Every night, after Sunita Aunty went back to her own flat, Meera pulled the blanket over her head and spoke into her phone.

“Papa, I got full marks in my spelling test today.”

She listened to it once. Then she deleted it.

Some nights it was, “Papa, will you come to the school function?” Deleted. Once it was only, “Papa, I miss you.” She played that one twice before she deleted it too.

Papa drove a delivery van. He left before Meera woke up and came home when her eyes were already closing. In the morning there was a boiled egg on the table and a note in his untidy writing. Eat everything. Study well.

On the few evenings they met, he asked, “Good day?” while pulling off his shoes and checking his phone for tomorrow’s route.

“Yes,” Meera said.

That was all.

Then her school held a painting competition. Meera painted a small house with a yellow sun. Two people stood at the door, holding hands. One was small. The other was tall and wore a blue shirt, the same blue as Papa’s work shirt.

She won first prize.

That evening she propped the certificate against the steel jug on the dining table and pretended to do her homework.

Papa came in at nine. He dropped his bag, bent to unlace his shoes, and saw the paper. He read it twice.

“First prize? When?”

“Today.”

“Why didn’t you call me?”

“You were driving.”

He did not take off his shoes. He sat down in them and looked at the painting for a long time.

“Is this me?”

“Yes.”

“I look very thin.”

Meera laughed. Papa laughed too.

Then he said, “I did not know what my own daughter paints. I should have asked.”

“I make voice notes for you,” Meera said, before she could stop herself. “Every night. I never send them.”

“Why not?”

“You’re always driving. Or sleeping.”

Papa took out his phone, switched it off and put it face down on the table.

“I am not driving now,” he said. “Tell me one.”

So she told him. The spelling test. Kavya, who forgot her tiffin and ate half of Meera’s. Sir walking straight into the glass door of the staff room. The dal went cold on the stove and nobody remembered it.

The next morning, Meera recorded a new voice note and, for the first time, pressed send.

“Papa, drive safe. Come early if you can.”

His reply came while he waited at a red light, his voice loud over the horns. “Beta, I will be home by seven. Save everything for me.”

At seven the door opened. Papa put down his bag, sat on the floor with his back against the wall, and said, “From the beginning.”

He took off his shoes only when she had finished.