He threatened he would find her, one way or the other. This week or the next. After the holiday, she would return to find him in her city. He knew the name of the city where she lived.

‘A big city,’ she laughed. ‘And you don’t know my exact address.’

‘There are two ways to get information,’ he said. A bribe or a threat. He elaborated on how he would bribe her. She laughed and laughed. And the threats?

It was Moni who noticed the smell. Fastidious, squeaky-clean Moni having to share a room with Salma’s running gear, the sweat-stained tops and soaking sports bra; the training trousers streaked with grass and whatever else. She wrinkled her nose and walked around the room, sniffing. ‘Can you smell that, Salma? What is it?’

Salma was fiddling with her hair in front of the mirror. She reckoned it had grown thicker since they’d arrived. ‘What kind of smell?’

‘A nasty smell. Foul.’

‘I can’t smell anything.’ Under a harsh light, the top front of her hair exposed glimpses of her scalp, but not as much. She had stopped parting it in the middle, an unflattering look. The past was where her luxuriant hair grew, in another country. ‘Why do you care about your hair, when it’s always covered?’ one of her colleagues had asked when Salma moaned about the price of hair-thickening products. Moni or Iman would never ask such a question. They knew that their headscarves were as important and unimportant as a bra or a pair of sandals. Salma cared about her thinning hair. She just did. What she didn’t care about was the smell in the room, if there was really a smell. It must be Moni’s imagination.

Moni stalked the room, sniffing. She picked up objects and held them up for inspection. In the mirror, Salma watched her with amusement.

‘It’s your phone!’ Moni pointed at it, lying on the side table near Salma’s bed. ‘The smell is coming from your phone,’ she said with triumph.

Salma turned around in disbelief. Suddenly possessive, she sprang across the room and picked up her maligned phone. Now in her hand, it felt valuable and irreplaceable, barely a few days old. ‘Phones don’t smell,’ she murmured, bringing it up to her nose. She barely sniffed it before wiping it on her sleeves.

Moni shrieked. ‘Don’t do that! Disinfect it or at least find out what’s on it.’

‘There is nothing on it,’ said Salma. ‘I had it on the grass earlier on. I remember chucking it in my shoes at some point.’

‘I see. So, you then hold it up to your cheek and your ear.’ Moni was astounded. ‘I would be careful if I were you. All the germs you might pick up.’