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she will sometimes besiege in brief, doomed bursts of dieting. He wants to stroke her there, but she won’t let him, not now, standing in the halogen light of their kitchen.
    ‘Maya, shall we—’
    ‘Don’t you want to know about my day?’
    ‘Yes, of course.’ He can listen and clear up, it’ll go that much quicker. He scrapes the food waste into the green bin.
    ‘Asha’s been picked for a dance show. There are only three other girls doing it. She’s very proud.’
    He switches the lights out in the lounge, in the dining room. He calls through: ‘That’s good.’
    ‘She was full of it when I picked her up. She’s going to be a mermaid.’
    ‘She’s done well.’
    ‘Mehul’s not firing on all cylinders,’ Maya says, when he’s back in the kitchen. ‘Trouble in paradise.’
    ‘What do you mean?’ He picks up the expensive knife, the one they can’t put in the dishwasher, and takes it to the sink. He turns on the hot tap and water sluices down the blade.
    ‘He’s fallen out with Tom. Playground stuff. I had to do the talk: you know, sticks and stones.’
    ‘What happened?’
    ‘Tom’s been saying things about Mehul. So Mehul came out of school today and he was a bit down in the dumps. That’s all.’
    Satish turns the tap on more. He holds the blade in the gush, tilting it up and down, sending spray over the edge of the sink.
    ‘What’s Tom been saying?’
    ‘Satish,’ says Maya. ‘Let it be. They’re just kids. It’ll be sweetness and light next week.’
    ‘Hmm.’
    Maya gives him her head-on-one-side look. Her expression is hard to read at this angle, but it looks alarmingly like compassion. Satish turns off the tap and reaches for the dishcloth.
    She points to her nose and smiles. ‘He said something about Mehul’s nose. He has the Bhatt nose, poor boy, and Tom teased him about it. You know eight-year-old boys, always the witty ones.’
    ‘Just his nose? Nothing else?’
    ‘Yes!’
    He looks at Maya, proudly sporting the Bhatt nose. ‘I like that nose,’ he tells her. ‘It’s a good nose.’
    ‘Thanks. Hey, can you go through the kids’ bags? I need their reading records for tomorrow.’
    The bags lie under the hall table, dumped there when the children came in from school. Maya’s vision for this table owes much to country-house dramas. She imagines an expanse of polished mahogany, a neat pile of letters, a vase of carelessly arranged blooms. Instead, in this inconvenient, servantless world, there is a saucer of unclaimed trinkets, a mound of football cards, and a sagging bag of ballet clothes. Satish drags the kids’ rucksacks out from underneath. Mehul’s reading record (‘The green one!’ Maya calls through) is dog-eared and stained with orange juice. Asha’s can’t be found.
    ‘It’s not in here,’ he tells Maya.
    ‘It must be. It always is.’
    ‘It isn’t!’
    Satish looks in the pockets: snapped pencils, an apple core, a crumpled newsletter. He empties out all the junk and makes a pile on the floor. There’s a sticker promoting road safety, someone else’s tie, a tattered notebook, a cigarette.
    A cigarette.
    Asha has a cigarette in her bag.
    It’s a bit squashed, and shedding flakes of tobacco. It was stuffed into a side-pocket, the last place she’d think her parents would go.
    He holds it away from him as he enters the kitchen. ‘Look.’
    ‘Oh shit,’ says Maya.
    Satish is up the stairs and into Asha’s bedroom before he can think clearly. He shakes her awake.
    ‘Wha—?’
    ‘Sit up.’
    ‘What’s wrong? Papa?’ she says, her eyes wide.
    He turns on the light and Asha hides her face under the duvet.
    ‘Look!’ he tells her. He holds the cigarette up in front of him.
    Asha emerges from the covers and sees what he is holding.
    ‘Oh, God!’ she says.
    ‘Stop that language. Do you know where I found this?’
    ‘It’s not what it looks like. It’s not mine,’ she wails.
    ‘Then why was it in your bag?’
    Maya has arrived and is