‘No, rasathi, my name is Nala. I am the doctor’s wife. Dr Rajan—you know him don’t you?’

‘Yes. He comes here. He helps us.’

‘Yes. What’s your name, rasathi?’ Nala began to wipe the girl, gently starting with her face.

‘Meenakshi, after the Goddess.’

‘I know the Goddess. I went to the Meenakshi Amman Temple once,’ Nala slowly took the girl’s dress off. It was dark and crusted in places. She wiped her carefully between the thighs. Large clots came away in her hands. She remembered the gloves too late.

‘You’ve been to India?’ the girl asked, trying to raise her head.

‘I have—I went after Doctor and I were married. Have you been?’

‘No. But my thatha was born there.’

‘Is your grandfather still there?’ Fresh, thick blood had started to trickle.

‘No, the British brought him to Kandy when he was a little boy. He died here.’ The girl closed her eyes. ‘Appa says we’ll all die here.’

Nala returned the next day with food and as many canisters of water as the driver could fit into the car. She went the day after that with their spare mattress and a pillow. And the day after that with old clothes.

•

Nala held the glass thermometer up to the lantern. It read just over forty degrees.

The man sat on his haunches next to his daughter. He wiped his face with his faded sarong. The skin on his forehead had thickened, from the cloth rope that tied the basket to his back. Tea was heavy when it wasn’t steeping in a bone china pot.

‘Do you know what to do, madam?’ he asked. His Tamil was faster and shorter than hers. Born here, he still spoke like an Indian.

‘I think so. Doctor taught me,’ she replied, clenching and stretching her fingers in the rubber gloves. She surveyed her instruments, all lined up on the cloth next to her. The syringe was loaded and ready. Rajan said he had ‘procured’ the penicillin from the British Army’s supply. Very few Ceylonese had access to it and, as she had proudly told her art class, Rajan was the first doctor to administer it to civilians. She hadn’t told her art class that she would also be administering it.

She inhaled deeply and exhaled slowly. The girl’s temperature had been high for too long. The man reached out and steadied Nala’s arm. His skin was black and cracked like desiccated tamarind paste, scorched by the sun.

‘Meenakshi is my only child. Her mother died long ago. I should have let her keep it but I didn’t know—I didn’t know she would do this to herself—or the baby.’ The man held his daughter’s hand.

‘What about the father of the baby?’ Nala asked, exhausted. She had been sitting there for hours, taking the girl’s temperature, and praying for the fever to ease.