She had initially built it to determine whether there were health risks. She listed dates of intimacy only as ranges, without detail, and messaged each woman separately to recommend routine testing because informed caution was not accusation. All four had practised safer sex, but the concealed network changed the information available to them. Naina refused to let embarrassment prevent practical care.
The clinic visit was the first time she and Tanya saw one another after the fight.
They had booked different appointments at the same centre and met in the waiting room by accident. For a moment, both considered leaving.
“This is statistically irritating,” Naina said.
Tanya sat two chairs away. “I can reschedule.”
“Why? We are already here.”
They completed forms in silence. A television displayed a cooking programme with subtitles. Tanya tried to think of a sentence large enough to repair what she had done.
“I’m sorry,” she said finally.
Naina continued writing. “For?”
The question prevented a decorative apology.
“For expecting you to disclose what I hid. For acting like your relationship was less likely. For seeing you as the person who keeps us safe instead of someone allowed to make the same mess.”
Naina capped her pen. “I also enjoyed knowing something none of you knew.”
“That is allowed.”
“I enjoyed feeling chosen.”
“Also allowed.”
“I ignored signs because I wanted to keep it.”
“Very allowed. Apparently popular.”
Naina almost smiled.
“I am still angry,” she said.
“I know.”
“But not only with you.”
They sat through the appointment process together. On the way out, Naina asked whether Tanya wanted tea. It was not forgiveness. It was the first plank of a bridge.
Rhea’s apology came through a six-minute voice note she re-recorded nine times.
“I investigated because facts make me feel powerful,” she said. “If I had asked you first, I would have had to trust your answer and admit I was scared. I chose evidence over friendship. Also, some of the things I said were true but cruelly timed, which does not make them useful. I am sorry.”
Meher did not send a voice note. She arrived at Tanya’s school at four with two coffees and waited outside the gate.
“This feels like a parent complaint,” Tanya said.
“I considered booking an appointment.”
They walked to a nearby park.
Meher sat on a bench and looked straight ahead. “You do judge me.”
Tanya began to object.
“Let me finish. You judge all of us, and yourself most. Sometimes you call it being sensible. Sometimes we depend on it. Sometimes it makes me feel like the shallow friend with clothes and photographs.”
“I do not think you are shallow.”
“I know. But you make jokes when I care about how things look, as if appearance is automatically less honest than language.”
Tanya thought of Meher’s presentations, scheduled sunsets and perfect images. She had treated them as comic flaws without acknowledging the skill and care beneath them.
“You make experiences possible,” Tanya said. “Then we tease you for organising them.”
“Exactly.”
“I’m sorry.”
Meher nodded. “I am sorry I used the one insecurity I knew would hurt you—that you think you are morally better. I said it because I wanted you to feel as exposed as I did.”
“It worked.”
“I am good at campaigns.”
They drank coffee. Before leaving, Meher showed Tanya a presentation titled FRIENDSHIP CRISIS: RECOVERY OPTIONS.
Tanya laughed. “You made slides?”
“I process visually.”
The four finally met at Naina’s apartment on Friday. Their initial conversation was careful enough to be useless.
“Work?”
“Fine.”
“Traffic?”
“Terrible.”
“Tea?”
“Yes.”
Tanya placed the silver earring on the table.
“Does this belong to anyone?”
All three said no.
Naina searched Sam’s public family photographs. “No sister named Simran.”
Rhea took the earring between two fingers. “Exhibit E.”
“We are not finding a fifth woman,” Meher said. “We are not building a support group with membership cards.”
“We should tell her if she exists,” Naina replied.
“We should not become detectives of every woman he has met,” Tanya said. “That keeps him at the centre.”
They agreed to send one neutral message through Dev asking him to tell any other overlapping partners that relevant health information had been withheld. Then they put the earring back on the table and laughed at the absurdity of conducting governance around jewellery.
The idea of revenge arrived after the third glass of wine.
Rhea wanted to invite Kabir to four locations at once and leave him travelling between them.
“Transport emissions,” Naina objected.
Meher proposed a billboard, then admitted she was joking only after everyone stared.
Tanya suggested doing nothing.
“Doing nothing allows him to convert this into four unfortunate misunderstandings,” Rhea said.
“What do you want?” Tanya asked.
Rhea thought. “One room where the story cannot split.”
That became the objective.
When Meher discovered Kabir’s dating-app launch, the irony seemed commissioned. Her agency had briefly pitched for the campaign, so she knew the venue layout. Naina found the event listing. Rhea confirmed that attending a public launch and reserving a hotel-bar table violated no law.
They named the plan Operation Full Disclosure over Tanya’s objection that revenge operations should not resemble school projects.
“All effective operations resemble school projects,” Meher said. “Timelines, roles, one unreliable participant.”
They established boundaries in writing.
No contacting Kabir’s clients or employer.
No publishing private messages.
No private images, recordings or sexual details.
No false claims, threats or damage.
No humiliating unrelated women.
No alcohol before the confrontation.
“This is excessively ethical revenge,” Rhea said.
“That is the only kind we can live with afterward,” Tanya replied.
Ishita’s relationship map was useful despite its criminal-investigation aesthetics. She verified dates from public event posts and identified where all four timelines overlapped.
“He used colour-coded calendars,” she said, impressed. “There are visible category patterns in his screenshots.”
“Do not admire the system,” Tanya said.
“I admire data, not morality.”
Dev met them at a café to provide event details. He looked as though he had volunteered for sentencing.
“Did Kabir tell you?” Rhea asked.
“Pieces.”
“How many pieces form four women?”
“I knew about Tanya and Rhea. I suspected Meher. I learned about Naina later.”
“And said nothing clearly,” Naina replied.
“I told him to fix it.”
“You assigned accountability back to the person avoiding it,” Tanya said.
Dev nodded. “Yes.”
He did not offer an excuse. The absence improved the apology.
“The launch ends around nine-forty,” he said. “Kabir usually goes to the hotel bar after breakdown begins. Sam will be there. Vikram may be shooting.”
“No photographs of the confrontation,” Meher said.
“I’ll tell Vikram.”
“Tell him only that we require privacy,” Tanya said. “Not why.”
Rhea looked at Dev. “If you warn Kabir—”
“I won’t.”
“That was not the end of the sentence.”
“I know.”
Rehearsals began. Rhea wrote forty-three questions. Naina reduced them to eight. Meher planned seating so Kabir could not form a private alliance through eye contact. Tanya objected to this as melodramatic, then selected the chair facing the honesty slogan.
They practised possible defences.
“We were not exclusive,” Meher said, playing Kabir.
“Non-exclusivity is not concealment,” Naina replied.
“I cared about each of you.”