Excerpt:

How angry his uncle will be when he realises, as he must, that the phone has been stolen. Everyone will know who has done it. That moment of recklessness – of greed, of envy bubbling up and congealing into something criminal, irreversible – hovers in his mind: lifting his relatives’ bags into the car, full of a dull resentment against his cousin, who can step briefly into this monotonous country life, just visiting, a nice change – quaint, if a little boring – and then stroll out again, as easily as a bird drifts on the breeze, back to the city, where anything is possible; seeing Toti’s phone fall out of a bag, and stooping to pick it up; crouching there for a second, the adults’ god-blesses muffled through the judder of the car’s engine; thinking, wondering how it would have been if he had not seen the phone fall – if it were still there later when the relatives have driven away – maybe finding it himself; hearing Toti’s nasal, whining voice, and glimpsing his fat face through the window of the car door; the sight of that insufferable spoilt pout convinces him, draws the spite that has been pooling in his heart down the veins of his arm to his fingers; almost involuntarily (and it is the almost for which he cannot forgive himself, because it was not a madness, it was a decision, a moment of surrender to evil) slipping the phone into a pouch hanging around his waist, to nestle with his dog whistle and stale pieces of yesterday’s unleavened bread; standing up, pulling the drawstring with a stealthy movement as he shuts the door with his other hand. At the same time – he now realises – he slammed it on the prospect of leaving the farm. He slammed the door on the city, on school, on being an engineer. Selfishly, stupidly, he slammed the door. Even then, he had a chance. He could have knocked on the window, given it back: look, I found your phone on the ground! But a thrill was tingling through him like the first twinge of a fever. Toti’s favourite gadget: his, now. The car rumbled forward; he waved; they drove away.