Nala had seen poorer villages. As a child she’d visited relatives, usually at funerals, and she’d been aware that some people had harder lives than her. She knew her parents weren’t wealthy like Rita Matthews, but they were the growing middle class. Ceylon was proud of its middle classes. Politicians boasted about them. The country’s streets were not littered with its poor, the way they were in India.

No, the streets of Colombo and Kandy were clean.

‘Just make the delivery and leave, Nala.’ That was the last thing Rajan said to her when he boarded the train for the capital. The car climbed higher into the hill-country. With each turn, the roads became narrower, as though they were struggling to find level ground between the angles of the implacable mountain.

The homes she passed were fragile huts, some steadied across wooden frames, others just propped against the sharp gradient of the mountain.

When she looked out of the car window, she could glimpse Philomena de Silva’s plantation between huts. The blanket of camellia plants looked different from this side of the valley, the thick green rows sitting like fat toupees in a shop window.

‘Wait in the car, madam,’ Vijay said, turning off the engine. ‘I’ll give them everything and come back.’

‘No. I’ll come,’ she replied.

She wasn’t prepared for the smell. She could taste the foulness when she swallowed.

‘Madam, please—Doctor will not like this. He was very clear.’

‘Doctor is not here,’ she replied lifting her sari to mid-calf as she stepped over potholes of feculent water.

Mohan had married an Indian Tamil—Vani—a low-caste, quiet girl. She wondered if Vani’s family lived like this.

The driver strode ahead of her confidently with a canister of water in each hand. The door to the hut was a striped sarong. He set the water down and lifted up the sarong to allow Nala in.

‘Shouldn’t we knock first?’ she asked.

‘No, only the girl will be here. The others will be on the plantation. It’s picking season.’

She followed Vijay into a small, dark room. A pulp of shredded coconut husk and cow dung had been applied to the walls to strengthen them. Woven bed mats lined the edges of the swept dirt floor. Against the far corner lay a girl, no more than fifteen, asleep on a mattress made of kapok fibre rolled up in an old sari.

Nala bent down and sat next to the girl. Her skin was hot and wet.

‘Madam, please,’ Vijay said nervously.

‘Bring the things, Vijay, do as Doctor asked. And candles—I think my husband keeps candles in the glove box. In fact, check the whole car and bring anything useful he keeps in there. Leave it by the door and wait outside.’

Nala pulled the stained bed sheet back and inspected the girl. She stirred and opened her eyes.

‘Amma?’ she asked softly.