Navigating the still unfamiliar kitchen, adjusting the recipe to suit what was available, were challenges Moni was happy to take on. Besides, she was baking for the boy. To thank him for the umbrella he had given her when he found her walking in the rain earlier. He had appeared out of nowhere carrying it and walked with her back to the cottage, still without saying a single word. If the rain cleared up later, she would go back to where his cottage must be and take with her a batch of cupcakes.

The rain continued, and tea and the cupcakes almost replaced dinner. Salma had a tuna salad and Moni ate the previous day’s leftovers. Iman steadily ate one cupcake after the other and finished off with a glass of milk. When she complained of constipation, the other two were quick to blame her erratic eating habits.

While Iman struggled in the bathroom, Moni asked Salma the question she had always wanted to ask. How on earth had her parents ever allowed her to marry David?

Salma smiled and said, ‘It was strange. Even now when I think of it, it just seems like fate. David was in Egypt working for BP. He had a good position with a nice flat and a car. That flat was a company let and the BP employee who dealt with the housing of the expatriate staff happened to be a long-time friend of my father’s. Uncle Emad’s wife was my mother’s friend, so you could say that they were family friends. Uncle Emad was very impressed with David. Among the other BP employees, David stood out for him because, during his time in Egypt, David had converted to Islam. After he did that, people started telling him, you need a wife. And Uncle Emad went one step ahead and not only said “you need a wife” but “I have just the right wife for you.” ’

Here Salma paused because it was at this stage in the story where she could mention Amir. Usually she didn’t. Even her children didn’t know about him. But now she said to Moni, ‘I was involved with someone else at the time. One of my fellow students in university: Amir. We had even started to talk about getting engaged. My mother had already met him. The three of us went out to a cafeteria together. I remember that day. She came to meet him behind my father’s back. She was tense. Amir spoke well. He said he loved me and that he had spoken to his parents about coming over formally to ask for my hand in marriage. But, he said, it was a bad time for them. His mother had just had a mastectomy and his father was in debt and struggling over the difficult sale of a piece of farmland. My mother listened to all that Amir had to say but she seemed sceptical. She said he should go ahead anyway and speak to my father. He said he wouldn’t do that behind his parents’ back. She said how about sending an aunt or an uncle as a substitute for his parents. He said that he wouldn’t feel comfortable doing that. She started to get annoyed. She felt he wasn’t cooperating enough, wasn’t flexible. She was being generous, she was giving him a chance. He was a student without a penny and after graduation he still had three years of military service to complete. She wanted him to make more of an effort. He, though, felt that she wasn’t being sympathetic. I sat there between them barely getting a word in.’