When she was back on her cane chair on the veranda, watching the sunlight spread over the tiles like a bright lacquer – too bright, too dry – the telephone rang. It rang so seldom, at Carignano, that its ringing sounded extraordinary, ominous.

Sitting bolt upright in her chair and trembling slightly, Nanda Kaul pressed the palms of her hands together and wondered whether to punish it by letting it ring itself to death or end her agony by answering it quickly. Its persistent shrilling was so painful that she was obliged to do the latter which seemed to her like a weakness, offending her still further.

She held the black ear-phone awkwardly, resenting its uncomfortable pressure on the small bones of her ear, picked surlily at the pages of the telephone directory and stared out of the window at a large hen scratching under the hydrangea. The look on her face was one no one had ever caught on it – she had allowed no one to, ever.

A burst of crackling and hissing, as of suddenly awakened geese, a brief silence, then a voice issued from it that made her gasp and shrivel, balling up her fingers tightly. The voice was not merely shrill, not merely strident, it was shrill and strident as no other voice ever was but Ila Das’s.

Moving the ear-phone a few safe inches away from her ear, Nanda Kaul sighed resignedly. She knew this voice was Ila Das’s tragedy in life and wondered, as always when she heard it, if Ila Das herself knew it. They had been together in school and college and from that time to this there had been no hint that Ila Das might harbour such a devastating suspicion about herself.

The shock of that hideous voice made it impossible to follow what was being said for a minute or two.

(from Chapter 6)