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I’ll find out, I’m warningyou. We’re going to be friends. I’m always right about these things.’
    A young girl arrived balancing a tin tray of tea glasses. Mair took one and sipped. The tea was milky and thick with sugar, but it was welcome. Her attendant lifted one of her feet out of the bath and dried it in her lap. Then she set to work slathering on handfuls of some gritty potion.
    Karen chatted on: ‘How could I pass up the chance of making friends with someone who turns somersaults in the air before she’s even spoken?’
    Across the room, Lotus had a dozen ribbon bows in her hair. Her tiny fingernails were being dabbed with glitter polish.
    Mair decided it was time to seize the conversational initiative. ‘What are you doing in Leh?’ she asked.
    Karen’s eyes widened. Her face in the mirror became a pale, intent oval. ‘We arrived here from Tibet. I’m a Buddhist, you see. It’s been a pilgrimage for me.’ She began to talk about the monasteries she had visited, and the devotions she had made. She had been blessed by the senior lama after the annual unveiling of a spectacular thangka painting, which had been one of the most spiritual experiences of her life. Did Mair practise? Really not? Had she never felt the call to do so? Did she know that one of His Holiness’s summer residences was actually here in Leh? Had she seen the huge golden Maitreya out at Thikse Gompa ?
    ‘Yes,’ Mair managed to say to the latter. Brisk massaging of her foot and ankle was showering the floor with dead skin and caked foot cream.
    Karen’s leg was undergoing the same treatment. She paused in her monologue and turned her glancing attention to the young girl, who had come back with a small selection of polishes on the tea tray. ‘Pink or red, do you think?’
    ‘Red,’ Mair replied automatically.
    ‘Hmm. Yeah, but I’m going to go for the pink. Don’t want to frighten the ponies, do I? Lotus, what colour are your toes?’ she called.

    ‘Pink, shiny,’ Lotus chirped.
    ‘How pretty. Daddy will love them.’
    ‘And now you’re going trekking.’
    Karen waved a languid hand. ‘That’s my husband’s partiality. It’s a reasonable trade-off, I guess. My monasteries for his mountains. Although we met in New York, we’re based in Geneva right now because Bruno is Swiss. These days, he gets to go skiing and mountain climbing pretty regularly from home, but we agreed that this holiday shouldn’t be all Buddhist. Lotus would protest about that too, although she’s generally pretty easy-going. Not that she looked that way when you saw her this afternoon, I admit, but she doesn’t often freak out like that.’
    ‘You’ll take her on the trek with you?’
    Karen looked surprised, then shrugged. ‘Sure. Why not? Bruno carries her in a backpack most of the way. Everywhere we go, Lotus comes along. That way you get a balanced, open-minded kid.’
    The child wriggled away from her admirers and came to show off her manicure, spreading her small hands on Mair’s knees and beaming up at her. The ribbons fluttered in her ringlets. There was logic in Karen’s theory, Mair thought. She remembered her first glimpse of the little family in the bazaar and the intimacy that had impressed her then. Lotus was certainly the most confident two-year-old she had ever met.
    ‘You look lovely,’ Mair told her. ‘Just like a picture.’
    ‘ Oui – comme Maman ,’ Lotus agreed, admiring herself in the mirrors.
    The door of the salon opened, setting the lace curtains fluttering. A dark head and shoulders were framed in the doorway. ‘Karen?’
    Karen glanced up from her scrutiny of her toenails. ‘Hi. Did you get everything fixed up already?’
    ‘ Pappy. ’ Lotus dashed across and leapt into her father’s arms. He swung her off her feet. ‘Jumping lady,’ she clamoured, pointing at Mair. ‘Jumping high. ’

    ‘Bruno, this is Maya,’ Karen called. ‘My new friend.’
    ‘Hello,’ the man said, nodding at her. There