I came around the side of the house, wanting to know what troubled the dog but not wanting a confrontation with my father over the bottles. It took me some time to pick my way through his overgrown garden, the mess on the ground that made the footing unsure. And it took me another moment to understand what I was seeing when I came to the end of the verandah: the back and shoulders of a man entering the house, my father with his hand on the doorjamb, waving an obliging hand to grant him entry. He had been asleep when I left him in there: maybe the man’s knocking had woken him.

I stepped up and into the doorway, and there in the room was Srinivas. He looked at me strangely: part apology, part defiance.

‘How did you get here?’ I asked him.

‘I followed you.’

‘You followed me for four hours?’

He shrugged. ‘It was not difficult.’

‘Who do you think you are? You can’t just—’

‘There is no law against following someone, miss. It was very important that I see your father, and you were unwilling to take me to him, so I…’

Again that unworldly look in his eye, the infuriating combination of innocence and fixation. And more than that. In his right hand he held a bottle.

‘Tell him to go, Father,’ I said.

My father tipped his head in the direction of my voice. ‘I’ll do no such thing, Eliza. That would be the height of rudeness.’

‘Rudeness? The man followed me out here!’

He was unmoved.

‘I thought you were supposed to be a recluse! You live so far outside society that I have to spend my days travelling out here, and now this person comes barging into your home and you appear perfectly at ease!’

My father made a soothing noise and patted the air with his hand. ‘Nobody came barging, dear. Why don’t you, why don’t you come in Mister, ah, Srinivas, and let’s hear what you have to say.’ He heard the thud of the proffered bottle on the table, and stepped backwards to the shelves I’d curtained for him with patterned cloth. His hands following a long-established domestic map, he drew out two heavy glasses he’d likely pilfered from an inn.

These sounds, the punctuation of so many conversations I’d wanted to escape. The trickling of the fluid, the way it stopped the room momentarily, its music speaking differing intimacies to any who heard. His hands sliding, mapping from bottle to glasses. Bottle down, glasses raised. This bloody ritual. I found a little-used lamp and attended to the wick, a task for my hands in the deepening gloom.

‘How many years has it been, lad?’

Lad? Had they both taken leave of their senses?