‘Amma, summer term doesn’t break up until the middle of next month. I can’t just up and leave,’ Shona started to explain.

‘The middle of next month?’ Henna mused, considering the proposal. ‘Say on the fifteenth? Yes, that will just about do. Well, come in the middle of next month, then,’ she said, suddenly not sounding distressed at all, but businesslike. ‘So it’s all settled.’ Shona pursed her lips, realizing how her mother had just manipulated her, using her lifetime experience of amateur dramatics for that very purpose.

‘Amma,’ Shona protested, ‘you have to tell me why you want me to come. Are you quite well? Is it Nanu? You can’t just expect me to pay for a ticket to Dhaka with no reason.’

‘Well, get the money from your prosperous father,’ Henna snapped at her, ‘if your great Pakistani husband is so poor that he can’t afford to send his wife to visit her poor old mother.’ Realizing from the silence at Shona’s end that this tactic was proving less than persuasive, she added, ‘Shona, I’m sorry for being cross. But this is important, I wouldn’t ask you if it wasn’t. Why are you making me give you reasons, when I’ve told you I can’t? Do you want me to beg you to come? My own, my only daughter, my own flesh and blood, wants me to beg? All right then, I’ll beg, I am begging you now. Come to Dhaka, Shona moni. I need you here.’ By the end of her little speech, Henna’s tones had shifted from bridling in cross words to wheedling in honeyed, humble tones.

Feeling instantly ashamed, even while she knew she was being played like putty by a seasoned expert at getting her own way, Shona said, ‘Amma, don’t speak like that. All right, I’ll come.’

Having achieved what she wanted, Henna ended the call instantly, with barely a veneer of civility. ‘Good, well I have to go now, Shona. Let me know which flight you’ll be on.’

Shona looked at the clock in the passageway; it was four in the morning, and she felt too tired to be angry at her mother. She put the phone down, and went back to bed.

Parvez was in the same position, but his breathing was lighter and shallow - he had, not surprisingly, woken up. Shona lay down at her end of the bed, and wished she had the comfort of someone’s arms around her. She went back to sleep with difficulty, counting the hours and minutes until she would see Dermot again.

’So why exactly are you going to Dhaka?’ asked Dermot, as Shona drove them to his flat during her after-school driving lesson.