I counted the boards in the ceiling because counting was a thing an ordinary woman could still do. Anjali’s voice came through the wall in bright fragments: tanker timings, the secretary’s laziness, a joke about husbands who only came home to eat. Daniel answered like any ageing sahib with time and manners. A cup touched a saucer. A chair scraped.

Under the sheet I was wet with him. The evidence moved when I shifted, a warm secret along my inner thigh, and I pressed my knees together as if modesty could be assembled after the fact. My kurta lay on the chair like a discarded alibi. I did not dare reach for it. The floor would speak.