She was conscious that she was getting distracted, that she had come to find Amir and was instead roaming around. Perhaps fate was giving her the chance to reconsider, to back out before it was too late. But already it was too late. When she sent him the address, when he decided to come, when she saw him in the forest, when she left Iman and ran after him.

Why was he leading her through this house which held remnants of the past? She crossed an atrium with a glass ceiling, the sun shining through, and it was as if she were in another continent. A place that was hot and bright. She quickened her steps. To go back in time is like diving into water. The body is out of its natural habitat, an intruder in the home of fish. Salma gasped as she walked into one of her favourite memories, the one in which she was wearing her green dress. She was in the corridor of Amir’s flat now, heading towards his room, her back to the kitchen where she had just been sitting with his mother. He was ill, and she was carrying the notes to the lectures he had missed. Because of his mother’s cooking, Salma’s dress smelt of coriander and garlic. Her heart was beating because she was in his flat and she had never been in his flat before. She was seeing what he saw every day, what he touched and smelt. Behind her in the kitchen, the lids of pots wobbled over a high flame and Umm Kulthum was singing on the radio. There was nothing particularly unusual about Amir’s flat or his mother, not much different from her own flat and mother, but she felt an added closeness to him. Now she knew about him what the outside world didn’t need to know, because she was special to him, she was his love and worthy of his privacy.