And Salma. How had she changed? She would not tell them. ‘Speak to us,’ said Moni. ‘Why are you quiet?’ asked Iman.

Salma could not yet translate her hurt into words, it was not only her body he had carved into, taken out her strength, tossed it away in a surgical pail. It was not only that. She moved away from her two friends. She lay back on the grass even though she could now sit and stand up. She could braid Iman’s hair and do push-ups. She rolled to her side and cried because she had not had a good cry for a long time. And they came to her, they did not leave her to cry alone. Iman to comfort her and Moni to say kind words. Salma had always been the strong one, the one whose life was sorted, the one who was envied, who knew what to do and what she wanted – but all that had been fragile.

‘I want to tell you about my mother-in-law,’ she finally said. ‘And don’t expect a mother-in-law joke.’

Moni laughed out loud. Iman smiled. She had met Norma many times. There was nothing remarkable about her, nothing of note. She was, to Iman, another chore that Salma slotted into her busy life.

‘She saved me,’ said Salma, and told them how Norma had carried her out of that clinic, back through time and countries, to the forest, where they were waiting for her.

Iman said. ‘It wasn’t her that saved you but what you did for her over the years.’

‘Nothing special,’ said Salma. ‘Nothing that anyone else wouldn’t have done. If David had married any other woman, she would have treated his mother the same way.’

Moni raised her eyebrows, ‘Given her free massages?’

‘Not necessarily,’ said Salma. ‘Not if she wasn’t a therapist.’ And when she said that, she felt a whole sense of satisfaction that she had eased someone’s pain. That she had helped. Why all these years putting herself down, ashamed that she had failed her PLABs, that she was not a doctor as she had always dreamt of being? Hiding her low self-esteem beneath the efficiency, aggressively pushing her children to achieve what she couldn’t, the years she lied to her parents, the low salary she continued to accept just to be able to say, ‘I work at the hospital.’ And when Amir surfaced on social media, all she had been willing to give up because he had addressed her as Doctor. She had been unfair to herself.