She lay back on the grass. The sun shone directly above her and she covered her eyes with her arm. The sweat on her T-shirt started to cool, her skin permeated by the breeze. She pulled her jacket over her and that simple action, of drawing a cover over her arms, reminded her of bed sheets, the lightest of materials on a sultry night that was too hot for duvet or quilt. She closed her eyes and the darkness was not black. It had moving colours like running water. Her weight was on the ground, she wanted to roll over onto her side but felt she couldn’t. When she asked her clients to lie on their sides, she slipped a small pillow under their heads. But she was not at work; she was free to rest, to squander time, to let her mind run loose. If she opened her eyes now, she would see the sky through the trees, but she did not want to open her eyes. Later she would, but now she could not open her eyes. She dreamt that he found her lying down, that he left the group he had been walking with in the forest and found her ready, waiting for him. In the dream she is impatient, hardly needing encouragement or preamble, and pulls him to her in a hurry, desperate because there is only a short time, only a small chance, before the feeling is lost and everything else with it. Better this rush, better this grabbing, assertive and direct, linear without games, triumphant without strategy. There is more of her in this shadowy world, with more skin and stronger depths; she is not held back by mind or matter. Everything is permitted, there are no boundaries. It is one and the same between her and him, between who he is, familiar and unfamiliar, knowing her, but the end is up to her. Opening her eyes before it was completely over, she was wide awake to the last motion of her body, the surprise that was not a surprise but still out of her control.

Slowly, she sat up and looked around. Her phone made a sound. She picked it up. It was a message from Amir. I can smell you. She smelt of sweat and of wanting a shower. She started to walk back to the cottage.

Iman wandered into the room Salma and Moni would be sharing. She guessed which bed was Salma’s and sat on it. The room, furnished for a couple on holiday, highlighted her failure. Another marriage ending. After all the times Ibrahim had kissed her feet and said he was devoted to her. The little gifts, when he had been at her beck and call – running to McDonald’s at 2 a. m. because she wanted a strawberry milkshake, holding the hand shower so that she could wash her hair over the bath, borrowing money so she could send it, through Western Union, to her mother. All this had ended or been a mirage.