In India, Lillian’s husband shot and killed a tiger. She did not herself witness this event and found it difficult to imagine her husband, an austere and proper man, intimately involved in that uncompromising moment of blood and passion when the tiger took the shot into its living body. But it was happily conceded by everyone who had been on the hunt: the tiger belonged to Lillian’s husband. Its skin was displayed on the polished floor of the house they occupied in Madras State. The tiger’s skull was unexpectedly small and innocent; its eyes were gold-coloured glass, blind. Lillian sat with her feet resting on the tiger’s back as she read or sewed. Secretly, she asked it to carry her away, to the hills, to the far-off mountains.

For nearly twenty years Lillian and her husband lived in India, most of the time in Madras State. They had four children, all boys. At about the time that Lillian could count on the fingers of one hand the years left until her husband’s retirement from the Indian Civil Service, he invited her to his office and showed her a map spread out on his desk. The map was of Canada, a country about which Lillian knew absolutely nothing. Her husband pointed to a dot of land on the left hand side of the map.