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too, all life, was like a story, and there could only be happiness in store, and she and David would be together for ever and ever. It seemed so real, especially with David holding her hands and the water lapping at her waist and the afternoon sun gentle on her wet shoulders. I didn’t seem wrong, at that moment, to make a promise for events beyond your control. Everything just felt right; for now and always. How could it be otherwise? She wanted to promise. She opened her lips to speak the words.
    T HAT WAS how Mani found them. Standing in the water, facing each other, hand in hand, lost in their bubble of rightness.
    Iyer had sent Mani to find Savitri, because the go-between, the boy’s aunt, was waiting. Mani had searched the whole of Fairwinds for her, asking everyone he met if they'd seen her, and Singh had told Mani that they'd gone to the beach, and when Mani arrived there they were, standing in the water hand-in-hand, gazing into each others’ eyes. Mani yelled and yelled for Savitri, ever more furious, but it was a long time before she heard because the wind snapped his words away. Finally, though, she heard, and spun towards him, and came out of the ocean, blouse and skirt transparent in their wetness and clinging to her body. Mani bawled at her and boxed her ears, and then not even giving her the time to turn around and wave goodbye to David he grabbed her by the scruff of her neck and marched her all the way home, dripping wet as she was.
    Mani was too stupid to realise he couldn't bring her home this way. He did, and in his fury prattled out the whole story in front of the boy's aunt instead of being polite and making an excuse for Savitri and waiting till the boy's aunt had left. So the boy's aunt saw her dripping wet like a drowned rat, and opened her eyes wide. On hearing that she'd been swimming with the sahib boy, and holding hands with him, she excused herself and hurried off, and they never heard from that particular boy's relatives again.
    Mani told Iyer that David was going to spoil Savitri and make her unfit for marriage. Iyer forbade Savitri from playing with David. Savitri told David.
    T HAT NIGHT she waited till all were asleep, wrapped in their sheets against the mosquitoes. Thatha , her grandfather, slept alone on the tinnai , the front verandah. The other men slept on the side verandah, and she and Amma, her mother, slept on the back verandah facing the garden because no-one slept inside in April, it was so hot, except the English, the Ingresi. As silently as a peacock's feather sweeping the sand she ran down the back drive to the manor house and round the back to David's window, which of course was wide open.
    She gave the cry of the brainfever bird. Savitri could imitate all the birds and the animals so well that no-one could tell the difference. She could give a perfect peacock's cry, she could chatter like a monkey or a chipmunk, and her brainfever bird's call was so true to life it was of no use, for David did not stir. She peered into the darkness behind his window; she could not enter because of the bars but she knew that David's bed was just beyond, so she reached in as far as she could and tugged at his mosquito net. David still did not stir, not even when she whispered his name as loud as she could, so she went in search of a long stick and found the very long one used for cutting down mangoes, with a little curved knife on the end, and with some effort managed to stick this through the bars — not using the knife end — in such a way that it ran along the wall, and she poked David in the small of his back.
    'Ow!' he said, and sat up with a jump.
    Savitri giggled and spoke his name, a little louder now, and when he realised it was her, he came to the window and they spoke through the bars.
    'They're looking for a husband for me,' she said, 'and that's why I can't play with you any more.'
    'But that's so silly,' said David. 'Because I'm going to marry you myself !'
    'I know. But still