The night we first slept together, I thought about Tom. Deepak was propped on his elbows above me, the glow from my lava-lamp turning his mouth a reddish pink. He kissed me, and suddenly all I was thinking about was how Tom’s lips used to dry out in the Pahang summer wind. How he’d rub Vaseline on them, and how Peony thought it was disgusting and dolloped Tiger Balm into his Vaseline pot. How he used to lie on the riverbank and talk about the snow he’d seen in England in the hope that she’d be impressed. How his dry lips felt on my own, too, and that sneaking sunrise joy that Peony would never know it wasn’t disgusting at all, but tender and bare and more grown-up than we could have possibly imagined.
‘Durga Panikkar? Your grandmother’s ready for you now.’
It’s Dr Rao. He leads me out of the waiting room and through to a ward with ordered beds. Ammuma’s in the closest one, and she’s far more alert now. She’s been brushed and combed, she’s been propped up against starched white pillows and her words tear out the instant she sees me.
‘Can we go home now?’
She doesn’t look happy; all this fluorescent light and soap doesn’t suit her. She likes things dark and cramped; she likes yesterday’s sweat on her sheets. She reaches for her false teeth, in a glass of water by the bed.
‘Of course, Mary, we just need to keep you under observation for a day or two.’
Dr Rao straightens his collar as he approaches her and pulls his cuffs straight. He’s trying to be respectful, but Ammuma just rolls her eyes.
‘In hospital and this boy thinks his clothes is the problem one.’
Dr Rao coughs, resettles his glasses. ‘How are you feeling? Do you have any pain?’
She shakes her head, folds her wrinkled lips over those too-bright teeth. They look like fangs, I think, not teeth; surely they’re far too big for teeth. My head’s spinning. Ammuma looks very small and far away on those pillows. She could be anybody at that distance. Someone from one of her own stories: a drowned woman in a well or a tiger-prince behind a mask. She could be dangerous.
Dr Rao bends over her bed. He pushes back the loose sleeve of her hospital gown and examines a weeping patch of pink skin. A bruise, on her wrist. He pauses at an old scar she’s had as long as I can remember, puckering the skin of her forearm.
‘She’s had it for years,’ I say, and he nods.
‘A burn, I think. She would have got it from kerosene, hot oil, something like that?’
‘She’s here, ar,’ Ammuma snaps. ‘Can ask yourself.’
Dr Rao steps back, lowers his voice a little. ‘Dr Panikkar? Durga?’
We move a few steps from the bed. Ammuma loses her focus, peers a little and then falls back. Her eyes droop and she tosses her head, frustrated. She’s blinking, picking up her blanket and turning it over and over with a look of intense concentration. It seems to be brand new to her every time.
‘It’s the sedative,’ Dr Rao explains, seeing my frown. ‘It takes them like that sometimes.’
He draws me closer, drops his voice. ‘Her lungs are a little damaged, Durga. There’s smoke damage, but this is something more. She’s never had TB, has she?’
‘No … no. She’s never mentioned anything like that.’
He nods, then looks at Ammuma again. He raises his eyebrows, gives her a reassuring smile. She glares right back at him.
‘Mary, have you ever had TB? Consumption, in your lungs?’
‘No,’ she snaps instantly. ‘No TB. So much questions, lah. Who are you to ask?’
‘I’m a doctor here,’ he answers patiently. ‘Dr Rao.’
She looks away fretfully, then wipes at her mouth. ‘Francesca, ah,’ she mumbles. ‘Francesca wants the doctor, isn’t it, not me? Go see my daughter.’
Dr Rao looks at me. He steps back from the bed, telescopes his neck into his shoulders like an animal sniffing something it doesn’t quite like.
‘A daughter?’ he asks quietly.
‘She’s dead. My mother’s dead.’ I consider this, turn it around for him with care, like a child stacking wooden blocks. I’m tired, and my tongue feels clumsy in my mouth. ‘She was Francesca.’
Ammuma hears this and starts to mutter, beating softly on the bed with both hands. ‘Francesca, in the black areas. You find her. In Kampung Ulu.’
My mouth dries. Kampung Ulu. It was where Peony died. Peony, laughing by the banyan swamp. Peony, one limp hand fathoms below the surface. Dr Rao gives me a questioning glance and I pull myself together.
‘Kampung Ulu, Ammuma?’ I ask her. My voice sounds very level, very normal.
‘The San,’ she mutters, and I frown. I haven’t heard anyone talk about the San in years. It burnt down just before I was born, and in the playground we’d sometimes pretend we were lunatic patients escaped from its locked wards. Locks on the gates, I remember Peony singing, I’m coming to find you, ready or not!
‘In the black areas,’ insists Ammuma. ‘The Emergency.’
‘Of course, yes, the Emergency.’ Dr Rao soothes her. I start to dislike him, with the kind of irritation that innocent objects provoke when they get themselves in the way. Tables in the dark. Chair-legs. Good intentions.
‘Dr Panikkar,’ Dr Rao murmurs in my ear. ‘Can I have a word?’
He ushers me a few steps away. ‘Does she often have confusion over time like this? Over dates?’
‘I don’t know.’ She hardly ever talks about the Emergency, which lasted from just after the war until just after I was born. Our house was nearly in the middle of the black areas: a hundred metres further away
