The bathwater had gone cold an hour ago. Kamala stood at the front-room window anyway, the thin festival silk pasted to her skin where she had not dried properly, and watched the morning come up over the roofs across the lane. A crow walked the parapet of the house opposite, then another, both of them turning their heads at nothing. The curtain breathed in and out against her shoulder. Dust turned slow in the blade of light that came through the gap where the cloth had worn thin, and the flat behind her smelled of last night — sweat, and the musk of the two of them, and under it the faint sourness of food left out on the table.

Her hand sat low on her belly, fingers spread, the heel of her palm pressed into the soft fold above the hair. She had not moved it in a long while. Under the silk the navel showed as a dark coin, and the two globes of her breasts moved slow beneath the wet cloth every time she breathed, the nipples dragging at the weave, stiff from the morning air that came in thin at the window's edge. The cloth at her waist was still damp from the bath, and where it clung it showed the width of her hips and the small hollows beside her navel, the two folds of her midriff that she had spent seven years arranging saris to hide and had stopped hiding somewhere in the last twelve hours.

On her inner thigh, high up where the flesh was softest, Abdul's seed had cooled to a tacky film. She could feel it there each time she shifted her weight — a small wet fact that would not dry, that would not be wiped away without her having to look at it, and so she had not wiped it. Deeper in, past the mouth of her, the place his cock had left its last load sat heavy and closed and would not give anything back. Both of those she could feel. Only one of them she believed.

She pressed her hand harder into her belly.

Three days. She had counted it again while the water ran, standing in the bathroom with the bucket at her feet, going back through the weeks the way she went back through the household accounts — the last bleeding, the days between, the morning she had woken with her breasts sore and told herself it was the heat. Three days before Abdul ever came up those stairs with the ledger under his arm. Three days before Sandip set his mug down and said the word that opened the whole thing. She had known it in her body before she had known it in her head, the way she had known for a week that something in her had turned over and gone quiet, and she had chosen to be looked at, and touched, and filled, and named, and she had not been sorry once. Not once. The thing in her belly did not care who knelt over her or what name got said against her navel. It had been there. It would stay. That was the whole of it.

Seven years, and Sandip had put nothing in her that would stay. She thought of him the way she thought of the shop — a thing she had lived beside so long she had stopped seeing it, the way you stop seeing a wall. His careful hands. The way he folded his shirt over the chair back each night, cuffs aligned. The way he had never once put his mouth low on her, had never once asked for anything with his voice, had lain on his side of the bed with his back to her and his breathing even, and she had lain there too, and the years had gone by like water in a pipe behind a wall, audible and unseen. He had watched, at the end. Stood in the doorway with one heel in the front room and one foot on the bedroom side, and watched Abdul's mouth on her, and she had lifted her hips anyway, and made a sound that was not a word, and he had not stepped all the way in and he had not stepped out.

She had said he would come back. She had said it to the ceiling with Abdul's weight still on her, and she had believed it then, and she believed it less now, in the grey light, with the crow walking the parapet and the flat empty behind her. His shirt was still on the chair. His razor was still by the mirror. His mother's photograph still stood on the shelf with the dust thick on the glass, and he had taken the ledger and his slippers and gone down the stairs in the dark, and the stairs had made their usual sounds, the third step, the creak at the landing, and then nothing.

The beads of her mangalsutra were still on the bedroom floor. She had not picked them up. She had walked over them twice in the night to get water, and once this morning to the bathroom, and the small hard taps under her heel were the only thing in the flat that sounded like anything happening.

Footsteps on the stairs.

Heavy. Certain. The third step did not creak under him the way it creaked under Sandip because he did not step where Sandip stepped; he took the stairs the way a man takes stairs he has taken before, without thinking about them, and the sound came up through the floor and into the soles of her feet and up the backs of her legs and settled low in her, and her pulse moved once, hard, in her throat, and then lay down again.

She did not turn.

The door was open. It had been open all night; she had not closed it after he left, and he had not closed it either, and the two of them had lain in the bedroom with the front room dark and open beyond the doorway like a held breath. Now his feet came across the front room floor, past the table with the two mugs still on it, past the chair with Sandip's shirt, and stopped.

She felt his eyes arrive on her the way you feel the sun come round a corner. Down the back of her, from the nape to the base of her spine, and then everywhere at once — the damp silk across her shoulders, the dark coin of her navel under the wet cloth, the heavy shift of her breasts as she breathed, the hand she had not moved from her belly. The room got smaller. The air in it got thicker. She kept her eyes on the crow.

"You are up," he said.

"The water went cold."

"You bathed."

"Yes."

He crossed the room. She heard him come the whole way — the floorboards, the small grit under his heel, the shift of his weight — and she did not turn, and then he was behind her, close enough that the heat came off him onto her back and the hair at her nape lifted, and he did not touch her. He stood there. His breath moved the damp silk at her shoulder. She could smell him — sleep, and the night, and under that the plain animal smell of him that had been in her mouth and her nose for hours and had not yet begun to smell like anything but him.

