‘My Appa used to say, “If you swim, swim together. If you sink, sink together.” He was a very wise man. You should go with Smrithi next time, she’d prefer to have you.’

‘Not now, Amma,’ Priya said brusquely. She ignored Nala’s hurt look and started the car. In the rear-view mirror she watched her daughter help her mother dry and re-plait her hair. They laughed and chatted conspiratorially about the afternoon.

She drove them home in silence.

•

Priya locked the changing room door, her face flaming with embarrassment. She hung up the swimming costumes and sat on the small bench. It was a stupid idea. She eyed the lycra sheath suspiciously. In Sri Lanka she’d only ever waded in the shallow waters of Mt Lavinia beach with Dhara. If they wandered out too far, Nala would call, pulling them back to the beach like an anxious tide.

As she pulled on a costume and adjusted it around her, she reconsidered. It was hideously ill-fitting; unless it was on backwards? No, it was on the right way, just not designed the right way for her forty-year-old form. If only Dhara could see her now, she laughed. She peeled the lycra off, tried another one, and yet another.

‘Are you okay, madam, can I help you?’ the David Jones attendant asked through the door.

‘No, thank you, I’m still trying these. I’ll be out in a minute,’ she replied. The costumes looked so much better on the mannequins. She couldn’t wear any of them. She couldn’t even get out of the last one she tried. Trapped in the changing room, surrounded by mirrors, she was unable to escape her growing discomfort. Everywhere she looked she could see herself: out of place.

‘Try this one.’ A freckled hand emerged from underneath the door.

‘What?’ she blushed again. She should have brought Shiranthi with her, she knew all the fashions.

‘Try this one,’ the hand shook the costume at her. ‘It’s nicer. The other ones were invented to make you look bad. Try this.’

‘Thank you.’ She knew she must have seemed ridiculous after an hour of sorting through hangers and another half hour of hiding in the changing room. She tried on the new costume. It was higher at the neck and lower at the groin, with a pretty frill around the buttocks. It was suitably modest.

The woman spoke again, ‘Just take it before you lose your nerve. No one looks good in a swimming costume except Olivia Newton-John, and even she looks better in leg warmers.’

Priya emerged from the room. ‘Thank you for that. I’m just not sure. That one was definitely better.’

The attendant looked at her. ‘You have such beautiful skin,’ she said.

‘What?’

‘You have beautiful skin. Like caramel. My friends and I would kill for skin like yours.’