Sometimes she would walk into a room to find them with David and she would have no clue what they were saying even though she could understand every single word. She would then feel that they were his children and not hers. She was the outsider, the foreign wife, and they were one unit. She had believed foolishly that they would be born with a hard drive of her memories. That they would know Egypt as she had known it, the crowded bus to Saint Catherine on the trip she had organised for the student club – Egypt, the Beloved – and how they stopped on the way for breakfast. Foul and tamiyah and tea with mint, Amir shouting at the waiters, in truth abusing them to make everyone laugh. And she had laughed too though she wouldn’t now, but still she noted with bitterness that her children lived in a world where it was okay to be rude to their parents but to a waiter they must be very polite.

She used to love a good argument but not with them. Despite all their bravado and independence, children growing up here needed to be handled delicately. One thwack with the hairbrush, only one, but the teacher saw the bruise and she and David were called in. The child was sticking a pencil in her ear and refusing to listen to warnings that she could puncture her eardrum. But no matter. Salma felt that she was embarrassing David in front of his own people, though he never reproached her except to say that when he was growing up plenty of children were given a good hiding, but no one did that any more. She didn’t want him to be ashamed of her, to feel that he had picked her up from the back of beyond, and so she became more careful, often not at ease. No matter how many clients she massaged and no matter that she had given birth to children with Scottish blood, deep down his people would think that she was not really one of them, that she was not British enough.

A message flashed on her phone. It was from Amir: I am listening. If he was listening, what should she be saying? Complaints and the luxury of regrets. She did not reply and instead wandered back to the tower and climbed to the top. This space still had a ceiling and the light was dim. Looking out through a cavity that must have been at some point a window, she saw miles of uneven land spread before her, green grass inland and, on the left, the steep edge of the cliffs into the sea. She looked out for the bench where she had left Moni sitting, but it was hidden from view. She could see a cove, but it was on the other side of the castle, it was not the one where Iman was now.

The castle was above Iman, its walls casting a shadow over the rocks and the sand. She wandered about the cove aimlessly, humming and singing, bending down to pick up rocks and examine them in her palms. At this close range, the sea was a moving world; the water cold and grand. Iman felt small in front of it. Not weak but limited. What did she know? She knew that every creature came from water, she knew that rivers poured into seas but never, in turn, became salty. She knew that fishes spoke. In their own language, they praised and glorified their Creator, they gave thanks and their hummed prayers were a blessing to the world.