She is standing at the top of the escalators one foot resting on a luggage cart and reading her Kindle. Even in her sixties she is strikingly beautiful. But that is not the adjective I would use to describe her. She is composed. This is remarkable given that she has spent forty one years in my company. Sometimes I feel a bit sorry for her, a well brought up English woman condemned to live in a family of wild Irish. But then I reflect that the alternative would have been to live with the English and I cease to feel sorry for her.

I cannot understand why she is already at the airport because I rose at 4 am to be here before her. However time ,which never changes in India, changes twice a year in England and the plane has arrived an hour earlier than I thought. Flavia usually travels very light but today she has a large suitcase with her. “What one earth is in I ask “. “Food”, she replies “I did a week’s shopping at Waitrose”. And so once again and for the last time we head into Hyderabad