In the bitter cold, when anyone with a grain of sense would be at home, not tramping around some draughty old mansion. ‘Palace,’ Arjun says. ‘A good idea to come when it’s not overrun with tourists,’ he says. ‘And it’s free.’ As always, Arjun sticks to his idea like a dog to a tree. If he decides to take the children out, that’s it; and Sunila must be dragged along, too. The family should be together. It doesn’t matter that she is with the children all week; their grumbling and complaining and forgetting their lunch money, their dirty clothes (how can two children be so filthy?), their endless quarrelling that she hides from Arjun so that he won’t discipline them. By the weekend she is tired of them. She glances behind at Murad and Tarani sitting in separate seats. Murad stares straight ahead, arms crossed. Tarani looks out of the train’s window, down at her hands, fiddles with her hair, anything to avoid looking at her father sitting in front of her.
