Senthan brought out a parcel from a plastic bag on his lap. ‘I brought you something, Amma, I hope you don’t mind. Ayah taught me how to make it once. Hers are still better.’ He opened the sweaty newspaper wrapping, revealing ten perfectly formed dumplings, their tawny cheeks pressed against each other. Nala leaned forward and inhaled. The palm sugar, coconut and green gram pulp inside made her mouth water.

Ayah had told her Thiru’s story, and his loss. She thought Thiru would ask her for money. Ayah was a sharp judge of character, and the house needed the presence of a strong man. Old Mr Perera was no more able to ward off would-be-thieves than Rajan. At best, her husband could have bored intruders with his exhaustive knowledge of acoustic schwannomas of the vestibular cochlear nerve.

She looked at Senthan again. He was burned dark by the sun, although his face was etched with more than just age and hard work. He was from a different caste, but Nala realised she could no longer tell caste or class as easily as she once could. Everyone looked degraded by the conflict, no matter which caste or class they had been born into.

Nala was a Vellala, from the land-owning caste. Her family hadn’t held farmland for generations, but by the lottery of birth, her caste had more currency than Thiru’s. They were the same but different. Mohan said there weren’t enough Tamils in Ceylon for the Vellalas to keep differentiating and discriminating.

He was right. War had no such bigotries. It didn’t care that some Tamils had been brought by the British to pick tea or that others were Muslim. War didn’t ask about the pedigree of your Tamil origin before it took your life. And it certainly didn’t ask if you liked to build things or had a cousin-sister who loved you or a daughter who needed you.

Senthan reached forward to offer her the food and she could see scars all along his forearm: fresh burns. Catching her stare, he quickly turned his arm over. They all had their scars, she thought, pulling reflexively at her sari pallu: some were more recent than others, some were more healed than others, but none were more important than others.

She knew she ought to wait for Rajan to return from work. He would need to agree to hire Senthan.

‘I’ll talk to Doctor, Iyah,’ she said, picking up a mothaham and holding out the packet towards the old man. ‘I’m sure he’ll say yes.’

CHAPTER 15

Sydney, 1987

Priya reached the phone on its fifth ring. ‘Hello, hello?’ she answered, breathless.

There was no sound on the other end of the line.

‘Hello?’ she asked again, slipping her handbag off her shoulder and dropping the car keys onto the side table. It was carved sandalwood, a gift from her parents. She was about to hang up when a man spoke.