His hand came around her and took the edge of the saree where it was tucked at her waist.

He pulled.

The pleats came open with a sound like a page turning. The cloth slid off her shoulder and hung from the one pin at her hip, and the whole front of her came bare to the morning — the damp silk falling away from her breasts, the dark coin of her navel, the soft fold above the hair, all of it out in the light that came through the worn place in the curtain, and the light laid itself across her skin in stripes and the dust turned in it.

He reached through the gap and put his hand flat on her bare belly, exactly where hers had been.

His palm was hot and rough, the calluses at the base of his fingers catching on the skin, and his hand was so much bigger than hers that it covered the whole soft rise above the hair and the small hollow of her navel both. He held it there. He did not move it. She felt the heat of it go into her the way a stone goes into a still pond — down and out, slow rings, and her belly moved under his hand with her breath and his hand did not move with it, so that every breath she took was her pressing herself into his palm.

"I did this," he said.

His voice was low and flat and certain, the way he said everything certain.

"Not him. Me."

She said nothing. The crow lifted off the parapet and went away over the roofs, and the two of them stood in the window light with his hand on her belly and the silk hanging off her shoulder, and she felt the words go into her and find the place where the truth of it was not, and sit there anyway, and she let them sit.

He pushed the rest of the saree off her. It went down her legs and pooled at her feet, and then he reached behind her and unhooked her blouse without asking — the hooks came apart one after another, quick, practiced, and the blouse and the bra went the same way as the saree, down, and she stood in the window light with nothing on at all, the morning air moving cool across her skin, her nipples drawn up tight, the wet still tacky on her inner thigh, and her hand came up without her telling it to and covered her belly again, and his eyes went down to it and stayed.

"Look at you," he said.

He went down.

Not to his knees beside her, but down in front of her, on the floorboards, his knees cracking against the wood, and his face came level with her belly and he put both his big hands on her hips and drew her forward one step, and then he pressed his mouth to the soft rise below her navel.

She felt his breath first, hot and wet through the thin skin, and then his lips, and then the scratch of his beard against the softest part of her, and her whole belly flinched under it and her hand came down and found his head and her fingers went into his hair and closed.

He kissed it. He kissed the soft rise the way a man kisses a mouth he has wanted for a long time — slow, and open, and not finished. Then his tongue came out and licked a slow line across the skin, from one hip bone to the other, and she felt the wet of it cool in the air, and he did it again, and again lower, and each time his beard scraped and each time her belly drew in and her hand tightened in his hair.

"You are carrying my child," he said against her skin.

He said it into her belly. She felt the words as much as heard them, the shape of them moving against the skin, the heat of his mouth behind them.

"Seven years," he said. "Seven years he had you and put nothing in you."

His tongue again, lower, dipping into the small hollow of her navel and circling it, and her knees went soft and she put her other hand on his shoulder to hold herself up, and the shoulder under her hand was broad and hard and did not move at all.

"A pathetic ugly Muslim," he said, and she felt his mouth smile against her skin. "That is what he called me, once. In his own house. To my face."

She remembered. She had been in the kitchen and heard it through the wall, and she had stood with her hand on the tap and said nothing, and Sandip had come in afterward and poured himself water and not looked at her.

"And now his wife is carrying my seed in her belly," Abdul said, "and he is gone, and there is nothing in this flat that is his."

His mouth came up her belly, kissing, and stopped at the underside of her right breast, and he took the weight of it in his hand and lifted it and put his mouth to the soft crease beneath, and sucked there, hard enough to leave a mark, and she made a sound and her hand fisted in his hair and pulled, and he did not stop.

"Say it," he said, into her breast.

"Say what."

"That I did it. Not him."

Her hand was in his hair. His mouth was on her breast, and his beard was wet, and the morning light lay across the two of them in stripes, and behind her the curtain breathed in and out, and somewhere below in the lane a cycle bell rang twice and went away. She looked down at the top of his head — the black hair, the broad back, the big hands on her hips — and she thought of the three days, and the thing that was already there, and the fact that he had it wrong and would go on having it wrong and it would make him gentle with her and proud and possessive and it would keep him here, and she thought that a lie you do not correct is not really a lie, it is only a thing you let stand.

"You did it," she said.

He lifted his head and looked up at her, and his eyes in the morning light were very dark and very still, and he held her gaze while he kissed the underside of her breast once more, slow, and let the weight of it fall back against her ribs.

"Again," he said.

"You did it."

"Again."

"You put it in me. Not him."

He rose then, all at once, and he was taller than her by a head and a half and he filled the window light entirely, and his hand came down on her hip and turned her, one hand, without effort, so that her back was to the curtain and her face was to the room, and the dust motes turned between them and the wall was behind her and the window was behind the wall.