‘She’s the same age as I was when I came to live with you. I realised that the other day. I wanted to buy anklets for her. I found such a dainty pair, with small bells. I think Smrithi would like them. I was thinking—I only lived with my parents for eight years, but by then they were my parents, and even though I loved you and Rajan mama for three decades afterwards, I still—I still loved them more.’

She turned to look at Nala. ‘Do you think those eight years—the first eight years—were what made me theirs and not yours?’ she asked.

Nala’s heart pounded. She knew the answer to that question—Dhara belonged to her parents because she was born of them, just as Priya and Nandan belonged to her more deeply than Dhara, as much as she had tried to love this child as her own.

Which was why she lied.

‘Yes, mahal, I think the relationship a child has with their first parent bonds them to that parent forever. It can’t be broken or replaced. It shouldn’t be broken … for the child’s sake,’ she added. She prayed silently for forgiveness. God would understand, surely He would agree it was best to leave things as they were. How would hurting Smrithi and Priya help them, or Dhara? No one should have to feel the loss of a child. She remembered it too well.

‘I understand,’ Dhara said, turning back, her shoulders lower. ‘Will you give the anklets to Smrithi for me when you go back? I bought comic books for Vivek; Priya says he’s always reading. What do you think?’ she asked sadly.

‘I think you’re a wonderful mami, Dhara.’

‘I had a wonderful mami to teach me.’ The younger woman rested her head on Nala’s knees, and Nala spread her hair out in the sunshine.

•

The man set his father down gently on the divan. Through the wrinkled gourd of his face, he smiled at her, toothless. His body had atrophied on his once-broad frame, and his frame had bent over itself. He looked like a crumpled paper bag. Nala could not remember a time when Thiru had not been strong.

For much of his life, he had pulled a cart with an icebox of meat through the streets of Colombo. When mass refrigeration and butchers put him out of business, he and his two sons found work digging roads and drainage between Colombo and the shining hotels that sprouted along the coast.

After the ’83 riots, Thiru and his family escaped with the cinders of their lives. He lost his daughter-in-law and three grandchildren. They had been trapped and slaughtered in their home in Dematagoda. It had taken several knife strokes from unpractised hands. Thiru had always shown the animals at the abattoir the mercy of skill, speed and precision. His grandchildren were shown no such mercy.