Monsoon Over Ella

The train left Kandy forty minutes late, which the man opposite Hiruni said was the same as leaving on time. She had a laptop, a survey drill and a bridge to save. She did not, yet, have an umbrella. Beyond Peradeniya the line began to climb, and the country folded itself into green. Rice terraces gave way to forest, forest to tea, and the tea went on and on, clipped into waist-high rows that followed every curve of every hill as if someone had combed them. Hiruni had grown up on photographs of this. Her father had kept one above the gas fire in their flat in Wembley: a hillside, a blue train, a sky the colour of wet slate. He had never said where it was taken. He had only said, when she was small and asked, “Up-country,” in the voice he used for things that were finished. Now she pressed her forehead to the window like a child.…