[ That's a vivid image - and she feels the flush of heat up her neck. ]

I would never do that to them. They look to me for their livelihoods, their care, not - [ except, she's thinking about - how many of them... would not have minded? It might have been at relief, in the days of the war. The particular not quite image, not quite sensation, of laying on her stomach, where Sita so carefully dotting the lines of henna on her back, pushing her hair back up her neck and - it was the cool-warm, of fingers bracing on skin to the dot of the paste. ] - not like that.

Besides... what on earth do you even feel for me apart from appreciation? [ It matters, it does not matter. That feeling that sits under her tongue that says - there was never a half ]