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Chapter One

Brij Mohan Grover died on a Tuesday afternoon in the first week of October, sitting up, with a glass of water in his hand, and by Thursday his son had lost the list.

Renu heard about the list from two different women before she heard about it from Vikas. By the time he came up the stairs on Friday evening with his phone in his hand and his collar open, she had already worked out most of what he was going to ask her, and she had decided to say yes before he had finished the first sentence, because he was going to take four minutes over it otherwise.

"Thirteenth day is the sixteenth," he said. "Mummy wants it properly done."

"How many people."