It was how she had imagined Lady Evelyn’s hunting lodge. Victorian, with eleven bedrooms on an estate of 15,000 acres. The kind of home a lady came back to after a day of brown-trout fishing on the River Carron. Walls on which hung one stag head after the other. But no, this place could be a museum, unlived in, with the carpets and paintings of long ago. With the faces of the Scottish aristocracy gazing down at Salma, viscounts and earls, their clans and tartan. All around her was silence. No attendants or guides. The lights were off, and the curtains were drawn. Perhaps they had all gone but forgotten to lock up. It was not right that the valuable past be left without protection. A thief could come in and take these antiques. She, for sure, would not take anything, neither would Amir. Stealing? It reminded her of the time in the car when she asked Moni and Iman what sin they would choose to commit if it would never count against them, a sin that would not have repercussions either in this life or the next, a sin that would go unpunished. Iman said something confusing about freedom from accountability. Moni said she would kill someone. Murtada probably. Then Salma had sent a message to Amir asking him what he would do, and he had said exactly what she was thinking of saying. He wrote that he would steal what didn’t belong to him – such as another man’s wife. She wrote back that she would steal what didn’t belong to her too – perhaps another woman’s husband. It had made her laugh that Amir and she were thinking along the same lines, that their thoughts were in harmony. It was all tongue-in-cheek and disingenuous, reducing adultery to theft, twisting a major sin into one that carried a lesser punishment. They were flirting. And now the time for flirting was over. Here they were in this stately home at the edge of the forest, both foreign and free to roam. If she called out his name now, he might answer her. She took out her phone, but the screen was a complete fog. Even if there was a recent message from him, she would not be able to read it.