“But I need only two tailors,” said Dina Dalai.

“Excuse me, I’m not a tailor. My name is Maneck Kohlah.” He stepped forward from behind Ishvar and Omprakash.

“Oh, you are Maneck! Welcome! Sorry, I couldn’t recognize you. It’s been years since I last saw your mummy, and you I have never, ever seen.”

She left the tailors on the verandah and took him inside, into the front room. “Can you wait here for a few minutes while I deal with those two?”

Sure.

Maneck took in the shabby furnishings around him: the battered sofa, two chairs with fraying seats, a scratched teapoy, a dining table with a cracked and faded rexine tablecloth. She mustn’t live here, he decided, this was probably a family business, a boarding house. The walls were badly in need of paint. He played with the discoloured plaster blotches, the way he did with clouds, imagining animals and landscapes. Dog shaking hands. Hawk diving sharply. Man with walking-stick climbing mountain.

On the verandah, Dina Dalai ran a hand over her black hair, as yet uninvaded by grey, and turned her attention to the tailors. At forty-two, her forehead was still smooth, and sixteen years spent fending for herself had not hardened the looks which, a long time ago, used to make her brother’s friends vie to impress her.

She asked for names and tailoring experience. The tailors claimed to know everything about women’s clothes. “We can even take measurements straight from the customer’s body and make any fashion you like,” said Ishvar confidently, doing all the talking while Omprakash nodded away.

“For this job, there will be no customers to measure,” she explained. “The sewing will be straight from paper patterns. Each week you have to make two dozen, three dozen, whatever the company wants, in the same style.”

“Child’s play,” said Ishvar. “But we’ll do it.”