Moni said, ‘I’m surprised. The way you met is more conventional than I thought. I was guessing that you worked together in the same company and then fell in love. Did he accept this kind of courtship?’

‘No, he didn’t accept everything,’ Salma said. ‘For example, he didn’t want to meet my parents until he had met me first. He was sure of that. He insisted that we meet up alone. We did. My father was adamant that at that stage David wouldn’t pay for anything for me. Not even a coffee. So, we went to the Aquarium Grotto Garden and I bought my own ticket. It cost two Egyptian pounds. David had to pay fifteen pounds because he was a foreigner. I liked him straight away. There was nothing not to like. He didn’t appraise me, I would have hated that. He never showed off. But once we got inside the park, I realised that I didn’t want to be there. It was full of students for one thing and I was anxious that one of them would recognise me and tell Amir that they’d seen me. “Let’s go somewhere else,” I said to David. “Anywhere.” He protested, “But your dad said . . .” and I said, “It doesn’t matter, I live a double life. I don’t always tell my parents where I go.” It was easy to be honest with him. I was speaking to him in English and it didn’t feel real. It felt that the normal rules didn’t matter any more. Everything was different. But I didn’t tell him about Amir. I could have easily, and I think he would have understood and gone away. But even then, I didn’t want him to go away.’

‘It’s fate,’ Moni said. ‘You were meant for each other.’

Salma was conscious that she had been candid with Moni, but still there was something she was keeping back. A minor detail she had pushed to the back of her mind. ‘I thought he would drop me when I told him that I lied to my parents. He just laughed about it and said I was sneaky. To me it sounded like an endearment: “Sneaky”. When a language is new to you, the words can sound different than their meanings. They ring other chimes. I couldn’t get over the fact that everywhere we went, he had to pay more for things because he was a foreigner. I had never known that. How would I have known? So, I started buying the tickets and speaking to the waiters. He wouldn’t say a word. He’d let me haggle and bring the price down as I was used to doing. It made me feel important. With Amir it had been the complete opposite. He always had to take the lead, pay the bill and decide what we did. When his allowance from his dad ran out at the end of the month, I had to pretend that I was unwell and that I didn’t want to go out, so as not to embarrass him. Amir was like that. If I opened a juice bottle he couldn’t open or got a better grade than him in a test, he would sulk for hours. Suddenly, with David, I was free of all that. What I wanted mattered. What I wanted I got. He even stood up to my parents and took my side. That’s when things went forward, and we started arranging the wedding and trousseau and all these details.’