She paused to take a sip of her whiskey. ‘In India Miss Quinn, everyone is only a messenger of something else. But when the messenger is clouded… what hope for the message? Well I hope you will be happy here.’

The speech was over and Quinn was dismissed.

Manju took her upstairs to the flat.

Quinn looked slowly around the silk furnishings and the plain white washed walls. Her home for the next few weeks. The air was still inside the flat, dusk had penetrated it and cast all the rich furnishings into a reddish glow.

Manju said, ‘Of course if things are not to your taste, we will change it without question.’ Their dark eyes followed each other around the rooms. There were silver ornaments and gilt wooden furnishing, wall hangings and painted wooden puppets hanging grotesquely from the walls. Manju thought she moved like a sleep walker, touching everything lightly with her hand, it was almost erotic, and she thought of her absent husband, who hadn’t touched her like that in months.

‘There are so many people downstairs,’ Quinn asked.

‘Are they all your family?’

‘They are my husband’s family.’

She lifted one of the puppets. ‘I suppose you could say neither of us belong.’

Manju did not reply. There was a portrait of Manju on the wall in the bedroom above the bed, with her husband on her wedding day.

She explained, ‘This was our flat, we have given it up for you. But we will take it off if you want.’

She pointed to the outside verandah and Quinn walked through the sitting room with a thick floral carpet and more silk curtains and onto the verandah where Pavna’s bougainvillea poured randomly out of terra cotta pots.

Manju said, ‘May I now ask a question?’

‘You can try.’