first time in their marriage she came up against his stubbornness. From this she had known how deep his hurt had gone, and because of this she had kept her own counsel. It had not been easy. Then Alice had arrived. The child had switched on the light they so desperately needed. Although, Kamala reflected sadly, she had also brought them a whole different set of anxieties.
Preparing to go to bed at last, Kamala thought back to the day Alice had been born. How happy they had been on that day. Moonlight fell across the garden sending great shadows from the lone coconut tree on to the gravel.
‘I’ll just have another look at her,’ Bee said, coming in, glancing at her, ‘check she’s asleep.’
Kamala nodded and waited. She was praying silently to the Buddha for peace to return to the house. Incense drifted through the open window. The night was cooler as they lay, side by side, in their old antique bed in a room steeped in bluish moonlight and scented as always by the sea. This was the bed where first Sita and then May had been born. Life and death, thought Kamala sadly, here in this house.
‘We might need to prepare for another visitor,’ Bee said quietly.
‘When?’
‘Not sure. After the demonstration, is my guess.’
Outside a solitary owl hooted and the moon moved slowly across the sea.
‘So at least you can still help someone,’ she murmured.
She felt infinitely old. Turning, she faced Bee, moving closer to him as she had done every night, without fail, all these years. He smelled faintly of tobacco and of linseed oil; he had been smoking too much in the last few days. It wasn’t only this news she was waiting for. She was certain there was something else. A train rushed past.
‘What is it?’ she asked at last, fearfully, in Singhalese.
Bee said nothing. He lay motionless for so long that she wondered if he had heard her. She hesitated, a cold fear in her mouth, willing him to speak. Finally he moved restlessly, his face unreadable.
‘Stanley leaves in a month,’ he said. ‘He’s got a passage to England. He decided to leave first and get a job, then send for them. I’ve told him that I will pay their fare. That way they won’t be parted from him. It will be better that way. Alice needs both her parents and the family must not be split up. They’ll be gone in four months at the most.’
Outside, the sea moved softly. The beach was empty, the water a churning mass of silvery black. Nothing could distinguish it from the dark unending emptiness of sky.
WHEN THE MOMENT SHE HAD DREADED finally arrived and she saw her mother walking slowly up the garden in her faded orange sari, Alice felt her legs grow unaccountably heavy and turn to stone. Kamala coaxed her out on to the verandah and reluctantly down the steps, a bunch of gladioli thrust out in front of her face. Long after she had forgotten her mother’s lop-sided expression of trying not to cry, Alice remembered the deep, burnt orange of the flowers and the shimmering sea-light. She gave Sita an awkward hug and the scent of the flowers passed violently between them. Dazzling sea colours of a certain unbelievable blueness flew into the house while the sound of the cicadas rose and fell in feverish cadence, reminding Alice of the Buddhist monks. It was Kamala who took charge of the situation, enfolding her daughter in a loving embrace, recalling the day Sita had walked in with the newborn Alice. No one else was capable of much. Within minutes Sita was installed in a chair and a cup of weak coriander tea was in her hand.
‘I’ll put your mama’s flowers in a vase in her room,’ Kamala told the child, smiling encouragingly, aware of some indecision. ‘She can see them when she has her rest.’
Alice nodded. She was a murderer. In the awkward silence that followed, Sita stared straight ahead at the sea. Two catamarans with dark patched sails stood motionless in the distance. Alice stole a surreptitious look in the direction of her mother. Sita had wanted a boy named Ravi but, because it had been a girl, they would have called her Rachel after the child in the film, Hand in Hand. Alice swallowed.
‘Did it hurt?’ she asked eventually.
Without warning her mother began to cry, a thin long howl followed by great choking sobs. Her sari was coming undone. Alice stared at her in dismay, wishing she hadn’t spoken.
‘Mama,’ she said uncertainly, looking around for her grandmother, wishing Janake would come over as he had promised. Sita looked frightening and unfamiliar. Her body was its old shape with her stomach almost flat again. She began to speak in a high, strange voice that wobbled on the edge of hysteria. Panic-stricken, Alice called her grandmother.
‘I thought my legs were being pulled apart,’ Sita was saying through a storm of tears. ‘And then my stomach collapsed. They didn’t let me see her, they didn’t want me to!’
She wrung her hands and her face twisted with the effort of trying to speak while she cried.
‘We have to leave this place, Alice. We must go far away from these murderers. We must go to England. Your dada is leaving first, but we must follow.’
Alice stood rooted to the spot. Her mother looked like one of the puppets she had seen at the fair. Her grandparents, coming in just then, moved swiftly.
‘Come, come, Sita, don’t upset yourself and Alice with talk like that. Let’s take you into the bedroom.’
‘Give your mother a kiss, Alice,’ Bee said calmly, ‘and then she must rest. After that I want you to come with me; there’s something I have for you. I’ve been waiting for the right moment.’
They stepped out into the hot afternoon, and turned towards his studio, a small shadow walking close to a larger one. Her bicycle was leaning against the mango tree exactly where they had left it. Seeing it, Bee stopped and sighed.
‘Child…’ he said.
And then he shook his head.
‘Can I ride my bicycle?’ Alice asked, stalling for time uneasily.
Her grandfather was beginning to sound frightening too. Whatever it was he was about to say, she did not want to hear. Bee nodded absent-mindedly. She wanted him to be angry with the government or her father. She wanted him to look fierce, but all Bee did was continue to stare at the sea. She sensed that Shockwaves were going through him. At last he took a deep breath.
Alice,’ he said, and to her relief he sounded stern. ‘There are certain things you need to know.’
She froze. He knew! She had wished the baby dead and he was going to hand her in to the police. Bee was looking at her. The heaviness that she had been carrying around for days shifted and the sun on her neck was as warm and comforting as a hand. Mango scents from the tree pressed against her. It was such an ordinary day. On the dry parched ground a yellow-spotted gecko moved haltingly, back and forth. Alice watched it until it disappeared under the debris of fallen leaves and then her grandfather’s voice was suddenly very clear and steady in the pause.
‘It is not the end of the world, you know,’ he was saying lightly, as though he was talking to himself. And it isn’t for almost four months.’
‘What?’ she asked, startled.
‘Huh?’
