‘That’s life,’ she said on the phone, the bitterness surfacing through. ‘People here complain about the health service being strained, doctors working long hours and yet they make it incredibly difficult for medical graduates from abroad to qualify.’

‘You should have persisted,’ he said. ‘You should have cracked these exam requirements whatever it took. Made sacrifices. Got help. Come on, it’s not like you to give up.’

She liked this reproach, his unshaking belief in her. But he hadn’t known her as a mother, hadn’t seen what pregnancy and sleepless nights did to her, time and again. It almost submerged her once and for all, but it didn’t. She wouldn’t be on the phone now with him if it had. Motherhood hadn’t enslaved her, but it did dent her resolve, put her in her place.

‘I tried, Amir. I tried my best. The circumstances were against me.’

‘Nonsense. You needed help that’s all, a bit of support. Your husband isn’t a doctor, is he?’

His voice was neutral, but she knew it was a dig that did not require a reply. Amir was the surgeon now, his private clinic stuffed full of patients, his reputation high, the money coming in. No doubt his wife had a full-time maid, a beach house overlooking the Mediterranean, private schools for the kids.

‘Do it now,’ he was saying. ‘It’s never too late. Sit those exams again.’

For a second, the old ambition surged through her. It flared up like lust. She was conscious of her elbow touching her breast as she held up the phone, her hips brushing the column she was standing against. ‘Or I could just pack it up and return home. Rewind the clock.’ Her voice had an edge to it, an uneven attempt to sound flirty.

‘I would be at the airport waiting for you.’

She could visualise it. To be whisked away, to be young again. ‘Don’t you have better things to do? I reckon you’re busy.’

‘Every day is the same as the one before it,’ he said. ‘My wife is Japanese.’

‘Really? I didn’t know.’

He laughed. ‘Metaphorically.’

She didn’t get the joke and imagined her children heckling in the background: ‘Racist!’

Amir began to explain. ‘She’s super-efficient, methodical and organised . . .’ He suddenly stopped as if caught out. He didn’t want to talk about his wife any more.

Salma rescued the silence with chatter. The Wimbledon matches. It turned out he was following the coverage even more regularly than she was. They were the same people but heavier and slower, their responses taking more time, their words loaded with assumptions, presumptions and the solidity of the past. She told him about Lady Evelyn. Her wedding in 1891 was in the All Saints Church in Cairo. As a gift, the Khedive sent palms and flowers to decorate the church.

‘What was she doing in Egypt?’