Ayah hobbled in with Thiru, the mas karaya. He had been selling meat to and flirting with Ayah for decades. He was an old man now, skin wrinkling over his incongruously muscular body. He had upgraded his ice cart to an insulated box with wheels, but he still had to pull it from house to house, yoked to a harness across his back. His sons worked in Kollupitiya, selling meat at the market and no longer making house calls.

‘The market is a far more profitable approach, but I still enjoy bringing meat to certain special customers.’ He gave Ayah a gappy smile and surveyed the kitchen, nodding his approval.

He left the room and returned moments later, carrying a stiff, skinned goat. Staggering a little under its weight, he placed it gently on the floor.

‘Hundred rupees, thangachi,’ he said cheekily to Ayah, winking at the girls.

‘Fifty, and I’m not your thangachi,’ she snorted back, hands placed belligerently on her hips.

‘Aiiyoh, thangachi! I’ve come all this way by foot. You couldn’t even take a taxi to Kollupitiya market for fifty rupees.’

Ayah appeared unmoved by his efforts.

‘Eighty, but no less—you are beggaring me.’ He wiped his face tragically on his sweaty shirt.

‘Fifty,’ she repeated flatly.

‘Done,’ he replied holding his hand out for the crumpled note she pulled from her sari blouse. He kissed it and winked at her again. Her scowl relaxed as she laughed and smacked him on the shoulder. She was aiming for his head, but he was at least a foot taller than her.

Ayah handed him three large paper bags filled with mothahams. She had been making the small steamed dumplings all morning, pushing the girls away whenever they tried to steal them. The whole house smelled like the succulence of palm sugar, fresh coconut and boiled green gram. Dhara’s mouth watered as Thiru juggled the bags out the door.

She turned to see Priya standing over the goat carcass, breathing in deeply through her nose, and out noisily through her mouth.

‘You’re not going to hyperventilate again are you?’ she asked. They had been practising dissections on animal parts and frogs at the university laboratory together, but Priya always stood well behind her, concentrating on staying conscious. Lately, her sister had progressed—instead of fainting she had started hyperventilating.

Their first dissection examination was coming up next week and Priya had yet to dissect a goat heart by herself.

‘Acca, I’m going to make the first incision from the thoracic cavity to the abdominal cavity. There’ll be a lot of blood and it may smell.’ Dhara turned to the old lady. ‘Ayah, I want you to be ready with the gauze and the cloths, you’re on clean-up duty.’

Dhara stretched white plastic gloves onto her hands. She gave a pair to Priya and another to Ayah who threw them away with a superior sniff.