces she’d taken to Sydney, but the house still looked like it belonged to her and Rajan. It would always belong to them.

Instinctively she walked towards the kitchen, looking for Ayah, ready to give her instructions for the day: string hoppers and a milk sothy for breakfast; rice, snake beans and fried prawn curry for lunch; and a simple puttu, coconut chilli sambal and green chilli omelette for dinner. Her mouth watered at the memory as she peered inside the kitchen. Ayah wasn’t there; she hadn’t been there for two years. Dr Fonseka and her dear friend Dolly down the road would be enjoying Ayah’s fiery sambal instead of her.

But the memories of a lifetime were strong and insistent.

She looked at the empty kitchen and saw the old maid squatting on her wooden seat. Attached to the small platform was the blade she used to scrape the soft white flesh from the hairy brown skull of the coconut. She held it tight in her crooked hands, still powerful despite their age. Ayah’s head was bent over her work, her shoulders hunched as she rocked back and forth, peeling away moist layers of the fruit with each movement. Later she would grind fresh red chillies with the coconut, rolling the heavy pin against the stone slab that also sat silent.