This is The Writers Voice, new fiction from the New Yorker.

I'm Deborah Treisman, fiction editor at The New Yorker.

On this episode of The Writers's voice will hear Madhary Vijay read her story

You are my dear friend from the August 17th 2020 issue of the magazine.

Vijay is the author of the novel The Far Field, which won the J.C.B. Prize for literature in 2019.

Now here's Madhoree for Jay. J.

You are my dear friend.

The bakers held a party in their flat and Mrs Baker told Gita that she was to bring the children in to say good night to the guests.

So just before 830, she made the girls undress and pulled their purple nightgowns down

over their heads.

Sally, nine years old, stretched her chubby fingers skyward.

Emma, seven, was less cooperative,

but together they managed it.

The girls smiled sleepily at Gita through veils of blonde hair.

Holding each by the hand, she walked them up the corridor toward the smell of rum and cigarettes.

The guests were scattered across the living room, most of them reclining on the baker's

couches with the spent aspect of runners at the end of a race, Gita paused with the girls at the entrance.

From an armchair by the window, Mrs. Baker surfaced. Tall and thin, she wore her yellow hair in a plumb-line ponytail down her black turtle neck

sweater.

There they are, she said, come here my bumble bees.

Two small hands left Gita's and then the girls were in their mother's arms.

She heard Mr. Baker's voice from over by the bar.

...