Over breakfast the next day, I offered him to give him some money – what I could afford, enough to get him through a few more weeks in Delhi. He accepted, but perhaps he took offence because the day before he had criticised me for paying a guide as much as he, Marco, would spend on several meals. But that, I said, was the tariff. He argued over our differing attitudes to western tourists, whom he thought I patronised, and to privilege and entitlement. (‘Since you’ve got here,’ he said, ‘you behave like one of the Indian rich.’) At Itimad-ud-daula’s tomb, which we visited in the morning, he was annoyed when the sight of wild dogs rolling on the graves upset me so badly that I scolded the guide and the guard for allowing them to desecrate the silence of a resting place. He said I was behaving like a bigot and a feudal. There was more: I’ve forgotten exactly what. Oh, yes, my wanting to visit the shrine at Fatehpur Sikri before we went to the palaces: he thought my superstitious behaviour was out of character. I just remember anger (his), coldness (mine), hurt. And though I soon forgot his words, I remember the day and the places: walking through the abandoned courtyards of Fatehpur Sikri at sunset, in the mist, and the guards telling us to leave because it was closing time, and the long, silent trip back to Delhi in the car that I had borrowed from my brother-in-law, and Marco driving all the way to Delhi with me in the back seat, and saying a quick goodbye somewhere near Connaught Place when he got out of the car and the driver took his place at the wheel.

I cancelled plans to travel to the shrine at Ajmer with my sister and left to spend the rest of my trip with family in Aligarh and Bombay.

I came back to London in mid-December. The city was dark and cold. I had given up my studio in Maida Vale before I left, and moved into my parents’ flat now, because I didn’t want to be alone.

Two days after I arrived, I dialled Riccarda’s number, only to be greeted by the politely anonymous voice of her answering service: ‘Sorry, Mrs Santini’s away until the New Year. We’re not at liberty to say where, but rest assured she’ll get your message.’

Then snow came down and covered the pavements: we were in a white world, in the bright light of another season. Hopping off a bus, I slipped on the hard ice one evening and hurt my leg and hip badly enough to stay at home over the Christmas break, watching the kind of films I never normally would.