Sitting high, watching over the island imperially, Kandy and the surrounding hill-country had reason for its pride. It was beautiful. Mist lingered lightly over the hills, kissing their contours. Their many nuances of green, giving way to emerald terraces, some sharp and some shallow, changed colour in the light. They were flecked with people in the distance, picking the tender leaves of the tea plantations.

Kandy offered Nala a surprising adventure. She found herself living alone with her husband for the first time since marriage. The hospital had given them a house with a housekeeper. It was smaller than her mother-in-law’s house, where she’d lived for the last year, but she didn’t care. It was hers; hers and Rajan’s. She could be as untidy and as unruly as she wished; she could tease and flirt openly with him; she could regale him with stories and scandals she learned from her weekly art class.

‘Don’t be seduced by those ladies,’ Rajan warned her about her new friends: the well-dressed wives of Sinhalese landowners, English diplomats and exiled aristocrats. He was particularly scathing about Philomena de Silva and her husband, Melvin, who owned the largest tea estate in the area.

‘Melvin humours his wife’s interest in politics because he married her for her connections. He’s a clever man. He knows that if he wants to do as well under the new party as he’s done under the British, he’ll need the right blood. Blood is as much currency as currency itself. The new democracy won’t be too different from the old autocracy, Nala,’ Rajan lectured her. He admired Melvin’s shrewdness as much as he was repulsed by it. ‘There’ll be a transfer of power from one self-interested master to another. The country will be defined by men like him.’

‘I think he’s very smart in his tailored English suits,’ Nala replied. She refused to be swayed, she looked forward to her art classes with the ladies. Sitting, chatting and sipping tea, they laughed their carefree, tinkly little laughs. They peppered their sentences with ‘You must’—‘You must try this blend of tea my husband is developing’; ‘You must see these shoes I bought in London’; ‘You must go to this new dress shop in Madras.’

Many of the ladies were well-travelled. They had been to Europe and seen the paintings she loved. They moved in interesting circles even if they weren’t actually interested in them. Their boredom was a pre-requisite for their sophistication. Nala was far too excited to feign boredom.

•

Rajan had asked her to do him a favour. He never asked for favours.

‘I have to go back to Colombo for a fortnight. The Royal College of Surgeons wants me to invigilate the written examinations. I wouldn’t ask you to do this, Nala, but this patient needs my help.’