This is the writer's voice, new fiction from The New Yorker.

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

On this episode of The Writer's Voice, we'll hear Madreouet read her story,

You Are My Dear Friend, from the August 17th 2020 issue of the magazine.

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

Now here's Madreira Vijay.

You are a 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 goodnight to the guests. So just before 8.30,

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 turtleneck sweater. There they are, she said, come here, my bumblebees.

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

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

Gita has saved our lives, ladies and gentlemen.

Take my advice. Don't try to go it alone in this country.

...